Mr. Secretary, thank you for joining us this morning. I want to get right to the news. 2. 4 million new jobless claims of unemployment this morning, several Senate Republican said yesterday they want to see some action now on the next relief package. Is another package necessary and if so, when . Well, let me comment first of all, im very sympathetic to the people who are not working at no fault of their own because we close down the economy and as we slowly reopen the economy in a safe way we will get people back to work. In the current cares package there is several parts of it that are designed to help those American Workers. One is the ppp and getting people back to work through that process. The other is the Economic Impact payments which are the direct payments and finally be enhanced on employment insurance. We do need to fix where in certain cases we are paying more than they made so we need to fix that. We will carefully review the next few weeks and i think there is a strong likelihood we will need another bill but we just have 3 trillion we are pumping into the economy and will step back for a few weeks and think clearly how we need to spend more money and if we need to do that. As you know, mr. Secretary, the house passed a 3 trillion bill that is strongly opposed by the administration and Congressional Republicans and you have a very Good Relationship with speaker pelosi, the president not so much but when is the last time you communicated with the speaker about a possible next package . I spoke to the speaker last week. Really our conversation was more about the execution of the current cares act and was not focused on the next steps. What i would say is look, im very pleased that the last two bills that were passed were 96zero, 100zero in the senate. They had overwhelming bipartisan support. Our extraordinary times. The whole senate came together these are extraordinary times. The whole senate came together and i would hope the next bill we do has overwhelming bipartisan support in the speakers bill obviously is a partisan bill so that is not something we are focusing on at the moment. You mentioned before the Senate Banking committee that this is an unprecedented challenge and as you mentioned this is no fault of americans. But this virus started in china and was not contained and they were not transparent and mr. Secretary, a lot of americans are angry at china. Will china be held accountable in any way . I understand why americans are angry and i think they have the right to be angry. It is not just americans, it is the rest of the world. And i would start with people want information. People want to know what went on with the virus and i think that china should be held accountable first by at least giving information and understanding want went on and how to combat this. President trump has talked about a transportation bill, the possibility of it being a stimulus down the road. Mitch mcconnell, majority leader is not a big fan of that approach and should congress, at some point this year, for another stimulus passed some type of transportation bill . As you know the president has been focused on infrastructure and going back to the campaign , and that was part of the president s platform to rebuild our roads and bridges and dams and the nations infrastructure as well as cutting edge infrastructure such as rural broadband. So i think that is something that congress is going to need to look at. I say whether we do it as part of the coronavirus bill or whether we do it separately, that is something that is on the president s agenda. You are an author of this ppp program, an Unprecedented Program that has saved many, many jobs. How many jobs have the ppp Program Saved to this date . I think its about 50 million jobs and i think by the time we get through this it will be 60 million jobs. You know, it wasnt perfect getting it up and running but was important was we developed a program from scratch. We knew that if it took four months to get up and running it wasnt going to help at all and it was unprecedented and we got to stop in a few weeks and we got money out the door and this is a major part of the u. S. Economy, the small and mediumsized businesses. And we wanted to protect the workers and just as important we wanted to keep those workers attached to the business so that when the businesses could safely open, they had workers attached to them. As you know, congress has replenished the ppp. When will the ppp need to be replenished again . How much time do we have . Right now we have over 1 00 billion left and one of the things we all are working with congress on and there is bipartisan support is lengthening the eightweek period. One of the companies they are having an issue with because theyve been closed and rehiring workers. There is bipartisan support to extend that to ten12 weeks and i know the restaurants have asked for 24 weeks but that is something we definitely want to fix. It doesnt cost us any more money and there is bipartisan support. As part of that eight week provision, as you mentioned, congress is talking about that , there are some that say you could do that administratively. Can you do that administratively as well as the 75, 25 provisions or does that happen to be done by congress, both of them . Well, the eight weeks i wish. Ould do administratively if i could, we would already have done it. Let me comment on the 75, 25 because theres been a little