Transcripts For CSPAN Hearing On Coronavirus Racial Inequities 20240712

This is an entirely remote hearing pursuant to House Resolution and the regulations. As a general rule, i will ask askeral rule, i will that microphones, including those of members and witnesses, be cap muted to avoid background noise. Members are responsible for on muting themselves when they wish to seek recognition. Somebody is not muted right now. Can you check to see if you are muted . Required tobers are leave their cameras on the entire time they are in official proceedings, even if they step away from the camera. Hearing, theremote Committee Chair is officially closed. Members who sit with their devices in the room must wear headphones to avoid feedback, echoes, and distortion resulting from more than one person on the platform sitting in the same room. Use are also expected to social distancing guidelines including the use of masks, gloves, and wiping down the area in the hearing room. Questions, if the witness is also in the hearing room, it would help if you mute while the answer is taking place , because the answer is picked up by your mike and that echoes back and there is usually distortion. The rollcall is not necessary to establish a quorum in official proceedings conducted remotely. When there is, the clerk will call role to make clear who is present at the start of proceeding. I will ask the clerk to call the roll. Chairman scott. Present. Misses david. Present. Present. Mr. Courtney. Present. Ms. Fudge. Present. Ms. Wilson. Present. Ms. Bonamici. Present. Mr. Turkana. Ms. Adams. Present. Mr. Design yay. Mr. Nora croft. Present. Ms. Jayapal. Present. Mr. Marelli. Present. Ms. Wild. Mr. Harder. Misses mcmaster. Present. Ms. Schreiter. Present. Ms. Underwood. Present. Misses hayes. Layla. Mr. Levin. Present. Ms. Omar. Mr. Trump. Ms. Stevens. Present. Misses lee. Mr. Castro. Misses fox. Present. Mr. Ro. Mr. Thompson. Mr. Wahlberg. Present. Mr. Guthrie. Mr. Burns. Mr. Grossman. Ms. Stephan. Present. Mr. Allen. Present. Mr. Smucker. Mr. Banks. Mr. Walker. Mr. Coleman. Mr. Klein. Present. Mr. Fulcher. Mr. Watkins. Present. Mr. Wright. Mr. Mus are. Present. Mr. Johnson. Present. Mr. Calorie. Present. Mr. Murphy. Mr. Van drew. Present. Chairman scott, this concludes the rollcall. Excuse me, susan wild present. Does anyone else want to note they are present . [inaudible] david sharon, ms. Underwood hello . Mr. Chairman, its congresswoman fox. I just want to note that congressman thompson was here and stepped out for just a moment and also that we have several members at misses bars funeral today. Kentucky people as well as other states. So there are several absent because of that funeral going on right now. That is certainly understandable. Thank you very much. Pursuant to Committee Rule seven c, Opening Statements are limited to the chair and Ranking Member and witnesses. I now recognize myself for the purpose of making an open statement. First, following up on the Ranking Members comment, i want to express my deepest condolences to our colleagues mourning the loss of loved ones. Our thoughts and prayers are with representative omar for the loss of her father, representative bonamici for the loss of her mother, representative barr for the loss of his wife, and our friend Jim Sensenbrenner for the loss of his wife. We are living in tough times for everyone but i know that these are particularly difficult times for those mentioned and we just want to wish them strength and peace. We are with them during this difficult time. Today we are discussing how covid19 is exacerbating inequalities in labor, education, and health, and the steps Congress Must take. A mountain of evidence has made it clear that to effectively respond to this pandemic we must address existing racial inequities in education, the workforce, and education. Bias andion, racial chronic underfunding of schools serving students of color produce consistent achievement gaps. We know that our k12 Public Schools have a racial funding gap. That is the difference between funding and School Districts serving students of color compared to School Districts serving predominantly white students. Positionedg gap has students of color to fall even further behind their peers. Black and latino students are less likely to attend schools that have the capacity to establish high quality Distance Learning programs. They are also less likely to have the basic technology such as a computer, highspeed internet, and as a result, latino students are expected to lose nine months of learning and black students are expected to lose 10 months of learning due to the pandemic. White students are expected to lose only six months. Addition, states will face a 615 billion revenue shortfall due to the pandemic. As the committee discussed last isk, Public Education usually one of the largest expenditures and unless the federal government provides immediate relief for state and local governments, it wont matter whether funding for education will be cut, but how much those cuts in education will be. While wealthier districts can fall back on property tax revenue, low income public School Districts will have to rely heavily on state funding. School districts that predominantly serve students of color, severe cuts in education will come at the time of greatest need. Consequences of these shortfalls are already evident. Nearly 750,000 Public School employees have lost their jobs since march. In colorado, the state Legislature Passed a budget that cuts a billion dollars from schools next year. Workforce, outlook is similarly concerning. Black and latino workers face significantly higher risk of unemployment. Although the rate of unemployment for white and latino workers has lowered, rates for black workers have increased in recent weeks. Among those who remain employed, workers of color are more likely to be employed in occupations with the highest risk of infection. Of black and latino workers can work from home compared to nearly 30 of white workers. Disparities,ese workers of color have been disproportionately affected by the department of labors refusal to issue enforceable Workplace Safety standards to protect workers from covid19. Workersk and latino disproportionately work in lowwage jobs. Congress has not raised the federal minimum wage in more than a decade. The longest period of time in its history. Weaker labor laws have eroded Union Membership and workers collective bargaining rights, which have left essential workers vulnerable to a deadly virus. The most profound consequence has been the pandemics devastating impact on the health of people of color. Africanamericans have been dying from covid19 infections at about 2. 5 times the rate of white americans. The death ratey, for latinos in the month of april was about 22 people per 100,000 adjusted for population and age. Native American Communities are suffering disproportionately. The Navajo Nation surpassed new york and new jersey with the most infections per capita. This follows the pattern of past diseases. With these challenges and education and workforce issues, disparities are rooted in structural inequality. People of color entered the pandemic with structural problems including health care discrimination, housing instability, food insecurity, and limited access to transportation. Left of budget cuts have limited funding of rural and Community Hospitals and communities of color, leaving families with few options. Access,of increasing the Trump Administration has been actively working to take it away in the midst of a Public Health emergency. A texas lawsuit threatens the entirety of the Affordable Care act. These efforts excuse me. These cynical efforts disproportionately impact people of color. If theseefforts efforts to strike down the law are successful, the uninsured rate among the Africanamerican Community would nearly double to 20 . Hispanic of uninsured individuals would grow. But we are not here to talk about the problem. We are here to discuss solutions. The heroes act which the house passed last month would take important steps towards addressing racial inequalities. Education, the legislation dedicates nearly 1 trillion of relief for states and localities to help reverse painful cuts to Public Schools. Proposingrther by more than 100 billion in additional Emergency Education funding to help cover the cost of cleaning supplies and other open,es required to purchase educational technology, sustain special education, and have colleges and universities maintain their institutions. Osha toes act directs issue an Emergency Temporary Standard that would require protections for workers at highest risk for contracting covid19. It also expands access to emergency paid leave to nearly 140 million workers. Inle paid leave provisions the Coronavirus Response act took important steps in the right direction, too many workers including many healthcare workers were excluded from those protections. The heroes act puts family and medical back into family and medical leave by dramatically expanding the circumstances in which workers can take 12 weeks of emergency pay, but we will not force workers to choose between a paycheck and the health of the people around them. Act expands Health Care Insurance coverage for covid19 testing and treatment, provides full coverage for the cost of premiums and furloughed workers, and increases the investment in health and nutrition for Community Support by including 1 billion of special funding and an additional 1 billion for Community Service to help address poverty. Invests the heroes act 75 billion dollars in testing and Contact Tracing to help contain the virus. This includes 500 million to recruit and train contact public through the workforce systems and communitybased organizations. Provisionsy, these represent a major step taken by getress to help our nation through this Global Healthcare crisis. As we confront this unprecedented challenge, we must accept our responsibility. Act, we will be experiencing recovery that offers relief to some, that leaves many low income communities and people of color to face longlasting or permanent setbacks in education and access to health care. This has stained our countrys legacy for too long. I look forward to hearing from our witnesses, who will share the scope of the challenge and policy considerations to get us on the right course. Im pleased to recognize the Ranking Member for her Opening Statement. Thank you. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I also want to extend my to those who suffered the lost of loved ones recently. Our prayers go out to them and their families during this difficult time. Mr. Chairman, youve heard me express my concerns about these virtual hearings, but it bears repeating. They fly in the face of 230 years of congressional and legislative precedent. These events undermine what our founders intended when they created our representative republic. Americans are stepping up to help combat this virus while their elected leaders in the house stay home. It is shameful. And mr. Chairman, ant so you know, this is entirely remote hearing it is not. A number of my republican colleagues and i are participating from the Committee Room in washington, d. C. And i encourage you and all other members to return to congressional precedent and hold our hearings in person. Turning to the topic of todays virtual hearing, the coronavirus and related state imposed shutdowns have caused devastating job losses and Unemployment Rates not seen since the great depression. Schools were forced to close their doors abruptly and switched to Remote Learning overnight, which impacted 97 of our countrys students. But lets remember that prior to the covid19 pandemic, the u. S. Economy and market were strong. Real gdp increased 2. 