Chief of Staff Ron Klain: The White House hopes to revive Trump’s plan to send masks to Americans

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“This was an idea that really popped up in the Trump administration last year – the public health authorities recommended it, President Trump vetoed it for some reason,” Klain told NBC’s Lester Holt. “We want to get this back on track. I hope we can announce some progress in this area in the coming days or next week.”

The Biden administration’s acknowledged receptiveness to the proposal comes after Rochelle Walensky, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, seemed to cast doubt on whether sending U.S. masks would necessarily convince those who weren’t already wearing them to to do this. When she was asked last week by CNN’s Anderson Cooper if it made sense for the federal government to send masks to American households, she replied that “it is not entirely clear to me that the reason people don’t wear masks is because they don’t have access to them. have. to them. “

“Certainly, I would be very supportive of people in areas where they are under-resourced and where they cannot buy or access masks. We have to make sure people have the protection,” Walensky continued. “But it’s not entirely clear to me that the challenge of wearing a mask is one of entry.”

On Thursday, Klain again defended the government’s goal of getting 100 million people vaccinated against Covid-19 in the first 100 days, telling Holt that “we are trying to ramp up vaccine production and distribution – we’ll say more. about the goals that come next. ”

President Joe Biden said last week that he expects the US will soon be able to vaccinate 1.5 million people per day, raising the bar with approximately 500,000 more vaccinations than the target of 1 million per day during his first 100 days in office. He said the US could surpass that initial target in about three weeks.

Klain refuted Holt’s point that the Trump administration managed to get 1 million doses of vaccine a day, claiming that “the Trump administration made one million shots a day every 40 days.”

According to data from the CDC, vaccine delivery first reached 1 million a day on Jan. 7, and as it dropped below and over 1 million a day in the last two weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency, the trendline was growing markedly.
Klain also spoke about negotiating Biden’s $ 1.9 trillion emergency relief proposal to Covid versus the much more modest Senate Republicans package, expressing his openness to more targeted disbursement of emergency checks to families in need.

“A question has arisen as to whether or not these checks should go to people making $ 200,000, $ 300,000,” Klain said. “I think if Congress has ideas on how to focus this to make sure that working people, middle-class people, in this country get these controls, we’re okay with that.”

“What we’re not going to do is leave out large parts of the middle class, and we’re certainly not going to compromise and reduce the number of these controls,” he added.

The GOP plan would provide $ 1,000 incentive vouchers to those earning up to $ 40,000 per year, and would cut off individuals earning more than $ 50,000 per year and couples earning more than $ 100,000, according to an information sheet from Republican Senator Susan’s office. Collins of Maine, who rolled out the proposal with nine other Republicans on Sunday.
Under the Biden proposal, people making less than $ 75,000 would receive $ 1,400 incentive vouchers and double that for couples making less than $ 150,000, and payments would phase out. That would cover 99% of tax applicants who earn between $ 77,100 and $ 110,700, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Foundation – while only 8% of the filers in that bracket would be eligible for the GOP plan.

According to analysts on the Penn Wharton Budget Model, about 78% of families would be eligible for aid payments under the Republican proposal, while 95% would be eligible for Biden’s proposal, who warned that the numbers are preliminary as there is no formal legal text is available. .

CNN’s Katie Lobosco and Phil Mattingly contributed to this report.

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