Finance

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell argued on Monday that Democratic leaders view the coronavirus pandemic as a political “opportunity” to “bail out” states such as New Jersey, adding that Republicans are willing to support another coronavirus stimulus plan that includes funding for other areas.

McConnell said the Senate GOP’s coronavirus relief package “focused on kids, jobs, healthcare, and legal protections to help our country reopen,” as well as another round of direct stimulus payments.

“I’d hoped the Senate would be spending this week turning a major agreement into law, but sadly for the country, sadly for struggling Americans, the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the Senate Democratic leader decided we would not deliver any of that,” McConnell said during a speech on the Senate floor.

“They stayed true to their comments from very early on in the pandemic,” he added. “This is the way they looked at it. They saw this pandemic as, quote, ‘a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision.’ That was the House Democratic Whip. Speaker Pelosi herself put it this way: ‘This is an opportunity. Every crisis is.’ Working families call this pandemic a crisis. They call it a nightmare, but leading Democrats call it an opportunity.”

McConnell described the $1 trillion state and local funding that House Democrats passed in the HEROES Act as one of the major disagreements in the stimulus negotiations with the White House…