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Gov. Andrew Cuomo ripped the U.S. Senate’s $2 trillion federal stimulus plan on Wednesday as inadequate for New York, the country’s epicenter of the COVID-19 crisis, while he renewed calls for the 15,000 ventilators the state will need in the next few weeks for the mounting victims of the virus.
“It would really be terrible,” Cuomo said in a news conference, adding that the state government would get $3.8 billion and New York City would get only $1.3 billion, despite having more people with coronavirus than anywhere else in the U.S. As of Wednesday morning,15,597 people had tested positive for the coronavirus in New York City, seven times the number of cases in all of California, and 192 have died.
Though “$3.8 billion sounds like a lot of money,” New York is looking at a budget shortfall between $8 billion and $15 billion, he said. The virus has already cost the state roughly $1 billion and could wind up costing several billion dollars by the end of the crisis, he added.
The Senate planned to vote Wednesday on the $2 trillion stimulus package, the biggest relief in American history, finalized in the wee hours of Tuesday night between senators and the White House. It was still hitting snags ahead of the vote as critics, like Cuomo, demanded changes. The House has not said when it would vote on the bill, which would then go to President Trump to sign.
Cuomo, who said he’d been in conversations Wednesday morning with the White House about ventilators, said New York needed help acquiring the lifesaving machines. He’s proposed a “rolling” system where ventilators are brought to New York to handle the immediate crisis and then shipped to the next hot spot as the disease ravages other parts of the country.
“We’re asking the country to help us, we will return the favor with dividends,” he said.
So far, the state has purchased 7,000 ventilators since the start of the crisis, will get another 4,000 from the federal government and has about 4,000 already, bringing the total to 15,000. But the state still needs approximately 15,000 more to deal with the surge in intensive care patients expected to inundate hospitals in the next two-to-three weeks.
“We have purchased everything that can be purchased,” Cuomo said.
The $2 trillion stimulus package, brokered between the Senate and the Trump administration, is the largest fiscal stimulus package in U.S. history, expanding unemployment benefits and providing loans and grants to businesses. The package includes a $1,200 direct payment to all taxpayers making under $75,000 a year ($150,000 for couples), and $500 per child.
It also increases the maximum unemployment benefit by $600 a week, which would more than double the current maximum weekly rate of $505 in New York state to more than $1,100 a week.
At the final hour, Senate Democrats pushed for funding for local governments. New York City’s $1.3 billion share will come out of a $150 billion allocation Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said will go toward states and counties.
“State revenues have dried up almost overnight, leaving them with untenable choices about how to allocate their health care and other resources,” Schumer said while speaking on the floor of the Senate ahead of the vote on Wednesday.
Additional funds will go specifically to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), which runs the city’s subways and buses, through a separate $25 million pot dedicated to public transit systems, Schumer said.
Ridership on New York City’s subway, which has reduced service to 75%, has plunged as nonessential businesses have shuttered and New Yorkers stay home, starving the already ailing MTA of revenue.
“The MTA is drowning after such a steep and sudden loss of ridership,” Schumer said. It wasn’t immediately clear how much will go to the MTA, but the organization has said it could lose $3.7 billion in revenue if ridership remains at its current level for several months.