3 in 2019 in 2018. In february, the Unemployment Rate was at a historic low. 5. 4 inemployment was august 2019, the lowest ever recorded. Hispanicber 2019, the Unemployment Rate was 3. 9 , also the lowest ever recorded. And in june 2019, asian unemployment was a record low 2. 1 . At the beginning of 2020, workers in the bottom 10 of income had higher average wage growth than those in the top 10 . By january 2020, low income earners saw a 15 increase in pay since the president took office. However, we know that americans including minority communities have felt the negative effects of these unprecedented times. The centers for Disease Control and prevention estimates that blacks and hispanics account for nearly 40 of covid19 deaths in the u. S. Minority communities have also been impacted by pandemic related shutdowns, with the rate of blackowned businesses falling 41 , hispanic businesses falling 32 , and asian owned businesses falling 26 . Policieshe progrowth enacted by Congressional Republicans and the Trump Administration benefited workers , employers, and families before the onset of the pandemic. Reopening the economy responsibly and ensuring Public Health are not mutually exclusive. We can and must open america again while taking into consideration the recommendations from our Public Health officials. Jobsmonth, 2. 5 million were added to the economy. Thatnificant indicator reopening the economy safely is the best way to help all americans get back on their feet. The wall street journal reported that new layoffs are being offset by employers hiring or recalling workers to allow more businesses to reopen. The white house and cdc have issued guidelines for reopening america again. Which includees three phases from Public Health officials are intended to help state and local leaders make timely decisions about reopening the economy and getting people back to work while protecting lives. State has started implementing phased reopening plans, allowing nonessential businesses to reopen and operate safely, allowing employees to return to work and americans to resume daily activities. The prepandemic economy ushered in under the Republican Led Congress and the Trump Administration benefited workers, employers, and families alike. Lows,ment was at record including minority unemployment. Low income earners saw a 15 increase in pay and 7 million jobs were available and ready to be filled. To achieve prepandemic Economic Conditions that enabled americans to flourish, we must continue forging a forwardlooking path to help minority communities recover and prosper as they were prior to the pandemic. Mandating further topdown federal laws and policies as proposed by House Democrats will only compound the challenges that all americans currently face as we continue to combat covid19. Witnessesthank the for participating in this hearing but i hope in the future we can have all our witnesses testifying here with us in washington as we work in person on behalf of hardworking americans. I yield back, mr. Chairman. Thank you, and i look forward to that day myself. To all other members who wish to insert written statements, do so by submitting them to Committee Clerk electronically in microsoft word format by 5 00 sunday, july 5. I will now briefly introduced our witnesses. Professor,s senior fellow and associate professor at Morehouse School of medicine, and past president of the American Health association. Valerie wilson is the Director Program on race, ethnicity, and economy at the Economic Policy institute. She is an alumni of Hampton University in my district. Is president of the foundation for research on equal opportunity. Mr. John king is the ceo of Education Trust and former secretary of the United States department of education. Witnesses forthe participating today and look forward to your testimony. That we the witnesses have seen the testimony and it will appear in full in the hearing record. Pursuant to Committee Rules and practice, each of you is asked to limit your own presentation to a five minute summary of your written statement. Let me remind the witnesses that it is a legally to knowingly and willfully falsify any statement to congress. During your testimony, staff will be keeping track of time and will use a chime to signal when one minute is left, and when time is not entirely, a more obnoxious chime will occur at that time. Please be attendant to your time and when your time is over, please wrap up your testimony and mute your microphone. If anyone is experiencing technical difficulties during your testimony or later in the hearing, stay connected on the platform and make sure you are muted and use your phone to immediately contact the committee i. T. Director, whose number has been provided. We will let all witnesses make their presentations before we move to a number of questions. When answering questions, please remember to unmute your microphone and mute when you are finished. We first recognized dr. Jones for five minutes. Thank you, chairman scott and Ranking Member fox. , covid19 hasd had a tremendously disproportionate impact on the health and wellbeing of communities of color. Compareht now, if you the death rates from covid19 by racial ethnic groups, black folks are dying at 52 per 100,000. American indians, 36 per 100,000. Per 100,000. , 28 asian folks, 26 per 100,000. And white folks, 26 per 100,000. Timesack americans, 2. 3 black americans are dying compared to white and asian americans. Why is this . Communities of color are more likely to be infected with the virus and more likely to die. They are more exposed and less protected. Burdened bye chronic diseases. This doesnt this doesnt just so happen. We are startled by what we are seeing with covid19, but this is equally distributed, there would be no way we could slice and dice our communities and see any differences in terms of infection. What this indicates is that opportunity is not equally distributed by race, ethnicity and the name of the system that causes this differential distribution is racism. Racism is a system for structuring opportunity and assigning value based on race and the social interpretation of how one looks, which has three impacts. It unfairly impacts on communities and saps the strength of the whole society through a waste of human resources. Some people would assert that racism doesnt exist and if it did, it is not systemic but an individual character flaw. I actually use lots of allegories to explain how racism exists. If somebody wants to ask me in three minutes, i dont have time in my Opening Statement but is somebody but if somebody is wondering about the dual reality allegory. Getting back to what we need to do. We need to act. Saying that racism is the basis of these differences is not an excuse. It is a call to action. I have my own ideas for action. But you are doing such a great job. I am providing you with three tools to guide future action to analyze how you should go. We need to ask the why, to get to the what. If you dont have the right answer to why, then the what will never result in improvement. The first tool is to question how is racism operating and looking at elements of decisionmaking in policies, structures, practices, norms, and values, which are elements of decisionmaking structures comedy who, what, when, and where. Who is at the table and who is not and what is on the agenda and what is not. How are decisionmaking values , the hawaii. After i outline, i will go back and say how that helps us with covid19. The second of the three tools are three principles for achieving Health Equity. Recognizing that Health Equity is assurance of the condition for Optimal Health for all people. It includes valuing all individuals of populations equally, recognizing and rectifying historical injustices, and providing resources not equally but according to need. Application of those principles can guide further action. The third tool is something many of you may not have heard of. Although you are the most erudite and connected folks in the country. That is the International Convention on the elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination, which is an international antiracism treaty that was adopted by the u. N. General assembly in 1965, signed 1966, United States in ratified by the u. S. Senate in 1994. Under which, we have presentday obligations. One of the obligations is to submit a report about every six years to a u. N. Committee, which we do. The last report was submitted in 2013. The Committee Reviews that report and then sends back its concluding observations. The most recent i hope that was the short one. I never heard the short one. You have one minute remaining. Ok, i did not know if that was the short one of a long one. The short one or the long one. I will just point out that we have the concluding observations provided to us in 2014 highlighted concerns and recommendations around racial profiling, around the disproportionate incarceration of people of color, around health disparities, achievement gaps in education, residential segregation. So how is racism operating with regards to covid19 . In terms of the who, what, when, where, the structural stuff leading to Educational Opportunity segregation leading , to occupational segregation as we are more on the front line jobs. In terms of policies, we are less protected in terms of ppe , in terms of paid sick leave. In terms of family and medical leave. In terms of practices, locations of testing sites in early policy requiring Doctors Orders and the like. Racism denial in this country puts the onus of the disproportionate impacts on peoples behavior and not recognizing that living in chronically disinvested communities, poisoned, no access to fresh fruit and vegetables is related. Finally, values as reflected and standards of care. Thank you for your attention. Thank you very much, ms. Jones. Dr. Wilson. Dr. Wilson thank you for the opportunity to testify. I want to discuss evidence of the racially disparate Economic Impact of covid19. And solutions that will avoid prolonged effects of the pandemic on Racial Disparity in the economy. There are three main groups of workers in the covid19 recession. One, those who lost their jobs and face economic insecurity. Two, those who are essential workers and face health insecurity. Three, those who are able to continue working from the safety of their home. Latinx, native americans, and low income workers are least likely to be in that last group. The first group of workers in the covid19 recession as those who have lost jobs during the pandemic. The national Unemployment Rate in may, but13. 