Reopening the nation's schools can be done safely, but it will take a great deal of money and Republicans still have not presented a coronavirus stimulus bill that outlines anything about future spending plans, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Monday.
"This is why we're at the cliff, the New York Democrat said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
"We passed our comprehensive bill, bold, helping American families close to two and a half months ago. We still don't have the proposal from the Republicans. They're divided. (President) Donald Trump provides no leadership."
Trump's top aides said Sunday the White House agreed in principle with Senate Republicans on a $1 trillion coronavirus relief package, and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows told reporters in the Capitol that he expects the package to be unveiled Monday afternoon after final details are clarified.
But Schumer said safety must come first when it comes to sending children back to school, and he's worried that "if we let Donald Trump push us around" like he "pushed around his governors" in states like Texas and Florida to open too fast, there could be serious problems.
"If you open a school too quickly, a kid, a teacher gets coronavirus and then the school has to go on shutdown, that's worse," said Schumer. "There are ways schools can be made safe but they need a lot of resources...they have to change bus routes, double the bus routes. They want to take their gyms and cafeterias and convert them into classrooms."
He added that he and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi three weeks ago sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to discuss legislation, but "they're so divided and we have all these cliffs."
"We want to sit down and negotiate, but you can't negotiate with a ghost," said Schumer.
And that, said Schumer, is "appalling."
"These are people who lost their jobs through no fault of their own," he said. "They want to feed their children, make sure to pay the rent so they're not kicked out of their homes. That expired last Thursday, the moratorium. How awful it is."
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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