WASHINGTON (Reuters) – White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said on Tuesday the idea of a payroll tax cut in the next coronavirus relief legislation is “absolutely not” dead.
“I think that if we go to that next phase of negotiations, the president has a way of getting what he wants in these things,” Hassett said in an interview with Fox News. “He believes strongly as I do, economically, that the payroll tax on the employee side is a really big positive stimulus.”
U.S. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday any action on a new coronavirus response bill could be weeks away, saying he needed to see further evidence of whether the $3 trillion that Congress had authorized was enough.
“We’re watching and planning. We’re not watching and waiting,” Hassett said. “We’re planning if we need to do more stimulus then potentially we’ll consider that. But if it looks like what we’ve done already … you know, it could be that that’s going to end up being big enough.”
(Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Chris Reese and Leslie Adler)
