Second Stimulus Check: Donald Trump Believes More Relief Is Needed

While Americans wait to see if a second stimulus check will be approved by the government, President Donald Trump reportedly believes that more relief is needed. Trump’s position was shared by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin during a Fox News Sunday interview. “The president and I believe we should do more stimulus,” Mnuchin said.

“We have about 7 and a half million jobs we need to get back until we’re back to where we were, and we want to help small businesses,” Mnuchin added. “We want to help businesses that are particularly impacted by this, and we’ll continue to work on proposed new legislation.” The U.S. Treasury Secretary also stated that, from his perspective, negotiations between Democrat leaders and the Trump administration are stuck “both on certain policy issues but more importantly on the top line.” He then went on to blame Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for being the reason that talks between the two sides have stalled. She “has refused to sit down and negotiate unless we agree to something like a $2.5 trillion-dollar deal in advance,” Mniuchin stated.

“As you know, we put $3 trillion into the economy when the economy was completely shut down,” Mnuchin continued. “We’ve now reopened the economy. Let’s do a more targeted bill.” Fox News Sunday guest host Brett Baier then asked Mnuchin if this new bill is the “skinny” GOP bill that has been talked about. “I’d like to call it a more targeted bill, but, yes, our expectation is we will move forward with that next week,” Mnuchin replied.”

The U.S. Treasury Secretary then spoke about something he and Pelosi do agree on: avoiding a government shutdown. “The Speaker and I have agreed we both don’t want to see a government shutdown, so we are going to do a clean CR [continuing resolution],” he said. “I hope by the end of the week we can begin moving forward on that.” Mnuchin added that they “haven’t agreed on the specific details,” but that he expects it would go “through the beginning of December. That’s what we did this year.”