To expect on election day and what it will take for voters to trust the results. Plus every one of the women ive, weve interviewed is qualified and ive narrowed it down. Biden zeros in on hipi. When will he decide . What it will mean for his campaign. Announcer from abc news, its this week. Here now, chief anchor george stephanopoulos. Good morning, and welcome to this week. As we come on the air this morning, the number of covid cases here in the u. S. Is crossing 5 million, more than any other country in the world. And the millions of americans who have lost their jobs during the pandemic are facing a new week without extended benefits after the collapse of talks between the white house and congress. Late yesterday, President Trump announced that he would take action on his own, signing a series of documents that he claimed would address the crisis facing workers, renters and the unemployed. To cheers from his country club members, he blamed it on failed talks with democrats in congress. Nancy pelosi and Chuck Schumer have chosen to hold this vital assistance hostage. On behalf of very extreme partisan demands. And were joined now by the Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer. Senator, thank you for joining us this morning. Lets talk about the president s proposals. First of all, trump wants to replace the 600 the unemployment federal benefit replaced with 300, he said the states will kick in another 100. Does he have the power to do that . Will you go to court to stop him . Let me first say, george, overall, we have this huge crisis, the largest economic crisis since the depression, the greatest Health Crisis since the pandemic, and unfortunately the president s executive orders described in one word could be in three words, unworkable, weak and far too narrow. The event at the country club is just what trump does, a big show but it doesnt do anything, and as the American People look at these executive orders they will see they dont come close to doing the job. One, what they proposed and second whats left out. Whats proposed. On the unemployment benefit, first, the 600 a week has been very successful. Its kept millions of people out of poverty, its pumped more money into the economy, Consumer Spending is probably the best thing in the economy. The president says keep people from working. Evidence shows thats not the case. Americans want to work. With 10 , 11 unemployment, you cant find a job and people shouldnt be given a pay cut. Second, this is an unworkable plan. Most states will take months to implement it because its brand new, its sort of put together with spit and paste. Many states because they have to chip in 100, they dont have money, they wont do it. To boot, it depletes the Hurricane Trust Fund to defer this money to pay for this money at a time when were at the height of hurricane season. Can the president do that, is it legal . Is it legal . Well, you know, ill leave that up to the attorneys, it doesnt do the job. It doesnt come its not going to go into effect in most places for weeks and months because its so put together in a crazy way, if he would have renewed the 600 as we did in heroes bill through january things would proceed smoothly. The payroll tax cut . Most employers its a deferral, and so it accumulates until january when it expires, employees are just going to continue to withhold the money. I talked to some, they dont want their employees to be stuck with a huge bill in december, so its not going to pump money into the economy, and second, the president said if elected i will forgive all this, that depletes money out of Social Security and Medicare Trust funds. If youre a Social Security recipient or medicare recipient, you better watch out if President Trump is reelected. Lets talk about how you get back to the table. You say these proposals are narrow and unworkable. Republicans say your trilliondollar offer is just a budget gimmick. Youre not cutting any programs, will you compromise more . Well, look, weve compromised a great deal. But one more point on the executive orders what they leave out, nothing on testing, we have a regime thats not testing, the president has messed up testing unlike any other countries. Nothing to help reopen schools safely. They need lots of money to reopen schools, not only for ppe but for bus routes, because kids cant sit next to each other. For ventilation systems, for hot spots, lot of schools want to convert their gyms and cafeterias for classrooms. Were going to see layoffs. This isnt an abstract concept. A firefighter is a firefighter. A person who drives a bus, a person who picks up the garbage, those are important jobs. Its not in there. Theres no money to help us with elections. Theres no money to help us with post office, very little money to no money to feed children and no real help for eviction of people, so they leave out a lot. So what we have democrats propoese proposed. What we proposed originally the 3. 4 trillion heroes bill was carefully done and it meets the needs, huge needs, twothirds of the American People by survey data prefer our 3. 4 trillion to their 1 trillion, which doesnt do the job, but in an effort to compromise, Speaker Pelosi told the negotiators from the president s office, well come down a trillion, you come up a trillion, that would bring us to 2. 