bit of confusion on this issue. When the program was designed and again, let me remind people it is called a paycheck protection program. It is not called the overhead protection program. It was designed that you got eight weeks of payroll plus 25 for overhead which we thought was a reasonable amount but the real purpose here was to get people back to work. When we came up with a 75 tax test it was a belt and suspender test. What we thought would how the program be designed which again, was the eight week plus the 25 . We did not think the intent of the program was to have 50 spent on workers and 50 spent on overhead. And obviously, we are somewhat concerned. We realize people do have more overhead and they can go out and take out a loan which is a 30year sba loan to pay back but we want most of this money to go to workers and that we believe the 75 was exactly consistent with the way the program was designed. There are roughly around 30 companies, Public Companies that say they wont return the money that they received in this loan grant program. They say that the goalposts have been changed. Will you go after these companies and why, if it is safe saving jobs after all . Let me comment that there was a certification that was in the application that the funds were necessary. And as i said before there were a few companies that became the poster child for the public being upset. I said this before, im a big fan of the Los Angeles Lakers and they are one of my favorite teams, but we did not envision this was a program for the Los Angeles Lakers. They obviously have the financial means to pay their players and support staff. Also, as you look at shake shack which was a Large Public Company again, they have the financial means, whether they want to pay their people or not is completely up to them. I dont think those were the types of companies that we thought could make the certification, so i came out early and defending the program and again, it was a small number of companies and what is over four and half million loans and its a small number of companies that jeopardize the program and we did say that we would review and hold accountable anybody who has a over 2 million. I think some legitimate Companies Got very concerned about the liability so we toned that down and said ok, if you go through review and pay back the money, the sba will not refer you to any other further enforcement actions. But yes, the bigger loans will be reviewed. They will be reviewed on a casebycase basis and companies arguments nor different than you go through any review. Theres all lawsuit pending about the nonPublic Companies. Media organizations have said they deserve the right to see who is getting this taxpayer money. Do you agree with that that the public deserves to know who is getting the money whether public or not public . Well, let me just comment. I very much support oversight and transparency. When we negotiated this bipartisan bill we added in unprecedented oversight and transparency. We created a new Inspector General for various parts of this. We created an Oversight Committee that was bipartisan. And in the fed of programs weve specifically agreed within 14 days to release the names of companies, and that was something that was interest in it. I think in the ppp it does not require disclosure. And i think the concern was that there is proprietary information off of payroll that that should not be in the Public Domain but again, that is something will be discussed. Mr. Secretary, speaking of oversight, the house has set up a special panel that Congressional Republicans oppose. They say its not necessary to oversee the specific committee because theres a lot of other oversight built into the law. If you were asked to testify before the house panel, would you . I cant comment on that. I have not really reviewed it one way or the other with my internal legal team and others, but i would say i testify this week at the Senate Banking committee with chairman powell. That is required on a quarterly basis. We absolutely plan on doing that. Again, i would emphasize there is a specific Oversight Committee set up that consists of republicans and democrats and im not exactly sure why the house needs to set up another committee. And again, there are other committees that the house does have jurisdiction that sheriff chair powell and i will testify before. Cbo recently has predicted that unemployment will be 10 plus this year into next. Do you agree with that prediction . Well, let me just comments for this is nothing against cbo and nothing against the rest of the economic models. We are in an unprecedented situation. This on employment was not a result of bad economic issues. This is a result of medical issues. I think its very hard to predict and a lot of it depends on reopening of the economy and a lot of it on, as we make advances, and by vaccines, in testing and people feel comfortable so i think the economic models, follow the medical models and i think its too premature to predict those things. But i do think is the Second Quarter is going to be a dreadful corner because literally it is like we took the water faucet and turned it off so nothing came through. Now we are slowly reopening the economy so i think we will bottom out in the second order and i think the third and Fourth Quarter will be better and as the president has said and i have said with a great advancement in medical progress in