Biden presses Trump to act on unemployment, says 'extraordinary steps' are needed [View all]

ormer Vice President Joe Biden pressed President Trump to take “extraordinary steps” to curb the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic as a record number of Americans file for unemployment.

“The economic damage from the worst public health crisis our country has faced in generations is both rising and deepening at an alarming rate. It is putting working families and the American middle class through unimaginable financial pain — and they need to be made whole as fast as possible,” Biden, who is the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, said in a statement.

“The economic devastation that families all across this country are experiencing by no fault of their own means we have to take extraordinary steps to protect them," he continued.

The statement comes just hours after the Department of Labor announced that more than 6.6 million people filed initial unemployment claims for the week ending March 28, more than doubling the roughly 3.3 million seasonally adjusted initial claims from the previous week, which was itself a massive spike.

The skyrocketing unemployment claims underscore the reverberations of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has shuttered thousands of businesses.



https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/490806-biden-presses-trump-to-act-on-unemployment-says-extraordinary-steps-are