4, then to 2. We can get in the middle. They said absolutely not. I said to them, its your way or the highway, they said yes, thats not the way to create the deal. Heres my hope, george, that now that theyve done these executive orders, and the American People will see how narrow, how not doing the job they are, that republicans who hung their hat on these executive orders will be forced by the economy, by the healthcare crisis, where a thousand people are dying a day, and were not making the progress. Get the American People to come to the table and come up with an agreement. Lets talk about where you could compromise more. One provision youre pushing is appeal a cap on state and local tax deductions. Thats a longterm goal of yours. Why does that have to be in the emergency covid bill . Well, first, state and local governments are hurting and one of the reasons was the elimination on the cap of state and local, it hurt state revenues. This idea that its rich people, go to long island, talk to a typical couple, maybe hes a firefighter and shes a teacher, they need that deduction. This affects the middle class, in suburbs, in the red states and the blue states, but were willing to come down a trillion dollars and well compromise and meet them halfway. They dont want to meet halfway, they dont want to meet any way and thats what the American People should understand that weve made a big offer, a huge offer, in an effort to get this thing going, well make well make that well cut that trillion and it wont be so easy because these are real needs of people. This isnt an abstract game. So many republicans say, they dont want to spend one nickel. Mitch mcconnell said 20 republican senators dont want to spend any money, not even the trillion that the president has proposed, and thats sort of reminiscent of herbert hoover, when the stock market crashed. Herbert hoover and some of the conservatives said, dont spend any money and we had the great depression. Were fighting for peoples needs. We need testing. We need our schools to open safely. We need to prevent firefighters and teachers and others from being laid off. Thats what were doing. This isnt a game. Theyre so wrapped up in their ideology. We hate government. Well, i got to tell you something, the republican mantra, let the private sector do it alone just doesnt work when you have a huge recession and a huge healthcare crisis. I want to ask about election interference. The Intelligence Community put out a new warning friday about foreign election interference, china wants biden to win, russia is actively interfering now to help trump. Iran is also looking for opportunities. I know you received classified briefings. Does that Public Statement accurately reflect whats happening right now and what, if anything, can be done to counter the interference . First, i cant talk about what happened in the briefing. There are public reports and firms have said that russia is attempting to interfere in our elections. The deputy of the dni said it just yesterday. So, yes, its absolutely true that russia is trying to interfere from Public Information and Public Statements. We are trying, democrats are trying to stop it in the defense bill. We want to put tough sanctions on russia. Chris van hollen has a bill, bipartisan, i believe its with marco rubio to stop it. Trump is resisting. Why does he not want to stop russia from interfering in this election . You have to ask that question. Your colleague Richard Blumenthal said its so alarming, so chilling that it should be declassified. He says every american has the right to see. Without compromising sources, yes. They should know another thing, these hearings that johnson and graham are doing, some of it is now public is based on false russia intelligence about joe biden, in other words, false russia reports on joe biden. They should be ashamed of themselves for what theyre doing. Letting the russians manipulate us or try to manipulate us. Senator schumer, thanks for your time this morning. Thank you, george. Lets get a white house response from the president s top economic adviser, larry kudlow. Thank you for joining us. This morning, let me give you a chance to respond senator schumer. You saw him right there saying that the president s proposal are weak, narrow and unworkable. Well, look, i think that providing significant economic assistance, even though the numbers are coming in very strong, good jobs number on friday, declining unemployment, weve created over 9 million jobs in three months, thats record. Theres still a lot of hardship out there and heartbreak out there. The point that President Trump made yesterday is that on a several occasions we tried to get, for example, a compromised deal on the unemployment assistance, which ran out, the federal unemployment assistance, thats a key point. And another key point is the Eviction Moratorium because the democrats rejected various compromises, at least twice to my knowledge. The president felt he had to take action, and it will be timely action. It will be temporary action to be sure mostly out until the end of this year. But lets help those larry, the president doesnt extend the federal Eviction Moratorium. I looked at the executive order, it simply directs hud to find a way to help people and it doesnt include extending the Eviction Moratorium. Look, thats not entirely true. It is true. I just read it. The secretary of health, if any determination is made that theres a Health Threat of Community Spread due to evictions or forbearance that they would take action, so thats clear, and thats exactly what the Health Secretary is going to do. We also are going to be working through other agencies to spend some money for example for rental assistance and federally backed housing, whether its Single Family or multifamily, if theres any forbearance, so its just says theres going to be a review, i can tell you, george, the intent of that is that the review will prevent any evictions. Weve been fortunate so far. But this is a guardrail and it will work out beautifully. Okay, i understand that. You say thats the intent. Clarify, im reading page 3, such action may include encouraging and providing assistance to Public Housing authorities, minimizing