McConnell: There Will Be a Fourth Pandemic Bill

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) leaves the Senate floor at the Capitol in Washington on March 25, 2020. (Alex Edelman/AFP via Getty Images)

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said there will be a fourth stimulus package drafted by Congress, but this time, it will focus on healthcare amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

“[It] should be more a targeted response to what we got wrong and what we didn’t do enough for—and at the top of the list there would have to be the health care part of it,” he told The Associated Press, confirming there will be another measure.  “There will be a next measure,” he said.

Congress passed a $2 trillion stimulus package last month that is slated to provide $1,200 for most Americans and $500 for every child, along with a number of measures to support small businesses and companies. Millions of Americans have lost their jobs and businesses have been forced to close as states ordered all nonessential businesses to close to slow the spread of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) virus.

McConnell noted there were shortcomings in the third stimulus bill, and the fourth would also try to address them.

His remarks came after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) also suggested the next CCP virus bill should build on the previous bills rather than Democratic-favored infrastructure projects.

Speaker of the House Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) delivers a statement at the hallway of the Speaker’s Balcony at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, on March 23, 2020. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

“While I’m very much in favor of doing some things we need to do to meet the needs—clean water, more broadband, the rest of that—that may have to be for a bill beyond that right now,” Pelosi told CNBC. “Right now, I think that we have a good model. It was bipartisan, it was signed by the president. But it’s not enough,” she added.

The GOP Senate leader indicated in a separate Twitter post that Republicans are now trying to implement the third package, known as the CARES Act.

“Senate Republicans are closely tracking the implementation of our historic CARES Act as the Administration puts it into effect for the American people. We are committed to supporting American workers, families, and small businesses as our nation confronts this historic emergency,” he wrote.

On Thursday night, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the first round of stimulus checks will be deposited within two weeks.

“I told you it would be three weeks, now I’m telling you it will be two weeks,” Mnuchin said during a briefing at the White House on Thursday night. “It is not going to take five weeks; I’m assuring the American public. They need the money now.”

Mnuchin added in the press conference that the IRS would prefer to deposit the stimulus money directly into Americans’ bank accounts instead of sending a check in the mail as the CCP virus continues to spread in the United States.

“We can process a lot of checks, but we don’t want to send checks in this environment,” he told reporters. “We want to put the money directly into people’s accounts.”