Economist and adviser to President Trump Stephen Moore called on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) to “get a deal done” amid a stalemate on a fifth coronavirus relief package.
“Come on, Nancy Pelosi. Come on, Chuck Schumer. Come together for the good of the country. Get a deal done! … What is holding things up? I think it’s pure politics,” Moore told radio host John Catsimatidis on his show broadcast on WABC 770 AM on Sunday.
Moore’s comments come as Republican senators declared the fifth coronavirus stimulus bill dead on Thursday after Democrats rejected the roughly $500 billion GOP-drafted bill.
In a joint statement, Pelosi and Schumer dismissed the bill, saying it “doesn’t come close to addressing the problems and is headed nowhere.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said later in the week that he doubts Congress will be able to pass another relief bill until after the election.
Democrats and Republicans have disagreed for weeks about the appropriate spending and policy provisions included in the next coronavirus relief bill to follow the previous $484 billion package passed in April.
Moore said that, despite the lack of coronavirus relief, “the good news is that even without the stimulus plan, which has been held up now for eight weeks, the economy is on great great roll right now. Four straight [months] of 1.5 million or more jobs created.”
The Labor Department reported Thursday that weekly claims for unemployment stayed flat last week when adjusted for seasonal factors but rose by more than 20,000 on an unadjusted basis. The new data is still bad news for the U.S. economy as the country continues to suffer from high rates of unemployment and jobless claims.
Moore suggested that because Democrats were unwilling to budge on their stance regarding the GOP-drafted legislation, they did not want to help the economy.
“That’s a cynical thing to think, but when I saw the actions of Pelosi this week saying no to everything unless we get $1 trillion, I thought, I don’t think she really wants to help the economy right now.”
Moore said Trump isn’t going to “waste” $1 trillion on a package, stating that the president “recognizes that a bad deal is worse than no deal at all.”
John Catsimatidis is an investor in The Hill.