Transcripts For CSPAN Washington Journal 03242020 20240713

Ruiz. Nationwide the country has reported more than 100 deaths in a single day, and pushing the total infected 42,000. Lawmakers in washington are at a stalemate over a third economic aid package, this one with a price tag of 2 trillion or more. This is your opportunity to tell decisionmakers how this is impacting your community. Small business owners, 202 7488000. Medical professionals, 202 7488001. Ll others, 202 7488002 send us a text with your first name and city and state at 202 7488003. Twitter orents on facebook. Com cspan. Joining us on the phone is mike lewis for the hill to talk about what is happening in the senate. Lets begin with the negotiations in the Upper Chamber yesterday. Where did they leave things . Guest good morning. It was a long day yesterday. They left with no deal around midnight. They are very close. We dont know quite what that means because they have been saying that for the better part of the last four days. It is a wait and see moment. The treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin and the minority Leader Meeting forr were 15 hours yesterday. They started at 9 00 a. M. And ended just after midnight. They are expected to be done today. They did call president towards the end of those negotiations. Schumer said the president was happy with the way things were going. The parts are all interconnected. Nothing is done until everything is done but it seems like they are poised to announce something today. If everyone is on board, they can pass it over to the house weekly. Host what are the changes that are appeasing democrats . Question. D republicans introduced their bill on saturday. 1 trillion. Three main components. A check, direct cash to americans, direct loans to Small Businesses and loans to Major Industries like the airlines that are most affected. The democrats said this helps corporations much more than it helps people. The past 48 hours has been mostly negotiations over unemployment insurance, which is now in there. Question. Republicans introduced their bill on saturday. The democrats got four months of on employment insurance for those laid off. There are now food stamp moneys. There is supplementary money. The 20 billion range, we hear. That went from zero to roughly 20 billion. The democrats insisted on a state Stabilization Fund, a Rainy Day Fund for state and local governments. That is 150 billion range. There is money for child care for seniors, transportation and housing, the more vulnerable populations affected by this to an extent more than others. We hear that money is in the 200 billion range. All those were additions to the republican bill not in the initial bill. A lot of the haggling wasnt over the specific policies but how much money would be dedicated to those policies. In thell Business Loans republican bill was 300 billion. Democrats were asking for 500 billion. The final number is about 377 billion. Same thing for hospitals. Republic democrats asked for a number its in the middle around 100 billion. Those in the negotiations they have been having, the types of things to be ironed out and it sounds like we are close. Host what happens today . Guest mnuchin will be back meeting with schumer. Its an interesting negotiation. The majority leader, senator mcconnell, has been very much involved but last night left the building. He just kind of left it to the white house to negotiate on behalf of the republicans. We expect it will be mnuchin and schumer once again ironing out the last details, trading legislative language, probably calling the president to get his final stamp of approval. We expect them to make an announcement. Board, they is on can pass it unanimously and move it quickly and then it will go to the house. Host the house is not in session. Guest thats a great question. We were asking Speaker Pelosi that question yesterday. There is a debate about whether or not the house would have to come back. Technically they dont have to. They can also pass it unanimously. They could just have one member from local states come in and pass it unanimously and wash their hands of this and get it to the president s desk. This is one of the biggest Bills Congress is going to pass in a lawmakers lifetime. Does somebody come back and try to block this thing . Pelosip is on board, if is on board and kevin mccarthy, minority leader in the house, schumer, mcconnell, if everyone is on board, they can pass it quickly. If someone was to be a cog in the works, they can block the whole thing but there would be a lot of pressure on them not to do that. We dont know what is going to happen. We assume schumer has been negotiating on behalf very handing glow with nancy pelosi. If he endorses it, she will endorse it. It is not an issue of the senate versus the house on the leadership level. Is there going to be somebody that might come back and block it out of some ideological concern . We just dont know the question to that. Certainly pelosi wants to do it quickly and not bring her house back because there is a lot of concerns over public travel and gathering in large crowds. A lot of house members are in that older, vulnerable population. They would like to stayathome. Host why did Speaker Pelosi unveiled her own bill yesterday . Though she stand down if there is a deal in the senate . Guest she is under a lot of pressure from her caucus. This is going to be a 2 trillion package. It is in normas. Numbers we have never talked about for emergency supplemental in any of your lifetimes. There lifetimes. The democrats have the majority and they want influence over this enormous package. They want to have their priorities represented and they would love to have their own and iron outloor the differences with the Senate Republican bill. There is just not time. The urgency is real. The number of cases are rising. Markets are tanking. People are unemployed and businesses are shutting. They dont have time to do it and they are not in town. A lot of pressure on pelosi to represent her caucus. Shes been having constant Conference Calls with members 200 members on a call. They all want to tell her what provision they would like in the package. Everything from an expansion of Social Security to a reduction on emissions for the airlines to receive federal help. Their bill is more a messaging bill. This is our liberal wish list. This is what we would do if we ruled the world for a day. They are on the record having a bill out there. Maybe the bill they introduced will guide the next round of help because no one thinks this will be the last round of help. Congress will probably have to come back depending on conditions on the ground and how the economy reacts to this package. There is already talk of another package somewhere down the line. Maybe this legislation can guide that package. Host you can follow mikes reporting at thehill. Com. You can follow him at twitter. Thank you for your time. Guest anytime. Host lets get to your calls. Bob in duluth, minnesota. What is it like for you live in duluth . Caller well, a lot of people are staying home. When you go to the Grocery Stores for a while it seemed like all the food was running short. It is Getting Better now. I think pretty soon the people are going to need a stimulus package. The government right now showing that it is dysfunctional. There should have been a stimulus package already past. If they dont pass it soon, i think the government is going to fall out of favor with the people and we are going to demand a change. Things they ought to be focused on right now is number one, the hospitals. We need to get rid of the virus and we need to supply the hospitals. Masks in allt kinds of stuff. They should have had testing equipment out. That could have helped stop things. The hospitals are number one. Host are you hearing your hospitals are overwhelmed . How are they doing . Caller they are not overwhelmed yet. A few particle masks i had left downstairs. I think the hospitals are taking those. The second thing on the list i think should be the Small Businesses. They need a bailout. Workers. Aced they need to focus on that right now. If they want anything add on, they can deal with that later. The emergency on those three things. Is showing its dysfunction by not addressing that. Not ask forshould any more than those three things for the first part of the stimulus package at least. That needs to get out now, sinkwise the economy will and money in the hands of the common consumer is the biggest engine that can stimulate the economy. As far as the corporate bailouts they caught the tax scam got the tax scam. They dont have to pay taxes and now they want subsidies. I think that is obscene. Host the wall street journal front page. Stocks slide as lawmakers tussle. The washington post. Senate close to a deal on stimulus. The president may ditch safety guidelines to jolt the economy. The Financial Times of london about our Federal Reserve. The full fire prayer for firepower fails to arrest leiden market. We saw that yesterday buying certain bonds to shore up the economy. We will talk about that later when we talk with steve moore from the Heritage Foundation. Ita in jacksonville, alabama. Caller good morning. They should have a blessed day. President up in washington, s known about this for three or four months. Did he mention it to the American People . Two, if he sends me some money, i wont believe it until it gets to my hand. When i do receive it, i may send it back so we can help these little families. California. Om what do you do for a living . Caller i am a retired housekeeper. Used it to work for the veterans hospital. Especially in, highly infectious cases, we are supposed to keep changing our masks and gallons. Gowns. They are telling professionals to just keep wearing them again. How do we know if the patient we are going into, this patient may not be infected and we could be causing the problem. They need to get this bill passed as soon as possible so the hospitals can get the equipment they need. You are listening doctors and nurses are becoming infected. What happens when they are now laid out and not there to take care of patients . Then we have a bigger problem. That is what is concerning me. Host you have got to turn down that television and just talk and listen through your phone. Mary in kingston, North Carolina. What is it like where you live . Caller its a small town. The majority of businesses are closed and several factories. Host our people losing their jobs . Caller yes maam. Host what is the conversation like . What are people worried about . Caller about when they will get income back. I have several friends that are single parents. School closures have really they have really affected their jobs because they depend on school for child care. Now school is canceled until may 14 here in North Carolina. I mean, they have to go to work still but leave their children at home and find day care. Daycares are still open. Fort of them are calling t them to be closed because they are putting kids at risk. I have a senior in high school. He may not walk across that stage after all the hard work he put in. He is upset about it. It is really tough on him. I dont work. I was in a wreck several months ago. Their father works. Luckily his factory is still open. Andave one income coming in they need to pass this bill. Theytrump said yesterday, need to take the partisanship out the equation. Host would you benefit from a 1200 check . Caller yes maam. Definitely. Host 1200 check for each adult and then a 500 for each child is what they are discussing. That is a possibility in this legislation. Trump one thing i heard, used an example yesterday for a family a four is looking at around 3000. That would help us tremendously. We left paychecktopaycheck. Host we are not able to buy gros like other people are doing. There are several orders in this this town. Rders in the local Grocery Store, piggly wiggly, for a pack of chicken they were costing 15. I went to another store and it only cost 5. 31. Host go ahead and finish your thought. Horrible think it is price gouging is going on at this time of need, especially for families like myself that live paychecktopaycheck. Host mary in North Carolina. Doug in san jose, california. Caller good morning. I am in one of those vulnerable groups. Im a senior with some medical conditions. Your previous caller pointed out that Grocery Stores are getting cleaned out by hoarders. For me going into a Grocery Store could be a real problem. I have tried to find a Grocery Store or a service that will deliver. That cant be done. I have tried to find Grocery Stores were i can pick it up. That cant be done. Theress is sitting playing this like a political football. Members ofur congress who have been exposed as having dumped huge amounts of stock when they knew what was coming and nobody else did, and now we are seeing this circus. Desperateing people and angry and not to mention unemployed. San jose is a big town. Theof a sudden all of restaurants and bars and even athletic events we have a major Athletic Team here. It is shut down. Congress needs to get on it and get busy. Host how do you feel the governor is doing, gavin newsom . Caller actually it is surprisingly well. I am not a gavin newsom fan. Apparently, and i have not confirmed this, but apparently he has been talking about putting the National Guard out there and even declaring martial law. The good news is he and the president are cooperating, which typically has not been the case. I am guardedly optimistic about that, but still we are a long way from resolving this issue. Medical people are working as hard as they can to do what they can, but this is not going away anytime soon. Host the senate will, as we , reconveningmike today and attending to pass a package. This is the third bill they have passed in response to the outbreak. The price tag for this one is reaching 2 trillion. You can watch our coverage of the senate on cspan2, uninterrupted when they come in. Doug mentioned lawmakers dumping stocks before the coronaVirus Outbreak started to spread to the level it is that. This is from fox. Com. Centers allegedly dumping stock as the market tanks is why some people think senators should not own stock. They say senator richard burr is under particular scrutiny, but he is not the only one feeling the heat. Her her financial disclosure, senator Kelly Loeffler sold millions in stocks with her husband in january. It raised eyebrows. There is a long history of lawmakers profiting off of stocks from the information they gleaned from their role in congress. That is why so much so that Congress Passed the stock act in 2012 that said lawmakers were prohibited from Insider Trading and gave the house and Senate Ethics committee the ability to implement new rules. Timeawmaker received jail over Insider Trading charges. John in arlington, virginia. What is it like in arlington. You had a big announcement yesterday in your state. Caller it is a slow strangulation. They have to sort this out right. If they can bring back things, either statewide or within the state, that would be good. There is a big pressure. I hear it from sadly, over in maryland they are worried about getting back to work and having to deali hear it with their kide in daycare. That is closed down. If you do get back to work, what do you do with your kids if the School System shuts down for the rest of the year like in virginia . I have two other problems i would like to bring to your attention. One is on the democratic side. This house business where they are bringing up things like Climate Change and racial and itty, that is a joke is a bad time for that kind of stuff. Stuff other, we know this is gamed out. In the military you go over options, you work out scenarios of what is going to happen. They have done this in the medical community. If it has not been done, it is a disaster. We know it has been done somewhere. They should have brought people in involved in this and say, what happened in this scenario . To say this was totally unexpected, we could not imagine this, that is just not true. There were people that did do this sort of thing and should have been consulted. Business doeshole not make the government as a whole look that great. Host yesterday tensions flared on the senate floor between the republicans and democrats as they continued to negotiate over a 2 trillion plus economic aid package. Here is the Senate Majority leader Mitch Mcconnell on the floor after they failed once again to move forward on a vote for theond economic aid package. [video] here are