How her district has been hit by the coronavirus, what needs to be done as far as Economic Relief and what congress will do, and the 2020 election. Events thatrtual politico is hosting in the coming weeks, journalists from across the newsroom. If you have any questions for representative ocasiocortez, you can tweet them and we will try to get to them at the end of our conversation. Before she joins us in a few minutes, lets set the stage for where we are today. And number of weeks into the corona pandemic. You are in your house, i am in my, it is different from a lot of the live events we have done. Made we can break it down in terms of what is happening at the white house and on capitol hill. And this effort to try to figure out when the u. S. Can reopen for business. Jake welcome to my living room or my office. Veryportant important things to think about. The white house in the midst of rolling out a counsel with which the president will decide by what mechanism and went to open the economy and his estimation economy, which wasnt a good position before the coronavirus, and the president wants to get it back in a good position. The president s focus and the white houses focus is to how to get the economy back to a place it can open up. The medical community is looking intently at a therapy and a vaccine for the coronavirus. The president said time and time again, how can he open up the government . The economy, rather. I dont think a lot of people have caught onto this. This is a little bit of to spread the centerpiece it is a little bit obtuse. Fund thata large would give loans forgive a bull loans two businesses across the country provided they did not fire their employees. By and large, it has been popular because it is free money from the government. That is generally popular. Secretary, who negotiated this package, Steven Mnuchin did most of everything, he said the fund that provides free money to businesses will be empty by the end of this week. That is a very big problem. There are loads of businesses that want this money, they want to keep their businesses open and keep their employees, but they wont be able to because this program will not have money to give to financial institutions. It is wednesday today. That is halfway through the week. This fund is slated to run out on friday. There is no movement that we can sense at this moment to get this pot of money refilled. It would have to go through the house and senate under unanimous consent. Republicans just want to refill a quarter with trillion dollars. Have morewant to money for hospitals, state and local governments. These two sides are at a stare down at this moment. We will have to see where this ends up in the next couple of days. This could have a big impact. I had a republican tell me that thousands of businesses could go bankrupt if this pot of money is not refilled. An important thing to watch and something that you and i will watch and keep people uptodate on. Anna i think it is important to think about the fact there has not been that Much Movement between the positions where Mitch Mcconnell had stated his described, toou have this money go, and speaker nancy pelosi. Sides so far, the president has not been in touch with the speaker. , where it is hard to be shocked, that is a relationship that is so fractured to this point, it is surprising they have been able to get on the phone or come to any kind of working relationship at this point. It is one of the things we talked about at the top of playbook this morning, this concept that when the president came into office, saying he was uniquely positioned to fight people and then bring them back into the full. He finds himself with very few allies, whether in terms of republicans in congress, or business folks, or certainly democrats. And in the media. Even the traditional republican allies you would think would be he would try to break them on the fold, really havent been there. Keep ane other thing to eye on is the president s battle with governors around the country. He believes he is able to reopen the economy, there is no evidence for that, it is not what the constitution indicates or how our system of government works. Governors will make decisions because the constitution says they can. On both coasts, governors are coming together to make decisions based on science, republicans and democrats, economic factors. The president said he will overrule them and is threatening them with withholding money. We will get to a stare down of sorts between the president and governors who have this authority to reopen the government on their schedule, and not the president s schedule. The president has not shut anything down, he has issued guidance and suggestions. Anna we have representative alexandria ocasiocortez joining us. We want to thank used to much for joining us. We appreciate it. You are on the ground in one of the hardest hit neighborhoods on planet earth. Can you tell us how the coronavirus has impacted your district that you represent . Rep. Ocasiocortez thank you for having me. I represent new yorks 14th Congressional District. Out of the top 10 most impacted districts in america, five of them are in new yorks 14th, including the top three. Impacttruly seeing the of this. Codes cover ip we are seeing mortality rates that are two times higher than the rest of york city. Know just many of us how ravaged the hospital is, how ravaged many of these communities are. People,ent working which means i represent a lot of frontline workers, a lot of hospital workers, as well as Grocery Store workers, delivery workers and more. All of these people are in a profoundly