President Trump and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said during an Oval Office meeting on Friday that some significant differences between the Trump administration and Democrats still need to be resolved before reaching a stimulus deal.
Asked for an update on the stimulus talks, Mnuchin told reporters, “The President’s been very clear in his instructions to me. That if we can get the right deal we’re going to do that.”
“We’ve been speaking to the (House) speaker. I would say we’ve offered compromises. The speaker, on a number of issues, has still dug in. If she wants to compromise, there will be a deal. But we’ve made lots of progress in lots of areas, but there’s still some significant differences that we’re working on,” he added.
The President, speaking from the Resolute Desk for an announcement on the normalization in relations between Israel and Sudan, claimed that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “wants to bail out poorly run Democrat states.”
“We just don’t want that. We want Covid-related,” Trump said, later adding, “We don’t want to reward areas of our country who have not done a good job.”
The President also asserted that Pelosi wants to wait until after the election to strike a stimulus deal. “I don’t think she wants the people to get the money before the election,” Trump said.
Meanwhile, Pelosi on Friday continued to express optimism about a potential coronavirus stimulus package, saying negotiators “could be very close.”
“We’re writing the bill, and hopefully we’ll be able to resolve some of the differences,” she said during an interview on MSNBC.
“I think the President wants a bill. I really do,” she said, adding that it’s still possible lawmakers could approve the legislation before the election, depending on how the GOP Senate reacts.
“We could be very close,” Pelosi said. “As I say, we’re close enough to put pen to paper.”
