McConnell pans Trump’s coronavirus infrastructure funding hopes
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Could major fixes for America's battered roads, bridges and arcane airports be partly funded in coronavirus bills?
While President Trump has floated the possibility, on Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell slammed the brakes on the idea.
"I'll be clear that infrastructure is unrelated to the coronavirus endemic that we're all experiencing and trying to figure out how to go forward," he told Neil Cavuto on “Your World” Tuesday. "We've borrowed an incredible amount of money here over the last month and we need to make sure that whatever additional legislation we do is directly related to this pandemic and to try to get it in the rearview mirror, get the country back up and running again."
McConnell did specify a smaller, more modest infrastructure bill is more likely when Congress returns to work in early May.
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Earlier Tuesday, FOX Business confirmed McConnell held a call with Republican Senators to set the record straight on his opposition to the idea that Trump began discussing last month.
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"So the plan was the Republicans had a plan of about 750 [million]," Trump said, "The Democrats were a little less than a trillion and I’m suggesting two trillion dollars. We redo our roads, our highways, our bridges, we fix up our tunnels" he said during a March coronavirus task force briefing.
Trump also pointed to record low-interest rates and the benefit of potentially capitalizing on cheap money.
The Federal Reserve will announce its decision on interest rates Wednesday and policymakers are expected to leave rates unchanged following the rash of emergency rate cuts in recent weeks aimed at stabilizing the economy hard hit by the coronavirus.
Axios was first to report McConnell's opposition to Trump's infrastructure funding idea.
FOX Business' inquiries to the White House were not immediately returned at the time of publication.
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