Connecticut’s two Democratic U.S. senators joined the state’s Democratic governor in urging the Republican controlled-U.S. Senate to pass the next COVID-19 economic stimulus package.
U.S. Senator Chris Murphy says it’s unconscionable that the Senate has yet to take up the HEROES Act, two months after the bill won approval in the Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives.
“Right now Governor Lamont, and 49 other governors, are making really tough decisions about how to reopen businesses and about how to reopen schools safely without any commitment from the federal government to help them with those expenses. It’s an abomination.”
U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal says passage of the bill would provide federal relief for Connecticut cities and towns facing more than $470 million in deficits because of the economic slowdown.
“It would mean either mass tax increases or layoffs of firefighters, teachers, police, sanitation workers, public works.”
Lamont says all 50 states need the money in order to avoid what happened in 2009 when Congress failed to pass an adequate federal relief package to handle the recession.
“And we ended up having to cut personnel, cut nurses, cut teachers, cut frontline workers, and potentially raise taxes. That would be the worst thing in the world for this economy to get going. So pass the HEROES Act and do it properly.”
The bill was passed by the Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives two months ago.
Murphy and Blumenthal would like their Republican colleagues to agree to take up the HEROES Act when they return to Washington next week. Republicans have called the bill a “non-starter.”
