During an appearance Tuesday on Huntsville radio’s WVNN, Sen. Doug Jones (D-Mountain Brook) offered listeners a synopsis of the back-and-forth bargaining over a coronavirus relief package on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.
Jones has been on both sides of procedural votes in the U.S. Senate in recent days, and expressed his disappointment in partisan wrangling.
“The last 48 hours, 72 hours — they were ridiculous in my view,” he said on “The Jeff Poor Show.” “There was a lot of political posturing on both sides. We actually took two votes that I was not happy about because they were procedural votes. That’s the misunderstanding. People thought we were voting on a package. We weren’t. We were just voting on procedural votes, to proceed. [Senate Majority Leader Mitch] McConnell knew they were going to fail. He just put it out there. It got tensions really raw because it took people away from the hard work of discussing how we’re going to help workers, how we’re going to help businesses, how we’re going to help our hospitals and the money that has got to go in there, and how we’re going to help our state and local governments.”
Jones insisted at the time of the interview, both sides seemed to have put that behind them, and he was optimistic the bill ultimately passed by the U.S. Senate would get through the U.S. House of Representatives and on to President Donald Trump’s desk.
However, Jones was not pleased about Trump’s remarks on social media and in a press briefing about the “cure” being worse than the problem, apparently referring to the economic damage potentially done to the country with the shutdowns of day-to-day life around the country.
“I think it was dumb of the president to say it,” he said. “I’m just going to be candid about it. It was not consistent with anything the scientists are saying. It’s not consistent with anything the health care officials in Alabama, from Huntsville to Mobile — there is no one saying that except people that are losing money in their stock portfolio. It really angers me to hear the president say it. And then for people to take that as gospel because the only way — this is a health crisis. If we can get past the health crisis, we will then get past the economic crisis.”
According to Alabama’s junior U.S. Senator, this relief package, if passed by Congress, likely will not be the last.
“[I]’ve said all along as we’re working on this third package, this is not going to be the last one,” Jones said. “I am absolutely convinced that we will be looking at other things, probably I say down the road. But I think quicker rather than later because this is not going to be the be-all, end-all.”
Jones later said he was not certain of the timing of when that next round of legislation could come from Congress.
@Jeff_Poor is a graduate of Auburn University, the editor of Breitbart TV, a columnist for Mobile’s Lagniappe Weekly and host of Huntsville’s “The Jeff Poor Show” from 2-5 p.m. on WVNN.
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