Coronavirus: Governors demand action from Congress over pandemic relief for states

'To get this economy back up again and running, we are going to need an intelligent stimulus bill from Washington'

With both red and blue states facing massive funding gaps due to the economic impact of the coronavirus, Republican and Democrat governors have called on Congress to pass legislation that would help address the problem.

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican, and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, in their respective roles as chair and vice chair of the National Governors Association, voiced their support for the $3trn coronavirus relief package unveiled on Tuesday in a show of bipartisanship.

“With widespread bipartisan agreement on the need for this assistance, we cannot afford a partisan process that turns this urgent relief into another political football. This is not a red state and blue state crisis. This is a red white and blue pandemic. The coronavirus is apolitical. It does not attack Democrats or Republicans. It attacks Americans,” a statement from the governors said.

The bill includes nearly $1trn in long-sought assistance for state and local governments, though the top Senate Republican had already bashed the proposal.

At his daily coronavirus press briefing on Tuesday, Governor Cuomo said that New York alone needed $61bn in federal funding. He called on both Congress and President Donald Trump to support a bill that would address such funding gaps.

“This economy has been damaged through no fault of anyone,” he said. “But to get this economy back up again and running, we are going to need an intelligent stimulus bill from Washington.”

He stressed that funding is needed for police officers, teachers and other local and state employees and warned against repeating the corporate-focused bailouts following the 2008 financial crisis.

“Don’t do it again,” said Mr Cuomo, referring to how 2008 federal bailouts were used by big banks in part to pay large bonuses to executives. “No handouts to greedy corporations, no political pork, and no partisanship.”

Without federal funding, New York could face spending cuts of 20 per cent to crucial services such as education, health and policing. The governor also called for funding for testing and tracing of the virus.

Mr Cuomo is also proposing what he referred to as “The Americans First Law,” which would state that if a corporation receives a bailout and then does not rehire the same number of employees, it must return any Covid-19 relief funds it received.

The governor reiterated a longer term goal about better investment in infrastructure, and highlighting how the last four presidents had made it a priority to address crumbling highways, airports and utilities, but failed to deliver.

“This bill shouldn't just reopen America, it should reimagine America,” Mr Cuomo said.

He would also like a repeal of the law that eliminated the state and local tax deduction — especially punitive to residents of states such as New York.

Since early March, Congress has passed bills allocating $3trn to combat the pandemic, including money for individuals and companies to blunt an economic impact that saw the unemployment rate surge to 14.7 per cent in April, as US job losses hit levels not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

To date the packages have not addressed the tax revenues lost by the individual states, many of which are facing huge budget shortfalls and are scrambling to find money to pay the salaries of police officers and other public workers, and to pay for schools.

With reporting from Reuters