“There’s not enough money to help everybody hurt when you shut down the government,” the Tennessee Republican said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

The solution to reopening the economy is to “test, trace isolate, treatments and vaccines,” said Alexander, who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. “We have to let people go back to work and earn a living.

“And I don’t see us being able to appropriate much more money to help provide a counter to that,” he added.

The U.S. needs a “breakthrough,” the senator said, citing the development of a vaccine to fight the virus.