Andrew Cuomo warns Congress against passing ‘politically biased’ coronavirus rescue package

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Friday suggested that the GOP-led U.S. Senate is trying to steer coronavirus relief money to red states at the expense of harder-hit blue states.

“The bill that they passed shorted New York state, which on any analysis has more cases, more costs, more infection, more devastation and more loss,” Mr. Cuomo said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

“If they pass another piece of legislation through that Senate that is politically biased, that is trying to help Republican states and not taking into consideration where the impact really is like in New York and California and Michigan, then shame on all of them,” he said.

Both the Senate and the Democratic-controlled House recently cleared a $2.2 trillion economic rescue package, though Democrats are now calling for more money to be directed to states and localities.

“When you look at the package and you look at the distribution, the Senate almost treats it as a pork-barrel bill,” Mr. Cuomo said. “This was not supposed to be a grab bag politics, everybody take care of their home state. This was supposed to be help the places that had the greatest pain, where you have the most cases.”

Senate Democrats said they managed to win some concessions by holding up the proceedings temporarily, though Republicans have disputed that notion.

On Thursday, Senate Democrats also blocked quick action on an additional $250 billion for small businesses, saying that the supplemental package didn’t go far enough.

“The only discussion is well, politically [in] the Senate this is what we needed to do,” Mr. Cuomo said. “I’m tired of that and so are the American people, by the way. This is no place to play politics. The country’s done with it.”

New York has been the hardest-hit U.S. state in terms of COVID-19 cases and coronavirus-related deaths.

There are more than 159,900 positive cases in New York state and more than 7,000 deaths out of a population of nearly 20 million people.

The number of cases in New York is more than any other country in the world outside the U.S., according to a tracker from Johns Hopkins University, though many doubt the numbers being reported publicly in countries such as China, where the virus originated, and Iran.