Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), in a Tuesday appearance on Breitbart News Daily, said Democrats are “taking a wrecking ball to Main Street America” by pushing Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) relief package filled with “liberal wish list” items unrelated to the crisis at hand and demanded Democrats to throw her bill in the trash and provide relief to Americans “today.”
Scalise, who describes himself as an “eternal optimist,” is hopeful the Senate can get back on track after Pelosi hijacked their bipartisan relief bill with a liberal “wish list” of her own.
“This has to end today,” the lawmaker told Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief and Breitbart News Daily host Alex Marlow. “Roll up your sleeves. Throw away your wish list of far-left or far-right ideology. We put that on the side. This has got to be put on the side. Throw this bill in the trash that Pelosi filed and get back to work for the American people that are literally facing losing everything if this game goes on longer.”
Long-term policy discussions, he said, should be saved for the upcoming November elections.
“Today is the day. It has to come back together today,” Scalise said. “They have to stop playing the games because, the goodwill is still there, but it’s not going to last much longer.”
Scalise expressed disappointment in Democrats who turned their backs on the bipartisan measure designed to provide immediate relief to the American people and placed the blame squarely on Pelosi for blowing up the bipartisan “lifeline” Republicans and Democrats were working on.
Pelosi “flew into D.C. on Sunday and, lo and behold, Sunday is when everything fell apart. And everybody just kind of got this new bill dropped on them in the dark of night after tremendous bipartisan work,” Scalise said, blasting it as a “fantasyland wish list of the far-left socialist left.”
“You literally have free benefits to people here illegally, and you’ve got all of these different massive slush funds … that have nothing to do with this crisis. You’ve got a bailout to the Postal Service. What does that have to do with coronavirus?” Scalise asked. “This has got to stop.”
“People are about to lose everything they’ve worked for their entire life,” he continued, noting that, on all the calls he has had with Americans who are losing their jobs and small businesses that are on the edge, “not one time has climate studies or carbon-neutral airplanes come up.”
“With every day that Nancy Pelosi and her allies play this dangerous game of chicken with our economy, Alex, they are taking a wrecking ball to Main Street America,” he said. “We don’t have days to wait and play this game.”
The original bipartisan bill, Scalise said, offered realistic relief to Americans worried about their businesses and individuals concerned by their inability to pay their upcoming bills.
“In the bill that we are — at least that we were working on in a bipartisan way — there’s the ability for the big regulators to give relief to our local banks so that they can, for example, give forbearance,” he explained. “So they can tell you if you’re maybe laid off of your job you don’t have to pay your home note for the next 90 days and you don’t have to face losing your home. That was in the bill. That was Republicans and Democrats that put that together.”
He also highlighted forgivable loans, which he described as “a loan that will actually be forgiven if they use that money to pay the rent and to make payroll.”
“That’s something Republicans and Democrats agreed on that’s in the bill. That’s not what Pelosi’s bill is about. Pelosi’s bill is about same-day voter registration and, you know, these workforce and empowerment studies and solar-paneled airplanes. What are they talking about? What world are they living in?” he asked.
Scalise, again, stressed the need for relief for families, as well as for small and medium-sized businesses, touting “loan forgiveness” and “breathing room” for banks, both of which are outlined in the bipartisan bill.
“It gives banks breathing room to say you don’t have to make your loan payments for the next few weeks or months,” Scalise explained, highlighting individual relief, via direct $1,200 payments to adults and $500 per child.
“That’s all in the bipartisan bill,” the lawmaker said.