Pelosi Calls on Republicans to Take up HEROES Act

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), reacting to a GOP stimulus proposal, said Republicans and the Trump administration should approve the House-passed HEROES Act.

“What we have in the HEROES Act was a gift to them,” Pelosi said at a news conference on Thursday, adding that the legislation passed in May gives a “strategic plan for testing, tracing, treating and, of course, mask-wearing [and] sanitation.”

Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), said the bill would be essentially “dead-on-arrival” if it ever reached the Senate, saying its too expensive and includes too many unnecessary non-COVID-19-related measures. The bill would cost $3 trillion.

The HEROES Act would provide more funding to city and state governments, extend the $600-per-week unemployment benefits until January 2021, provide more stimulus checks to a greater number of people, and other measures. Republicans have criticized the bill as offering too much aid to illegal immigrants and does not offer liability protection for businesses that reopen in the midst of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus epidemic.

On Wednesday, Pelosi said in a televised interview that more aid should be directly sent to Americans for an economic recovery.

“You can help people stay open, pay the rent, pay the utilities … even pay employees, but if you don’t have people coming in the doors, you’re still having a problem,” the California Democrat said in an interview. “So that’s why we want to put money in the pockets of the American people so that they can, in this consumer economy, spend, inject demand into the economy, create jobs,” she said.