Sen. Brown slams Mnuchin: 'How many workers should give their lives to increase our GDP by 0.5%?'

Daily Kos Staff

Tuesday May 19, 2020 · 12:58 PM PDT

2020/05/19 · 12:58

While Donald Trump and his administration continue to push for the country and Americans to “reopen,” and expose themselves to the ongoing pandemic, elected officials continue to stay safe and work via video conferencing. Today, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell took questions from senators. Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio used his time to ask what exactly the Trump administration, the treasury, and the federal reserve were doing to support, economically, the “essential” workers they are pushing out into a clearly dangerous environment.

Mnuchin spent a good amount of the time sidestepping Sen. Brown’s questions. Specifically, Brown’s questions concerning whether or not the Trump administration was making sure the trillions of dollars in taxpayer money being given to big businesses had any meaningful strings attached to them to protect the workforce. Mnuchin’s only response was that the money was being handled “in the spirit” that the White House negotiated the CARES stimulus package. Most reports seem to suggest that Mnuchin and Trump are using the American people’s money to coerce big business into kissing the administration’s ring, in order to get some of that free cash.

Sen. Brown moved onto questions about what exactly the Trump administration, and the treasury specifically, were doing to support the workers who will likely contract the virus as the country reopens. Mnuchin gave a standard no calorie response, to which Sen. Brown pressed the strong reality that as “essential” workers—predominantly women and people of color—contract the virus, people will die.

SEN. SHERROD BROWN: Public health experts have told us it's not safe to reopen the economy until we have worker protections in place that will control the spread of COVID. Things like testing, contact tracing, protective equipment, efforts that the president has clearly failed to lead to. … How many workers will die if we send people back to work without the protections they need, Mr. Secretary?

Mnuchin responded by saying the Trump administration wouldn’t send people back to work without the protections they need. He went on to ramble about wearing a mask and something about Vice President Pence following the best medical advice. All things that if you have spent more than two minutes reading or watching the news the past few weeks, you would know are not true. Sen. Brown decided to highlight his question once again, by asking for the simple math equation of deaths to money that Mnuchin and the Trump administration were looking to achieve.

SEN. BROWN: So how many how many workers should give their lives to increase our GDP by half a percent, that you’re pushing people back into the workplace. There's been no national program to provide worker safety. The president says reopen slaughterhouses, nothing about slowing the line down, nothing about getting protective equipment. How many workers should give their lives to increase the GDP or the Dow Jones by a thousand points?

Mnuchin attempted to talk about how great a job Donald Trump has clearly not done, and Sen. Brown cut Mnuchin off telling him he didn’t want to hear the same false speech we hear from Donald Trump every day at the press conferences he holds instead of rallies.

YouTube Video

Sen. Brown slams Mnuchin: 'How many workers should give their lives to increase our GDP by 0.5%?'

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