evictions and foreclosures, it doesnt talk about extending the moratorium. Some other issues as well, especially on this proposal to extend Unemployment Insurance benefits, 300 federal contribution, 100 from the states under a new program, you heard senator schumer said states wont be able to get this up and running in time and a huge delay in getting the money to people. Well, look, i dont think there will be a huge delay. The Labor Department has been working with the states, the states are the ones that process the federal benefits before. So i dont see any reason why it would be all that difficult. Most of their systems have been upgraded. The Labor Department will be deeply involved in helping them out. I mean, in terms of delays what good is delay of the legislation if you cant if you dont think you can process anything . We should have gotten this done weeks ago, now we will take 75 of the cost share so that if states put up another 100 from 350 or 400, which is their average across the country, then youll have essentially 300 to 400plus, really if the states are generous, 800 unemployment assistance per week out to the end of the year, i think thats a compromised view, we tried to get that through a couple times. We werent able to compromise. So the president s gone ahead and done it himself. I think its going to help a lot of people. That plus the payroll tax and some other things. On the payroll tax, its not a tax cut, its a tax defrlg. Deferral. Senator schumer has talked to employers will continue to withhold the money they dont want to be on the hook for it later on. It will only help those who actually have jobs. Finally, even some republicans are weighing. Senator ben sasse said its unconstitutional slop. President doesnt have the power to unilaterally rewrite the payroll tax law. Well, okay, i appreciate those things, maybe well go to court on them. Were going to go ahead with our actions anyway. Our counsels office, the Treasury Department believes it has the authority to temporarily suspend Tax Collections so were banking on that. Weve had also the repurposing of funds, george, that was decided in our favor in the Supreme Court case involving the mexican wall a while back. So we think we can do it. I do think the president and its in executive order would like very much to make the deferral a permanent deferral. In other words, hell essentially let it go in future months rather than a payback. So it will be, you know, loan forgiveness in effect, and i think businesses will welcome it. Youre right, there are many people working than not working, thats a good thing. But there are roughly 140 Million People who are working. There are roughly 15 million, 16 million who are unemployed. The unemployed is too high. But the 140 million theyre going to get a gigantic wage increase, probably 1200 between september 1st and december 31st and, again, well do everything we can to forgive those loans. I think thats an incentive to work for those who are heroes during the pandemic and also for the unemployed it gives them the incentive to come back to work to offset some of the excesses of unemployment assistance. You just said this could face legal challenge, that seems pretty clear thats going to happen. You said right now the democrats are also saying youre not doing enough on testing, to help schools, state and local governments, why not go back to the negotiating table and get this done, isnt the quickest and easiest route to guarantee relief . Well, i dont think the president has said we can go back to the negotiating table, weve not said no to that. Except his team walked away. Secretary mnuchin. Well, look, secretary mnuchin and chief meadows have been up there every single day for long periods of time. We provide as much staff and policy support as we can behind the scenes to back it up. We have proposed a large School Assistance for covid. We want kids to go back to school. We put 105 billion on the board and the democrats rejected it. We actually exceeded their original. It was 100 billion. Across the board weve done all these things, i listened to what senator schumer was doing. Saying. We have massive testing program. Were testing 1 Million People per day. I think Something Like 60 million, 65 million, by far the largest in the world. Thankfully by the way, with the distancing and with the masking and with the hygiene and with the testing where applicable, weve seen now the mitigation is working and the curves are flattening out in texas and california and florida. Thats a real good thing. We put these things look, can i just i dont want to get overly political. For heavens sake, the president said yesterday, onethird of the democratic proposals had absolutely nothing to do with covid. Theyre talking about harvesting mailin votes, mailin votes themselves, no signatures, no sending assistance to illegal aliens. Letting felons out of jail. Its a very liberal left democratic wish list that had nothing to do with covid. Well remove that stuff we would probably have Better Grounds to negotiate. Larry, we could go back and forth on that. Democrats complain that the president wanted to put funds for building an fbi building in Downtown Washington in way some critics said would help his hotel. You made that point about covid and mitigation, the Washington Post is reporting this morning, that an internal model of the president s counsel and economic advisers predicts quote a looming disasters with the number of infections expected to rise later in august, september and october in the midwest and elsewhere, have you seen this analysis, how worried are you . I have not, george. I have not seen that analysis. All my discussions with my colleagues i havent heard anything about that. As ive said, having