Steven Mnuchin: ‘Very close’ on coronavirus relief deal

President Trump and top Democrats on Sunday said they are “very close” to striking a deal that offers another tranche of coronavirus relief funding to small businesses while extending money to hospitals.

Mr. Trump said the deal could happen as soon as Monday.

“I think we’re getting close to a deal. Could happen, a lot of good work has been going on,” Mr. Trump said. “A lot of good things are happening.”

Mr. Trump’s optimism reflected comments from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who earlier said the bill could be signed by Wednesday.

The small-business program extended $250 billion in loans to companies that wanted to retain workers amid the fallout from virus-related shutdowns. The program ran out of money three days ago, prompting the administration to plead for billions more.

Mr. Mnuchin said negotiators are eyeing a deal that offers $300 billion for the stimulus, known as the Paycheck Protection Program. It would also extend $50 billion for disaster loans, $75 billion for hospitals and $25 billion to expand testing for the coronavirus.

The secretary said states demanding funds for their own budgets will have to wait for the “next bill,” however.

Democrats who wanted to help states in this round said they made progress on other fronts.

“Many of the things we have asked for on the banking side, on the testing side, on the hospital side, they’re going along with, so we feel pretty good,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer told CNN. “We still have a few more issues to deal with.”

Likewise, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told ABC and Fox News that parties were close to an agreement.

Mr. Trump acknowledged that rural hospitals, in particular, need funding.

Democrats outlined a series of demands as cash for the small-business loans ran out last week. Besides hospitals and states, they wanted to help mom-and-pop businesses and minority-owned companies instead of big corporate chains.

The GOP said Democrats were dragging their feet while small businesses faced furloughs, layoffs or outright failure. President Trump derided Mrs. Pelosi by saying she “doesn’t want to come back” from her house in San Francisco to get the package done.

“The negotiations are going on,” Vice President Mike Pence told “Fox News Sunday.” “We’re very close but I think every American has seen the success of the president’s program to provide payroll support and we’re going to work to expand that so that no one working in a small business in America would have to worry about missing a paycheck during the trial and difficulty of the coronavirus epidemic.”

The coronavirus has spread throughout the U.S., sickening over 740,000 and killing nearly 40,000.

Governors responded by shutting down wide swaths of the economy to keep people apart and disrupt transmission. In the past month, nearly 22 million Americans have lost their jobs and filed claims for unemployment benefits.

Mr. Trump has urged states to reopen their economies in stages, so long as they can do it safely and with adequate testing. States say they need more support from the administration to be successful.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said his state appeared to be “past the apex” of the brutal outbreak, with the rate of hospitalizations and daily deaths declining. But he faces a $15 billion deficit as he tries to stamp out the virus and reopen the economy in stages.

“You have the president saying 15 times ’it’s up to the governors, it’s up to the governors, it’s up to the governors.’ And then they’re going to pass a piece of legislation that gives you know what to states? Zero, zilch, nada, niente,” said Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat.

Mr. Mnuchin said the federal government did open up channels for states to borrow funds, although an infusion of new funding will have to wait.

“The president is willing to consider that in the next bill,” Mr. Mnuchin said. “But right now, we’re focused on small business and hospitals.”

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, said the National Governors Association had been trying to get the money into the bill under discussion.

“I don’t think the deal is finalized yet,” he told CNN. “But, look, we do not want to hold up funding to these small businesses. And we hope that the Democrats and the Republicans in the Senate can come together in a bipartisan way and get something moving for the American people.”

Besides cash, governors say they need federal help in setting up the testing regime needed to reopen the economy without seeing a second wave of coronavirus infections.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Sunday pleaded for help in obtaining the supplies that support coronavirus testing. She said her state has the lab capacity to double or triple testing, but not without the gear.

“The reagents and the swabs are absolutely essential. You can’t process all of these tests if you can’t take the sample and protect it and move forward through testing. And so while our capabilities are there, these important supplies are not,” the Democrat told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Democratic governors say Mr. Trump is uniquely positioned to gather testing equipment by invoking the Defense Production Act. They also say the federal government can negotiate with foreign countries that offer much-needed chemicals for the tests.

Ms. Whitmer pushed for help as she faces pressure from pro-Trump protesters to relax stringent stay-at-home rules. The president cheered them on Friday, tweeting, “LIBERATE MICHIGAN.”

“If the federal government would use the Defense Production Act and say we are going to make every swab people need and we going to expedite creation of the reagents —we would know how prevalent COVID-19 is,” she told NBC. “It would take down the risks associated with taking actions to reengage certain parts of our economy because we would have a lot more data about how prevalent COVID-19 still is in our state.”

Hours later, Mr. Trump said he’s prepared to use the DPA, a Korean War-era law, to procure tens of millions of testing swabs per month, holding up one of the swabs and a Q-tip prop from the White House podium.

At the same time, he distanced his administration from the actual task.

“Testing is a local thing,” Mr. Trump said.