Senator Mitt Romney, R-Utah, told CNBC that he was “not surprised” to hear news of Attorney General William Barr’s resignation from the Justice Department.
“It was clear that part of the [Trump] Administration was a challenging job for him to say the least, “said Romney.” I’m not surprised that he was no longer able to connect to the process that is now running. ”
President Donald Trump brought the news of Barr’s resignation on Twitter, saying he would be leaving the Justice Department before Christmas. It comes less than two weeks after the attorney general denied the president’s unsubstantiated claims that the election was rigged and the FBI found no evidence of widespread electoral fraud.
Romney added that he was “concerned” about the “democracy cause” not only in the United States but around the world when it comes to the president’s false electoral fraud claims.
“The biggest concern I have is that people here really believe that this election was stolen somehow and there is no evidence of it and the president said it was stolen even before election day,” said Romney during a taped interview Monday night on The News with Shepard Smith. “What’s going on now, I’m afraid, is terribly daunting for people around the world.”
Romney is also part of the bipartisan group of lawmakers who launched the $ 908 billion two-part stimulus package. Legislators are now splitting the original $ 908 billion bipartisan proposal into two bills, putting everything they can agree on in one bill and everything they disagree on in another bill. Romney told host Shepard Smith that he believes there is a chance to pass.
“You actually see a number of people coming in with support,” Romney said. “We hope that this will be achieved either in whole or in part, and that the help will reach people who are in dire need.”
As part of the potential compromise, states would receive $ 160 billion in three installments over the next six months. The payments would depend in part on the population and how much money each state has actually lost. The bill would raise the bar for lawsuits against companies, but this protection would only last for the duration of the pandemic.
Some of the broadly agreed items, including $ 748 billion for unemployment benefits, small business, vaccines and education, have been grouped into a separate bill. However, neither House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Nor Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Have agreed to put the bipartisan compromise to a vote and Romney said it was not yet confident that either guide would do so.
“We have people who will lose their unemployment insurance the day after Christmas, and preventing it from happening is a high priority,” said Romney. “We want help for people who also need spiritual aid facilities, we urgently need help for small businesses, and we have a lot of businesses just clinging to it. So this is another round of small business PPP grants and loans . ”
Stimulus testing is not included in the bipartisan compromise. Romney noted that help will be given to the people who need the money to pay rent and eat.
“Sending checks to people who don’t need them isn’t as high a priority for us as sending checks to people who are unemployed, unable to pay rent and looking for food,” said Romney.
It has been 262 days since the last relief bill, and the nation has passed another dire milestone. The coronavirus pandemic has killed more than 300,000 people in the United States since February. More than one in ten deaths has been reported since early December, and over the course of the pandemic, the US has recorded an average of 1,000 deaths per day, according to a CNBC analysis of Johns Hopkins data.
