Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Congress will very likely need to pass more stimulus legislation for the U.S. economy, as the nation struggles to recover from the coronavirus outbreak, Bloomberg reports.

Said Mnuchin: “I think there is a strong likelihood we will need another bill.”

“Workers filed another 2.4 million unemployment claims last week, continuing a wave of historically high filings since the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic began,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

Bloomberg reports about 38.6 million initial unemployment insurance claims have been filed since the pandemic began.

Wall Street Journal: “Nearly half of adults live in households that have lost income in the two months since the coronavirus pandemic led to a nationwide economic shutdown and more than a third expect to lose income over the next four weeks, the Census Bureau said in a new report.”

“Delinquencies among borrowers for past-due mortgages are soaring, a sign that Americans are struggling to pay their bills due to a wave of layoffs or lost income from the coronavirus pandemic,” USA Today reports.

“At 6.45%, the national delinquency rate nearly doubled from 3.06% in March, the largest single-month increase ever recorded, and nearly three times the prior record for a single month during the height of the financial crisis in late 2008.”

“Sen. Lindsey Graham, a close Trump ally and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he’s pushing Trump to get behind a plan to pump more money into infrastructure projects — even though that idea has gotten an icy reception from McConnell so far,” CNN reports.

Said Graham: “I want to do infrastructure. I told Trump, this is the time. We got it teed up. This is the time to go big. … It really is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to give a facelift to the country.”

“Graham isn’t alone. Other powerful members of the Senate GOP Conference, including two committee chairmen — Sens. Roy Blunt of Missouri and Roger Wicker of Mississippi — want to move on an infrastructure package to pump money into roads, bridges and transportation projects.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) promised House Republicans that the beefed up unemployment benefits enacted earlier this spring “will not be in the next bill,” Politico reports.

“All 50 states have begun to reopen in at least some way, more than two months after the coronavirus thrust the country into lockdown. But there remain vast discrepancies in how states are deciding to open up, with some forging far ahead of others,” the New York Times reports.

President Trump privately expressed opposition to extending a weekly $600 boost in unemployment insurance for laid-off workers affected by the coronavirus pandemic, the Washington Post reports.

“Republican political operatives are recruiting ‘pro-Trump’ doctors to go on television to prescribe reviving the U.S. economy as quickly as possible, without waiting to meet safety benchmarks proposed by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to slow the spread of the new coronavirus,” the AP reports.

“The plan was discussed in a May 11 conference call with a senior staffer for the Trump reelection campaign organized by CNP Action, an affiliate of the GOP-aligned Council for National Policy. A leaked recording of the hour-long call was provided to The Associated Press.”

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) pressed Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin on the need for a careful reopening of the economy at a Senate Banking Committee hearing:

BROWN: How many workers should give their lives to increase our GDP by half a percent or the Dow Jones by 1,000 points?

MNUCHIN: No workers should give their lives to do that and I think your characterization is unfair.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin warned senators that the economy may never fully recover if states extend their shutdowns for months, the New York Times reports.

Said Mnuchin: “There is the risk of permanent damage.”

However, Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell suggested that “simply reopening states without a vaccine or a sense that the virus will not resurface is unlikely to provide an immediate economic boost.”