President Donald Trump and his administration are taking the right steps toward reopening the nation's economy once the coronavirus pandemic eases, former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley said Friday.
"What you want to do is make sure that the health and safety of people is number one, but you also want to have a second track where you are working on the economy, and that means that you keep going in the direction you are going with health and safety," Haley said on Fox News' "Fox and Friends."
The White House is considering the creation of a task force that is focused on reviving the economy, and if the group should include representatives from the private sector, according to reports on Thursday.
Haley, noting that there is a push to start opening the economy again on May 1, said that there must be an evaluation to determine if benchmarks have been reached.
She also called on lawmakers to come together to complete legislation to replenish the Paycheck Protection Program, which is allowing small businesses to keep workers on the payroll.
"There is no reason to believe that they couldn't have passed Mitch McConnell's bill," she said of Democrats' effort to stall Trump's push for an extra $250 billion in aid. "Now is not the time to be playing games."
Haley, a former governor from South Carolina, also discussed an opinion piece she wrote this week for The New York Times, defining the role of governors in the states' responses to the coronavirus emergency.
"When I was governor and we knew a crisis was coming, we developed those relationships with the feds," she said. "[In] states that aren't doing well, those governors need to learn from those mistakes and make sure that when this happens again, they are prepared."