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Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Tuesday the Trump administration is working with Congress on a plan that would send checks to Americans in an effort to blunt the coronavirus pandemic’s effect on the economy.

“We are looking at sending checks to Americans immediately,” Mnuchin told reporters. “Americans need cash now and the president wants to get cash now. And I mean now, in the next two weeks.

“We want to make sure Americans get money in their pockets quickly,” Mnuchin said at a White House briefing on the virus. “We want to make sure small business owners have access to the funds. We want to make sure airlines, hotels. We have an entire package.”

He said President Trump has also floated the idea of a payroll tax holiday.

“The tax holiday would get people money over the next six to eight months,” Mnuchin said. “We are looking at sending checks to Americans immediately. We have heard from hard-working Americans that many companies have shut down. People need cash now.”

He also encouraged people who can file their federal taxes later to do so, saying individual Americans can defer up to $1 million and companies can defer up to $10 million.

“We’ll have a pretty good idea by the end of the day what we’ll be doing,” Trump told reporters as Mnuchin headed to Capitol Hill to meet with senators. “We’re going big.”

Mnuchin said the government would like to send out the checks in about two weeks.

Sens. Mitt Romney and Tom Cotton have floated the idea of giving Americans $1,000 a person.

Mnuchin is negotiating an $850 billion stimulus package to inject into the economy – $50 billion of that would go to the airline industry, which has been devastated by global travel restrictions because of the pandemic.

“We look forward to bipartisan support to pass this legislation very quickly,” Mnuchin said. “You can think of this as something like business interruption payments for American workers.”