3 this masks huge disparities by race. As of may comedy hispanic as of may, the hispanic Unemployment Rate was highest. The black Unemployment Rate was 16. 8 . Asian was at 15 , and the white Unemployment Rate at 12. 4 . Black and asian workers were the only racial and ethnic groups whose Unemployment Rate did not improve. The Unemployment Rate of all groups remains higher than the previous overall height of 10 in 2009. The second group of workers in the covid19 recession are essential frontline workers. In the near term, these workers have been protected from job loss, they face greater likelihood of contracting covid19 while performing their jobs. Black workers are overrepresented in this group, making up one in nine workers overall, but about one in six frontline industry workers. They are also more likely to be uninsured and less likely to have paid sick leave. Economic insecurity magnifies the current economic damage to workers and families. In the United States, a long history of racial exclusion, discrimination and exploitation have linked economic inequality and race. The black Unemployment Rate is typically double the white Unemployment Rate. This difference cannot be explained away by differences in education, even for workers with college or advanced degrees, black unemployment is significantly higher than the white Unemployment Rate, including at the record low rates reached prepandemic. Among the employed, black face at all paid face pay gaps at all pay levels and levels of education. Research has shown us has grown over the last several decades and have grown most in collegeeducated workers. Lower incomes, less savings, and higher poverty rates among blacks and other people of color relative to white households. Such longstanding racially stratified social and economic structures require that we center the needs of those who face the greatest economic insecurity, improving the effectiveness of any policy response while narrowing disparities. Many of the policies needed to address immediate needs are included in the heroes act and other legislation that has been introduced since. I will mention a few as i conclude. First, the robust economic recovery is directly tied to our ability to secure the health and safety of communities and workplaces across the country. Osha must exercise its authority to protect workers by enforcing emergency standards that address Worksite Health and safety risks associated with covid19 and workers who voice concerns must be free of employer retaliation. We must develop a National System of testing and Contact Tracing in underserved communities to provide employment and accurate access to testing and other services necessary. Third, since loss of employment also means loss of Health Insurance, federally funded comprehensive Health Insurance with full coverage for covid19 testing and treatment as well as paid sick leave and family leave are essential. Continuing crucial Unemployment Insurance provisions will help avoid more serious and persistent damage to the economy. The expiration of expanded ui and other support provisions automatictied to triggers, measurable and reliable indicators of recovery from all communities as opposed to arbitrary expiration dates. This and more will be needed to rebuild a better than normal economy with more widely shared prosperity. Thank you for your attention and i would be happy to answer any questions. Rep. Scott thank you very much. Mr. Roy . Mr. Roy chairman scott, Ranking Member fox, members of the committee, thank you for inviting me. The foundation for research on Economic Opportunity is a nonpartisan think tank that focuses exclusively on ideas that can improve the lives of americans on the bottom half of the economic ladder. I welcome the opportunity to discuss our work on how covid19 economic lockdowns have widened racial inequities. My written remarks show more largescale view. I will touch on how lockdowns have disproportionately affected minority owned businesses. I will touch on how School Closures disproportionately harm minority students and parents. I will discuss covid19 mortality by race and ethnicity and how states failure to protect Nursing Homes has harmed vulnerable seniors of all races. In late 2019, the black unemployment reached the lowest rate in history, 5. 4 . Today, the black Unemployment Rate is 17. 8 . In my testimony, i detail how disparities between white and nonwhite Unemployment Rates also reached the lowest levels in history prior to the pandemic, but the economic lockdowns have brought those disparities back to levels seen a decade ago. Compared to whites and asians, blacks and latinos are less likely to work in whitecollar occupations where working from home is feasible. Instead, they are seeing their jobs and hours slashed. Blackowned businesses have also been hit far harder than white owned businesses. It is estimated that blackowned businesses experienced losses of and versus february april 32 for hispanic owned businesses and 17 for white owned companies. Put simply, racial and ethnic disparities are worse when the economy is worse and especially during the governmentmandated shutdowns of the economy that we are experiencing today. As you noted, mr. Chairman, the s School Closures disproportionately harmed children from low income families. That is because the families are far better equipped from low income ones to provide their kids with opportunities to learn outside of school. Poor children are less likely to be able to take advantage of Virtual Learning because they often lack highspeed internet access. More than 30 million low income children receive free or reduced price lunch. School closures affect parents, especially Single Parents who are unable to work if that means leaving their Children Home unattended. The good news is that it is possible to safely reopen schools, as a forthcoming paper will show. Other countries have done it while protecting Public Health because children are at extremely low risk of death of severe illness from covid19. One rising concern is how it is affecting different racial and ethnic populations overall. The latest data from cdc indicates blacks have a larger share of covid deaths than they do of the population, even when adjusted for the fact that covid is more prevalent in cities where minorities live disproportionately. Mortality rates are higher in native American Communities, especially arizona and new mexico. What may be surprising is that whites are also dying of covid at higher than predicted rates. Hispanics and asians represent a lower share of covid death than would be implied by their geographicallyadjusted share of the u. S. Population. The likely reason is that morbidity and mortality from covid19 is most common among the elderly. 81 of all of the deaths have occurred in people 65 or older and whites are the oldest racial group in the u. S. , a median age of 44. Asians have a median age of 37. Blacks, 34. Hispanics, 30. We should expect to see higher fatality rates in whites relative to asians and hispanics due to their age, and we do. Africanamericans are relatively young, but we are still seeing higher mortality among blacks. Some are from a with the summer some of you are familiar with the research on the tragedy taking place Nursing Homes and facilities. Within that 0. 6 of the population, 43 of all deaths from the coronavirus. Nursing homes are residential facilities for medically vulnerable seniors who have challenges with daily activities. Residents are disproportionately poor, nonwhite, and enrolled in medicaid. The nursing home tragedy has a bronze lining, because it means that the risk of death from covid19 for the rest of the population is considerably lower than we may have thought. We can use that information to reopen the economy safely and reduce the harm we are imposing on hundreds of millions of americans of all colors. Thank you. Rep. Scott thank you very much, mr. Roy. Secretary king . Thank you so much, chairman scott, Ranking Member fox, and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify. This hearing takes place in the shadow of massive global protests against Police Violence seeking to ensure that black lives matter is more than just a hashtag. The murders of george floyd,reonna taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and Rayshard Brooks remind us yet again that systemic racism and the legacy of slavery infect our institutions, public discourse, and daily interaction. Our Education System is fraught with racial inequities that existed before covid19. Far too few black and latino children have access to affordable, highquality preschool. Black children, particularly boys, are disproportionately suspended or expelled from Early Learning the pandemic has pushed the Early Childhood Education Sector for blacks. Over 65 years, after brown v. Board of education, district lines and School Assignment policies still segregate k12 by race and class. Districts with the most black, latino, and native American Students spend almost 2000 less per student per year than districts with mostly white students. Students of color are less likely to be assigned the strongest teachers, less likely to be having access to counselors, less likely to be enrolled in advanced coursework, and less likely to be subjected to exclusionary discipline. The higher Education Sector doesnt reflect americas diversity. Not one state or Public College publicone states colleges have or graduate a representative share relative to the state population. The burden of student debt falls disproportionately on black students who are more likely to borrow and more likely to default. Covid19 has exacerbated these educational disparities. During the Necessary School andures, black, latino, native American Students disproportionately had less access to online learning, more teachers unavailable to assist in online learning, and more emotional stressors. In response, we urge congress to take the following actions. First, Congress Must support and strengthen p12 education. To address devastating budget shortfalls, over 70 stakeholders have called on congress to allocate 500 billion for state and local governments, including 175 billion for k12 education and 50 billion for Higher Education. This must include a strong maintenance of effort provision and add a equity provision so states and districts can ensure the most vulnerable students retain critical support. Congress must allocate dedicated funding for broadband extension to support stents learning, to extend learning time to tackle significant learning loss from the pandemic of an tackle resources to address nutritional, emotional, and Mental Health needs. Congress should refrain from permitting blanket waivers to key civil rights laws and protect the historic interpretation of the title i Equitable Services provision. The federal government must promote diverse schools, require data to be disaggregated by race, and uphold civil rights. Congress must enact equitable reforms to Higher Education. They should