some items on the democratic wish list that they choose to block this legislation last night. Credits for solar energy and wind energy. Provisions to force employers to give special new treatment to big labor. Listen to this. New emissions standards for the airlines. Are you kidding me . This is the moment to debate new regulations that have nothing whatsoever to do with this crisis that is what they are up to over there. The American People need to know it. Us finds wont let hospitals or safe Small Businesses unless they get to dust off the Green New Deal. I would like to see Senate Democrats tell new york city doctors and nurses who are literally overrun as we speak that they are filibustering hospital funding and more masks because they want to argue with the airlines over their carbon footprint. I would like to see Senate Democrats tell Small Business employees in their states who are literally being laid off every day that they are filibustering relief that will keep you on the payroll because democrats special interest friends want to squeeze employers while they are vulnerable. Squeeze these employers while they are vulnerable. Host the Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell on the floor. Minority leader Chuck Schumer, democrat from new york, this is what he said. To andts are objecting proposal pushed by republicans. [video] the bill still include something most americans dont want to see. Large corporate bailouts with no strings attached. Maybe the majority leader thinks it is unfair to ask for protections for workers and labor of companies that are getting hundreds of billions of dollars. We think it is very fair to ask for those. Those are not extraneous issues. That is a wish list for workers, nobody else. We are looking for protection. We are looking for oversight. If this federal government is making a big lump to someone, to big companies, we ought know it and of the details immediately. The bill put on the floor by the republican leader said no one would know a thing about those loans for six months at least. Bailoutsose socalled we need to protect workers. The workers those industries employee. We have been guided by one plan. Workers first. That is the name of our proposal. The bill needs to reflect that priority. Host Chuck Schumer of new york on the floor. We are getting your thoughts on the impact of this coronaVirus Outbreak on where you live. Michael from ohio, a Small Business owner. What is your business . Caller host it is what . Caller its a r, restaurant. Bar, a restaurant. Host you had to close down . Caller yes. Everyone has had to close down. Host what has it been like financially for you . Caller it is not good. People are wondering what the heck is going on. They accept it because you want to straighten this problem out, but what i cant comprehend is watching yesterday is why they cant solve the situation so businesses and people out of work cant get money. When you have Something Like this, this is a time to try to add things to the thing. If youre a democrat or republican, why would you not worry about taking care of the people . The whole world to shut down right now. Why would you try to add things to mess up and prolong the agony for the businesses and the people out of work right now . Host have you had to we lost michael. A Small Business owner. William is a medical professional in pittsfield, massachusetts. What do you do . Caller i am a registered nurse. Host have you been on the front lines . Caller i havent. I work in an outpatient dialysis unit. Many of my colleagues have a tough in the icus and emergency rooms. Host what are they telling you . What do they need from washington . Caller from washington, you have two narratives going. You have the narrative of the Health Care Community and the medical community. We keep hearing flatten the curve, flatten the curve, which we need to do. Then you have the narrative from the economics side. Saying we have got to get the economy rolling again. Going,ave to get that we really need to be cautious here, and we need to take heed of the epidemiological information coming in and the suggestions from the cdc and from organizations like the who. Businesses,o reopen we need to do it carefully, because what we could see is if we see the curve start to go that we open fact businesses to early. Undid alluve just the good we have been trying to do with flattening this curve. Where im atnd of with this. Host william, there are reports today in the paper the president feels anxious about the economy, and he wants to lift these restrictions, sooner rather than later. You are saying, from a medical standpoint, you dont want to see that happen. Caller yeah. It is weird to me because i live in massachusetts, and governor baker just shut down nonessential businesses for two weeks, yet the president says lets restart the economy and maybe get some of these businesses going again in like a week or so. I think there might be a disconnect between the federal as you, as far know, maybe the fed or the president himself should say lets let the states figure out get theirshould states and local economies going again. I think its unrealistic in ,tates that are not hardhit maybe be a little more liberal of opening business. Host that is what the president is pointing to, if we are not in a hot zone, maybe we can ease restrictions a little bit. Caller yes. Study about this concept of herd host immunity . Caller yes. Soundsmajority, and this crazy to me, when a good majority of Health Care Professionals contract the virus and get over it, and have antibodies in their body and can get back to work, that is when you will really see the spike, and you will see this virus start to be over with, when our Health Care Community can, effectively treat sick people and not get sick themselves. Host william, on this disconnect between the senator and State Government, this is from the washington times, stayathome. Governors have ordered residents to stay at home to minimize the spread of the coronavirus. Ohio, until april 6, illinois, april7, michigan is 13. Delaware is may 15. West virginia until further notice as well as california, new york, new jersey. Connecticut, stay home until april 22. Nevada is april 26 april 16. Pennsylvania, six counties until april 6. The World Health Organization held one of their briefings yesterday and here is what the leader had to say about the spread of the virus. I would now like to continue with the rest of my remarks on the covid19 pandemic. Than 300,000 cases of covid19 have now been reported from almost every country in the world. That is heartbreaking. The pandemic is accelerating. Days from the first reported case to reach the first 100,000 cases. Days for the second hundred thousand cases second 100,000 cases. In just four days for the third 100,000 cases. How the virus is accelerating. But, we are not prisoners to statistics. Standards helpless by bystanders. We can change the trajectory of this pandemic. Because they are not just numbers, they are familiesose lives and have been turned upside down. Host the leader of the World Health Organization. If you want to watch his entire briefing yesterday, you can go to our website, cspan. Org. From the newspapers this morning, usa today front page, Officials Say the Olympic Games will be delayed. That is on the front page of the newspaper there in tokyo, moved to 2021. You also have this from the Financial Times in london, u. S. Employers are point between cutting payroll and planning for recovery. Also, on that front, this morning, from wall street journal, halt in u. S. Air traffic, major u. S. Airlines are drafting plans for a voluntary shutdown of virtually all passenger flights across the u. S. , according to industry and federal officials. Government agencies also consider ordering such a move, and the air Traffic Control system continues to be ravaged by the coronavirus contagion. The business section of the wall street journal, virus takes a toll on manufacturers. Boeing is going to suspend production in seattle with many of its workers getting sick. Ge will layoff jet engine workers. We are getting your thoughts on the impact of this coronaVirus Outbreak on your community. We go to louisville, kentucky. Burning, good morning to you. Share your thoughts with us erny,ng, good morning b good. Share your thoughts with us. Caller i work at the university and all of our classes are online. I believe we will be able to finish the semester successfully. Our restaurants have been particularly helpful during this crisis. They came up with very unique ways of staying open and to serve customers. One is providing, on carry outs which hasnt been carry out orders, beer. Which hasnt been done. They have expanded their deals to four to five days a week and this is not just chain restaurants. I dont know for certain, but i believe the drivethroughs are allowing lockups now, because there is a lot to people who do not have a car. You cant really use the drivethrough unless they allow you to walk up to the window. I think we are doing the best we can. It is strained. There is very little traffic during the week, and i think we are doing the best we can to take care of our underserved and Homeless Population as well. Our governor, who i think is doing a good job, comes down every afternoon and gives us a onehour hour update. Instead of using an iron claw, he is using a velvet hammer to explain the situation. I think hes a doing i think he is doing a good job. One other thing, you have to be one of the kindest people i have seen on tv to allow everyone to have their say. During these times, this program is more important than any other , just to allow people to talk. I think that is what people need to do. Thank you. Agree. Ernie, we letting people talk and letting washington know what you are all thinking and how it is impacting you there, that has been the mission of this program from the very beginning, but it takes on more relevance in this time. Crag in new jersey. A Small Business owner. Crag, what is it like for you and what is your business craig, what is it like for you and what is your business . Caller i lend money to businesses. Well,a Small Business as but that is what i do for a living. Irrespective of what i do, i would like to make my thoughts on this, which i think this is way overboard at a 2. 5 death rate. We are going to put the country into a Great Depression. I have no doubt in my mind. You cannot stop commerce at this level. 1. 5 Million Deaths per year from people driving cars. We dont stop people from driving cars. Worstcase scenarios that you this r 1. 5about Million People will die from this virus. I dont want my kids growing up in a Great Depression. Ive heard stories from my grandfather about the Great Depression. About how they had to share an apple to eat at the end of the day. This is where we are headed. Never before have we had an entire worldwide economy shut down like this. I dont understand where the courage of the American People are. The same people that went overseas to battle the nazis are shivering and hunkering down in their house because the word about the deeper 2 death rate, where the vast majority of these people, and my heart goes out to anyone that dies from this, are over 80 years old, over 70 years old. Im 60 years old and im at risk. Im prepared to take that risk. Im prepared to take that risk for the future of my family, of our country. If i were 70 years old, i would be quarantining myself, as i think any responsible or 70 or any responsible 70 or 80 your old person should do. Host i want to show you a tweet from Scott Gottlieb who is a former fda director. Wewe can put that one up, if have it. If we dont have it, we will get it for you in a minute, but it is 18 to 59yearold you see in the hospitals. It is not older people. It started out as people thinking this would have fatalities for older people because of what the population in china and italy what they were seeing there. He says many young adults and middleaged americans are becoming seriously ill and surviving only after prolonged hospitalizations and icu admissions have longterm consequences. This is a dangerous virus for most age groups. So the impact of only surviving by being in the icu s they are only surviving by being in the icu. If you look at todays guardian, it talks about how germany has a. 3 death rate compared to italy, which has 9 , and the u. K. Has 4. 6 . 3 . Even if it is. 6 . Even if it is worstcase scenario, italy, you cant stop the economy. What you going to do when this country is completely indebted for all the money we are trying down for the stimulus bill . Even if you stop this thing, it is not permanent. It will start somewhere else, like an amber in a fire. An inoculation, you will not stop it from coming back. You cant do that for something if we were talking about ebola spreading at this rate, i would be agreeing, but we are talking about a small percentage of people that will die. We have people that die here in Car Accidents all the time. Host all right. Caller we dont stop cars. Your, the same amount of people will die in cars again and again. This is one year. Host heard your point. We will move onto another point, steve in madison berg, pennsylvania. Berg,r hello madison pennsylvania. Caller hello and thank you for taking my call. I would like to take this from the perspective that we all had this disease already. The only reason we havent gotten it is simply because it has not caught us yet. , iftting that is the case we can accept that, then we can take the actions by social distancing. My neighbor is 81 years old, right next door. I have to text her. I want to text her because i want to know how she is doing. , buts right next door prudence with this disease is imperative, imperative. Apparently, that message is not getting through. Need tos in washington realize that there are people out here that are hurting and that want to participate in society. We are doing the best we can, given the tools we have. The unfortunate aspect of this is that we do not all realize what we have available to us and how to go about using it. God to flowgrace of over all of us. If we can come to the realization that this, as i say, we have this disease, all of us have it, and we need to take the. Ction to self distance be very careful how we interact with one another. Then, we can overcome. Host steve, many governors have mandated that self distancing. In the united kingdom, the british Prime Minister, boris johnson, yesterday, but the city of london in a lockdown. Heres what he had to say. This evening, i must give the british people a simple instruction. You must stayathome. Do toitical thing we must stop this disease spreading between households. That is why people will only be allowed to leave their home for the following, very limited purposes. Necessities, basic as infrequently as possible. One form of exercise per day. Walk, cycle a run, alone or with members of your health family. And, traveling to and from work, and only where this is absolutely necessary and can be done from home cannot be done from home. That is all. These are the only reasons you should leave your home. You should not be meeting friends. If your friends ask you to meet, you should say no. You should not be meeting family members who do not live in your home. You should not be going shopping a sexual except for essentials. And, use Food Delivery Service where you can. If you dont follow the rules, the police will have the powers to enforce them, including through fines and dispersing gatherings. With the compliance governments instruction to stay at home, we will immediately close all shops selling nonessential goods, including libraries, playgrounds, and gyms ands places of worship. We will stop all gatherings of more than two people gathering in public except people you live with. Ceremonies, stop excluding funerals. Parks will remain open for exercise, but gatherings will be dispersed. No Prime Minister wants to enact measures like this. I know the damage this disruption is doing and will do to peoples lives, their businesses, and their jobs. That is why we produced a huge and Unprecedented Program of support for workers and business. I can assure you that we will keep these restrictions under constant review. We will look again in three weeks and will ask them if the evidence shows we are able to. At present, there are just no easy options. The way ahead is hard, and it is lives will,hat many sadly, be lost. Host the Prime Minister of britain yesterday. President trump held his briefing yesterday at the white