Former Vice President Joe Biden blasted President Donald Trump for "failing to prepare our nation" for the coronavirus outbreak.
The comments from Biden, who is seeking the Democrats' presidential nomination, came as the number of Americans filing claims for unemployment benefits shot to 6.6 million last week. Biden made his remarks in a Medium post on Thursday.
"The economic damage from the worst public health crisis our country has faced in generations is both rising and deepening at an alarming rate," Biden said. "It is putting working families and the American middle class through unimaginable financial pain — and they need to be made whole as fast as possible.
"Donald Trump is not responsible for the coronavirus, but he is responsible for failing to prepare our nation: for the months during which he continually neglected dire warnings from experts and downplayed the threat to us, and for the erratic and unacceptably slow federal response that has tragically lagged behind other countries."
Biden said the government must take "extraordinary steps to protect" the families experiencing "economic devastation."
"We need to get unemployment checks to the workers filing claims, so they are made financially whole," Biden said.
He added: "We still need to keep as many workers on payroll as possible, and as many small businesses in business. And we need to get the direct cash relief into Americans' bank accounts without delay. The bills are piling up."
Jeffrey Rodack ✉
Jeffrey Rodack, who has nearly a half century in news as a senior editor and city editor for national and local publications, has covered politics for Newsmax for nearly seven years.
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