extend provisions in the cares act to next year. Offer equitable, targeted Debt Forgiveness in recognition of the recession will make repaying student debt impossible for millions of borrowers. To counter widespread losses of financial assistance, congress should double the pell grant and simplify the fafsa process. It would increase enrollment and limit debt for students of color. But there is more congress can do including expanding pell access to incarcerated students and undocumented students, increasing investments in hbcus , supporting diversity and education programs. Improve outcomes for low income students and education improvement programs. Improve outcomes for low income students and students of color. [indiscernible] thank you for the opportunity to be here today and i look forward to your questions. Thank you very much. I think all of our witnesses for their testimony. Under Committee Rule 8a, we will now question the witnesses under the five minute rule. I will be recognizing Committee Members in seniority order. In order to ensure that the fiveminute rule is adhered to, staff will keep track of time and use a chime to signal when one minute is left and when time is up entirely. They will sound a short chime when there is one minute left and a longer, more obnoxious chime when time is up. Please wrap up your time when your time is over and remute your phone. Experiencesr technical difficulties, you should stay connected on the platform, ensure you are muted, and use your phone to contact the committees i. T. Director. As chair, i will reserve my questions to the end. We begin by recognizing the gentlewoman from california, ms. Davis. Rep. Davis thank you, mr. Chairman. Secretary king, it is great to see you, sir. What issue one issue that goes underappreciated in Higher Education is that of campus climate. Colleges, as we all know, were built for the socalled traditional student population, largely made up of recent High School Graduates from affluent families. We know that todays students are more diverse and often older , the first in their family to go to college or from communities that have been poorly served by our colleges and universities. Not to mention early education. The protests for Racial Justice that have emerged across the country further underscored the need for our Education Systems to address systemic racism and ensure that students of color are well served and supported. Recently, the president of Johns Hopkins university revealed that in 2014, they discontinued the practice of offering students preference and admissions for having family members who also attended the university, often called legacy admissions. In the article, he recognizes this was not an easy step to take. But the shift has allowed space for Pell Grant Eligible students to enroll. Secretary king, can you further explain some of the inequities associated with legacy admissions in Higher Education. [indiscernible] rep. Davis mr. Secretary, i think we are having intervene . Can you i believe bouncing off your microphone and causing a bit of echo. Is that better . It is not. The communication was good at the beginning of your testimony. Can you mute your microphone, then unmute it again, just to try and see if ok. In the interest of time, jump offline. This may be something we need to reset. Rep. Scott have him call in the audio, the phone. Yes. Mr. Kaine, if mr. King, if you could please use a phone and call your audio again. 4155275065. Let me know if you need the access code. 6979932 is the access code. Follow the prompts in the affirmative. Can you speak again . Think you are on mute. Can you hear me now . Now, if you will use your phones butte capacity. Sounds very good. Thank you for your time and consideration. Sorry about that. In response to the question on the issue of legacy admissions, what we know is that the legacy advantage translated into as much as 45 increase in the likelihood of a student being admitted compared to a similarlysituated student who doesnt have the benefit of legacy preference. The consequence for our selective admission universities is that low income students and students of color arent are at an enduring disadvantage and are dramatically underrepresented on those campuses and institutions. It makes sense if universities are true to their commitment to a diverse student body, to eliminate legacy preferences. To really ensure that students of color are fully represented, more istive admissions, needed. Race needs to be taken into consideration in admissions policies, Financial Aid needs to be provided so that low income students can have access to those institutions. More work needs to be done to recruit a diverse faculty in a positive climate for students and specific efforts need to be made to recruit students from high school that serve large numbers of students of color. Eliminating the legacy admissions would be an important step to improving diversity on the campuses in the nation. Thank you, mr. Secretary. I think we all have to ask the question about the federal role in that. It may be encouraging and we also know that early admissions plays a bit of a role as well. Would you agree with that . Yes. For many institutions, the early admissions practice advantages those students that have the most resources. When you think about access to school counselors, we have some states where there are 500 to 600 students per counselor. Students are not able to take advantage of those early admissions processes. Thank you again. How can our institutions lead the way in dismantling and addressing the harm done to communities of color, even in a covid world where students will be offcampus . What new approaches do we have to think about . I believe i have one minute left. Campusesd media step, need to make sure students can access Higher Education. Low income students are at risk of not having devices and internet access. There is a congressional effort put forward to dedicate resources for higher ed. I think that is critical to make sure students can take advantage of higher ed this fall. Much. Nk you very good to have you with us. Dr. Fox, do you wish to be recognized . Yes sir, i do. You are recognized for five minutes. Prior to covid19, our country had record low unemployment across the board including for black, hispanic and asian workers. What Economic Conditions resulted in these low rates before the pandemic, and Congress Considers additional policy prescriptions for how areg the pandemic, negative economic effects of the pandemic different from previous economic downturns such as the 2008 financial crisis . I will start with the second question. When statesif and and localities reopen economies, there will be relatively rapid rebound of businesses that did not run out of cash. The average Small Business has about 30 to 28 days of cash on hand. For those businesses, who knows how many will rebound. Unemploymentound, should recover rapidly. That is my hope on that. Whenred to the recession there were underlying problems with the economy, particularly inflation in housing prices, we see something that can hopefully be quickly solved. In terms of your first question remind me what the first question was. What x drivers of low employment right. Something that was going on since the Great Recession of 2008, the biggest in the last several years has been tax cuts and the jobs act of 2017 and regulatory changes which allowed manufacturing jobs and other industries to hire and expand in allowed employment to rise. When employment rises, it is lower income workers that are disproportionately i do not think there were any of those proposals here. As you stated in your written testimony and research, longterm shutdown is untenable, we have no choice but to reopen covid19ly even though research on treatment continues. State lockdowns and whether it is whether to combat the coronavirus and reopen at the same time, and what effect this will have on communities. The most important thing to understand about covid19 is a disproportionate impact it has, not so much on race, but age. Due toall deaths covid19 are in people over age 65. Happening deaths are in the 0. 6 of the population of Nursing Homes. Standpoint islity not affecting younger people. There are isolated cases. In general, the probability of dying from influenza is greater in Young Children than covid19. An opportunity to reopen schools. We have to take care to make sure vulnerable teachers and school and staff are protected, and children who live with the vulnerable, grandparents and members of their household, they are protected and have resources to learn outside school. Other countries are reopening schools, and that is important for this committee to consider. Foxx , could you explain further the impact of the actions of gaza of governors who force Nursing Homes of covid19 patients discharged from hospital, can you talk and whichdeath rate states have experienced have the highest deaths . In my written testimony, i have detailed data on the share of overall covid19 deaths the percentagend of nursing home and Long Term Care facility residents who have died of covid19. The worst state is new jersey. 11 of all residents of longterm care facilities in jersey have died of covid19. New jersey is one of the states like new york, michigan and others that forced Nursing Homes people with active covid19 infections who were being discharged from hospitals, and i contribute it significant way spread of covid19. Rep. Foxx that is the same state where the state Health Director took her own mother out of a longterm care facility before she enforced thebefore so allow those people back in. That is one of the most shameful things that has happened in this country. Thank you. I yield back. The gentleman from arizona. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I appreciate the witnesses being here. About achievement gaps, people are talking about opportunity gaps and inequities in education. Have opportunity gaps become more apparent as a result of covid19. What will happen if congress does not act with the level of for some in communities of color, and the pressure to intensifies, the consequences of that on the . Ommunity at this moment, what we know funding isore of from state and local dollars. Those state and local budgets have taken a huge hit from covid19 economic crisis, and that will translate into significant cats to the School District. School districts are preparing around the country for 25 cuts in state aid. It will have a devastating impact. That could mean approaching to money and jobs lost in the Education Sector. Layoffs of teachers. The elimination of programs, particularly those that serve the most vulnerable. Happens,now if that districts will be less able to do the practices that Public Health requires to have the states reopen. Toneed congress to step in prevent those cuts, and additional resources. Thank you. In your verbal testimony, you mentioned the impact on small and the negative impact on people of color. That is so important to the recovery. [indiscernible] these Small Businesses disproportionately affected, is it appropriate and necessary for retary mnuchin [indiscernible] tot will give us a framework see what impact that money is having. Those Figures Figure should be released publicly . I do. Making sure the money goes to the greatest need. One of my concerns about the way that ppp was designed by congress is it favored medium to Large Businesses over Small Businesses, because if you are a one or two prison shop, you do not have the resources to draw that money down. The money ran out. The smallest businesses did not benefit as much as they needed to. Thank you. I yield back. Thank you. The gentleman from tennessee. He is having trouble. He is one of the members at the funeral. Mr. Thompson you are recognized for five minutes. Sorry, mr. Chairman. He is having a problem. The gentleman from michigan. Thank you, mr. Chairman. We certainly express our condolences. Going back to statements that wean about the heroes act need to understand it is a messaging piece with no expectation that it would ever pass. It is cynical to keep bringing it up as legitimate. Major citiesason with Terrible Health and education outcomes are in longheld democratic controlled government. Even in my boyhood home in chicago, the challenges are there, but it has been the efforts of longheld democratic leadership that always complains about not having the outcomes we want, and yet the policies are the same. I think it is time to stop republicans who have been evidently pushing real change that works and brought about Economic Growth in this byntry only impacted covid19. Until we stop opposing educational choice for minorities, the complaints ring hollow. We know covid19 is much more lethal for those over 65 years of age, like myself with certain chronic conditions. We have a sobering figure that shows Nursing Homes and assisted living facilities are the hardest hit victims of covid19. Over 40,000 seniors have tragically died under this care. What percentage who live in longterm care facilities, and how does that compare with the share of covid19 death . As i mentioned in my testimony, 0. 6 of american residents live in assisted living facilities, and yet represent 43 of all deaths from covid19. Unfortunately michigan was a handful of states, about five states with the governor issued an executive order forcing Nursing Homes to admit covid19 positive patients back into facilities. It is reported that this was contrary to recommendations from homes leading nursing association. How did this policy create such a dangerous situation for seniors, and what should be done to address challenges Nursing Homes face . There is no doubt governor whitmers order to force Nursing Homes to accept patients with active covid19 infections worsened the state of Nursing Homes it comes to covid19 fatalities. We mentioned one third, what the states reporting of one third of all deaths from covid19 are coming from covid19 in Nursing Homes. The integrity of the data is not clear because michigan is one of the last states to report the data. They were the third to last date based on our work. They also have had a big outbreak overall. 3 of all people in longterm facilities have died from covid19, one of the highest in the country. It is a real problem. What concerns me about michigan is that michigan refused for many weeks to disclose the nursing home vitality data until they were forced a nursing home to report that data. Week or weeky the and a half ago that michigan , but itving that data was underreported. What can be done to address data shortcomings coming forward to ensure we have the best information to make crucial policy decisions. Nursing homes are required to report fatalities to the federal government. Andonly starts on may 5, only applies to Nursing Homes and not assisted living medically for less vulnerable seniors. We will not get complete data, but that will help. The lives ofotect People Living in these Nursing Homes. We have to have strict policies about visitation from relatives, strict policies about testing staff and making sure staff cannot go from place to place. And better oversight about infection control. A lot of these were not designed to protect against infection. I yield back. Thank you. The gentleman from connecticut. Thehank you to all witnesses were being here today. I am surprised to hear mr. Value ofismissing the the provision for state local assistance, perhaps he missed it, but a couple of days ago the u. S. Chamber of commerce came out in favor of Congress Acting to provide assistance to state and local governments. They are joining jerome powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve who is highlighting that in terms of fiscal stimulus required, like the best efforts of the Federal Reserve. Group has strongly endorsed the provisions of the. Eroes act to bolster states that is not because these individuals or groups have been hijacked in a partisan way, this is about math and the erosion and collapse of state revenue that is happening across the states. In red and blue it will require Congress Take this measure up. The senate is moving toward bringing some version of fiscal stimulus. It is what the Federal Reserve is calling for. Another measure of the heroes addresses another part of the fallout from the coronavirus, which is the corrosion of Health Insurance. In your testimony you noted the fact that 30 higher than the the 2009 recession, the impact that is having on employerbased coverage. Can you talk about that in more detail . A couple of my colleagues about 16. 2 million workers likely lost their employerprovided Health Insurance. Going into the crisis, workers tocolor were like likely have employerprovided Health Insurance to begin with. They are also less likely to be insured from their employers. By providing coverage to these importantt is also for communities and workplaces to get everyone back. The heroes act requires states basically reopened their exchanges for the enrollment pe riod, and it is a 100 subsidy for cobra. People losing their benefits layoffs have some continuity of coverage, is that right . Yes. Page 10,r testimony on you alluded to the fact one of , doimpacts of the lockdown you support the cobra subsidy which the chamber of commerce has endorsed . I do not think the cobra Subsidy Program is the best way to improve we do not have a lot of time. Answer. Ld be happy to the best ways to improve the individual insurance market. Make the exchange is better by funding reinsurance that allows theiums to be lowered and aca exchanges, and more accessible to people who need insurance. We need to move away from employerbased coverage. The chamber of commerce once everyone tied to their job, we need where individuals have their own insurance. Time o think in real i will give you an example. A native american casino has 6000 workers employed at the beginning of march. They went more aggressive than the governor wanted. They shut down because of the governor lockdown. They only recalled 1500 workers, there are still 4500 people who starting on june 1 lost their health coverage. Having cobra subsidy would extend the coverage and not disrupt their access to doctors. Ofing the exchange in terms the long game, i could not agree more, but we are trying to protect people in an emergency. I think the cobra subsidy, which addresses a real need that is happening that is proportionally hitting hourly workers. Thank you. Is mr. Thompson ready . Chairman, i am ready. The gentleman from pennsylvania. Five minutes. Thank you. I am making do here. I want to thank you for making time to join us for this hearing. Is resulting in statemandated shutdowns, there has been a dramatic effect on the economy, workers and families. My home state, employment fell by more than a million nonfarm jobs in april. Employment rose by 25 million, the largest number of jobs gained on record. Are you seeing signs the economy is recovering and jobs will continue to return . We are seeing some gradual improvement from the depths of the recent lockdown, particularly as some states start to reopen, there is a clear correlation between states that have reopened or never locked down severely like that, and economic gives us hope a rebound can happen quickly as the economy is reopening. I hope we can get to that point as soon as possible. We should have gotten to that point much earlier than we have up to this point. Mr. Thompson, are you able to get your camera on . Yes, hold on a second. It should be on. It is confusing because i am using the phone to speak. Give him another 30 seconds. Thank you. Message i would like to reinforce for the committee, before we panic and look at creating we should stay the course what we were doing prior to covid19 in terms of opportunity. One of the things we have worked on in a bipartisan way has been educational training. Are issues with people whose jobs have been lost. Those jobs will be there, and focuserarching need is to on getting people access to job training for those jobs. The cdc has issued guidelines including a three phase from health officials. The guidelines are intended to upstate in local officials make decisions about reopening the economy and getting back to work while protecting lives. I know you look closely at the needs, what additional points would you like to highlight to the committee for responsibly opening businesses and society . And from my testimony, we have written extensively on how to reopen the workplace and schools. You may be on mute. I do not think i am on mute. I will start again. Know from what we put out on reopening workplaces and schools, our view is the president s plan is too cautious, particularly with schools that can reopen earlier, and workplaces for younger members of the workplace who are at low risk for serious illness or death from covid19. In that context sorry about that. I will finish the answer for the record. The most important thing we need to do, a number of states have considered and more state should consider starting the Fall School Year early to make up for lost time from the spring. In other thing we talk about is maximizing testing particular targeted and at risk populations that are asymptomatic, like children who live with grandparents or other atrisk individuals at nursing home facilities, because the more we can isolate and trace nursing home interaction, the more we can reduce the spread overall. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I yield back. Thank you. From ohio thank you so much, mr. Chairman. Once again, my colleagues on the others of the aisle live in an alternative universe with alternative facts. It is interesting to me i wonder if theyre watching the people marching in the streets today. They are marching not because they feel like marching, they are marching for justice. It would be nice if sometimes they would listen to what like people actually think that is, if they know any black people well enough to have the conversation with them. Secretary king, from your experience, what can we do at the federal level to prevent students of color from falling further behind . There is a long list. I would start with a few priorities. One is we have to save the child care sector, black and latino students are underrepresented and equality childcare, and without 50 billion to stabilize the childcare sector, we will lose many of those providers. K12, we know schools are already highly segregated by race. The strength and diversity act would help to address that and help us move towards more integrated schooling. We also desperately need resources, resources to stabilize districts budgets but also to address the learning loss, particularly students of color who are less likely to have all of the things in place necessary to benefit from Distance Learning the last few months. Many students will return to school 9, 10 months behind in learning and will need additional support, afterschool time, extended school year, intensive tutoring to address those needs. They will also need emotional and Mental Health support, as well, for many students isolated from the relationship of schools which matters so much to them. Thank you. Dr. Jones, how can we build trust between underserved communities and local institutions, including hospitals and Health Care Providers . First of all, there has to be communication. So i think that the hospitals need to be asking folks in the community, what do you need . There have to be community and Advisory Boards and the like. There has to be attention in terms of the practice and sending people away from the emergency department. So the hospitals have to be unafraid to collect data by race and actually investigate possible differences in their practice by race. And there has to be investment in the community, Community Health workers, health centers, even if they are not directly associated with the hospitals. There has to be some linkage. It gets to the question of who is at the table and who is not, what is on the agendas and what is not. As you said, so many people think they can figure out what is good for those other people. We need to have the people who are impacted by decisions at the decisionmaking table. Thank you. To go further with you, dr. Jones, can you talk a bit very closely about the impact of poverty on Health Outcomes for people of color . First of all, it does not just so happen that people of color in this country are overrepresented in poverty while white people are overrepresented in wealth. I have been writing so many notes talking about frontline workers tend to be more people of color. That does not just so happen. So we should not take that as a baseline when trying to move people from there. The first thing is it is because of historical injustices that are being perpetuated that we even see an association between social class and race. And those structural factors are part and parcel of structural or institutionalized racism, so even if we have the most successful antipoverty strategies in the world, without the antiracism strategy, we would not take care of that. Mechanisms are in housing, in our schools, in investment in communities and businesses, in green spaces, and sacrifice zones, placement of communities of color around known polluting industries and the like. So poverty and race are correlated because of structural racism. We need to understand that and have both antipoverty and antiracism strategies. Thank you so very much. Chairman, i want you to know that i learned a long time ago that if you are not at the table, you are on the menu. Black people are sick of being on the menu. I yield back. Thank you. The gentleman from kentucky, mr. Guthrie. Gentleman from alabama, mr. Burns. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I am very concerned that about a third of the people in my district are africanamerican and we know that about 50 of the people that have died from covid19 in my district are also africanamerican. There is something going on there, and it bothers me greatly. I have learned a lot from listening today. I have been doing a lot of research before today. But i think, as a nation, we need to get to the bottom of this. Something is very wrong here, and we need to address it. It is also true that a disproportionate number of people in my district who are africanamerican have been affected economically. The worst thing we can do for them, back in the spring of this year, was to shut down the American Economy, shut down society, and shut down our schools. There is no question that africanamericans in the my in my district were disproportionately affected when their jobs were wiped out. Africanamerican Small Business people lost their businesses as a result of it. And all children when home when went home when they closed the schools, but some children have parents and households that can support them while they were trying to learn from home, and far too many africanamerican children did not. So the best thing we can do here in washington, decides we have besides we have got to get to the bottom of what has happened here with the Public Health issue, is to get the American Economy going again. Without it, i am afraid we are only going to make inequality worse in this country. You know, a lot of people, and a lot of people in my district, just cannot do the jobs they were trained to do on a zoom meeting from their home. They just cannot do that. When we take their jobs away from them, we take their opportunity away from them. Mr. Roy, i would like you to discuss the precovid19 trump economys effect on disparities between whites and minority Unemployment Rates in this country. Thank you for the question. As i mentioned in my written testimony, before the pandemic, the disparities between the white and black Unemployment Rates and the disparity between white and hispanic Unemployment Rates, had reached record lows, along with the overall Unemployment Rate reaching record lows. So that was something that i think we all should have celebrated at the time. Whether we did or not, i dont know. Those disparities have come back in tremendous forms since the lockdown occurred. You have all seen the charts from bls that show the data very clearly. And if we look at asian americans, asian americans, for most of the 21st century, have had lower Unemployment Rates than whites. As a result of the economic lockdowns, that completely changed. Now asian unemployment as much, is much higher than the white Unemployment Rate. So that is useful and illustrates how the Racial Disparities that have been created by the pandemic, as opposed to the structural racism, legacy of slavery and segregation issues, we have been discussing, as well. One of the things i have also noticed, mr. Roy, is there has been an uptick in Mental Health issues as a result of lockdown. Do you have information about how that uptick in Mental Health issues has affected minority communities . It is a huge problem, so many different dimensions. You have people who were already fragile from a Mental Health standpoint who are being pushed over the edge, and then you have ordinary people who might have median or normal Mental Health prior to the pandemic who are struggling now. And there is all sorts of ways this can happen. You have people who are in isolation in their homes, not merely in terms of their employment. You have people who may be in a very crowded living facilities, particularly true in new york city were people who live in intergenerational households with maybe three generations or more living in the same space are at greater risk of transmitting covid19, let alone having potentially mental challenges. And that is disproportionately minority, disproportionately immigrant phenomenon, both in the United States and elsewhere. So there are a lot of things to be concerned about. Last question is this. What is the effect of shutting down schools on minority kids . Yeah, that is one of the most difficult things to understand from a science standpoint, what we have been so aggressive at shutting down schools. Shutting down schools can work with influenza, because influenza does kill young people, but covid19 is not influenza. It is a very different disease that seems to largely spare younger children. So if you look at countries that have reopened their schools in europe, western europe, in particular, they have done pretty well with school reopenings. We should learn from their example. Thank you very much. I yield back. Thank you. Gentleman from northern marion [indiscernible] ms. Wilson. Gentlelady from florida, ms. Wilson . Gentlelady from oregon. Thank you, mr. Chairman, and Ranking Member fox and colleagues thank you for the kind words. Thank you to the witnesses for being here for this important conversation. I am concerned about the suggestion that this is somehow a nursing home issue. A couple days ago there was an article in politico looking at harvard analysis of National Center for Health Statistics data, particularly focusing on the disparity in the latinx community. This is what it said, the danger is elevated among younger minorities, latinos age 35 to 44 have coronavirus mortality rate nearly eight times higher than white people in that age group, and black people in the same age range have a mortality rate nine times higher than white people. The inequity persists with latinos age 25 to 44 and those 45 to 54 who have a coronavirus mortality rate to be five times higher than caucasians. I am concerned this is an issue, talking about what is happening in Nursing Homes, which of course is a concern. I want to follow up on secretary kings comment about childcare care and Early Childhood education. We know the childcare sector already faced series charges, not justchallenges in oregon but across the country. There was vast unmet need, high cost for families, and also insufficient conversation for Early Childhood educators. Fixing the childcare system is important to children and families, and it is important to the economy, but it is also an issue of Racial Justice. Secretary king recognized that the childcare workforce is overwhelmingly women and predominantly women of color. There are many barriers, especially with children of color, least likely to be put in supportive childcare settings. So we have some work to do need. We need to make sure the resources are equitably distributed, and we needed dual focus, to stabilize the system but also vastly improve it. I recently released a report, childcare in crisis, for working families, children, and educators, in which i call for the passage of the childcare is essential act and the childcare for working families act, which represent a critical federal investment in childcare sector that also advances equities. Secretary king, how would providing equitable access to highquality childcare and Early Childhood education benefit children and society as a whole . And what are the repercussions, particularly for lowincome children and children of color, if we continue the status quo . Thanks so much for the question. The nobel prizewinning economist, james heckman, has written on the return on investment of Early Childhood you can get a 71, 81 return on investment because students get highquality Early Childhood education are more likely to rise from kindergarten prepared academically, more likely to graduate high school, more