The White House and Congress are coming close to a deal meant to help small businesses, as well as provide money to hospitals and set aside money for testing, as the United States struggles to keep up with the economic and health crises that have stemmed from the coronavirus pandemic, according to the Washington Post.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told CNN on Monday that they had “come to terms on the principles of the legislation,” but also signaled that a bit more had to be ironed out, noting that they were now “down to the fine print.”
“I feel very optimistic and hopeful that we’ll come to a conclusion,” she added.
A major disagreement currently is that Democrats have been pushing for the new small business package to include a national testing strategy, even as Republicans, including the President, have called for individual states to take the lead on testing as they see fit.
“Testing is one of the places where we want the language to be as good as we can agree to that we need a national strategy for testing. Testing is the key that opens the door to our economy—testing, tracing and isolation,” Pelosi said.
If all parties can come to an agreement, it would total some $470 billion in additional spending, with $370 allocated to small businesses, $75 billion going toward hospitals and another $25 billion for testing, according to the Washington Post.
Trump praised the pending deal as a “great plan,” and said that he hoped the Senate would vote on it on Tuesday.
“We’re talking about $75 billion for hospitals and other health care providers,” Trump said. “Many providers and their employees have taken a huge financial hit in recent weeks.… Hospitals have really been fantastic.”