President Donald Trump said Congress should authorize taxpayer checks for the roughly $ 300 billion remaining in a pandemic loan program.
“We have $ 300 billion in an account that we don’t need,” Trump said at a news conference Friday. “It would be very appropriate to spread that out to the American people and I am willing to do so.”
Trump couldn’t say where the $ 300 billion came from. A White House official later said it was part of a more than $ 450 billion fund that Congress established in the Treasury Department to support emergency loan programs created by the Federal Reserve to combat the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.
There hasn’t been as much demand for the Fed’s emergency pandemic programs, particularly its Main Street program for small and medium-sized businesses. The Congressional Oversight Commission, a panel that oversees Treasury and Federal Reserve responses to the pandemic, reported last month that lenders had issued loans using only about $ 472 million of the more than $ 600 billion available under the Main Street program.
About half of the Treasury fund has pledged to support Fed programs.
“We have $ 300 billion, it’s there, we don’t need the money, we don’t need anything,” Trump said. “You could give it to people as a very powerful stimulus.”
He added that “there is a theory” that he could issue the money without congressional approval, but that he would like lawmakers to approve it.
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