dangerous position. We also know this crisis is hitting us in the context of racial income inequality and inequity. The death toll is reflecting those inequities, as well. Jake the president has said he has given everything to. Overnors that they need he referenced andrew cuomo, who has bagged for medical equipment. For medicalegged equipment. Do they have what they need . Rep. Ocasiocortez a lot of our frontline workers do not have what they need. We are hearing Different Things from hospitals. A lot of frontline workers have been concerned about having adequate supplies. There are frontline workers who simply do not have the ppe that they need. We are not just talking about nurses and doctors in ers and icus, we are talking about Home Health Aides who are going from apartment to apartment and caring for people with disabilities and they do not ppe to5 masks or the feel like they are confidently protecting themselves and the patients they are treating. We are hearing about the mental toll. What we are experiencing in new york is on the scale of 9 11. We know we are losing thousands of people in new york city. Up byath toll was revised thousands of people. We started to count people who passed away from covid like symptoms but did not have access to a test, and we are looking at over 10,000 deaths. This is an enormous crisis and a lot of our frontline workers are starting to talk about the mental cost. We need to watch over the longterm about how we are going to provide Mental Health care support. This is one of the reasons we are pushing for a bill that would temporarily expand medicare to cover everyone who needs that coverage. Trumps relationship to governors, on one hand, he cant have his cake and eat it too. You cant refuse to recommend shutdowns, refused to take any responsibility, and in all the sudden turnaround and think you will tell governors what to do. I think that is the bind that he is in. If he gave up power, that is fine, we have to take that mantle of leadership and responsibility. Jake can you assess Andrew Cuomos performance during this crisis . Rep. Ocasiocortez given this entire crisis, there are things that, logistically, did the best he can, and things you have to work out. Comfort,omes to the trying to get ventilators, he is doing his best. Racial andery real economic inequities in the way we have responded to this crisis in the state of new york by recommending mortgage plans, without recommending rent moratoriums or rent suspensions. We are exacerbating class issues. Thousands,oing to be if not hundreds of thousands of people in new york city that will not make their rent this month, next month, and there are no plans for them. Because of that, that means that even those momandpop landlords will not be able to pay their mortgages. We need a real plan. I support Maxine Waters in a plan for mortgage moratoriums and rent moratoriums and we are plusding 2000 per adult, 1000 per child reoccurring during this crisis. It is not a left or right thing, it is necessary to keep people intact. You said for the record you would have opposed it. Can you talk us through why . Do you think it has been successful . Rep. Ocasiocortez this was a every singleor person, particularly every single democrat. What we are talking about is quite literally one of the largest Bank Bailouts we have seen in history. It wasnt just the 15 billion that was put in a slush fund. It had provisions in it, but it had a waiver where Steven Mnuchin could say forget the rules. It looks like they are defying the rules. I dont think that amount of billion, money being leveraged into 4 trillion for wall street corporations. I did not find it acceptable. It was a very bitter pill. When you look at what we were getting fort in terms of stimulus checks, i thought it was asymmetrical and we were giving away far more than we were getting for working families. I dontinistration, think that is on democratic leadership. We are between a rock and a hard place. Donald trump and Mitch Mcconnell refused to help working families. Eth to gete pulling te them to expand unemployment. They did not want to do it. I opposed the bill because i felt there was a great amount of harm being done and i was uncomfortable with unanimous support for it. I also acknowledge that many of my colleagues voting for it made a completely understandable vote. Jake all three of us are around the same age and this is our second major onceinalifetime financial calamity, and i only laugh because it is not onceinalifetime for any of us. I wonder if you could reflect on that a little bit and what does Congress Need to do in the short thed the media term immediate term. I wonder if you could project forward for this generation, we had the lessons of our generation in 2008, but now it looks like we could be going through something even more significant and i wonder what congress should be doing and a longerterm sense. Rep. Ocasiocortez you are totally right. Millenials have been completely screwed by our circumstances and events that have happened in our lifetime. It is important to know when these events are happening in our lifetime. In the 2008 recession, we graduated into that. Millenials graduated and the recession hit just as we were starting our careers. One of the thing you see economically is your starting wage at the beginning of your career has a very longterm trajectory. It is like an anchor. Job,people apply for a new one of the first questions is what is your last salary . When you graduate into a recession, you are permanently anchored into a low salary. You take that compounded by real wages for working people have not raised