Fox’s Maria Bartiromo Grills Mnuchin on Economy: ‘Are You Considering a Full Shut Down?’
Fox’s Maria Bartiromo interrogated Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on the steps being taken to boost the U.S. economy amid the coronavirus outbreak on Monday.
The Mornings with Maria host pointed out that there have been “calls to shut everything down across the country, not specific states so that we understand when the end date is.”
“Are you considering a full shut down, Secretary?” Bartiromo asked.
“Maria, what I would say is, nothing against the financial people, and, and, and me, we should leave the medical suggestions to the medical professionals,” Mnuchin responded.
“But that’s not a medical suggestion, that’s also an economic suggestion,” Bartiromo replied. “We’ve got businesses that you’ve been on the phone with this weekend who say, ‘I’m out of cash. I need cash now! I need to shut down, reassess, I need this now.”
“Well Maria let me be clear, for businesses that have to shut down, this bill gives them much much needed support. So again, vast amounts of money for small businesses, we have the IRS fully geared up as soon as this is approved. We expect to get direct deposits to hard-working taxpayers for bridge payers,” the Secretary answered, referring to the coronavirus stimulus bill that failed to move forward on Sunday.
“I’ve seen a bunch of fake news over the last couple of days over a complete shut down of the economy. The president has not made that decision… I think the president is hopeful that the policies and procedures put in place will kill this virus quickly,” Mnuchin added.
Later in the interview, Bartiromo pressed Mnuchin on his desire to pass the stimulus bill today:
“So, will you flood the country with cash? Do you believe the country will be flooded with cash to help the cash flow problems at so many businesses today?”
“Maria, this legislation is now approximately two trillion dollars, part of that is 500 billion dollars, which is not a slush fund… it’s a mechanism that we can use, working with the Federal Reserve, that will provide another 4 trillion dollars of potential liquidity into the market… this is a massive liquidity program that the President is determined, that we are going to support hard-working Americans… we are going to win this war,” Mnuchin answered.
“Why are the Democrats pushing back?” the Fox Business host asked.
“Ask that question to the Democrats,” Mnuchin said.
Watch above, via Fox Business.