house, and indicated he would like to see these restrictions in the United States lifted after the 15 day period on march 30. Heres what he had to say. Many of the doctors on your team endorsed easing pres. Trump we talked together and i think they are ok with it and i am ok with it. This could be a much bigger problem this could create a much bigger problem than the problem you start off with. Other nations will have to do what they need to do but they will probably do something similar. In our case, much worse than anyone else, because of the magnitude of our economy, the tremendous size of what we have built and the jobs involved, you have almost 160 million jobs in this country, the most ever by far. Almost 160of jobs, million, so we cannot turn that off and think it will be wonderful. There will be tremendous repercussions and tremendous death from that. You are talking about death, probably more death from that then anything we are talking about with respect to the virus. If we continue with the strict guidelines than if we use them . Pres. Trump i think we can do them both. We are getting fairly close to coming up with a date and it is a shorter period of time then i have been hearing the news report. I think everybody should be happy with that. Host back to your calls. Steve in madison berg, pennsylvania madisonberg, pennsylvania. How has the Coronavirus Impacted you and those around you . Caller yes, i was just on. Host im sorry, steve. Let me move on to jean, a Small Business owner jean, a Small Business owner. Caller thank you for taking my call. Host your welcome. What is it like in greenwood . Caller same as everywhere, people are taking precautions and people are starting to wear their masks and put gloves on and take things more serious. So, it is kind of people are kind of confused as to what is going on. I think a lot of things of what has happened to us here in america is that, in the past, politicians have given away the work americans could have been doing, like everything that we get has been coming from china. American workers work for what forn their businesses what . And their businesses are almost completely shut down because everything is coming from china. A lot of things are closing. Pots and pans, all of those things could have been made in america and i think we could have been stronger. I do applaud President Trump for trying to bring back american businesses. Confusion overf exactly whats going on, and im like the gentleman the just called earlier, that the numbers just dont add up for the action being taken to close down the whole nation, and also, they are saying they dont have the masks and the equipment the hospitals need, but i dont see the numbers dont add up, because you dont have anything to show that these supplies are being used up. On what . They show i think 35,000 cases that had symptoms or confirmed cases. Then, they had i think 500 deaths. Host you have to use the equipment when youre treating someone who survives as well. But i i understand that, dont see how they are running out of equipment. Im so happy somebody will be putting a stop to the people who are going in and buying up 20 and 30 roles of paper towels, toilet tissue, taking all of the lysol and stuff like that off of the shelves. Im glad to see the stores are beginning to put a stop to that, because that doesnt make any sense either. Host all right, jean. There is news out of china. Wuhan, from peoples daily, out of china, tweeting out this morning that wuhan is to lift Outbound Travel restrictions, starting april 8. A provinceities in as many of you may know, getting news out of china from other journalism ised difficult after the Chinese Government kicked out u. S. Journalists. In a fullpage open letter to the Chinese Government, the publisher of the dutch publishers of the New York Times, washington post, and wall street journal signed a joint letter together noting our news organizations are rivals and compete with each other on the biggest stories, including this one. On this matter, we speak with a single voice, both countries and the rest of the world and if it by having talented journalists, many fluent and versed in chinese culture, covering the secondlargest global economy, and a population hardhit by one of the worst pandemics in modern times. When this crisis passes, we believe both countries will news accessfreer and information about the other. His letter running in the New York Times, washington post, and wall street journal today. Lets go to wanda in pennsylvania. What is it like in pennsylvania . Wanda, please turn down your television. Caller ok. There you go. Host all right, go ahead. Caller im calling into say our representatives, they need to concentrate on this virus. Nothing else. They need to vote on what they are going to do for the businesses, for the workers, and for anybody that needs help. That is what they need to do. And another thing, my husband and i sat here and watched our thishis lady who wrote book, i forget her name, she was telling on there that most of all of our medicine is made in china. I was shocked. Our medications. Something needs to be done about that. We need to make our own medicines. The lady said they checked into it, went to the one place they were making it to check up on the place, and they didnt have anything in there to wash their hands. They didnt have Running Water in the place where they are making our medicine. Host so wanda wanting congress to address that issue but also passing another stimulus bill. There is a third package negotiated on capitol hill hind us. The Senate Republican ash behind us. The Senate Republicans are putting forward a proposal but democrats rejected that sunday. They did that again yesterday but continue to negotiate. A democrat of new york, saying they are close. The senate will come back today. We could see them voting again for our coverage, gaveltogavel, of the Senate Voting again. For our coverage, gaveltogavel, of the senate, go to cspan. Org. Or, you can listen to the senate floor downloading the cspan radio app. Deborah in florida, a Small Business owner, what is your business . Caller we manufacture. Host what do you manufacture . ,aller various awnings, tents pretty much any architectural item that goes on the outside of buildings. Host ok. Caller we have several businesses we run. I will say that workers need immediate help. Unemployment offices are overwhelmed. People are hungry now. We need to take care not only our employees the best we can, but the government needs to bailout the Small Businesses, because if we are not bailed out, there will not be anybody to go on a plane to byproducts. All businesses manager matter, and there are businesses we need to run our country, but if we leave the Small Businesses out of the equation and put them at risk, americas economy will not recover. People . Oy more caller we employ more people than any other industry in america, Small Businesses are the engine. We need to protect them. Into have you looked getting a loan from the Federal Reserve . The fund the Federal Reserve has set up. Caller we have, and we are. The amount of paperwork they want is astounding, but the process is being done. It takes hours to do it. Host do you have to do it online . Tell us what do you have to do . Caller right now, you can in, 41 to 50t papers for each entity. If you do it online, it does take a long time, and you must have the information at your fingertips as you do so. Host can you, have you been told or can you see when you do this paperwork how long it might take them to process it and for you to get this money . Is it a loan or some sort of grant . Caller we havent seen any grants. We have only seen loans. We are in florida and the state of florida wants to produce a loan that, if you dont pay it back within a year, it will be 12 interest, which i think is ridiculous. But, i thing my purpose here speaking to you is that it is very important to understand what Small Businesses do for our country. Everywhere in our country, and i appreciate the farmers who are still sending goods to market. People are hungry. There are food banks here in the county will that are empty. It is hard for people who do not have money and become newly unemployed to know where to turn, to know what to do. That too many Large Businesses in the past have been bailed out, and i think it is time to take a look at what really does run america. Host deborah, how many employees do you have total . Caller 70. Host when were they laid off . Caller we have been trying not to lay off everybody. We have been working with as many as we can right now. We have laid off about 10 people , but we have shorten hours considerably. Over three decades, have we ever laid anyone out. We had the best year ever, and it is astonishing how you look at, a couple weeks ago, everything was absolutely great. N everything stop stopped. We need to protect the health of the people of the United States. We need to understand this virus is spreading. I pray for everyone every day that we survived this and we do well. Host deborah, how much longer can you go trying to keep the employees you have . Caller it has been very difficult. We are looking at that now. If we need to close down, quite frankly, and try to weather this out. My heart breaks for the people who work for us. It truly does. Hope i wishi you luck, and i hope we could reach out to you again at some point and get an update from you and see how your businesses are going, your health, and those in the family and your employees, and those around you. Caller thats very kind of you. Thank you. Host we will take a quick break, and when we come back, we will talked to Stephen Moore and what the Federal Reserve did yesterday and what is next for the economy. Later, jason sneed will be here to discuss how the pandemic is impacting camping 2020 and potentially how we vote in the fall elections. Larry hogan announced the closure of all nonessential businesses in his state but stopped short of issuing a shelterinplace order. Here is what we he had to say. Have enactedng, i an executive order, which closes all nonessential businesses, organizations, establishments, and facilities in maryland, effective at 5 00 today. In addition to those businesses, which have already been closed by our prior executive orders, this new executive order closes all of those businesses not covered by federal guidelines, which were issued thursday by the federal government, as defined as Critical Infrastructure sectors, including health care and food, and agriculture, energy, public works, communitybased government operations, and the defense and industrial based sectors, law enforcement, public transportation, critical manufacturing, financial services, and water and wastewater. Let me be clear. Or ordering auing shelterinplace directive. Home. Cing people to stay however, we are telling all marylanders to follow all of the directives we have already issued, and follow state law against crowds of more than 10 people. And, we are telling you, in less you have an essential reason to leave your house, you should stay in your homes. Todays actions of closing nonessential businesses are absolutely necessary to protect the health of marylanders and save lives. This is an exceptionally challenging time for marylanders and for all americans. Announcer washington journal continues. Studiooining us from our here at cspan, separate from me as we practice social distancing, is steve moore, visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, coauthor of trump enomics. I want to begin with the Federal Reserves move yesterday, before the markets opening up, to buy back unlimited buying of bonds to help businesses. What exactly did they do and how does this help the economy . Guest hi, greta. Thank you to cspan. This is an extraordinary action by the fed the government is taking extraordinary actions in this unusual situation, something we have maybe not seen ever in American History with the combating of this virus. The other day, during his press conference, the president said he is a wartime president and we are fighting an invisible enemy. That is right. We are treating this like it is a war and it is ending invisible enemy, so you are seeing the steps by government. The fed is trying to combat deflation, trying to stabilize the economy by infusing more dollar liquidity into the u. S. Economy. Right now, because you have this global pandemic, whenever there is fear, everyone in the world buys dollars. There has been a run on the dollar, and the fed wants to make sure, if people want dollars, there are dollars for people to buy. The markets appear to have responded positively. The futures indexes are way up this morning. That is a bit of good news, finally, on the stock market. We will see how long those gains are sistan sustained. We are talking a couple thousand points on the dow. We will see how this works out. I will say this, no matter how much money the fed infuses into the economy, no matter how many aid packages Congress Passes to provide to help the people who need help because they have lost their jobs, none of this will do much good if we dont, at some point soon, reopen the economy. If people are not producing things, it doesnt matter how much money we have in the economy. , the arent things to buy United States is shut down. Host can we reopen the economy when peoples lives are at risk . Guest this is the question everyone is pondering from economists to Public Health officials, even at the Heritage Foundation where i work there is a lot of debate about what the next what the best step forward is. I think of this as an economist, so im not a Public Health official, but i believe at some point soon that we have to get this economy reopened. This devastation of a shut down lockdown of our economy would be so great that i think you are talking about 30 million to 40 Million People. I just listened to that caller you had on before me talking about having to lay off workers in her business. Owner of a business. Im on the board the board of a business where we have 30 employees. The last couple of days, we had to lay off all of our workers. It was heartbreaking. That is one of the hardest things to do, to tell people they have to be laid off. That is happening all over the economy right now. My feeling is that we have to be smart about having a date certain, sometime hopefully in the next two to three weeks, where we start reopening parts of the economy so we can get things going again. There may be some areas like new york or san francisco, or parts of california, that need to be continued to be quarantined, but the devastation and we are talking about millions of business is ruined forever, talking about people losing their life savings, talking butt not 10 or 20 million 50 Million People put in the unemployment lines. That is an incredible toll with trillions of dollars of losses. We have to be smart about this. Two trumps credit yesterday said credit, yesterday reopen theneed to economy and he was asked if that was months from now and he things it will be weeks from now. Host have you given this advice to the president . Our viewers may recall the president considered you for the Federal Reserve board. Are you having conversations with him and advising him . Guest i have not talked to the president lately, but i have communicated with some of my friend allies at the white house. Frankly, greta, there is a debate in the white house about this, just as there is debate you have 10 callers and i bet five would say reopen the economy and five would say we have to do everything we can to protect Public Health. What im saying is we have to have a balancing act. The idea somehow we will keep the economy shut down for ive heard 10 to 14 weeks, i guarantee that will not work. Wevastation would be would have a Great Depression if that happened. We have to be really smart about this and have to take incredible Public Health measures. One other quick thing, because i have been talking a lot about this in the last few days, people wonder what about people who do not want to go back to work . I have family members who are afraid and want to stay away for the next two to three months until they feel it is safe to go outside. There are other people who want to get back to work. At some point, you have to let every individual business, man, and woman make their own decision and let workers decide for themselves whether they feel it is safe to go back, based on the best Public Health information we have. Host if the president ultimately decides, within weeks areas,ay, to, in certain reopen the economy and let people get back to work, do you see the Unemployment Rate still at 20 to 30 . How much damage has been done so far . Guest that is a tough question. By the way, talking about 20 and 30 Unemployment Rates, this is astonishing because, as the previous caller said, her business was booming as recently as three to four weeks ago. It is so frustrating, me as an economist, someone who helped President Trump at this economic plan together, we were sailing along with the trade deals done, tax cuts, deregulation. The economy was growing at 3 to 3. 