Another round of coronavirus relief checks could be on their way from Washington, D.C. by the end of the summer.

But the fact that no direct aid to state is coming from Senate Republicans has Gov. Phil Murphy angry, and he is taking it out on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

“Not balancing a budget in his life or in his last 3.5 decades that I’ve been skeptical of McConnell,” Murphy said during Wednesday’s COVID-19 briefing.

This comes as the White House, Democrats on Capitol Hill and Senate Republicans mull over an additional COVID-19 stimulus program for Americans.

“By the way, the fact that I said Republican Leader is only to designate they are in the majority in the Senate and I’d say the same thing about Democratic leadership if they put forth a similar bill,” Murphy said.

McConnell and most Republicans say that they now want another round of relief checks to go to American families, as well as tax credits and funding for kids, jobs and health care. What is missing, according to Murphy, is direct payments to states to help pay the rising costs associated with fighting the pandemic and help amid an economic downturn that caused tax revenues to drop dramatically.

“What New Jersey has gotten back is a drop in the bucket compared to our needs,” Murphy said.

The governor says that the economic damage from COVID-19 could be as much as $20 billion by the end of next year.

“We have slashed planned spending to enact an austere stopgap budget and we dipped into the rainy-day fund just to get us through the next two months,” Murphy said. “We have directed all state departments to start preparing for 15% budgets cuts starting this fall.”

Murphy recently signed legislation to borrow nearly $10 billion to help balance the budget. He says that the only economic crises in New Jersey history as bad as the pandemic have been the Civil War and the Great Depression.

 

For more on today's briefing, click here.