What McConnell Says Next Coronavirus Relief Bill Must Include Or It 'Won't Pass Senate'

Leah Barkoukis | April 29, 2020 7:30 AM

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday that the next coronavirus relief bill must include liability protections for businesses.

"We can't pass another bill unless we have liability protections. That's the only way we're going to ultimately begin to get past this," McConnell said on Fox News’s "Your World with Neil Cavuto". "We have to have businesses brave enough to open up again and employees brave enough to go back to work. And I'm glad to see that some of the states are beginning to move in the direction of reopening."

McConnell said that the nation is in uncharted territory and that while everyone is hopeful a recovery will take place quickly, it would happen faster if this type of security was in place.

"I think that we get a more rapid recovery if we have liability reform [and] if we have testing that reassures people, because the economy will not truly be open unless everybody's willing to participate in the economy again,” he said. "We have a red line on liability. It won't pass the Senate without it."

On Fox, McConnell says the Senate won't pass a bill "that does not have liability protection. So that's an integral part of our economy..What I'm saying is we have a red line on liability. It won't pass the Senate without it."
— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) April 28, 2020

The Senate is scheduled to come back May 4 after an extended recess since March 26 over concerns about coronavirus.

“We’re going to take whatever safeguards the Capitol physician recommends that we engage in and we believe we can do that safely,” McConnell this week. “Look, it doesn’t make sense for the Senate to sit on the sidelines while a lot of other people are going to work everyday and trying to get us through this.”