5 percent according to the atlanta Federal Reserve bank until the coronavirus came along. We had the blockbuster jobs report at 350,000 jobs when you counted the revisions, so we were sailing along and we hit this. This brick wall. Toidentally, its important the story because think out we had a president who put in place an economic grin that worked so well, because it an Economic Program that worked so well because it cushioned us from the blow. How fast we can get the Unemployment Rate down, it is hard for me to say because we are really this is uncharted territory. We have never seen anything like this. Art of the question will be how much how many workers are willing to go back to work even if the president starts to allow businesses to reopen. Host i want to invite our viewers to join in on the conversation. Steve moore is here to take your questions. ,emocrats is 202 7488000 republicans is 202 7488001, independents is 202 7488002. And you can text us at 202 7488003. Mr. Moore, if we reach unemployment that is higher than 10 , 15 , what does that look like in this country . Guest the good news is this will only be temporary. We do not know if it will be one month, two months, or three months. We will conquer this virus. We always do. Fortunately, it will not be like the Great Depression in the sense we have double digit unemployment for eight years. But, this will cause hardship for people. We have this a package and im. Ure we will talk about that the price tag keeps changing every time i look, but it could be as much as 2 trillion. We never passed an aid package anywhere near that in history. That will provide shortterm relief so people can pay their bills and put food on the table, hopefully pay their rent and mortgages, but at some point, as i said earlier, there is only so much money the government can put into the economy. If there is not production, if you dont have people working, the economy comes to a halt. That is a scary scenario. Host lets get to calls. Tony in bethlehem, pennsylvania. Caller good morning, mr. Moore. Guest good morning. Caller i was looking at the chart greta showed about the shelterinplace rules in certain states. And of them was april 22. That is one month from now. I think, by that time, these men staying home with their beautiful wives and wellbehaved children who are still healthy are going to say, you know what, i would rather die on my feet than live on my knees and want to get back out there. Of all, this is a decision at some point every individual has to make for themselves. I am a civil libertarian so the idea that government is telling people when they can go out of their house, curfews, having police in the street, these huge grabsings are of power by government, and it makes me nervous when i see what is happening in san francisco, new york city, and so on. I think it is absolutely appropriate, for the time being, but i agree with you. At some point, people will go stir crazy. You will see people wanting to get out, and people have to know what the risks are, but the question we all have to ask is, who should make that decision . Should politicians make that decision for us or should we make those decisions for ourselves . As a libertarian, i think more and more of these decisions have to be made by the individual. I want to make a related point. Obviously there are huge Public Health risks in terms of putting the economy back in some semblance of working. On the other hand, there is real Public Health risks to keeping people the costing causing. Ankruptcy to businesses you will see depression and suicides, big increases in drug overdoses. We know that from the evidence. High unemployment and economic stress is highly associated with health problems. There are two sides to this equation. Im not here to tell you or anyone this morning that i know the answers. I dont think anyone does. What im here to do is say we have to make a calculated decision about when it is appropriate for our economy to get running again. Host steve in pennsylvania. Caller good morning. That if you take away the ability for people to make decisions on their own under these circumstances, you will have more deaths if people go back to soon, because people go back to their old way of life. You can come out of a depression but cannot come out of death. The longer we keep people away from each other and keep people segregated, we will have a better chance to not have a relapse of the situation going forward. That. I cant argue with there is a lot of truth to that. There are two sides to this equation. On the one hand, if we do start to reopen the economy, you will have to do it in a smart way with very high regard to what best protects the Public Health. There can be social distancing in the workplace. We have this going on right now. Greta is on the sixth floor and i am on the first floor, but we are both at work right now. That is one little example. People can work apart from each other. I am not saying that mitigates all of the risk. We need screening and testing. We need, maybe before you can go into a public place, take peoples temperatures to make sure they do not have a fever. We are paying a pry heist a high price for the fact that the cdc screwed up and did not have these tests that you have another countries. How can it be that korea has tests for the coronavirus where you can find out quickly whether someone has it or not but in the United States we dont have it . It was a monumental screw up by the center for disease control, and we are paying a multi trillion dollar price for that. Host is it right to put the blame on the cdc, or is it the job of the people who oversee the cdc, congress, and the money being appropriated to the agency . Guest we give 10 billion dollars per year to the center for disease control. It is not a bot a shortage of it is not about a shortage of money. Looking at the other programs, frankly i think the cdc took their eye off the ball. If you look at the cdc website, it is about things like gun control, lgbtq issues and things like that that are not part of the cdcs mission. Its mission is to protect us from pandemics and be prepared for them, and they werent in this case. I think, when this is all over, i wont point fingers at any individual person. We have to find out what happened and why there was this monumental blunder by our government. Host we go to dayton, ohio, tom. Caller good morning. Host morning. Caller i was kind of frustrated about the bill going through congress. , but theump supporter stuff pelosi was putting in a supposed to take all of their debt away, i dont understand with what that has to do with what is going on right now. Im ready to get back to work myself. Want this country to go. God bless you all and stay safe. Guest i think this gentleman is really expressing the views of so many tens of millions of americans that, number one, we are a productive people. We are the greatest economy in the history of the world. It is heartbreaking to see this shutdown. It is heartbreaking to see people unemployed, heartbreaking to see businesses people spent their whole lives building up, in three weeks time to go from profitable businesses to now being shuttered because of this virus and the lack of economic activity. Im glad this gentleman called in because that is a sentiment everyone is hearing. The gentleman also makes a good point about this aid package. It is scandalous it has taken so long for this aid money to get out in the first place. We want to get this into the pockets of people so they have money they can spend, that they can keep their families fed and housed. It is true that what is happening now, this has turned into a court bureau festival. I wont point fingers at either party because i think both parties are doing this. But it is true because nancy pelosi wants to put in things like permanent leave. She wants stuff having to do with Climate Change. Cant we put that thing aside geta few months so we can this virus contained that is a threat to the health of millions of people . You just look at the bill, it should be straightforward. It doesnt have to be 1400 pages. Nancy pelosi, the ball is in your court. Get this thing passed in 24 hours so we can get the a to the businesses and families that need it. Host Stephen Moore of what congress has done so far, the first two rounds of economic stimulus, what do you think makes the most impact . What are some of the proposals they passed and the president signed into law that will help . Guest first of all, this is not going to help the economy enlarge. In other words, the government sending checks to people does not help the economy. We do have to help people in need, especially because it is the government shutting down the economy, it is not the fault of the private sector, it is the government to made the decision, so they should bear the decision , but we shouldnt kid ourselves by sending someone a check stimulating kid ourselves by thinking sending someone a check stimulate the economy, it does not. It. S aid to people who need i think the most important part of this, with respect to the economy, and im so glad you asked this question because i keep hearing people say this is a bailout for big business and so on. Look,ea here is because businesses, small and large, dont have customers right now, if they dont get some kind of a loan, they will go bankrupt. Million want 27 american businesses going bankrupt. That doesnt benefit anyone. If they do not go bankrupt, they will have to have a fire sale on their assets and put every single employee on their payroll in the unemployment line. That is a disastrous consequence. Without businesses, there are no jobs. This is an idea where you give these businesses, that were healthy three weeks ago, maybe a yearss, loan, so they can get through this. Once we get through this, hopefully in the next three months we get the economy functioning again, we can hit the ground running and have these missed this is these businesses fired up. We want a vshaped recovery where we will fall by 10 to 25 . We dont know how much the economy will falter, but we want to see us booming out of that as soon it is it is over, so we get back to where we were in january and february. These loans to the businesses i think are important. They have to be repaid. They are not giveaways, they are low interest loans. Every company from the small retail store down the street to United Airlines or Delta Airlines is going to need these loans so they can stay functional, so they can get going. These are companies that employ millions of people, so i think that is the most important thing, the loans to the businesses so they can get up and running. Nobody hates bailouts more than i do. I think bailouts are horrific. I dont want to see favoritism from one industry to another, but you have to do something when the government is telling businesses they have to shut down. Host what about restrictions on this money . Just saying you cannot buy back stock or use it for competition, it has to be used to help the worker in your business. Guest of course those things make a lot of sense. Stock buybacks are just a way to make sure the company is financially sound. I dont understand why stock buybacks have been so demonized. There is a good article in the wall street journal about them. These companies are not doing stock buybacks right now. They need this money to stay afloat, to be able to pay their payroll. You need the money to pay the loans they already have outstanding, to make sure the Companies Already to go when the economy recovers. I think there is this idea that this is just a giant corporate bailout, i think, is somewhat nonsensical. Host we go to california. Jim, go ahead. Caller good morning. I want to comment on steves assumptions. It all sounds nice, but i have been as i have been paying attention to cspan with Mitch Mcconnells comments yesterday demonizing the democrats for not signing onto his bill for the mnuchin toto allow determine, at his discretion, where the money is spent and how it gets paid back. I have an issue against that. I remember United Airlines giving bonuses to their Corporate Executives with our tax dollars, and if it wasnt for a strike by the airline mechanics, the public would not have known about it. This idea that only the democrats are the demons here is ridiculous. This expenditure by Mitch Mcconnells attitude, he wont do anything that wont go back to the president to be signed. We need to be fair and acrosstheboard with this, and i dont see it happening. Guest this is a fair point. As i said at the outset of this discussion, i think both parties are to blame with how bloated this bill has become. There is so much stuff in here that i dont like, that you dont like, and it should not take 1400 pages to help the businesses that need loan and workers who need immediate assistance. Right. Are this is politics at play and both parties are politicizing this right now. It is a shame because the aid needs to get out there yesterday, not a week from now area lets get the bill done. I think there are 80 to 90 there. Im hearing from the leaders of both parties where they think they are getting close. Put that aside, get it done, get the stuff out there, but dont put this extraneous stuff in here that has no business being in a shortterm aid package. Kent, washington. Willie is watching there. Oh ahead with your question or comment. Mr. Andgood morning misses america. I have a question for mr. Moore. We need to prime the pump, and im wondering what you thought about the idea, if not nationwide, a Pilot Program for employers to try to pay their workers every week instead of every two weeks, every month, however it is done now. We need to prime the pumps so we can get the economy going and more money circulating so people are paid every week. A Pilot Program with the local county governments or State Governments, whatever. Guest i think it is an interesting idea. The more money we can get circulating in the economy, the better. I think theres a lot to what youre saying. , greta. He idea i think the president was able to do this unilaterally from moving tax today from april 15 two i believe july 15. Dont quote me on that, im not 100 certain. People dont need to be paying massive tax bills right now. Its put that off. I like the idea of maybe suspending in the payroll tax for the rest of the year so that when the economy does start getting on good footing, we can get juice into this economy. 7. 5 pay raise for every worker in america, giving a real incentive for people to get right back on the job. For employers, you talk about a 7. 