Mnuchin: ‘The president and I believe we should do more stimulus’

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Sunday that he and President Trump are in favor of further stimulus in response to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

“The president and I believe we should do more stimulus,” Mnuchin said on “Fox News Sunday.” “We have about 7 and a half million jobs we need to get back until we’re back to where we were, and we want to help small businesses. We want to help businesses that are particularly impacted by this, and we’ll continue to work on proposed new legislation.”

{mosads}Mnuchin told guest host Bret Baier that he believed negotiations with Democrats are stuck “both on certain policy issues but more importantly on the top line.”

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Mnuchin said, “has refused to sit down and negotiate unless we agree to something like a $2.5 trillion-dollar deal in advance.”

“As you know, we put $3 trillion into the economy when the economy was completely shut down. We’ve now reopened the economy. Let’s do a more targeted bill,” he said.

Baier went on to ask if the White House hoped to move forward with a so-called skinny stimulus bill in the week ahead.

“I’d like to call it a more targeted bill, but, yes, our expectation is we will move forward with that next week,” Mnuchin said.

In the meantime, Mnuchin discussed his informal agreement with Pelosi to avert a government shutdown independent of coronavirus funds.

“The Speaker and I have agreed we both don’t want to see a government shutdown, so we are going to do a clean CR [continuing resolution],” he said. “I hope by the end of the week we can begin moving forward on that.”

“We haven’t agreed on the specific details,” Mnuchin said, adding that he expects it would go “through the beginning of December. That’s what we did this year.”