Kudlow: WH Looking at "Bonus" Pay to Get People Back to Work.
BURNETT: Tonight, National Economic Council director Larry Kudlow says the White House is very carefully, his words, looking at a potential back to work bonus. Under the Republican proposal, unemployed workers who get a job would receive a temporary bonus of $450 on top of their weekly wages. OUTFRONT now is Gary Cohn, former Director of National Economic Council under President Trump and a former president and CEO - COO, I'm sorry, Gary, of Goldman Sachs. So, Gary, you've talked a lot about this issue of the fact that the whole goal of the original assistance was to keep people home so we're paying people more than they would earn in the workplace to get them to stay home. So now you're going to say if you go back to work, you get a $450 bonus on top of that, does that even out to encourage people to go back to work?</s>LARRY KUDLOW, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL: Well, Erin, thanks for having me. Look, I understand what they're trying to do. They're trying to get people back into their workforce, which is exactly what has to be done. I completely agree that the way to recover our economy is to get people back in the workforce. There's an enormous multiplier for every person, you get back in, you drag other people back in, because that person demands goods and services as they re enter the workforce. So encouraging people to get back in the workforce will drag along other people, so I understand the mission. And so if the government is going to spend money on employers and employees, I'd rather they spend it to get them back into the workforce than having sit at home and sitting idly. Now, look, we do have to understand there are some limiting factors. We still have not opened up daycare. We still haven't opened up schools, so there are a bunch of limiting factors that we're going to have to deal with to get people back into their everyday normal life.</s>BURNETT: And to that point, a fox news poll, Gary, ask people whether we should wait to reopen the economy or not, 55 percent said we should wait, even if it makes the economic crisis last longer, 34 percent say the country should reopen, even if it makes the public health crisis last longer. So two very different point of view, but as you could see 55 percent saying, wait, how do you get the economy moving, if more than half of Americans think we should still be waiting to open up and I asked it in the context of what everyone watching. And you and I both know, which is that you can open a state, but if people don't feel like going back out, they don't, right? So you need that confidence. We just don't have it yet.</s>KUDLOW: Look, we do need the confidence. But remember, we need the confidence by seeing people going out and interacting in the economy and seeing positive results. So for the last two months, almost, we've been sitting at home and we've been hearing the right thing to do is to stay home. We need to protect each other. We need to flatten the curve. So, it's very difficult to change people's mindset instantly from you need to stay home and that's the right thing to do for your fellow citizens to now you need to go out. So, look, this has to be an incremental approach. I actually think that's what we're trying to do right now. We're trying to have an incremental approach to opening different parts of the economy. Earlier in the show, you showed the data, how it's affecting different states and how the virus is coming back in certain states, how it's not going back in other states. And that is something we are going to have to be very careful about. And, look, this all goes hand in glove with testing. We are going to continuously have to test so we understand what are the implications of reopening the economy.</s>ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: So, you know, I know you're not a market prognosticator, but, you know, you look at unemployment, real unemployment is what, 20 percent, maybe worse than that, right, at this point. And yet you got the Dow back to where it was 11 weeks ago when all this began. Consumer confidence jumped, new home sales have gone up. I mean, how does all this add up to you? I mean, those if I said confidence is going up, new home sales are going up, the Dow is at its highest level in 11 weeks and then I'll tell you unemployment is at 20 percent, part of me says one of the things has to be really, really off, and I know the unemployment numbers are real, at least for now.</s>COHN: Right, the unemployment numbers are real, I don't think anyone is debating that, but the Dow represents the 30 biggest companies in the country, the 30 most important companies. And even today is a perfect example. The Dow -- the 30 companies of the Dow outperformed the S&P 500, the 500 biggest companies by almost 1 percent, so you are seeing different returns for different companies based on their importance and based on the relevance. And the market indices that we tend to look at a daily basis are the biggest and most important companies. If we look at the index of the smallest 500 public companies in America today, we would get completely different results. We did see companies that are struggling and struggling to stay alive, let alone had their share price go up.</s>BURNETT: How quickly do you think unemployment will improve dramatically?</s>COHN: Well, remember, the unemployment numbers that we see every month are lagging. So, we'll continue to see some bad numbers, and as we get people more and more comfortable reentering the economy, and we get more and more people back to work and we get more normalized activity, we will see the economy recover. But we've got to change the mentality of people. As I said, we're used to hearing stay home, and stay home is the right thing to do. We now need to hear it's OK to go shopping, and maybe it's okay to go shopping because there's only four people in the store, five people in the store. We need to come out with some real rules that make people comfortable, leaving their home and reengaging in the economy again</s>BURNETT: All right. Gary Cohn, thank you very much. I appreciated as always. It's a fair point. We really need those specifics everywhere. There's so much uncertainty, everybody has different rules. Thank you. And next, President Trump pressed on why he was mocking Joe Biden for wearing a mask.</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I thought it was very unusual that he had one on.</s>BURNETT: Plus, Twitter fact checking the president, you can see it there at the bottom of the tweet. Get the facts about mail-in ballots. Now, tonight, the Trump campaign responding.