5 reduction in their payroll costs, allowing them and incentivizing them to hire more workers. You ask the question, how do we get those 30 Million People back on the job . Something like a payroll tax cut, just for the next nine host michael is our last call. Very upset cspan moore on. Llowed mr. I spoke with you when he put the last tax cut. You couldnt understand how i as a trump folder my taxes went up or you didnt know that they eliminated the 10 minimum tax bracket and pushed it up to 12. That is why my taxes went up. Now you are advocating giving this money away to the same old people, the friends of donald trump to rip us off one more time. Didnt vote for nancy pelosi wouldnt. Evenot one penny should be to business, unless they sign binding contracts that theyre going to use this money to help the workers. Otherwise, forget it. Host im going to jump in. Businesses that are healthy and profitable, there are no jobs. It is that simple. Without businesses and employers there are no jobs. So the idea of some of these loan programs isnt to give a big bailout to businesses, it is to make sure that we get back in commerce and we have a functioning economy. By the way, i am not a big fan of this bill. I dont like bailouts and i dont like giving out money to people or businesses. I am a limited government guy but the government is who shut the economy down and they will have to bear the cost of getting the economy back on its feet. The tax cut, come on, my goodness we had the best economy in 50 years just three or four weeks ago and the tax cuts were a spectacular success. With the lowest Unemployment Rate in 50 years. Just as this woman who was on before me was saying that her business was booming until three or four weeks ago. We have this virus attack that nobody could have predicted. I am so pleased we have a president who is dealing with in such a direct way, a guy who knows how businesses run. We have a blessing that we have a guy would Donald Trumps talents trying to lead us out of this great tragedy. Lets hope that the next time you have me on, i am sure this judgment will call again, but hopefully that is in three or four months and we arent even talking about coronavirus and we are talking about the economy back on its feet and people working again and businesses making profits. The stock market is up. That benefits everyone. One last thing, the people who are suffering the most from the shutdown of the economy are not rich people. Rich people are fine. The people who will feel a real crunch if we keep our economy close down for three to six months is the lowest income people, the people at the very bottom of the income scale. No matter how much money the government prints, no matter how many aid programs that Congress Passes to help people, if you dont have a functioning economy, you cant help people because you need production. We have to get this 20 trillion economic Engine Running again. Host thank you for the conversation. Guest thank you. Host when we come back, the honest election project Stephen Sneed will be here. And all the impact of the pandemic on the elections. Doctor, ona medical the Coronavirus Relief bill. Yesterday, Charlie Baker announced the closure of nonessential businesses and stayathome advisory to contain the virus. Here is what he had to say. Effective tuesday, march 24 at noon, all nonessential businesses shall close their physical workplaces and facilities to all workers, customers, and the public. This order will remain in effect until tuesday, april 7 at noon. Im also directing the department of Public Health to issue a stayathome advisory outlining selfisolation and social distancing protocols. This advisory will also be in until from tuesday tuesday, april 7. We also advise people over the age of 70 and those with Underlying Health issues to stay home and limit their interactions with others as much as possible. Again, more specifics on what this means for businesses and for everyone at home in a moment, but everyone should know we will always allow all Grocery Stores, pharmacies, and other types of businesses that provide toential goods and Services Massachusetts residents to continue to operate. We will not stop anyone from essentialthese businesses. First, i want to acknowledge the incredible impact this action could have on businesses and individuals. It is not lost on me or anybody else in my administration that many businesses, locally grown and owned by neighbors and friends, are the businesses most unlikely to be able to put in place remote or telework policies. I also know that by taking this action now, we can significantly improve our position in this fight to slow the spread of this virus. Acting now to prevent more persontoperson interaction and spreading the virus will buy us more time. Our healthcare care system can better provide for a challenge like nothing theyve seen before. Our goal is to slowly spread by limiting persontoperson contact. A concerted effort now will help us get back to work and back to school. Journalngton continues. Host Stephen Sneed is with us and we are talking about the impact of the Coronavirus Impact on the election season. First on the project and how are you funded . We are a nonprofit and we are a watchdog. We were not expecting to be in a pandemic such as this. Our primary mission is to ensure the integrity and security of the electoral system and to defend the rights of voters to participate in a system which is free, fair, and honest. There will always be challenges so our democracy, pandemic being the latest and we need to respond to those with elections that people can trust. Ost with reaction to their decision to avoid people clustering at the ballot box . Guest i commend them for their swift action to make the elections as safe as possible in these incredibly uncertain times. We certainly dont want people to be congregating in close and othern the cdc Health Officials are advising otherwise. That is a wise precaution for states basing these impending immediate deadlines to conduct elections to postpone them so they could devise thoughtful accommodations for these uncertain times. I think that was the right move. The what do you think impact will be on november voting . Guest i think it is a little too soon to say with any degree of certainty. We are looking ahead to a few weeks or couple of months at this point where we can say with some degree of certainty what Health Restrictions are guidelines will still be in place. Looking ahead to november is a bit more challenging and quite frankly i dont want to read those tea leaves with the sense of certainty here. I think we just need to wait a little while and see how the curve develops and see if we can flatten the curve and see what Health Restrictions are likely to be with the impact of the virus will be closer to the november elections. It is important that states right now be thinking through a series of contingency plans to be prepared to meet whatever sort of situation will be warranted. Host the New York Times editorial had a piece by voting by mail. They wrote, experiments in the state so far have yielded key findings. First, turnout is significantly higher nearly everywhere voting mail is used. Second, political persuasions use it and like it. Third, it is safe and secure. Barcodes allow for ballot tracking and validation and stays using it have encountered essentially zero fraud. Is the election system on a state level in a place where every state could go to a mailin ballot . Guest no, we are nowhere close to that era people are using mailin voting more and more with each election close to that. People are using mailin voting or in war with each election. At a long way from being able to get to an allmale election. Quite frankly, i am worried about people who are calling for us to make that sort of major transition, structural change to how we cast ballots. ,n the best of circumstances much less in a matter of months in circumstances where government offices are closed and workers are home we are trying to make significant changes to elections in the midst of a pandemic. We have a long way to go before we get to mailin voting. There are health of democracy reasons, security reasons that we dont want to go in that direction. Host what you mean by the election . What are you concerned about . People cast ballots by mail, they often do so days or weeks ahead of an election. One of the things we saw as recently as this past super tuesday was a phenomenon of voter regret where they cast ballots for people no longer in the race. Au might say that president ial election, the likely hit of one of two not be the candidate on election rate is pretty low, but there are all sorts of things that can happen feelchange the way voters they want to vote for. When there is a high degree of uncertainty given the fact that we are in the middle of a pandemic with uncharted waters, that is one thing i am concerned about. Absentee ballots are the least secure only second to internet voting. They can be lost, tampered with or destroyed and in the circumstances voters might find themselves disenfranchised. We saw this happen in North Carolina in 2018 were hundreds of ballots were tampered with or destroyed in a concerted effort to swing an election. They had to redo a congressional race because of that. That is what i am concerned about. Host lets do get to the callers. Surely in florida. You are on the air. Caller thank you. What i was going to say is that we need to make sure that everybody who likes to vote do vote. If we have to do it by mail, then that is fine, but we cant allow the virus to be the reason for not voting at this time. It is so important that we vote. Voting is a way of speaking to the people. It is very important that we vote. Host are you worried that if this pandemic is still ongoing in november that we could see even lower voter turnout than we have in years past . Guest it is a concern but we need to be cautious in how we respond to it. I do think there should be a thoughtful, targeted response by the states and there should be a range of options they develop and contingency plans to allow them to respond. We do not know what the situation on the ground will be in november. It could be we are under the same sorts of lockdowns we are today and in all likelihood we will not be. I do not think we should be locking ourselves into a particular course of action like all to allmale voting mail voting which could cause more confusion and problems solved. What to ensure that everyone who to vote can this year and we need targeted accommodations and they should be designed to deal with the Virus Outbreak and designed to be maximizing the odds of success and that means we have to make the minimum necessary changes to the way we cast ballots, particularly given how close the deadline is and given all of the other uncertainties that prevail in our elections right now. Host will go to vermont, michelle, independent. Caller caller good morning caller good morning. My question is in regards to how we are pretty much a Democratic State in vermont. We have a republican governor but most hands times his hands are tied. I am on the border and because we had to shut down the borders we rely on tourists dollars. My question is in regards to unemployment and how i am required to make three job searches a week in order to receive my benefits instead of giving us a 10week callback so we can just draw unemployment and not have to worry about going out and job search. We are supposed to be staying home. Everything is closed up anyway. I apologize. We have moved on to taking question about the primary season and what effect the coronavirus is on that. We will get back to how this is affecting the community at the top of the hour. Host dan in oregon, a democratic caller. In oregon, we vote my mail all the time and we have not had a single problem and yet he says it is not a good system. While i take affront to that. Thank you very much. Host jason sneed. Guest i am certainly not meaning to cause anyone ill feelings. The bottom line is, the states that have adopted vote by mail systems have had years to implement them. They have not tried to implement them in the midst of an International Crisis like the one we are dealing with right in whichort deadlines staff are dispersed to their homes, in which we are struggling to run elections in the meantime as well. We have to keep in mind that 2020 so far has not been a good year for rolling out new forms of voting and new electoral reforms. We saw the problems of the act out s used the the app used for the iowa caucuses. We saw michigan well out same day registrations and it slow down the process of voting to such an extent that in some places voters were left in line for hours. Murphys law prevails in elections and what can go wrong will go wrong here the idea of rolling out a systemic change and are in Election Year to the way that we cast alex invites a whole lot cast ballots invites a whole lot to go wrong. Host to wisconsin, republican. Caller i have been anxious to make my comments. I am a 77yearold woman, born the 1940s. Ning of as i got a little older, we were still living in a depression type atmosphere, plus also with the war, we were restricted also. I pretty much know what it is like not to have anything and to barely get by. Be has to be may postponed, because of the fact that what you have been going through with the previous elections and the problems that youve had with long poles and people not getting to vote. You may have to look closer at may havethat elections to be they do that november. It is not set in stone. Has theson sneed, who power to postpone an election . Guest we would have to have Congress Pass a law to change the date of the november election. This is not something the president can do unilaterally. In some states, governors have the unilateral power in the state of emergency to change elections, as we have seen that power used a number of times in recent weeks. Would have to look at a congressional enactment to change the date of the federal election in november and realistically there isnt a whole lot of leeway because there is a constitutional mandate that the new president take office on january 20 next year. That would require pushing that back and would require an amendment to change that. I dont think we are close to needing to make a decision about postponing in november. We do not know what the virus impact will be. Could be i dont think we need to worry about postponing the election. Host an independent caller, good morning. Caller as far as postponing the election, i think that would be a nightmare. Voting wouldailin ifthe solution and i think they treated it with the same urgency that they are treating Everything Else that has come up with the coronavirus and made the investment in it now, that it could be successful. Lostentioned ballots being and not knowing whether yours was counted. If they have barcodes on the ballots, it seems to me they could just take the number on the barcode posted on the internet and you could check your number to make sure that your ballots was counted and if it wasnt, there would be some system in place where you could try and correct that and get your ballot counted. I think it would make a lot of sense and moving on it now would be the solution rather than waiting until the last minute and saying we dont have time and throwing our hands up in the air and being in a crisis situation. I think we do have time and mailin voting is really the best solution at this point. Anything more to add on that . Guest i do think we should be looking at targeted expansion of mailin for vulnerable populations and populations who are sick with coronavirus and dont want to infect other folks. We have to keep in mind that elections are complicated. Changing the way the that people cast ballots is a difficult proposition and far from something which is easy. There are legislative and logistical hurdles in place, changing not only how people vote but what the absentee ballots would look like to ensure they have barcodes means that you also have to change the way you print the ballots, buy new equipment, training personnel on the new equipment and also we have to consider the fact that taking these mail in ballots and processing them is more personnel intensive operation in most places. Riske inviting potential for sowing confusion at the very least amongst voters and poll workers and Election Officials if we make too broad of a change , particularly if we come into the november election find out the virus is not as significant a worry as we feared it would be in march. I think we need to make targeted, temporary changes that maximize the odds of success in voting in november. I think that means we make the fewest changes necessary. Host where is online voting at this point in time . We see that we can register with the 2020 census and fill out the information that they require online. Why not being able to vote online . When athis appears to be few areas a bipartisan agreement in the election space. Illadvisede is under any circumstances. It is simply not secure enough. The opportunities for interference with voting, whether from foreign actors and nationstates to simple hackers themselves bye how people vote from one party to the other. The risk is simply too high. We are a long way away from being able to have a system in place that we can trust to be able to reliably and accurately count and tally our vote on election day. Just look at the Iowa Democratic caucus, where a simple app that nobody was using it to cast alex with simply to report tallies used to simplys report tallies. But stop laid that out but extrapolate that out to november and that would sow the seeds for disaster in terms of voter confidence in the election and the results. I do not think that is a direction we want to be heading, even in a crisis like the one we are dealing with today. Host andrew in North Carolina, republican. What is your question . Caller i enjoy