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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says after four huge bailouts and stimulus he doesn't want taxpayer money to go to states that were deep in debt before the virus arrived. Take a look at the state pension fund debt across four key states, California, $190 billion in debt. Kentucky is $42 billion in debt. New York, $11 billion in debt. And New Jersey, $142 billion in state pension debts. Now to put that in perspective, over just a few weeks the federal government borrowed $3 trillion in coronavirus relief, yet total revenue flowing to the federal government is expected to bring in only $3.6 trillion for this entire year. One of McConnell's chief critics who called him the Marie Antoinette of the Senate joins me now. Republican Congressman Peter King of New York, a member of the financial services committee. Good to see you, Congressman King. Thanks for being here tonight. Good to be with you, Martha. Thank you. That's the argument that -- thank you for being here -- that, you know, so much money is going out the door and some companies, as well as some states are gonna look at this and as an opportunity to, you know, fill their coffers to make up for past misdeeds and budgets that don't work. No, that's a total lie being spread by Mitch McConnell, no one is looking for any money other than that we've lost directly because of the coronavirus. We're talking about paying the cops, the firefighters, the doctors, all of the lost revenue also because of coronavirus. This has nothing to do with pensions. Nothing to do with state spending.
Listen, I'm not a big fan of Governor Cuomo as far as his policies of governor, but I think he's doing a very good job as far as the coronavirus is concerned. And none of the money we're talking about, none of the funding would be in any way tied to state policies. It's entirely because of the coronavirus. Because of the shutdown, like in my county. Nassau County is by the way is almost twice as many deaths as the entire state of California, 40 percent of the county budget comes from sales tax. Sales taxes is gonna be almost zero probably, you know, for the next few months, so how do you make that up in the budget? That's directly because of coronavirus -- coronavirus. All of the money spent at hospitals, all of the expenditures. So, Mitch McConnell when he says that we should go bankrupt, you know, one of the reasons that New York has problems otherwise it's because we subsidize Kentucky. We get many, many billions less back from the federal treasury than we pay in, while Mitch McConnell in Kentucky they walk over billions more than they're entitled themselves. So, if he wants to pointing their finger, you look in the mirror. All right. I mean, all good points. But let me put up this tweet from Nikki Haley, who was the governor of South Carolina. She said "States should always plan for rainy day, just like any business. I disagree that states should take federal money or should be bailed out, this would lead the taxpayers paying for mismanagement of poorly run states. States need to tighten up, make some cuts and manage." What do you say to Nikki Haley?
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