Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Wednesday suggested that states could go bankrupt rather than get additional federal funding to deal with the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic.
And at least one member of his own party is slamming the plan.
Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.) ripped McConnell in a pair of tweets on Wednesday evening:
McConnell told radio host Hugh Hewitt that some states have given too much in their public pensions, and he didn’t want federal money to bail them out now that cash everywhere is running low.
“I would certainly be in favor of allowing states to use the bankruptcy route,” he said Wednesday. “It’s saved some cities, and there’s no good reason for it not to be available.”
Later, his staff issued a news release dismissing federal aid as “blue-state bailouts.”
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo called McConnell’s remarks “one of the saddest, really dumb comments of all time.”
And on social media, the plan was slammed by people across the political spectrum:
