Congress Working on $2 Trillion Financial Aid Package

unemployment insurance. And while states try to grapple with the influx of patients, they're still desperately short on masks and protective equipment for medical workers. Some governors are calling for a coordinated national response to the shortage. Ginger Gibson, political reporter for Reuters, joins US for more. Thanks for joining US, Ginger.

Continuing on with all of the coronavirus coverage, the US is now reporting the fourth most coronavirus cases in the world, were over twenty seven thousand in in the country, almost four hundred deaths. New York has become kind of this epicenter of COVID nineteen with about of the country's total cases. There. Governor Andrew Cuomo has been on a lot of the talk shows just talking about how much his state and

just kind of in general. I think it's a general feeling around the country that the states and the governors need help there. But I wanted to start off with the new news that we've just got. Kentucky Senator Ran Paul has just tested if positive for coronavirus. I think he's the fourth member of Congress overall that has it. Now,

that's right, we now have several members of Congress. Additionally, I know some reporters who cover the Hill that have been tested for it, haven't seen their results yet, but are showing the symptoms that have pursumed cases. These folks have been walking around the building with each other for the past week and what can sometimes be very close quarters. So an example of what happens when you're not putting

that distance between yourself. Congress, the halls of the United States Capital are full of people who can transmit diseases to one another. So we've seen that play out. We've seen reports said at least the sick members of Congress who have contracted this disease say they are doing well. They don't have any of the critical symptoms or conditions that have hit other people. But again, as we know, this disease progresses and they'll all be watching their health

very closely in the coming days and weeks. Yeah, Senator ran Paul, they put out a tweet. They said he's asymptomatic and he was tested out of an abundance of caution due to his travel and everything, and they said they closed their office down about ten days ago. They've been working remotely, so they don't think that any staffers have been exposed to him while he's had coronavirus, so hopefully the spread is limited there. Let's move on to

this financial aid package that Congress is working on. They're saying now it could be up to two trillion dollars. That is a lot of money. But they're still going back and forth. I think the last thing I heard was that Nancy Pelosi said they're not just there yet, so everybody's kind of go back and forth. They're still trying to figure it out. But everybody does maintain that this is very bipartisan right now. They've worked negotiating over

the weekend. Everyone has priorities there are priorities coming from the White House, coming from the Republican controlled Senate and the Democratic controlled House. I think it's fair to say we're going to see something past in the coming days, and I would expect that to be sort of a dual focus piece of legislation here, and dual focus might be a little too simple fuckation of it. This is going to be a very large piece of legislation, and that it appropriates a lot of money, as you suggested,

could be to trillion dollars. But I think we're going to see something focused on business and something focused on people. So they have been negotiating how to get cash into people's hands, people who are facing real economic hardships, that have lost their jobs, that are struggling, or that the prospect of an illness means they couldn't work and it would be bankrupt in the process. And then we're going

to see aid to business. We're going to see help to the airlines and the rest of the track evel industry, some type of assistance to small businesses that are having to close down all across the country. So it's going to be very large and very sweeping. And what is the most unprecedented shutdown of economic activity and trying to stave off what would be a really devastating economic fallout because of it. They said that they're trying to make

this one last about ten and twelve weeks. It would tie the economy over for about ten and twelve weeks. They said, direct payments to Americans about a thousand and twelve hundred dollars. Families of four would be getting about three thousand dollars, and as you said, just a bunch of other things, enhanced unemployment, insurance, things for small businesses. You mentioned the number again, two trillion dollars. Where does this money come from? Is this stuff from the taxpayers?

Are they just reapportioning money that we have? How do we get all this money? This money would be coming onto the United States debt. It would be increasing the US debt. It would be basically borrowing money from the future that the federal government would be responsible for paying back. The argument being that better off to have the federal government, which is capable of taking on this kind of dead do it now and try to save the economy before it's in a free fall, then wait and then have

to deal with it afterwards. There was efforts to try to keep and stave off in two thousand eight, during the financial crisis that led to a recession. There was a lot of pushback that it would increase debt, not as much money was spent as some people would have liked. There was criticism then that the government didn't do enough

to get the economy to recover fast enough. And this is an attempt to try to not repeat that, to say, all right, well, let's put as much money into this as we need to stop this from being another catastrophe. So that's on the financial front. On the health front, it's still very critical. States across the country are just kind of desperate and angry. They need more and more medical supplies. Hospitals are experienced a big shortage of masks

and other equipment that they need. I mentioned earlier Governor Andrew Cole from New York. He said that states are starting to compete with each other for some of these materials, and he's calling for some type of coordinated national response on all of this. Get people to start manufacturing these things more, distribute them to hospitals and states so they have it. So the administration is facing a lot of

pressure from the states individually on this. That's right. We have seen a response to this epidemic that's really been on a state level, more often state governors putting out responses telling people what they should and shouldn't be doing. Before we see it coming at a federal level, and a little bit of a back and forth between governors and the president over who should be sort of helming

some of these things. So, yes, we're seeing states trying to get the resources their states need at the expense at times of the other states that might be needing them. And as you mentioned earlier, this is not uniform. We're not seeing this epidemic evenly across the country. There are pecular areas that are much more hard hit than others. New York City, very hard hit, parts of Florida, very hard hit. Other places along the East Coast also hard

hit Seattle, Washington. Those are the places that would appear to need these resources more and they say it shouldn't be left to just who can bid the highest or who can buy the vast the fastest gets these resources. Ginger Gibson, political reporter for Reuters. Thank you very much for joining us. Thanks for having me. I'm Oscar Ramirez, and this has been your daily coronavirus update. Don't forget that.

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