New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) announced that he will travel to Washington D.C., on Wednesday to meet with President Trump to discuss ways of jump-starting the New York economy efforts through major infrastructure projects.
During his daily press conference on coronavirus update, Cuomo made the announcement that he will meet with the president to discuss critical infrastructure projects that were put on the sidelines amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“I’m going to go to Washington tomorrow,” Cuomo said Tuesday at the New York Stock Exchange. “Scheduled to meet with the president to talk about a number of things.”
“Everyone has identified the same problem, Democrats and Republicans, but nobody has done anything,” Cuomo said Tuesday. “If there’s ever a time to actually take on this overdue need of major infrastructure construction, now is the time. There is no better time to build than right now.”
Cuomo highlighted several infrastructure projects such as the Empire Station Project that would renovate and expand Penn Station, an AirTrain for LaGuardia Airport, the Cross-Hudson Tunnels, and the Second Avenue subway line expansion as examples that are “long overdue” and would like a partnership with the federal government.
“Penn Station has been torturing people for too long,” he said. “Let’s accelerate while ridership is low and we need the jobs. The time to do this work is now when you need the jobs and the volume is low and New York will lead the way. We are going to accelerate our big infrastructure programs. You have an infrastructure that’s crumbling, you need to jumpstart the economy, you need to create jobs, do it now.”
Cuomo added, “Let’s do the things we’ve been talking about. You want to restart the economy, you want to reopen the economy, let’s do something creative, let’s do it fast, let’s put Americans back to work, and let’s make America better. It is common sense.”
The unemployment rate in New York since the outbreak that has crippled the state for the past two months. is reported at 14.5 percent.
Cuomo said 73 people died over the past 24 hours, the lowest daily toll since he started reporting figures over two months ago. New York, the epicenter of the pandemic in the United States has infected more than 362,700 people and killed at least 29,220, according to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University.
The meeting between the two New Yorkers will mark the second will meet in the past month amid the pandemic.
Trump will likely meet with the New York governor on Wednesday morning as the president is scheduled to head to Florida in the afternoon to attend the historic SpaceX launch at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
CoronavirusGov. Andrew CuomoInfrastructureNew YorkNew York NewsPresident TrumpWhite House
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