Obama Economic Chief Questions Pelosi-Mnuchin Corporate Bailout Plan: ‘It Doesn’t Help the Rest of the Economy’

Former White House Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Jason Furman on Wednesday questioned the value of a bailout for the airline industry after political leaders failed to come to an agreement on an economic stimulus package that would help other Americans.

“I personally don’t even love what’s being done for airlines,” Furman said in an interview with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell. “I think you shouldn’t do something for one industry that you don’t do for everyone else. Even if you thought that was a good idea, it’s only for one part of the economy. It doesn’t help the rest of the economy. And what you’re seeing is one industry can take care and protect itself, because it’s a concentrated interest.”

Furman was talking about negotiations between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to pass a bailout package for major airlines. The Treasury Department confirmed the two spoke Thursday morning about the issue, a day after President Donald Trump wrote on Twitter that Congress should “IMMEDIATELY” pass $25 billion in funding for airlines.

The move comes after the president on Tuesday rejected a $2.2 trillion stimulus package passed by House Democrats to authorize spending they said was needed to stimulate the economy in light of the coronavirus pandemic. The White House indicated Republicans would be willing to spend $1.6 trillion, while the president said separately that he would also be willing to sign off on a plan aimed specifically at providing $1,200 payments for Americans who received similar payments earlier in the year.

Pelosi said Wednesday that she would not agree to either proposal, saying in an interview, “He’s just again rebounding from a terrible mistake he made yesterday and the Republicans in Congress were going down the drain with him on that.”

Furman said it was misguided for Congress to focus on bailing out airlines without helping Americans more broadly.

“The broader interests of hundreds of millions of Americans [are] being lost in the shuffle,” Furman said. He added that the airline bailout was “in no way adequate for the tens of millions of people getting unemployment insurance right now, through no fault of their own, because there just aren’t jobs in our economy.”

Watch above via MSNBC.