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President Donald Trump says his administration will ask Congress to pass payroll tax relief and other quick measures as a public health and economic maelstrom brought on by the coronavirus drew closer to him personally. Intending to calm the fears of financial markets over the impact of the epidemic, Trump told reporters Monday he is seeking “very substantial relief” to the payroll tax. Trump also said he was seeking help for hourly-wage workers to ensure they’re “not going to miss a paycheck” and “don’t get penalized for something that’s not their fault.” (3/10)

“It’s not their fault,” he said of affected workers. “It’s not our country’s fault. This was something that we were thrown into and we’re going to handle it and we have been handling it very well.” He added, “The main thing is that we’re taking care of the American public and we will be taking care of the American public.” (Baker, Haberman and Karni, 3/9)

Trump has long advocated for a cut in the payroll tax — a tax paid by companies and employees to fund Social Security — to stimulate the economy. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin suggested that it would be a temporary move. "The economy will be in very good shape a year from now. This is not like the financial crisis," Mnuchin said. "This is about providing proper tools of liquidity to go through the next few months." (Gregorian, 3/9)

Trade adviser Peter Navarro—backed by Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, and legislative affairs director Eric Ueland—argued in favor of pushing for a payroll tax cut now, the people said. On the other side, National Economic Council Director Lawrence Kudlow and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin called instead for narrowly targeted measures aimed at helping workers without sick leave and businesses facing virus-related disruptions, the people said. They questioned how expensive and how effective a payroll tax cut would be. (Restuccia and Davidson, 3/9)

House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the top two Democrats in Congress, told reporters that any payroll tax cut should be limited to those affected by the virus. They also said they are crafting new legislation, on the heels of $8.3 billion coronavirus funding enacted last week, that might be ready to be introduced this week. (3/10)

Democrats panned the idea of industry-specific relief. But there is bipartisan momentum behind some sort of expanded leave benefit for individuals forced to stay home from work without pay due to coronavirus-related quarantines, forced school closures or company policies. Finding a way to get school meals into the hands of low-income children forced to stay home due to school closures also has some support on both sides. (Sword and Lesniewski, 3/9)

Kudlow said last week that the Trump administration was considering “targeted” economic relief for certain sectors hurting from the coronavirus. Administration officials have rejected the idea of a larger stimulus package, and Kudlow, like Trump, has insisted that the economy remains strong. (Samuels, Chalfant and Lane, 3/9)

Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill said Monday that they could unveil their proposal for a second round of economic relief surrounding the coronavirus outbreak as early as this week. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) are floating a series of legislative reforms designed to combat the spread of the coronavirus and provide economic relief to those most directly affected. (Lillis, 3/9)

President Trump confronted one of the most perilous days of his presidency Monday by first erupting in a barrage of commentary that failed to calm the cratering financial markets, struggling to inspire confidence that his administration could stop the spread of the novel coronavirus. But by the time the sun set in Washington, Trump sounded momentarily chastened by the turbulence and previewed a raft of emergency measures to shore up the economy. “We have a very strong economy,” the president told reporters, “but this blindsided the world.” (Rucker, Costa, Parker and Dawsey, 3/9)

Then there was the blame game. One senior administration official blamed the national security staff for bungling the early coronavirus response. Other aides blamed the vice president’s office, which has taken the lead on the response. “The Office of the Vice President seems way in over their heads,” one White House official said, referring to the coordination and messaging. “They don’t know what they’re doing.” Separately, some aides took issue with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield, who’d dutifully stood by Trump during his Friday visit to the Atlanta agency and commended the president for his “decisive leadership.” (Cook, 3/9)

The fast-spreading coronavirus and a plunge in oil prices set off a chain reaction in financial markets on Monday, a self-perpetuating downward cycle that could inflict serious harm on the global economy. What started last month as unease about a potential economic slowdown in China has evolved into a borderline panic, with the S&P 500 on Monday crashing nearly 8 percent. The mayhem is threatening to roil the underlying global financial system and the abilities of companies large and small to survive a potential economic monsoon — a downward spiral that is fed and intensified by these destructive forces. (Phillips, Eavis and Enrich, 3/9)

The Dow Jones industrial average shed 2,014 points, or 7.8 percent, on Monday, the largest decline since the financial crisis. Stocks fells so sharply, they tripped a so-called “circuit breaker” that halted trading for 15 minutes. Oil prices tumbled 25 percent, its worst day since the 1991 Gulf War, as the coronavirus weakens demand for fuel, with Saudi Arabia and Russia refusing to scale back production. (Long, Heath, Englund and Telford, 3/9)

Investors remained wary about the outlook for global markets, noting that stocks remain well below where they started the week. President Trump’s pledges to discuss measures such as cutting payroll taxes with Congress to ease the economic pain caused by the coronavirus outbreak were met with cautious optimism. “You could call it a dead-cat bounce,” Altaf Kassam, head of investment strategy for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at State Street Global Advisors, said of the rally in markets Tuesday. “If there’s more fiscal and local economic policy by governments, that could be a good Band-Aid to staunch the bleeding.” (Wallace and Yu, 3/10)

"President Trump is leading a whole of government response with the vice president helping him on the public health issues we're facing with the novel coronavirus. That is his number one concern in terms of the economy. He and his economic team have the tools to keep this economy going strong," Azar then told reporters at the White House Monday. "But the public heath and protecting the American people is the number one priority for all of us." (Cathey, 3/9)

As the severity of the coronavirus outbreak was becoming clear, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri sent a letter to the Food and Drug Administration arguing that the crisis was revealing a dangerous dependence on China in one key area. “The novel coronavirus in China highlights severe, longstanding, and unresolved vulnerabilities in our capacity to produce lifesaving pharmaceutical drugs and medical devices for our own citizens,” Mr. Hawley wrote. “This is unacceptable.” (Seib, 3/9)

Reaction was trending on Twitter Monday to a meme President Donald Trump retweeted about himself -- one originally from the White House social media director -- that caused critics to compare his handling of the coronavirus crisis to the story of emperor Nero fiddling while Rome burned. The image also apparently included a QAnon slogan, the Washington Post reported. (Muwahed, 3/9)

Vice President Mike Pence invited top executives from the largest U.S. health insurers to discuss the response to the coronavirus outbreak on Tuesday, as the White House sought to signal a more muscular effort to stem the outbreak and stock markets again stumbled. (Wadhams, Jacobs and Mohsin, 3/9)