likely to go on to college, and more likely to have longterm economic success, and longterm Health Benefits from having participated in quality Early Childhood education. So the potential return to an investment like the childcare for working families act is quite powerful and ought to be rationale for bold action at this moment. If we fail to invest in Early Childhood, what we know is that we see the achievement gap already present in the kindergarten. Kids who are holding a book upside down because they are so unfamiliar with letters. We know there are a lot of folks who will not be able to go back to work if the childcare sector collapses, and that will disproportionately harm low income communities and communities of color. I appreciate that. I quote professor heckman in my report for that reason, that this is a good investment that actually pays for itself over time but also really gets our children, who are our future, off to a great start. Dr. Wilson, secretary king gave compelling testimony about harmful gaps in longterm outcomes for children of color, and you know that the divide has not been bridged. Educational attainment is enormously important, but why is it the institution to close labor market gaps for workers of color . Educational attainment is important because it provides mobility. No question that a worker with a higher level of education is more likely to have higher wages and be employed than one with less education. The problem in the labor market is that, at the same level of education, we see disparities in employment, as well as wages. In fact, over the last 40 years or so, the wage gap is actually grown the most among the most educated workers in our economy. So that raises another question of what is going on here, and i think it raises the issue of what we are here to discuss today, the role of Racial Discrimination and creating unequal outcomes in our economy. The federal role in education is about [inaudible] i intend to continue addressing it, and i know that is the balance of my time. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you. Gentleman from wisconsin. Thanks for having me. A little difficult to be on here because it kind of appears in this committee we are supposed to always kind of look at people racially and just not look at people as people, so i have to kind of switch my mindset for this committee. First thing, for mr. Roy, today, i do not know if you had a chance to look at it, but after yesterday we had a total of 267 lives lost due to the covid, which is, while not good news, is the lowest we have had since march 23. And i feel good about it because a lot of the socalled experts in the Public Health field were predicting disasters as states opened up their economy. Instead, we have 267 lives, we have i believe now 10 days in a row of under 1000 lives lost, so it seems as though the socalled experts have rarely been so wrong. Do you want to comment, mr. Roy, on the fact that we only had 267 lives lost . I am relying on a website that a lot of people tell me to look at that has been cited nationwide. Do you want to comment on the relatively small number of deaths now that we have had so many states open up their economies compared to where we were a month ago . Yes, all of your points i agree with. There has been a precipitous decline in the daily death rate, and the predictions of what the death rate would look like today after states reopened their economies from certain experts were completely wrong, completely wrong. By the way, we should emphasize that the impact of those experts advice on low income americans, including minority americans, has been disproportionately harmful. Ok. I think in the future, we should be a little more jaded about the Public Health establishment . Here is the thing, it is like cbo estimates. You can have a lot of expertise generally and still get predictions wrong. Predictions are not facts. What happened here is you had a lot of people making educated guesses to the best of their ability, we might say, but they were just guesses, yet we were expected to treat them like they were certainty. Thanks. My own personable weighing in, my little world and individual congressman gets, is there is a growing body of information that the way to avoid covid is have more vitamin d in your body. It is a strong correlation between vitamin d and not getting covid. Are you familiar with that sort of thing . And would it perhaps be better off rather than analyzing the chance of getting covid by race, analyzing the chance of getting covid by the amount of vitamin d in your body . As you know, correlation is not causation. The reason i mention that in this context, we do not know if the better response in people with high vitamin d is due to the presence of vitamin d or the fact that they are outdoors more. If you are outdoors and exposed to sunlight and you are not in closed, confined areas with people who are covidinfected, that seems to be a major factor vector of transmission. Outdoor infection transmission seems to be very low. But if youre in an enclosed space, like a subway in new york city, for example, or a small apartment with three generations of your family, that tends to be where the transmission occurs, or a nursing home, for example. Ok. So you would say that a lot of this advice, at least in the state of wisconsin, youre getting advised to stay indoors, lock yourself away that was exactly the opposite of the advice we should have been giving people . In fact, it is quite possible that the lockdowns worsened transmission by forcing people indoors and preventing them from being outdoors more, therefore being around other transmitters of the disease less. I want to talk about race, like i said, but vitamin d, is there any difference by race . Yeah, i do not know the data well enough to comment, so i will leave that one for now. Some of my colleagues talked about difficulty getting into college racially and such. In the state of wisconsin, very, very maybe smaller percentage than normal. I am under the impression talking to people at our university systems, they already go out of the way through affirmative action to try to push more people of color in the universities. Is that typical around the country . You know, it is typical, but i will mention, because this came up earlier in the hearing, i am coming to you from austin, texas, and the university of texas has a very interesting model in which they take the top i think the top 10 of students from every high school in the state and guarantee them admission at the university of texas. That allows you to find the high achieving students in every High School Even if that high school is in a disadvantaged area. I feel like that model could be used more widely as an alternative to affirmative action. Thank you for having us, mr. Chairman. Thank you. Next, gentleman from california. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I thank you for this very important hearing on how covid19 has increased racial inequities in the country. The shift to Distance Learning has exposed the educational inequities many students of color have been facing for decades as states open up and grapple with depleted budgets. It is the role of the federal government to ensure equity in every sector. Many colleges like the university of california system, private schools such as harvard university, have suspended the use of a. C. T. And s. A. T. Scores in the admissions process to help level the playing field. How much is the process reliant on these test scores . No question that reliance on provides the azt provides a disadvantage for students who have had less access to quality k12 preparation. There is also some evidence that suggests that those assessments, the more they are relied upon, the fewer black and latino students will be admitted. One worry i have is folks moved to test optional is that just changing the use of test scores is unlikely to produce the kind of increase in black and latino representation that we ought to see. So it is important that universities also take other steps. Financial aid is critical. Making sure that resources are available to support students as they come to campus. It is critical that colleges and universities consider race as they make admissions decisions. It is critical that they reach out to high schools that are in high needs communities so students know about the opportunities. So the test optional piece can be part of a package of efforts that would produce more diverse classes. Do you believe that, you know, we have an opportunity here with s. A. T. s and a. C. T. s now being very difficult to attain because it is inadvisable to test large numbers of students and congregate settings, and i do not think they have found a way to do testing remotely for student for security purposes and the integrity of the test. Is there an opportunity to reexamine College Admissions generally . Yeah. What i hope colleges and universities will do is look at their entire admissions process and ask what more can they do to make sure they have a representative class . More low income students, more students of color, more firstgeneration students. And they ought to also consider the role of extracurricular activities. They ought to credit the students who work in their familys bodega each night the same way they credit playing on the lacrosse team, for example. You know, many schools will have ap programs. These programs also rely on some form of testing. But im worried about those schools that do not have a history of strong curriculum and that universities may be looking and favoring students who come from schools with a history of teachers who can teach these curricula which often are not offered to lowincome and minority students. Exactly right. They are typically underrepresented and access to ap, and it is a problem across schools and within schools. Students of color are less likely to be in schools that offer those courses. And even when they are in schools that offer those courses, they are underrepresented really have to under representative relative to their population. We know there is implicit bias that affects who gets referred to those courses. In some cases, there is automatic enrollment to those who qualify to try to reduce the role of implicit bias. Of course, i have long thought about how we have an alternative to access to higher ed where the gateways are kind of characterized by testing, different kinds of admissions testing. I have long been interested in concurrent enrollment strategies, such as College High Schools i would like to think about alternatives such as that. The dual programs can increase the likelihood of those students graduating from high school and going on to college. The challenge is the district that needs the dual Enrollment Programs the most of the ones with the least resources, so we really need the infusion of additional dollars for k12 and the Higher Ed Institutions that serve high needs communities. It does take resources to make sure that they have the teachers who are qualified to teach those courses, who know about the pedagogy. The School Systems