House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Tuesday described the Democrats' planned $3 trillion coronavirus relief bill as being a scientific, fair and nonpartisan way to open the economy.
"Number one in our bill is how do we open up the economy," the California Democrat said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "How do we get rid of this virus, this villain and that is testing tracing, treatment, and isolation."
The proposed bill is called the "HEROES Act," and also has provisions to help essential workers who have remained on the front lines by sending money to state and local governments, where they get paid.
"We have important assistance for hospitals as well," said Pelosi. "It's about testing. It's about honoring our heroes and it's about putting money in the pockets of the American people by some of the measures [such as] unemployment insurance, direct payments, employment retention, tax credit, child tax credit."
The bill also calls for extended testing, "so that we know the size of this challenge," and so disparities can be ended that have resulted in minority communities having a high rate of death.
The bill, however, "isn't about politics. It's about humanity," and that means there must be a strategic plan to "test, trace, treat, and isolate" to defeat coronavirus.
She also said the bill will allow the economy to reopen "scientifically and instead of helter-skelter. We're long overdue."
"We're thinking big and appropriately focused discipline," she said. "We have a plan, we have a goal. We have a timetable. We have benchmarks and we want to say let's open up the economy. It's all a negotiation but again, states, governors, and mayors across the country, Republican and Democrat, desperately need this help."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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