Sen. Bill Cassidy, one of the lawmakers involved in a bipartisan call with President Joe Biden's top economic officer Sunday to discuss the $1.9 trillion coronavirus stimulus plan, said Monday that Republicans in the discussion want to know more about the justification for the massive proposal.
"We can all agree, we need to have the money up there for vaccines," the Louisiana Republican, who is also a physician, said on Fox News' "Fox and Friends." "Clearly, the vaccine rollout is kind of not working as well as we would like."
Money for testing can also be accepted, said Cassidy, but with some of the other agenda items, "let's talk about that and you show us why you want that money, and then let's talk again."
Sunday's meeting was led by White House National Economic Council Director Brian Deese and involved as many as 16 senators, with eight from each party invited to participate, reports CNN. The network reported that an unnamed person on the call said the White House wants to pursue Biden's massive plan as a full bill rather than splitting it up, meaning Democrats can use a budget reconciliation process to advance legislation with 51 votes and avoid a filibuster.
Meanwhile, Cassidy said the holdup with the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines could be there has been too much big government control over the process.
"There were vaccines, if you will, in storage to go out," said Cassidy. "I just don't know. Is it that it's not being produced or that it is not being delivered? I spoke to a friend of mine who is actually involved in the distribution. He says too much big government control has kind of messed it up. If you ever want any other medicine you need, it's always there but that's because the normal mechanism is in play."
But with the government control, that could be causing delays, he said, so "we need to go back to how things are normally distributed."
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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