No matter how much money is allocated for loans to the nation's businesses, nothing will substitute for them being able to reopen their doors, former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, now the vice chairman for Moelis & Co., commented Friday.
"The original intention was just to be a bridge," Cantor, a former Virginia Republican lawmaker, said on CNBC's "Squawk Box." "I believe strongly we have to work toward a strong reopening. The Trump administration's guidelines are very much on point."
The original intention for the Paycheck Protection Program was to give small businesses the cash they needed, but large companies took advantage of the resource, said Cantor, adding that he respects Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin for giving the large companies a certain date to repay the money.
"I think the answer to all that is that we really need to focus on safe reopening," of businesses, said Cantor said.
He added that Americans were asked to stay at home to flatten the curve, not because "we felt we were going to stay at home and lick this virus."
Cantor said he also thinks it will take commonsense among communities when it comes to applying the White House guidelines on reopening, as adjusting will "will be a new normal for some time."
Businesses will also have to find a way to repay the money they have borrowed, but first and foremost, growth must start again.
"There's going to be the natural partisan human cry for a living wage, for universal basic income," said Cantor. "I think if we can come together and sort of set aside those normal partisan destinations and really think about what that means and how we can get more people in the jobs of the future it definitely I think will change politics."
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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