significantly in 30 or 40 years, the fact our parents might have made similar to what we are making now, it does not help. When you have this this is happening when a lot of millenials are just climbing out of that recession, just getting to formative parts in their careers. Many of them are hitting their early 30s. These are usually the moments in our economy when we think people would purchase a home or start a family, and we know millenials are delaying these major steps for financial reasons. Dont rward, i personally, i dont support a Progressive Agenda just to score points or i consider myself a leftist, i support a Progressive Agenda because i think it is the right thing to do. Is payht thing to do a living wage, support labor rights and make sure we are doing that with social justice. Make if we dont pursue solutions that are on the scale of these crises, we already know what the consequences are. We see it right here with covid19. There are leaders that do not want to respond with a swiftness or on the scale a pandemic requires an thousands of people are dead because of it. When it comes to the future for millenials, if we dont make moves, we are talking about millions of people in this country being condemned to a precarious form of living, housing, medical care for the rest of their adult lives. Thought you even have a at this point what the dollar figure is congress would need to spend before this is over . Rep. Ocasiocortez a lot of people have asked me what implications this has for Climate Change. When it comes to the dollar figure, i think for both of these issues, i dont think there is a figure we can look at that is too much. I dont think a lot of people understand the scale of the impact of this. This is not even a slowmoving recession, or relatively slowmoving like we saw in 2008, where the cracks started at the top and it eventually manifested with crashes and housing prices or whether in a meltdown of our Housing Market and eventual unemployment. We are talking about the entire economy essentially seizing up overnight on a global scale. Policymakers, have never, ever, entertained anything on this scale before. I think that we are going to have to either make the new deal look normal or small compared to what we have to pursue moving forward. This is happening with the backdrop of the 2020 election. Joe biden secured Bernie Sanders endorsement. On, therere you got was a conversation that Elizabeth Warren endorsed him. You told the New York Times you had not heard from bidens campaign. Is there an update . Rep. Ocasiocortez our teams are in touch. Anna do you expect to endorse him . Rep. Ocasiocortez we are having conversations with bidens team and seeing what some of the policy conversations would be like. I would like to see the Vice President clarify issues. It is incredibly important we support the democratic nominee in november. Jake Bernie Sanders said it would be irresponsible to not support biden and it sounds like if you are not there, you are leaning toward that. Rep. Ocasiocortez at the end of the day, one of these two people are going to be president it will either be donald trump or joe biden that will be elected president in november and we have to live in the reality of those choices. I know there might be a lot of people that are uncomfortable with that, but as a person who represents a vulnerable community, a community where this choice can very much be the difference between life or death, or being separated from their children or not, i think, for me, personally, it is important to me to be in solidarity with the families i represent and supporting joe biden. Jake do you anticipate being a surrogate for joe biden . Rep. Ocasiocortez as i mentioned with the New York Times, a lot of that is up to our conversations that we have. Also, the role the Biden Campaign wants. It is not entirely up to me. Anna you said there might be some policies you want to have him shift on. Can you give us one or two examples were yearly want to see some shift, the folks in your camp are looking for biden to make some movement on . Rep. Ocasiocortez sure. I really dont have two, i have four. There are very real, tangible areas the democrats fell short during the obama administration. I would like to have those areas improve, particularly when it comes to puerto rico, immigration, health care for americans. I dont think it will be enough for us. We will have to pursue a more Ambitious Health care policy and Climate Change. Dont think the Vice President has a sufficient Climate Change policy. Jake do you have any thoughts on who should be his running bit . Rep. Ocasiocortez i do not. Jake everyone has thoughts. Rep. Ocasiocortez everyone speculates. Biden hasraged that said he wants a woman of color to be his Vice President , for me, what is important is not womans identity in gender and cultural terms, but what is important is who that woman is in her stances. While there are not enough women of color in the senate or in politics, or in general, there politicallyectrum of women of color. There are some that are more progressive. That bidens choice signals that. Think barack obama selected joe biden because they came from different places. Biden was more conservative than obama. Encouraging if biden pick someone more progressive. Seen candidates stumble around with this new reality technologically. How concerned are you with the inability ability or to reach out and campaign during this paralyzing time . Rep. Ocasiocortez this is a especiallyoncern, when it comes to congressional elections. There are a lot of states that have primaries coming up. Implications for all