White House officials are working with congressional Republicans on an emergency stimulus package that could send two $1,000 checks to many Americans and also devote $300 billion towards helping small businesses avoid mass layoffs, according to two senior administration officials and a Treasury Department fact sheet.
No final decisions have been made and talks with Republican leaders remain fluid, but the growing scale of the $1 trillion rescue plan is coming into sharper focus. The Treasury Department is circulating a two-page sheet of priorities that it wants to see in the final deal. As part of it, the White House seeks to create a $50 billion “airline industry secured lending facility” that would allow it to make direct loans to “U.S. passenger and cargo air carriers.”
Treasury would determine the interest rates and other terms of any loans, but they would include limits “on increases in executive compensation until repayment of the loans.”