killing this virus we expect our economy to be great again next year. You said this spring that the Fourth Quarter would be gigantic. Are you tempering expectations . Do think still think it will be gigantic in the Fourth Quarter . Again im not tempering what im saying but when you come off a low number of closing down the economy you will have very, very big increases so yes, i thank you will see a very large, call it a gigantic increase in the Fourth Quarter. Regarding production, some have called the administration to use more of the defense production act which they have employed, but did the initiation plan to do more than as far as manufacturing so a lot of people say we need that now or certainly we both needed down the road in the fall going into next year. Its a very important tool. It should be used carefully. I know the president is very much willing to use it and if we need to use said. I got an update on vaccines yesterday and the investments that barta is making which i think is terrific. And in many cases they have commitments to take over a large amount of the vaccine but the defense production act is a very important tool to protect the American Workers and if the president needs to use, he will. Mr. Secretary, the president has mr. Secretary, the president has been critical of the Postal Service which is running out of money. There are provisions in the new house built that i know is considered dead in the Senate Spread the president has said the Postal Service should charge more for carriers like amazon and others. Do you think that should be looked at and maybe the Postal Service should charge amazon more . Weve looked at this so let me give you a history here. I chaired the federal Financing Bank. The post offices largest creditor in the federal Financing Bank so last year i asked my team to give me a financial update. I was shocked at how bad it was. I updated the president on that and as a result of that he me to chair a task force and we have put together a complete plan to fix the post office. Let me also say that when we came into office there were no governors. Again, this is just outrageous. This is corporate 101, there was no oversight on the post office, so the postal board of governors did not have anybody. We now have a fully functioning governance board, people appointed by congress, both sides of the aisle. I think its extremely important. They just ran a search hand hired a new postmaster general, someone with terrific business experience. And during the last bill people thought the post office was going to run out of money so they wanted to throw the post office 10 billion. I said thats not fair so lets give them a loan if they need more money. As of now, package deliveries are up over 50 to offset them now and as of now they dont need to use the loan. So absolutely think the , president is right. We want transparency on these agreements. We want to make sure that again, any of the ecommerce transactions and again, right now, post office is doing an amazing job delivering things to people as they are at home, an amazing job. We just want to make sure that post office is paid fairly and isnt subsidizing that business. The first class mail business is a business that should be subsidized. The package business and again, what im trying the overnight package business. Im not talking about if you take your package to the post office and send it crosscountry. What i am talking about is the overnight business that services amazon, ebay and others and that should not be subsidize by taxpayers. An Unusual Program has come out of the state department. Its been reported that the eagle plant where Social Security recipients could get a 5000, 10,000 payment in exchange for reducing their Retirement Benefits down the road. It is odd that this has come out of the state department. Is there something that will come out from the administration paired democrats have been critical of it . It is not something that we are considering at this point. He did, of the Economic Group and we look at lots of things and, as you know, Social Security is very important to the president and we will look at other options of people new money. The president and Vice President have been tested regularly. Have you been tested and will you continue to be tested in the weeks ahead . I am also tested on a regular basis because i am in pretty much daily contact with the president , Vice President and others. The white house has thought it prudent. And these machines are a very easy process. I hope we can get more and more of these added machines into the workforce. In many places if people could go into work and could get tested they would be much more confident in going to work. But yes, just as a precaution because im around the president on a regular basis i do get tested. Secretaryestion, mr. Thank you for joining us this morning. We appreciate your time, mr. Secretary. Thank you very much. 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We will spend this last half hour talking about the future of the Restaurant Industry. Good morning. Good morning. What has been the impact of the Coronavirus Impact on the Restaurant Industry . Guest it has been devastating. Right after the cruise lines and airline business, restaurants and bars have been hurt the most. And it is a very different kind of business from the two i mentioned, the cruise ships and airlines, which are very concentrated. Th