4 00 today and it will include 300 51 million for Small Businesses three hunter 51 billion for351 Small Businesses and money for hospitals and testing. I doubt if it has been changed a lot from now to the afternoon, and it will go a long ways to helping Small Businesses get the money they need to start their business up again after the government shut it down. And if there are any fiscal conservatives, as i am a fiscal conservative, wondering about spending this money, the rationale is for the first time in the 240 year history of the nation, theur government, state and local, made decisions because of public inlth that we had to shelter and shut the economy down. And when the government does that, the government has the responsibility to get the economy going again. 351 billionis makes up for the previous 350 billion that we thought was going to be enough to get Small Businesses started. But it did not turn out to be enough. Host it was tweeted by cnn about the minority leaders, saying that schumer signals that 150 billion for state and local governments will not be in a deal. We will fight that on covid four very strongly he says, there will be an ability for state and local to use existing money to make up for lost revenue. Are you in support of money for state and local governments and another economic aid bill . Guest i think there will be money, the amount and how it is distributed will be in dispute. I will say its nearly a foregone conclusion because the federal government shut down business, so income tax and sales tax that support most state governments are coming up governmente federal has some responsibility in that area. But how its going to be distributed, for what purpose, and whether there is any restrictions on it will be left for a later date. Disconcertingy about this whole deal about getting more money for Small Business, of all of the different programs that we did in phase three to get money to , none ofconomy running the money had run out yet except for Small Business. So we figure we ought to take it a step at a time and supplement the Small Business. But in order to get a bipartisan agreement, we had to put 75 hospitals,e into even though there are 70 billion appropriate already that has not been spent. We figured that we ought to do it on a stepbystep basis and make sure that we were not spending more money than needed. But to get the bipartisan agreement we had to go beyond the money for just the Small Business loan program. Host what about large corporations getting millions of dollars from the Small Business loan program . Guest they should not have gotten it because they have more than 500 employees. They could have legitimately gotten help from another Government Program because we appropriated 450 billion to back up everything the Federal Reserve did, and they should have gone to the Federal Reserve to get it and not get it from the Small Business programs. And lets talk about your state, rural health, will the Rural Health Facilities in iowa and other states be seeing more money . Do they need it . Guest yes. We had a briefing on the bill will come before the Senate President andice secretary of treasury. And by the chief of staff for the president. Thats one of the issues i have 120p, because we hospitals in iowa, but probably 80 to 90 of them are rural hospitals that are losing money because a lot of their income comes from elective surgery. Equipmente all of the and time and professional help virusp those who have the that weted to make sure kept them going, because they could not do elective surgery. So in the 75 billion going out situationprobably a where a lot of the money will be going to rural hospitals. Host what about the farmers in your state . How are they doing . And the Food Processing plants in your state. Guest first, a farmer is always optimistic. Travel, iowa today, yesterday, maybe one day last weekend all of this week, the sun was shining, its not raining, they are outputting seed in the ground for what we hope will be an abundant crop. My son is doing that even late last night on our family farm. You are optimistic. But right now, corn prices are lower than anybody would have ever anticipated over the last 20 years. As one example. But you point out a major problem, packing plants. The operation when you are slaughtering livestock and cutting it up in the chain is moving slowly and everybody has a specific job to do and you are working shoulder to shoulder , its a perfect environment for the virus to get into everybody. That is what has happened in iowa and other places. Operating, butre may be at 75 efficiency. And we are in a terrible situation where if there is not tough room and employees ,ake care of the slaughtering particularly in iowa, because we are the number one state in the production of pork, if i could say this way. There is a very precise and sophisticated process from the birth of a baby pig till six pound later when a 260 pig is slaughtered. If you dont keep that process going, you will reach a point where you will have to euthanize big pigs, and what do you do with them at that point . That becomes a Public Health problem as well as the virus. So we have to keep the plants going. And you have to make sure that there are safe working conditions. So we are trying to test everyone when they go into the separate are trying to people as much as we can, putting protective equipment on each person and space between them as much as we can. But its a difficult thing to do. Host President Trump tweeted, in light of the attacks on the invisible enemy and the need to protect the jobs of our Great American citizens, i will be signing an executive order to temporarily suspend immigration into the United States. Is that a good decision . Guest i dont know. I figure we are a nation of ablerants, we ought to be to be open to about one Million People year coming in legally. We are all against people violating our laws coming into our country illegally. But we are a welcoming nation and we need people. So i dont know what the president s decision was based on, Public Health or just a feeling that at this point when we have 22 Million People filing for Unemployment Compensation that its not time to bring in other people. Its difficult for me to comment on it, but i welcome Legal Immigration and do not welcome people violating our laws coming to this country. Host and you are on the president s task force to open the economy, are some states like georgia and florida, are they opening too soon . Guest im going to leave it up to the governors of those states. There are 50 different ways of opening up our economy, its good to be up to the governors. I expect that they are going to follow the guidelines very well, but even within a state, you may have a different opening for upper new york than you will for new york city, for example. Its gonna have to be done very slowly and it will have to be done with Public Health people its gonna take a lot of testing and i think we will have greater testing capability than before and so testing is very important. Its hard for me to realize that you are going to be able to trace people from one to the thing, it its a good seems to be an overwhelming job to take care of anyone who has had contact with somebody with withirus, and then contact everyone else who has had the same person but if we have the capability we ought to do it. It starts with testing and with 25 billion in this bill casting passing today, i think we can ramp up testing. Areink a lot of people thinking in terms of testing 328 Million People and do it frequently. And i hope everyone realizes thats not a possibility. But we have to test in a sophisticated way. I think the best way to do that is to follow the advice of people like dr. Burke and dr. Birx and dr. Fauci. Host we are asking our viewers this morning should frontline workers receive hazard pay during this pandemic . Petersues of yours, gary , is pushing for 25,000 of retroactive pay for frontline workers, beyond medical personnel. Would you support that . Or no tofore i say yes that, i want to see beyond doctors and nurses how many other people are going to qualify or it and whether or not we are being fair and equitable to everybody that went above and beyond the call of duty to do their job. Truckers being praised as being essential because they are delivering food and i want can eat to know how far down the chain thats going to go before i make a decision. Because if we are going to start singling out some people for going above and about and beyond the call of duty i want to list of all of the people that we think went above and beyond the call of duty. Host the Small Business relief package is passed, the house will vote thursday. The house is in for a brief pro forma session tomorrow. You can follow live house coverage on cspan on the senate on cspan two. As the coronavirus pandemic continues, many senators working from home districts. This is a very serious issue. State away from people right now. I see this as a war. The United States is at war with this virus. The newly touch using updated congressional directory. It has all the Contact Information you need to direct with u. S. Representative or senator and order your copy online today at cspan store. Org. News rethinks, coming up, North Carolina governor roy cooper will talk about his states efforts to respond to the ongoing pandemic. Live coverage at 2 00 p. M. Time. N and then louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards on the efforts and his estate. You can also watch online at cspan. Org or listen with the free cspan app. President trump leads the the Coronavirus Task force Briefing Schedule at 5 00 eastern. Host pbs frontline is that with a documentary about the first coronavirus patient on u. S. Soil. It premieres tonight. Take a look. [video] 2020, atuary 15, 35yearold local man from washington lands at Seatac Airport in seattle. He is traveling from wuhan, china