Americans are hurting because of the coronavirus pandemic, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is "using their pain" to leverage the Democrats' $3 trillion HEROES Act, Sen. Bill Cassidy said Monday.
"Republicans offered to continue the unemployment benefit while we continued to negotiate on every other issue, but Ms. Pelosi said no," the Louisiana Republican said on Fox News' "America's Newsroom." "The act, by the way, mentions marijuana more than it mentions jobs."
President Donald Trump, however, "cares" and signed a handful of executive orders over the weekend so he could get help to the American people that "Ms. Pelosi" wants to deny, said Cassidy.
However, Cassidy said he didn't like how former President Barack Obama signed executive orders, including one to pay health insurers' cost-sharing subsidies without appropriations from Congress, and he doesn't like presidential orders now, but at least Trump's orders are "self-limited."
"It only goes so far, I think 2 months, whereas Obama's was everlasting," said Cassidy. "Once he did it, it didn't have any limit to how long it would last and so this something, if you will, that we do for the moment, not for eternity. I think that's a big difference."
However, the results of Trump's actions won't be known until they're seen, said Cassidy, but at the same time, his order to extend $400 weekly in enhanced unemployment benefits will help families who have lost their incomes, and it will stimulate the economy.
"Hopefully it pushes Pelosi off of her position of 'give me everything,'" said Cassidy. "Oh, no, I've worked it down to 2 1/2 trillion or I won't give you unemployment insurance. I think the real genius of this is to undermine Pelosi. She is not going to allow anything to happen unless the cries of the American people move the action."
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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