President Donald Trump is "absolutely prepared" to back more stimulus money to restore the economy after it was crippled by the coronavirus pandemic, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Monday.
"We have put $3 trillion out," Mnuchin told Fox Business' Maria Bartiromo. "If we need to put more money out to support American businesses, American workers, the president is absolutely prepared to do that."
Conversations have started on a bipartisan basis on another phase of coronavirus stimulus financing, as everything that has been done so far has been accomplished with "overwhelming bipartisan support," said Mnuchin.
To date, four packages have been approved by Congress, including the $2.2 trillion CARES Act that was signed at the end of March, including the $349 billion Paycheck Protection Program.
"Working with Congress we were able to get $3 trillion that we are pumping into the economy," said Mnuchin. "As it relates to states, part of this is $150 billion that went to states. That is a lot of money."
Meanwhile, $175 billion of the $310 billion in the most recent stimulus package, which was added to supplement money approved through the CARES Act for small businesses, has been sued so far, said Mnuchin.
"We couldn't be more pleased in this round," said Mnuchin. "Around 2.2 million loans already done at an average loan of $79,000 dollars, so we are really seeing this is going directly to small businesses. Just to put this in perspective, the previous round had $1.7 million loans. We are already way over that level."
The current round will impact about 60 million people and get them back to work, he noted.
The secretary also on Monday said that it is important that the economy open in a slow, steady pace.
"This was no fault of businesses," said Mnuchin. "We are going to see obviously a difficult second quarter. We will see things better in the third quarter, and better in the fourth quarter."
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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