Lawmakers need to be "realistic" about coming up with a coronavirus relief package that members of Congress from both sides can agree on, Sen. Marco Rubio said Wednesday, but at the same time, there's a "limit to what you're gonna take."
"I’m not going to pass the $3 [trillion] HEROES Act or whatever they called it, which has all kinds of stuff in there that has nothing to do with the pandemic," the Florida Republican said on CNBC's "Squawk Box." "So everyone’s going to have to do something to get what we want, which is the nature of divided government.”
But the only way to get a bill passed is through compromise, and up until Tuesday night, there was no movement toward that occurring, but now there's agreement that both sides want to get a deal done by the end of this week, said Rubio.
Meanwhile, the Paycheck Protection Program loans for most small businesses have been spent, and companies will soon start laying people off, which will be reflected across the rest of the economy.
"We have to do something, and that will require us to vote for a bill that has things in it that I may not necessarily like," said Rubio.
Meanwhile, Rubio said he thinks including low-interest, forgivable loans proposed by Sens. Todd Young and Michael Bennett in the package is a good idea, but there is not $300 billion in the small business portion of the bill to afford it.
Rubio also discussed purchase talks between TikTok and Microsoft, noting that it's not the videos the Chinese apps take that are the problem, but the data that's mined.
"Data is more valuable than gold. Personal data today is more valuable than gold," he said. "The difference between TikTok and the other social media apps is, by Chinese law, ByteDance has to turn over all of their data to the Chinese government. In fact, their disclosure says so. I don’t care where they store it, that is the big problem."
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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