your show. It is my understanding that the democrats want to insert in the stimulus package strict guidelines on how states should run their elections process or Something Like that. That is an incredible overreach by the federal government. What is good for new jersey may not be good for new mexico. What is good for north dakota may not be good for my native North Carolina. It is for the states to determine. The federal government should not be in the voting business. Thank you, and i enjoy your show. Host jason . Guest i agree the states have the primary responsibility for administering the election. The federal government should not be stepping on their toes, particularly in a crisis. Should not take advantage of this crisis to push a political agenda or make permanent structural changes to our democracy. We need to give states flexibility there is a role for federal government to play by mustering resources to support efforts. It is ultimately the states that have the deep Institutional Knowledge that will be necessary to make the elections a success. They have experience in administering elections and doing so with Great Success despite emergencies and catastrophes. There was an election on 9 11 in new york. There have been elections conducted in the immediate aftermath after hurricanes and natural disasters. We need to give states flexibility to leverage that experience and bring it to the table for the primaries and the general election. We should not be posing burdensome mandates that have nothing to do with coronavirus and make it more difficult for them to do their jobs. Host a Democratic Party North Carolina. Am an old man born in montana, right on the canadian border, raced all over the nation. I appreciate the lady from vermont. My statement is first, we are poisoning ourselves. We are not taking care of mother earth. We dont even listen to mother earth. She never forgives. We are poisoning ourselves and it is getting worse and worse and worse. Weve got to change that. Voting, i amg, on over 80. I think that we should have voting from our homes and vote accurately to our county and have it counted. Appreciate it very much the general i am listening to because cspan is so great. Love you. Jason snead. Ofst i think there lots health of democracy reasons. You want people floating voting close to the election so they have all of the facts and close to possible so that they make the most informed decision possible. We have to keep in mind that voting by mail, absentee voting is one of the most vulnerable forms of voting to fraud. Of votesee instances harvesting that changed the outcome of a north can grant race. Na congressional that disenfranchises voters want to make sure that voters nationwide have a system they have confidence in. There are a lot of states that allow absentee voting and some require an excuse and some do not. Reasonable perfectly and we should not make this the primary way people cast their ballots in 2020 or any. Don, independent, in kansas. Caller i looked this guy jason snead. Who is he . From the heritage project. And then you had Stephen Moore, the socalled foundation of the heritage. I question his impartiality and nonpartisan nature in his analysis. Right now, we are in the middle of some kind of a weird crisis, the coronavirus, and it certainly has upset the regular functioning of our nation. As for elections, 58 countries on earth have paper ballots that are counted by people. Papere a weird mixture of and computer ballots counted by computers. The real fraud in american elections is Election Fraud. It is dishonest counting controlled by private companies that run our system. Thank you. Your organization as part of Heritage Foundation. The exactly is the goal of honest elections project . Guest i want to set the record straight. The caller is incorrect. I used to work at the Heritage Foundation, but my new group is an entirely separate, independent enterprise that has no affiliation with the Heritage Foundation whatsoever. I want to be absolutely clear about that. I am proud of the time i spent at the Heritage Foundation, regardless of the callers feelings, it is an upstanding outfit but completely separate from the organization i am leaving now. About where the real fraud lies, i think i will have to disagree. I am not aware of any widespread Election Fraud in which private companies are changing the way people vote. What i do see when we look at this problem is that there is votinglarly in absentee that can be exploited by unscrupulous individuals. While i was at heritage we put down a database that tracks proven cases of fraud, and you see instances in which Public Officials are pressuring, courier sing, or buying the votes of people trying to win their way back into office, there are all sorts of ways in which it can be perpetrated. We need to take it seriously and have policies in place. Host thank you very much for the conversation this morning. I appreciate it. About , we will talk we will return to our question from the beginning of todays washington journal, what is the impact of the coronaVirus Outbreak on your community . We have divided the lines, Small Business owners, medical professionals and all others. Later on we will talk with rivalry was will be joining us drywall true as will be joining us. The negotiations of an economic aid package and he would like to see next. He can also take your medical questions. For we get to your phone calls on what it is like where you live i want to show you from yesterday, the british Prime Minister addressing his nation calling for on the pandemic. Heres what he had to say. Pm johnson i am giving the british people a simple instruction, you must stay at home. What we need to do is stop the disease from spreading between households, which is why people will only be allowed to leave their homes for the following, limited reasons, shopping for basic necessities as infrequently as possible, one form of exercise a day, a run, walk, a cycle, alone or with members of your household, any medical need to provide care or help a vulnerable person, and traveling to and from work, but only where this is absolutely necessary and cannot be done from home. That is all. These are the only reasons you should leave your home. You should not be meeting friends. If your friends ask you to meet, you should say no. You should not be meeting family members who do not live in your home. You should not be going shopping except for essentials like food and medicine. You should do this as little as you can. And, use Food Delivery Services where you can. If you do not follow the rules, the police will have the powers to enforce them, including through fines and dispersing gatherings. To ensure compliance with the governments instruction to stay at home, we will immediately close all shops selling nonessential goods including stores, and electronic and other premises including libraries, playgrounds, out down outdoor gyms, and places of worship. We will stop all gatherings of more than two people in public and all social events including weddings, baptisms, and other ceremonies, but excluding funerals. Parks will remain open for exercise, but gatherings will be dispersed. To enactminister wants measures like this. I know the damage that this disruption is doing and will do , businesses,ives and jobs. That is why we produced a huge and Unprecedented Program of support for workers and business. You that wessure will keep these restrictions under constant review. We will look again in three weeks and relax them if the evidence shows we are able to. At present, there are no easy options. Hard, and it is still true that many lives will sadly, be lost. [end video clip] washington journal continues. Host we are back with your thoughts on what is happening where you live in the coronaVirus Outbreak are you seeing businesses close down . Yourin general, how has life changed because of this outbreak . If you are a Small Business owner, 2027488000. Medical professionals, 2027488001. And all others, 2027488002. Text us at 2027488003. You can also go to twitter and facebook. Com to join the conversation. We will start with the president yesterday at his Daily Briefing and he talked about the future of the economy in this country. [video clip] pres. Trump Public Health experts are terrific and are studying the variation in the disease across the country, and we will be using data to recommend new protocol to allow local economies to cautiously resume their committee at the appropriate time. We also have a large team working on what the next steps will be once the medical Community Gives a region the ok, meaning the ok to get going, to get back and go to work. Our country was not built to be shuts down, this is not a shut down. Lt to be my administration works with democrats and republicans to reach an agreement on an Urgent Release bill on the million for the millions of american workers, large, and Small Businesses badly affected by the medical difficulty that we have had. If you had a viable business in january, we are committed to adjourn the same as true in the coming weeks and we want to make it better than it was before and we are doing things to help in that regard. America will again and soon be open for business, very soon, a lot sooner than three or four months that somebody was suggesting. A lot sooner. We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself. ,t the end of the 15 day period we will make a decision as to which way we want to go, where we want to go, the timing, and we are referring to the timing of the opening of our country. Because, we have it pretty well shut down in order to get rid of this invisible enemy. [end video clip] host that was President Trump yesterday. Jonathan swan in washington tweets out that the administration is discussing to easet tiers americans back into normal life after the 15 day period. People with Underlying Health conditions or in the highest risk range will be asked to stick with isolation. That is what Jonathan Swan reports. On capitol hill, the senate along with the administration led by the treasurys treasury secretary and the leaders in the house, speaker, arethe minority leader still negotiating on this third economic stimulus aid package. They have yet to get the votes that they need in the senate send it to the house for an agreement, this morning, kelly no Kelly Mcmanus tweets out final stimulus bill yet, negotiators say that tuesday is the day. And we will know more as we go along. It has also been reported that nancy pelosi will do an interview at 9 00 30 9 35 after the markets open up. The impact of this outbreak on california,ty, in you are up first. Good morning. Caller good morning. The 1200ke to say on that the people are supposed to personing, that if a , thatlive on 600 a month would give people enough food and gasoline for 12 months and, if the banks would not charge anybody for those two months in the economy would or mortgages, you would not have to worry about any penalties or fines, and after staying down, and people could go in and still be getting money for their food, and i believe at the end of the two months if things have tapered off that the economy could get that going and no one would be worried about getting sick or worried about their bills and debts. If we could just go into limbo and shut down, i think this would be great. It is just an idea and thought, that greed plays a lot a big part in the staff and we need to get rid of greed. Host if you are interested in watching the debate in the senate when they gavel in for their legislative session, though to cspan2, we will have our comverge uninterrupted coverage uninterrupted of the Senate Debate in the votes that follow as well. In other news from the New York Times, the ioc and japan have agreed to postpone the Tokyo Olympics until 2021. Phyllis, in tennessee. What is it like where you live . Caller good morning. While the senate is up there arguing over the bill, they want to give the Rich Companies tax breaks like they did before. They will take that money and reinvested. They are not looking out for the public. People are dying in republican states and Democratic States. People are getting sick every day while they are arguing. They could send money overseas to war, and you mean to tell me you cannot help the americans here . It is not theirs fault, it is our president it is not their fault, it is the president s fault. I am sick and tired of Mitch Mcconnell up stop stuff. Calling up stuff. Host mark in west virginia. Aur state today announcing shelterinplace or nonessential only essential travel etc. Caller that is correct, i believe it starts at 8 00 p. M. Tonight. Host how will that impact you . Construction, so we are used to up and down periods. It is feast or famine, hopefully this does not last long, that a couple of things i wanted to point out. First of all this bill needs to reflect the Health Care Needs first. There is politics being played on both sides. Need of all, the democrats to throughout all of that stuff like solar or wind subsidies, that should not be part of it. But why did the republicans meet in private with corporate lobbyists and exclude the democrats . It has not been a bipartisan bill at all. O what i would like to add host go ahead. Caller i would also like to say as far as the economy goes, our economy is based on fantasy. I read a book over 25 years ago about it is called modern money mechanics and is about our banking system. It is a deck of cards to begin with, and the stock market has been overinflated. And ayou have the buyers drop in oil prices. It is all coming together. What i would like to see them do in the short term is to do a resourcedbased economy, and that would kind of elude to what the caller before was talking paying back aanks lot of people and whatnot. Go to a resourcedbased economy on the shortterm, do a 30 day quarantine, and then we will be going from there, but for the president to say that we will go right back to work in seven days, that is really a responsible. Host the speaker of the house, yesterday, laid out from the House Democrats perspective what they would like to see in this phase three economic stimulus bill. Heres what she had to say. [video clip] today House Democrats are in failing to take responsibility for workers and families act, a bill that takes responsibility for the health, wages, and wellbeing of americas workers. Responsibility and require that any corporation that takes taxpayer dollars must protect wages and dented benefits, not ceo pay, stock buybacks, and layoffs. To replace this is the average workers who are their jobs. For our Small Businesses we provide fast relief with grants and loans. For our doctors, nurses, first responders, and healthcare workers, and other health institutions, we provide funds to care for those who are sick and to be sure that our providers have personal protective equipment that they need. We protect our Health Care Workers by requiring the administration to enforce are stronger osha protections. For our families we give direct payments to americas family families in a robust way and strengthening the earned income tax credits. We give more workers the security of pay, family, and medical leave. We make the coronavirus treatment free for the patient, for our students we provide emergency funds for schools and universities. We help current borrowers with their student debt burden and the g. I. Bill benefits. We bolster snap and other initiatives to address food insecurity. For our democracy we ensure that states can carry out the election and require early voting and vote by mail. [end video clip] host that was Speaker Pelosi. Negotiations are happening in the senate and she is a part of them with Chuck Schumer of new york. Mitch mcconnell, the republican leader, and the white house led by Steven Mnuchin. Responded to what the speaker had to say yesterday in a tweet saying what is in her bill to deal with coronavirus . Mandates, Climate Change studies and forces the airlines to spend money not on workers. She is holding the American Peoples wellbeing hostage to the liberal agenda. Dave in california, a Small Business owner. Welcome to the conversation. Caller you guys are on the wrong track, you do not talk to nutritionists. You need to have a nutritionist on their. I did the research. I never got a single shot because a lot of people do not know that when you get a shingles shot you can die, be paralyzed, and also get shingles. Most of the time it does not happen. I protect myself, and i will tell you what i do. If you talk to a nutritionist, there is