Another stimulus check: Trump says he supports another stimulus package and it will be ‘very generous’

President Donald Trump told a reporter for Scripps on Monday that there will be another stimulus package and that it will be “very generous.”

Speaking to Joe St. George, National Political Editor & Washington Correspondent for Scripps, Trump was short on details about a new stimulus package in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, only saying that he supported another spending package and that the specifics of the next round of stimulus would be coming in the “next weeks.”

When asked if Americans were going to get a second stimulus check, Trump said they would.

“Yeah, we are,” Trump said to the question of whether he was “going to get them a second stimulus check.”

Trump went on to say, “We will be doing another stimulus package. It’ll be very good, it’ll be very generous ... .”

Trump in recent weeks has touted a payroll tax holiday that would include suspending the collection of taxes used to pay for Social Security and Medicare.

Trump may face a fight with a growing number of Republican senators who have signaled their tolerance is wearing thin for plans to pump more money into an economy that has already seen three stimulus packages.

On Friday, Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, said another stimulus package could come soon and that he would prioritize investing in "future generations," though he did not explain just what he meant by that.

He did say that he favored legislation that would include liability shields for universities and for corporations that would protect them from lawsuits related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

House Democrats passed legislation in May that included $1,200 checks for virtually every adult and child in the country, nearly $1 trillion for state, local and tribal governments and $200 billion for hazard pay for essential workers. The price tag for that legislation was expected to be more than $3 trillion. McConnell dismissed that package, saying soon after it passed that it was “dead on arrival at the Senate.”

The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump was meeting with his senior advisers to discuss another stimulus package, according to a senior administration official.

“We’ve been through the rescue phase and we’re now in the transitional reopening phase and I think generally speaking we’d like to move into a growth-incentive phase for the future economy,” the senior administration official said.

Trump, his advisers and many Republicans in Congress have been taking a wait-and-see approach to the next round of stimulus relief.

The administration is also discussing a tourism tax deduction or tax credit for families or individuals who take a vacation somewhere in the U.S. in the next three to six months, the Journal reported.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Capitol Hill earlier this month that Trump is “seriously considering” more stimulus in the form of a possible second stimulus check or funding for businesses in certain sectors.

Cox Media Group