By Maria Caspani and Doina Chiacu
NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Governors from both major political parties on Wednesday urged lawmakers in Washington, D.C., to cast aside partisanship and deliver relief to U.S. cities and states facing economic ruin as they fight what they called a “red, white and blue pandemic.”
The plea followed the unveiling on Tuesday of a $3 trillion-plus coronavirus relief package by Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives. The proposal would provide funding for states, businesses and families.
Without specifically mentioning Tuesday’s bill, which faces a legislative challenge from Republicans, the bipartisan National Governors Association asked Congress to deliver “urgent state fiscal relief.”
“This is not a red state and blue state crisis … It does not attack Democrats or Republicans. It attacks Americans,” the association’s chair, Maryland’s Larry Hogan, a Republican, and its vice chair, New York’s Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, wrote in a statement citing the colors applied to their respective parties.
“The nation’s governors are counting on our leaders in Washington to come together, put partisanship aside, and to get this done for the American people,” they said.
The legislation includes nearly $1 trillion in long-sought assistance for state and local governments bearing the brunt of a pandemic that has infected nearly 1.4 million people in the United States and killed more than 82,000.
Republicans in Congress want to hold off on new coronavirus relief until an assessment of the impact of nearly $3 trillion in assistance that Congress allocated since early March.
“It’s dead on arrival here,” Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said of the House bill.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Wednesday said the U.S. response had been “particularly swift and forceful,” but he called for additional spending to mitigate the effects of lockdowns that have shuttered businesses and forced tens of millions of Americans out of work.
Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York, the city hardest hit by the crisis, urged U.S. President Donald Trump, a native New Yorker who is running for a second term in November, to be “the difference maker” and back the additional funding.
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State restrictions imposed because of the pandemic remain a patchwork. New Jersey and Iowa announced tentative steps to resurrect commerce while Washington, D.C., extended its stay-at-home order through June 8 and Los Angeles said residents could be locked down all summer.
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California Governor Gavin Newsom, due to release a dramatically revised state budget on Thursday, said the pandemic would make the yearly fire season more challenging. He cited the danger of housing evacuees together in shelters.
California’s state university system, the largest in the United States, on Tuesday canceled classes on campus for the fall semester and moved instruction online because of the coronavirus.
State and city officials, torn between battling the outbreak and restoring business and social life, have often acted along partisan lines, sometimes within the same jurisdiction.
In Texas, Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton told Democratic leaders in three counties and two cities that their local pandemic health requirements were stricter than Governor Greg Abbott’s own orders – and therefore unlawful.
Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, a Democrat, wrote on Twitter that his guidelines were modeled on the governor’s. “I ask the public to make decisions based on the recommendations of public health professionals: our lives depend on it,” he wrote.
In Michigan, Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, said rallies by armed militia groups against her stay-at-home orders had undermined efforts to stanch the pandemic.
“I am going to make decisions based on facts, not based on political rhetoric or tweets,” she said on Wednesday.
(Reporting by Maria Caspani in New York, Doina Chiacu and Makini Brice in Washington, Rajesh Kumar Singh in Chicago, Brad Brooks in Austin, Texas and Sharon Bernstein in Sacramento; Writing by Sonya Hepinstall and Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Howard Goller)