something to knock out all viruses, and i want to tell you this and how much you should take. I am not saying it will work on the coronavirus. It is called all of leif extract. F it kills the herpesvirus, the flu, and everything. If you do that, you never get sick. I never get a flu shot and never get sick. If you take 1000 milligrams of will notf extract, he get shingles from the medical reports i have read. Do not know if it works on coronavirus. You cannot take it if you have high Blood Pressure or on debt diabetic medicine because it lowers Blood Pressure. Have a nutritionist, or at least looking up on line online, and you will not probably get sick or get this virus. I cannot say it will work on coronavirus, but it works on every other virus. Some doctors prescribe it for high Blood Pressure, you cannot be on high Blood Pressure medicine or diabetic medicine because they interfere. At least look it up. That is my comment. Scared, everybody cannot stay at home forever. Leaf the the olive tree of life, there might be a reason for it. Get bruce, he on, is a certified nutritionist. Host ted in oregon. Hello. Caller good morning. This is a vacation destination down here on the oregon coast, and, last week, Governor Kate Brown had us under a plea stay at home advisory. Advisory,stay at home and now it is mandatory because last weekend, even though they were told do not come to the beach. Please do not come. I am within five miles of the biggest state park, forts stevens, and which is now closed. Over the weekend i saw hundreds of campers with plates that went as far east as north dakota. Today, we are under a mandatory stay at home. I find it kind of shocking and waslling that Stephen Moore given a platform this morning. We all know what Stephen Moore is and what he stands for. It is kind of a bit of a shocking thing to a lot of us. There is nothing going on here. The restaurants are closed, the canneries are down to diminished capacity because there is no call for fresh seafood. It is quite shocking, but other than that, that is all i have got to report from oregon. Host all right. We have guests who represent a wide variety of perspectives and we try to have different perspectives on the Program Every day, so do not take one program in isolation, look at all of the guests that we have so that whether you agree or disagree, you are hearing the other side. Liz, in new jersey. Hello. Caller good morning. Jersey, especially southern new jersey, we have fewer cases in the communities closer to new york city, and it and the spread is high, especially as soon as we can start testing. They only started testing earlier this week with any volume of testing. I haven that i live in, lived there all of my life, it is pretty well shuts down. People are taking this seriously. My particular development, the only people that are coming and going are going out to get some groceries or coming back, they are taking this to heart. I think it is because we are learning that it is highly infectious and easy to catch. So, for those parts of the had who have not have many declared cases, i suggest staying home and away, because we do not have a vaccine, we do not have clear treatment programs that will help this, we do not have enough tests, and because we have been trying to economize and make money on her hospitals, we do not have as on our hospitals, we do not have enough dead space as this crashes in. It is not a joke, and the president s comments yesterday when he is sort of saying he wishes to prioritize the economy over health care, we cannot go there, because this thing is not going to be denied. I think we need to be focused on getting the curve flat. It will only make it so we have enough nurses to to take care of you and you are sick. Vaccine,o prioritize a but i think the people in new doing is doing are well. Our governor does a conference every day. He is not pulling punches and telling us what they are finding. If you live in a state with very little coronavirus yet, i pray it does not come to you, but that is not much of a protection. I think we need to stay this not get astry to many people as infected as possible. What connie, in oklahoma, business do you have . Caller i am a financial representative, so i do not have any employees. I am wondering how this bill will affect people like me, because i am the one that brings in the paycheck for myself, and i wanted to see what your take is on that. Host i do not have the specifics of it. There is no text yet, they are talking about a bill that is 1400 pages total. I do not think anyone knows the answer yet because the negotiations are still going on. Can you tell us what is it that you do and how your business has been impacted . Caller i see people facetoface for financial furnishes. When they are scared and they are told to stay at home it affects how many people i see in a day. I am concerned about the longterm ramifications. Into smallyou looked Business Loans or grants . Clear not yet, i was not if they refer to me. When i hear people talk about Small Business owners it is to help keep your payroll going and i do not have employees. I do not have anybody to be concerned about payroll four. Host but you have to pay yourself. Thank you for the call. Amanda in kansas. Because i am ad little mystified at the fact that they keep telling us that all we have all the facemasks that we need and all the testing stuff ready, and just this morning i was watching the news, and we have a professor. Him and his family went to london, came back, and they knew he was ill. He is in the icu. And yet, they are saying that the restrictions for being tested here in kansas are that you have to have either been someplace where the coronavirus was at, or you have to have been in contact with somebody, and you have to have all of the symptoms, not just one or two, all of them, and yet his wife and kids who came back are now starting to have symptoms, and they are refusing to give them the test. They are selfquarantined. And, it seems like we are hearing a lot of things, and everybody selfisolate, which i am doing because i have a heart problem. Selfisolate, and now all of a sudden trump is saying we have to go back to work. Thereis one other thing, was a caller who said that he could live on 600 a month. Good luck with that, because i am debtfree and i can tell you, cutting everything to the core, it is at least 1200 1400 a month to pay bills, that is not a mortgage. I own my house outright, so i do not have any bills other than and you areod, gas, talking at least 1200 to 1400 a month. My thought is that they have to keep the American People right. , oncey keep them right this is over, the businesses will go back to being normal, if we have the money to go out there and spend. If she if you let the American People go into hold and they do not have good Credit Ratings anymore, they cannot buy anything, and it will not matter how right you make the businesses, the businesses will go under anyway. Thank you. Host jake in massachusetts. You own a business as well . Caller good morning, how are you doing . I am a flooring contractor. I do not believe i will be back in business anytime soon. I come into your house, put your want mewn, will you there anymore . Right now i am scared of my neighbors. I do not see how this will change. Host have you looked into a grant or loan to keep you afloat . Caller it would not do me any good. Truck, i owns my my truck. My insurance, i do not own the building. I do not have that type of overhead. Only one. He i have a few friends in the carpeting business, they are working on jobs that they have already started. I walk into a house, and i am in and out in a day or maybe two. People are not going to want to be there. I do not want nobody in my house and i expect everyone else feels the same way. I do not think they will turn over. If you open the economy will not turn over again. Host how are you paying the bills right now . Caller we are in pretty decent shape. To be honest, i have my motherinlaw who lives with me. She is 97 years old who is helping us with bills, and we have a little bit of money held back. We are not too bad off. We will be looking at Something Else to do for a job when this is all over. Host jake, how do you think your State Government is handling all of this . Caller mr. Baker . I think he is behind the curve. He took his time about doing everything. The screening at logan airport, they did not do that the longest time until the president closed down the travel. Baker is behind the curve. Cuomo scares me. He is saying we are not getting rid of this virus, we are slowing it. This is coming to my house eventually. We have old folks in this house, a wife that has preexisting. This is scary, truly scary. I do not know what to do. Host jake, we have been covering governors from your state, governor baker, governor cuomo, republican governors across the country, there are Daily Briefings that they are giving, if you have missed some of those and you want to compare what other governors are saying you can find them on our website. Denison, texas and is a Small Business owner as well. Business . T is your caller it is david, not jake. I do Website Development and design, i have been working in offices or in front of my house for 22 years. I am in tune with working at home, but it makes it easier to spend hours. Business,yed, small and in a desperate situation because it all rolls downhill. Closing, Hotel Clients my restaurant clients are closed. Most of my other Service Clients are at home. The big Entertainment Companies are closed. Day termsnies bill 30 to your client, so it is the money i am not getting now for the work i am doing, it is the work i have done in the last 30 days that i am not getting paid for because they are closed and i am not bothering to call them. I was in the Hotel Business i worked1, with 9 11, with hotel and hotel system and design. The only part of the country that got any relief was new york in that area. The rest of the country, though Hotel Industry was devastated. That is how i got into website design business. It is devastating, and the idea that nancy pelosi would come in with a 1400 page bill and plop it on the desk is atrocious. I love Stephen Moore, but like so many of the tv guys and very brilliant guys, this is not a bailout, a rescue for any industry. This is not anything like the 2008 scenarios you had the congress writing restrictions and things that caused banks to make crazy loans and wall street coming up with Brilliant Ideas on how to take and package these loans, which did not make sense. And, created these investment things that fell apart as soon as the economy took a nosedive. That is not where we are. Host david, i am going to leave it there. Isning us from California Democratic congressman and , whoal doctor, raul ruiz will talk about the efforts to pass a third coronavirus aid package. Where do you where do negotiations stand . What do you know . The housenow that leadership released a bill for ascussion that will provide lot more Financial Support for families, not only in the form to getnding the ability tests, and health care, for many for free, and the unemployment insurance, but also providing is morer a child, which than the current bill which would only provide 1200 for adults and 500 for children. This will be of immediate Financial Support in the form of programs thatd hardworking American Families are relying on to weather the storm. Host does that mean that you would not vote in favor of what is being negotiated in the senate, because we learned earlier from a capitol Hill Reporter that there has been some changes made to get more democrats on board, we are talking about a state Stabilization Fund of 150 billion and food stamps to the tune of 450 billion. 100 billion small Business Loans increased to 377 billion, is that enough to get a yes from you . Guest you just mentioned that that is the senate bill and i am a representative in the house. That bill will most likely change by the time it gets to the house and we start voting on the house bill that the House Republicans and democrats have come up with. At the end of the day, they will be reconciled to go to the president s desk. I am not that into the particulars of the senate bill, i know the nuance in the conversation that has stalled those talks has been the idea that the democrats want to ensure that the billions and billions of dollars that are going back into the economy actually reach hardworking americans who are struggling through this and not go to the pockets of millionaire, alien air ceos in the form of stock buyback. I think that is where the arguments and the stalemate is happening. Quite honestly, it is different for a single mother was laid off and cannot go to work provide for herself and her family than it is for a multimillionaire who the stockllion in market. Businesses,s small that is what the house bill is intended to do. It provides grants as well as very low Interest Rate loans for Small Businesses. It is working to ensure that there are no infection evictions for families as well as Small Businesses. That will be important, because it is those folks who are struggling because they got laid off, or because they are not bringing in an income, and we want to focus that focus on that to keep individuals at home from congregating in more than 10, and make sure this virus does not cause havoc in the United States. Host you are back in your state, what is your workday like as you try to respond to the coronavirus and hear from your constituents and help them out . Guest my background is somewhat unique. I am a Board Certified emergency medicine physician who has training in disaster aid and Public Health throughout my during theve worked h1n1 pandemic and responded to haiti, so ike in have real life experience, education, and training precisely for this. I am very busy talking to the press to educate the American People to really get them to therstand the importance of of staying at home and social distancing measures. It is important to understand that when we talk about the economy that the depth of the recession and the length of time that the recession will last is directly proportional to the as wellthe transmission as the length of transmission of this virus. The more that we can all of us together, the country, tackle this virus i making sure that we practice social distancing and the spreadnd prevent of the virus, the sooner we can get back to work, and it will help everybody. Host what are you hearing for medical professionals about what they need and whats the fastest way to get what they need . Guest what they need right now our masks, downs, and ventilators. Gowns and ventilators. The fastest way to do that is for the president to implement the Defense Authorization act to make sure that the manufacturers produce what the frontline needs. Mortality in this country will depend on demographic as well as the Health Care System being able to hold the line. We need to hold the line by ensuring that the Health Care Workers are protected, that they have the ability to go to work, they do not get sick, and have the equipment they need to help save lives. That is why i have called on the president call for a disaster declaration that allows him to mobilize 40 billion worth of equipment and moneys in order to purchase these goods to help vulnerable locations. It allows him to move disaster fema,l assistance teams, the coast guard physicians, the department of defense physicians and nurses throughout the honorable areas, including hospitals where we need to hold the line. Throughout the vulnerable areas, including hospitals where we need to hold the line. I am worried about my county, even though it is not a powerhouse urban center like los angeles, we have 30 of our population older than 60 years old. We have higher rates of diabetes, cardiopulmonary diseases, hiv, and that puts us in a category of high risk demographic. These are individuals who are most likely to get severely sick from the virus. In addition, we do not have the Health Care Capacity that Large Urban University Area University areas have. We have three hospitals, limited. Eds and icus you put those two factors together, a highrisk population with a lower capacity system, it is a recipe for high mortality. We have had six deaths representing 20 of all of the deaths in california, even though we are less than 1 of the population. My message to the governor and his staff has always been that this is a hotspot, we are a fragile and vulnerable population. Locations like mine are going to be the ones that