Thursday on Fox News, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) once again dismissed the possibility of a bailout for states as part of the response for the coronavirus pandemic.

McConnell defended his earlier suggestion that states could declare bankruptcy and argued the federal government should not be liable for state governments that had made poor decisions prior to the pandemic.

“What I’ve said is, we’ve already provided $150 billion in previous bills in the last month or six weeks for state and local government,” he said. “Bankruptcy is obviously a decision, if it were legal, would be made at the state level. I don’t think many states would choose that option. But the point is, we’re not interested in borrowing money from future generations to send down to states to help them with bad decisions they’ve made in the past unrelated to the coronavirus epidemic. We’re more than happy, and already have, sent $150 billion down to states and localities to deal with the pandemic.”

“And I think any additional assistance that we provide for state and local government also needs to include some things that are important for everyone else, that is the doctors, the nurses, the hospitals, the brave businesses that will be reopening, concerned about an epidemic of lawsuits that are going to be brought by the plaintiffs all over America in the wake of this pandemic,” McConnell said. “So we don’t need an epidemic of lawsuits in the wake of the pandemic. And so if we do another rescue package, and we may, we need to take our time, do it right and it needs to include these liability protections so that all of these brave workers and brave businesses that will be reopening are not subjected to this second epidemic of litigation.”

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