U.S. President Donald Trump said Sunday that Republicans are "close" to getting a deal with Democrats on another legislative package to help alleviate economic damage done by the coronavirus pandemic.
The deal will involve approving extra money to help small businesses hurt by the coronavirus pandemic. At a White House briefing, the president suggested there could be a resolution by Monday.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin expressed hope a final package could be reached and passed by Congress in the coming days. "I think we're very close to a deal today," Mnuchin told CNN's "State of the Union," putting forward a new target number of 300 billion U.S. dollars, beyond the 250 billion U.S. dollars under discussion last week.
Mnuchin said the White House has also agreed to add 75 billion U.S. dollars to hospitals and first responders, and 25 billion U.S. dollars to ramp up virus testing – clear wins for Democrats.
Democrats joined the optimism about the pace of negotiations. "We're on a very good path" and a deal could be reached soon, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told Fox. That marked a notable quickening of her timeline from last week, when she suggested the interim bill could clear Congress "before the end of the month."
Top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer was more direct, saying "I'm very hopeful we could come to an agreement tonight or early tomorrow morning."
U.S. officials said Friday that the massive business loan program has aided 1.6 million enterprises to date. Democrats are stressing that some money in the interim package should be set aside for businesses in rural and minority areas where there is often less access to banks.
Critics have savaged the administration for lagging on testing efforts and say testing should be massively expanded, an essential for trying to safely reopen the economy.
A health worker starts the process to test people in a car as they use a newly approved saliva-based coronavirus disease test at a testing site during the outbreak of COVID-19 in Edison, New Jersey, U.S., April 15, 2020. /Reuters
Regarding the critics, Trump said he is planning to use the Defense Production Act again to help with the production of swabs needed to conduct coronavirus tests.
He said the administration is close to finalizing a deal with a company that will convert its plant to produce 10 million swabs per month, but that he would use the DPA to force another company to do the same.
The United States has by far the world's largest number of confirmed coronavirus cases, with more than 755,000 infections. The country has reported over 40,000 deaths due to the coronavirus, according to data released by Johns Hopkins University.
At the press conference, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said Sunday the United States has enough testing nationwide to allow any state to start lifting lockdown orders forced by the coronavirus if they have met other criteria.
"We believe we have the testing today around the country that would allow any state in America to move to phase one (of the recovery plan) if they have met the other criteria," Pence said at a briefing. Those criteria include 14 days of declines in infections and enough hospital capacity to treat everyone who gets sick, he said.
(With input from AFP)