suffer high mortality, which is why we need to mobilize. We got word that the governor is going to send a tent hospital, one of two. We need a mobilized physician. I have a Good Samaritan who will protect the physician from liability if they go in volunteering different locations. We need to produce the masks in the ventilators immediately. It is a matter of life and death that we will be able to save more lives if we beef up our capacity before the surge happens. Host let us get to calls. Terry and iowa. Independent in iowa. Independent. Good morning. Caller i want to ask you one question. He told everybody what you need to do, then can i ask you a question . What does 30 Million Dollars with the Kennedy Center has to do with the bill . What does cleaning up the Postal Services debt have to do with the bill . What about airline each epa emissions. What is wrong with you congressman . You need to get it together and quit playing partisan politics, and get together and come up with something. This is an emergency, it is not a time to stack bills with a bunch of crab that we do not need at the moment. You can debate it later on. Host congressman. Clearly, funding the Kennedy Center has nothing to do with this bill. Clearly. I do not support it at all. We have to verify whether or not that is in the bill. There is a lot of misinformation reallyinformation to create a sense of partisanship to distract what is really happening right now. What i am focused on is to ensure that American Families at 1500 per adult, 1500 per child to weather the storm. That is the Democratic House bill. We want to expand unemployment insurance, grants, and low Interest Rates loans for Small Businesses. Let us look at what the House Democratic bill, which was a bipartisan bill actually did for the Families First Coronavirus Response act. That expanded Medicaid Program to make sure that you have health insurance, and also insured that the federal that thet ensured federal government will pay for testing if you are uninsured. It raised the amount in billions to support the meals on wheels and the flying food bank in case you get hungry. This will also help and give people protections under the family medical leave act if they have to stay home to take care of their kid if their kid has to go to school. Or if they have to take care of quarantine. That we passed in the Democratic House will expand paid sick leave in case you have to stay home to be quarantined or give care, and take care of your child because it cannot go to school or to be quarantined, and expanded unemployment insurance. Those are the facts, that is what we passed and that is what the senate passed. Those are the realities on the ground, and we will work to make sure that hardworking americans get the care and supplies that they need. Host as we are talking with you, nancy pelosi moments ago doing an interview with cnbc. From what she says in that interview, Phil Mattingly tweeting out, news from Speaker Pelosi says there is optimism that something can get done on emergency economic package in the next few hours. Fewshe says there are a issues that matter to her members but overarching lee that we are getting to a good place. Pelosi has agreed to take the houses language, that is a big change. Guest that is breaking news, i am hearing about this from the first time. I am optimistic. Theres been a lot of Conference Calls within the democratic caucuses that say we need to push the support for economy and American Families. The house does not have to wait for the senate to act. The house has taken a leadership role in negotiating with the administration. We got it done for the Families First Coronavirus Response in the house is moving forward quickly to provide this aid while the senate is still negotiating. I am optimistic that the house will pass their aid package which provided more money to the pockets of hardworking families for the single mother who is taking care of their kids because she has to stay home at school for the worker who just lost their job for an extended mored, it will be unemployment insurance, food support, and aid to local communities. I am very glad to hear that news. This as a, he views big signal from pelosi that the house will approve emerging senate deal. Florida, independent. Good morning. Caller good morning. I agree with the previous caller regarding this, and i noticed that he said there is some issues that are rumors about what is in this bill. So why is it that the house posted online the highlights of it, and let the people of america really see what is in the bill. Lessons to nancy pelosi talk about the highlights, and all the good things, and yet, who is talking about all of the little pork that has been slip in. I think we need oversight on the agree, thered i should be restrictions and restraints about how that money goes to big corporations. It should be used for the workers and workers only, no bonuses and stuff, but i want to see what is in this bill, and we want to decide who is doing the right thing and who is doing the wrong thing. Host congressman. Guest i agree, i think it should be transparent, and online and i think the American People should see all of the details of the senate or house bill. I firmly believe in transparency for the American People. The biggest pork that the democrats are trying to prevent is the billions of dollars that will go to the pockets of millionaires and billionaires with stock buybacks. I think that is the main contention in the senate, and in the house, they are working on ensuring that instead of the money going to stock buybacks for the millionaire or billionaire ceos, that they will go to the hardworking families that are weathering the storm with a very difficult circumstances. Host cindy, st. Joseph minnesota, you are on. I am a good morning republican and trump supporter and i hope what i get what i need to say out. I agree that there should be one plan of attack, and there is, but no one has given that plan. This is a plan that the president and the governor in california is working with coronavirus. Gov, and everybody should be online with it, because there is so much misinformation on what is happening. Zinc is athing is, homeopathic medicine. Tribal indians used it before ama. As far as studying things, let us quit with all the chemicals and drugs, which hurt people and start looking where you have the time down the road and homeopathic spirit the biggest reason i wanted to call homeopathics. I wanted toreason call with schumer gobbling it up is only because they want to protect the chamber of commerce. I would like to remind you that we need to crush the chamber of commerce because these are the same people that put america out of work. These are the same people that hired the illegal immigrants, putting their Tourist Program and their little tourist maps and started to build their little fasttrack trains and decide that they were going to start a whole new Tourism Industry for the usa. People need to realize that this is why the rino republicans in the senate and some of the democrats, until pelosi came to town with her Green New Deal garbage, and another thing i would like to say to every member of congress, before you vote, read the bill. If you do not like part of it, go line by line item and delete that line, and if you cannot delete that critical line that you disagree with, like you mentioned earlier, then vote no on the whole thing. Host i have to jump in at that point. Guest you want me to comment . Host please. That with allink due respect to cindy, first of all let me say that she is absolutely right, the most costeffective way of handling the virus is by following very simple homemade instructions that can fit your home, which is wash her hands very often your hands very often, 20 seconds, use Hand Sanitizer when you do not have soap and water, stay isolated. This is the time to boost your immune system, take your multivitamins, your supplements, make sure you sleep, refrain from smoking and drinking excessively. You avoid stress. By learning about the virus to be able to empower yourself to make smart decisions. That is very important that the American People during this hard time really understand because stress and the lack of sleep will weaken your immune system. Regarding other things, because somebody states it does not mean it is true or factual. I have reviewed the house version and i do not see anything about a Green New Deal in it. Find s the economic whati see is economic Financial Support, insurance rate, the boost in food support, grants, and small Business Loans. There is a lot of masterful misinformation experts that are fueling the partisan divide by pitting one or the other or giving information that is not completely accurate, and now we are all thinking about partisanship. Everyone is going towards blaming the democrats or republicans. What we need for the sake of american lives is that we understand that in order to get us back to work we need to make sure that we stop the spread of the virus, we save lives and that we do it quickly by the personal responsibility of not congregating with people more than 10, of making sure that we keep six feet apart whenever we are in a group, to make sure that we can stay at home as much as possible. It is ok to walk your dog, take a breath of fresh air, to get some exercise, keep in mind, try not to touch the handles of where most people are touching, and if you do, wash your hands or use Hand Sanitizers. Make sure that you do not remain sedentary, glued to the news all day. Focus on your children, and your family, and make sure that you keep your faith in what gives you your strength. For me it is god, and his son, jesus christ, and i spent time talking about that with my family during difficult moments. That is why, right now is a time to focus on that rather than the misinformation and the partisan divide that a lot of this is fueling. Politico isn from tweeting out that the speaker said we can come to a conclusion that sticks, and then we have unanimous consent. Talking about what is happening in the senate. If the House Democrats and others like what they see, this could be passed by unanimous consent. She says if we do not have unanimous consent, i can call them back to amend the bill and pass our own bill. The easiest way is to put concern aside and get it done. As a medical doctor what concerns do you have about calling members back to vote on this . Raul ruiz clearly there guest clearly there are risks to doing that, and i am concerned because we also have individuals who are older than 65 years old, with many in their 70s and they also have heart and lung problems and perhaps diabetes. They have the high risk. That,r, having said congress has a responsibility to the American People. For me, being a doctor, i always put that health and safety of my evennts above my own, though i follow whatever procedure i need, i do not sleep, the first awake and last to go to sleep and i ensure that my patients have what they need because that is the calling of a physician. The calling of a Public Servant should be to put the benefit, health, and safety, and welfare peoplend wellness of the above their own. If we need to go back and vote, to provide the Financial Support for the parent who is struggling, for the worker who just lost their job to provide lives,e comfort and save then we will have to do it. However, if we do go back, my recommendation would be to avoid members congregating in the 10ll spaces of no more than and six feet apart, so if you go to the house floor, they are not bunched together and to take all of the necessary precautions with your clorox wipes on the plane and to wash her hands frequently and use Hand Sanitizers. Other than hawaii and alaska, Southern California is the furthest from washington, d. C. , so there will be a lot of airtime in airports as well. It takes me about nine hours from door to door from my place in the district to my office in washington, d. C. There has to be some changes. We also have to limit the staff that will go to work. My staff is at home, working from home with the telephone. If i go, there will maybe be one staff that will join me in the office, if needed. So that, those of the precautions that we need to take. Host let us get in debbie, philadelphia. Caller good morning. Mercy and prayers to the planet. I am a democrat, so fight on. Even though i want the workers first, definitely, i am questioning whether or not there is any adjustment for folks on Social Security or social willity disability or ssi, there be any financial benefit to support them . I do not know whether or not a member of congress no, but know, but there is price gouging going on in the supermarkets, and gas stations where they claim that the prices are going down with services that they know people are still definitely going to need. People that are on a fixed income are hopefully being considered in this package. Thank you so very much. Guest i think that is a very good idea. Thank you for informing me about that. I definitely understand that there is price gouging. Are pushingocrats to prevent pharmaceutical companies from price gouging their medications, that individuals need, but we need to discuss what is happening in the Grocery Stores. My wife went to Different Stores looking for some products, we are running low on toilet paper and she went to five Different Stores trying to find some in the district, and she comes home with her two bags of groceries in the first thing she says is the prices have gone up. True,at is unfortunately so we need to work with the system to ensure that as we are giving money to, and helping support the families that the marginal support is weakened because those that are raising their prices and taking advantage of the situation, we need to make sure that they do not do so as well. Yes, ill go back after this get on the phone with my staff to see if there are any changes to in the Social Security give our seniors the support. In addition to that, theres a through the t edicare that all the testing and all the treatments will be copay. Ely free without medicaid hose on the progr program, will also have that support. Theres a lot of support in of money to the food banks and the meals on wheels programs help the senior organization, make sure that support to ough provide for the nutritional well. Of seniors as right now for negotiation that are older folks that are old, the 65 years recommendation is to please stay home. F you have diabetes or heart, lung illnesses, please avoid eople who are sick with coldlike symptoms. Please understand this virus can of an regardless individual is coughing or sneezing or has symptoms. To prevent from virus is soesh social distancing by six feet. They can last in the air for bout 10 seconds so thats why were recommending to stay further than six feet from and minimize contact. If you are very high risk, call neighbor or support to help you with your necessarities when necessities o when you need to go shopping and have them drop it off at your front door. Make sure when you get our mail or when you get your groceries, dont be afraid of grabbing those, opening your door, etc. All you have to do is wash your and water for 120ekdz after 20 seconds and if there are any virus on the material off your hands and you will be safe in way. Host congressman raul ruiz, we thank you for spending time with morning. Guest thank you. It was fun with all the breaking news. Thank you. Todays t does it for program. We will be back tomorrow at 7 00 a. M. Eastern time to take more your calls. Stay safe. Enjoy the rest of your day. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] more from the states later with louisiana governor john bell edwards. Reportersted to brief this afternoon on the coronaVirus Outbreak in his state. Watch that live at 3 30 here on cspan. Have a hat, well briefing with new york governor get or kwoema and cuomo. Daily mail is reporting that louisiana now has the fastest of coronavirus in the world. Part, icle reads in governor edwards has said his the Fastest Growing cases of coronavirus in the world. Ighest initial growth rate of confirmed coronavirus cases globally. Tonight, a special live evening edition of washington ournal examining the federal and state response to the coronavirus. Join us with your questions and comments. In week nights, tonight starting at 8 00 eastern here on cspan. Follow the federal response o the coronaVirus Outbreak at cspan. Org coronavirus. Watch congress, white house and updates from governors. The spread with interactive maps. Watch on