of us across the board. The number one thing that is most important for us in every state in this country, and nationally, is to guarantee maili that we standardize thato compensate for the challenges in campaigning this year. Even states like new york. States, the of declaration of waiving the excuse for absentee voting is completely insufficient i think for the challenges ahead of us. York, absentee ballots are not counted the same way mailin ballots are in other states. They are not counted. They tend to be when the election is close. We need to nail everything a person, every single eligible voter in this country about it that is what has to be done. Thus the only way i think we can really compensate for the fact that we are not going to be having people going out and registering others, and knocking doors in the scale we already did have been would have been at this point in this year. You do have a primary, the u. S. Chamber of commerce push back the challenge of carrera. This seems like something that might benefit to you. Yeah, hey, there is a lot of conservative and republican interests, theres a lot of wall unseating aests in member that holds wall street accountable. I take it as a badge of honor. I think it shows we have been very effective in our first put, and, if people want to a lot of resources into this race, that means its because we pose a very real threat to a lot of the lobbyists and corporate interests that are used to having free reign in washington, sometimes you are defined by your friends and sometimes you are defined by the people who come after you. I dont take it personally. We have a few minutes left, so i want to get to a couple at least one audience question and a one final one and one final one from us. You talked about how this pandemic is affecting communities, especially this one. Im curious how you think it is affecting dreamers who the president said he would like a deal on but has not been willing to get one done for a long time. Dreamers, itcting is affecting mixed status families, just in terms of rolling out aid. There has been tangles with mixed status families, evenially children and more adult children, undocumented people, in this country. This issue has been impacting families a lot. I do think a lot of dreamers are sick of being used as a bargaining chip or political football. Going to that we are provide some small relief for dreamers while deporting their parents, all of these things, fraught emotional issues as well. This is why we have to have a larger conversation about immigration and the contributions of undocumented people in this country in general. We have i. T. I and payers, itin payers. Thats undocumented people paying taxes, and we are talking about people paying their taxes through itin while also receiving no Economic Relief while not having access to a lot of the Public Programs many of us enjoy. The number one most impacted zip code is one i represent, and this is a heavily immigrant community, where people are going outside, stocking up on stocking up on groceries, and they are terrified of being removed from their home. It has Public Health consequences. When we dont create the economic policies that allow people to stay indoors to contain the virus. One more question, and then we will let you go. The last one is just on your election. You are challenging chuck schumer, and i know its in the back of your mind a little bit. And on a lot of other peoples minds. No, no. Right now, my concern is making sure im taking care of everything right in front of me and just making sure i earned the honor and privilege of 14thng new yorks Congressional District for another term. There arehonored wellheeled and wellfunded organizations coming in, i also dont underestimate the millions of dollars invested interest in unseating me. Im very much focused on my honestly,n 2020, and this new cycle is so in vain, who knows where any of us will be in 2020 . I hear you. Thinkiterally dont even about this in any serious way. I dont know. [laughter] we will leave it there. Thank you for your time, we appreciated. Thank you all for joining us on this livestream. We look forward to them in the coming weeks and months. The coronavirus pandemic is having an impact on the congressional schedule, House Majority leader announced members will not be back for legislative business until may fourth. Mitch mcconnell has announced the same, two weeks after the chamber was originally scheduled to return. Furthermore, members have been advised about insufficient notice to capitol hill if legislation to coronavirus was to be considered before may 4. Of theive coverage on house on cspan and cspan2. Cspan2 for the senate. While thecspan coronavirus pandemic continues, many are working from home. 30 of my folks are those in the automotive industry. The other majority are what i would call the frontline workers. Now, they are considered essential workers. I hope people dont forget these are the folks who have been day demanding 15 minimum wage. I think its important to highlight they are the ones now keeping us afloat. Se s was a very, very, very serious issue. Listen to the local authorities, federal and state authorities, health experts, and just stay away from people right now. I see this as a war. The United States is at war with this virus. Stay in touch, using the newly updated cspan congressional directory, having all the Contact Information you would need to connect directly with your u. S. Senator or representative. Order your copy online today at cspans store. Org cspan store. Org. We are back with clarence anthony, ceo ended and executive director