We're looking at that, I'm not going to make any comments on any specific decisions, but we are looking at it.

Steven Mnuchin

Categorized in : Politics

We want to make sure that kids are safe and that if there is money that schools need to spend to safely have people in classrooms, social distance, spread things out, change hours, these are all the things we're looking at.

I think what Anthony Fauci said is that if people don't take these things seriously, that the numbers could continue to spike.

I think that should be done.

We want to be much more targeted and focused on specific businesses and industries and workers that will have the hardest time coming back.

I'm not going to comment on it because, as I've said, it's not going to be my decision, it's going to be a Treasury secretary's decision in the future.

I just want to clarify that we have not changed any of this and this is something in the distant future.

Working closely with governors, we are beginning to open the economy in a way that minimizes risks to workers and customers, we expect economic conditions to improve in the third and fourth quarters.

We just want to make sure that before we jump back in and spend another few trillion of taxpayers' money that we do it carefully, we've been very clear that we're not going to do things just to bail out states that were poorly managed.

Let's take the next few weeks.

It's one of the things that we're considering on the list, i want to thank the Senate and the House for having acted very quickly in an emergency basis. We now have over $ 3 trillion we're putting into the economy. A lot of that money is just beginning to get into the economy. We're working with the Federal Reserve on close to another $ 3 trillion of facility and liquidities. These are all beginning to have a very positive impact.

Before we rush back into the next bill and spend more taxpayer money, we just want to be thoughtful.

I think we're very close to a deal today and I'm hopeful we can get that done.

There are still a couple of open issues, i think we are very hopeful that this can be closed out tomorrow.

Everybody wants to keep it open. We may get to a point where we shorten the hours, if that's something they need to do, but Americans should know that we are going to do everything that they have access to their money at their banks, to the money in their 401(k)s, and to the money in stocks.

This focuses on employers that are 500 and less people, that's a portion of the economy, but it's the economy that is going to be hit the hardest.

We have an agreement that reflects what the president talked about in his speech the other night.

We're going to work together on a bipartisan basis to figure out how we can get things done quickly that are going to help the Americans that are most impacted by this and small and medium-sized businesses that are impacted.

I don't expect that this will have any ramifications on Phase 1. Based on everything that we know, and where the virus is now, I don't expect that it's going to be material, obviously that could change as the situation develops. Within the next few more weeks, we'll all have a better assessment as there's more data around the rate of the virus spreading.

If we get the right deal before the election, that's great. If we get the right deal after the election, that's great. We don't feel any pressure one way or another.

It's not an optional tax, you pay the safe harbor as opposed to paying something else. People may pay a little bit more in a safe harbor knowing they have tax certainty.