will need support in implementing the strategies of dual enrollment in the College High Schools. Exactly right. And we know that low income students and students of color are disproportionately enrolled in the districts getting the least resources, and that is likely to get worse if states have to make huge cuts as a result of the covid19 economic crisis. You talked about the maintenance of equity requirement. We will not have time. I yield back, but wonderful to talk to you, mr. King. Thank you so much. Thank you. Next, gentlelady from new york. Gentleman from georgia. Mr. Chairman, i want to say that he had to step out, so thank you. Thank you. She had to leave, but i wanted to call her name just in case she stepped back in. Mr. Allen from georgia. Yes, sir. Can you hear me . I can hear you. Super. Thank you for holding this hearing today. One of the things that i brought up in the last hearing, and i wanted to make sure that we had some feedback on this, is, you know, in 2018, our federal spending was about 4 trillion. Then in 2020 that has gone up substantially. Trillion,about 3 trillion, and48 discretionary up about 500 billion. Is simply this. This is to mr. Roy. Almost 4ent about trillion since covid19. You have heard mention the heroes act with an additional 3 trillion which would just about triple, more than triple discretionary spending. Situationooked at the as far as discretionary as far as the spending goes, and its impact on the people of this country . Liked that, i do not mind doing debt when you have collateral, but it looks to that we are on a downward spiral that will not be good for anybody in this country. Can you comment on that . Can you comment on that, mr. Roy . Mr. Allen, it is interesting because tomorrow im has dried fight testify gate for the house budget may on this topic. How the combination of congressional spending and declining revenue from the lockdowns is going to lead to a massive explosion of the deficit this year. By the way all that does is move closer to us, the ultimate fiscal reckoning which will happen, when we have two crashes federal federal spending when we have to crash federal spending because nobody wants to buy Treasury Bonds because the u. S. Is insolvent. Who will that harm . Mostly people who are dependent on public assistance, medicare, social security. So the more we destabilize our fiscal situation the more we are putting at risk economically vulnerable populations. We have had to deal with the covid19 crisis. And the next it looks like if we do not do something about it, do believe that fiscal crisis is coming upon us, and rapidly . In both directions. Who knows, we cannot protect when the fiscal crisis will come, from the debt we are piling on year after year. But we know that it will come because the laws of math and economics, we do not get an exception from those loss in the United States. And really the only way to overcome where we are is a Strong Economy. As far as the workers that were affected, the workers that benefited from our Strong Economy, three months ago 22 trillion going on three 2320 going on 23 trillion. Who benefited most from that Strong Economy . Low income americans. The disparity between the white and hispanic Unemployment Rates were at record lows prior to the pandemic, and those disparities have now widened. The lockdown is driving those disparities. As far as the Biggest Issue, and we have one minute, the Biggest Issue in my district is people who are on unemployment, including the 600 onus, do not want to return to work and theres a lot of animosity between the employers and the employees about returning to work. Have you looked at how this is affecting folks going back to work and rebuilding this economy . There is no doubt that the 600 bonus is retarding the recovery, even in those states that have reopened, because people have a powerful economic incentive. You cannot blame them for it. A powerful economic incentive to stay on the sidelines. So i would love for congress to revisit that piece of legislation, and reform the bonus so it is more targeted to the people who truly need the help. Good, and of course the liability question is the other issue we have out there as far as employers worried about liability and bringing their employees back to work as far as lawsuits. Yes. What is your take on that . It is absolutely a very Important Program problem. If congress is set to vita safe harbor for people to go back to work and employers to open the doors it would be important. From North Carolina, dr. Adams . The heroes act requires osha to issue a temporary Emergency Temporary Standard that requires employers to develop and implement an Infectious Disease plan, to protect workers from exposure to the coronavirus. This provision also makes it a violation of the osha act to retaliate against workers for raising concerns to the employer or to the government about inadequate Infectious Disease protection. Dr. Wilson, in your expert opinion, is an enforceable safety standard a necessary step to economic recovery . Or what it impede economic recovery . I think it is a necessary step to economic recovery. Ensuring the health and safety of American Workers and communities across the country are a critical step in building a solid recovery. We know from surveys that 60 of those who work outside their home expressed that they have concerns about contracting coronavirus. Among workers of color, black and latino workers in particular, it is closer to 70 of those workers expressing concern, in addition to the fact that they express greater concerns about retaliation as a of speaking up against that. So it is very important that the workers, as workers go back to work and as frontline workers who are already out there, that workers are empowered to advocate for protection of their own personal self health and safety as well as the health and safety of American Workers. Thank you very much. According to research from the brookings institute, we can expect 40 of borrowers to default on their loans by 2023. That does not begin to account for the impact of the covid crisis. To me this indicates Student Loans and a default crisis. We know certain students are at greater risk of default. The study find the rate of default for students across schools is four times that of students who attend committee colleges. Black borrowers who have completed a bachelors degree default at five times the rate of white borrowers complete their degrees, and are more likely to default than white borrowers who leave College Without a degree. I am concerned the student loan default crisis will worsen in the wake of covid19. Secretary, what can you tell us about those who struggle most to pay back their loans . And what you see covid19, how do see it impacting these struggling borrowers . Thank you, congresswoman. Certainly the racial wealth gap is driving the degree to which black students are disproportionately likely to default on their loans at every income level, even at the highest income levels, black students are still seven times as likely to default as white students. The key is, to provide targeted debt relief, to try to address this. And to ensure that college is more affordable. If you look at the amount of the cost of attending a Public College, that was covered by pell grant in 1980, it was 80 . Today that is down to 28 . We need to make sure college is affordable for all students. That investment in Higher Education will have longterm benefits for our economy. That was going to be my last followup question, what can congress do, and i believe you have answered that. Thank you for your work and thanks to each of our individuals who came to testify. From pennsylvania, mr. Smucker . Thank you. I want to go back to the discussion around the disproportionate deaths in Nursing Homes. My district is home to a high number of Senior Housing facilities, Nursing Homes and assisted living facilities and other senior residential communities. My state, Governor Wolf in pennsylvania, was one of five governors who made the decision to force Nursing Homes to take covid positive patients. Many Nursing Homes were not in a good position to handle infection, or prevent the growth of infection and they were at capacity. I talked to nursing home workers and administrators who are frustrated when they were at 98 capacity in one case, difficult to isolate patients. We were moving patients, the governor was moving patients to the Nursing Homes in the hospitals were virtually empty edward best equipped to handle this. The impact virtually empty and the hospitals were best equipped to handle this. Nearly 70 of the deaths in pennsylvania have occurred in Nursing Homes. 6,426 deaths in pennsylvania and more than 4000 in Nursing Homes. To make the decision worse, at the same time, the governor was not adequately prioritizing Nursing Homes for ppe. They were receiving ppe only after hospitals had what they needed, so it was devastating. 4,389 deaths in Nursing Homes in pennsylvania, how many of those can be attributed to that policy . Mr. Smucker, good to see you. I do not know the answer to that because we have to look facility by facility in a retrospective analysis. I hope those are done by researchers when we have more time to look at this problem. It is a catastrophe. 68 of all deaths in pennsylvania are in Nursing Homes. And by the way one thing apart to mention his this was not, some, look at what happened and we should not have done that, at the time governors put these orders into effect, the Nursing Home Community was up in arms fighting these orders, arguing they would devastate. You are exactly right and i was talking to them at the time and they were desperate for help. It was in pennsylvania and not new jersey where the secretary of health removed her mother from a nursing home in the mist of the crisis, think about that. And telling pennsylvanians it was safe to keep your loved ones there. It is frustrating and it makes me angry to understand what has happened. One of the things i have not heard, can you shed light on disproportionate impacts of nursing home residents who are minorities . Are there more minorities who have died in Nursing Homes as well as in the general population . As i mentioned in my written testimony we have tried to do that work so we have done some basic correlations and regression analyses of racial demographics at the state level and nursing home fatalities. At the state level we do not see a correlation. We hope that county by county we can see if there more correlations of the county level or at the facility level, but we do not know yet. We have continued to be in lockdown and a shutdown in pennsylvania. How do you think that would have changed had we given adequate consideration to have any of the deaths were, we were seeing that in Nursing Homes . This is the two points i really want to drive home in this hearing. The first is that we did not do enough to protect people in Nursing Homes who are disproportionally nonwhite. The second thing is that in the state like pennsylvania where 70 are happening in Nursing Homes, that means the risk for the average pennsylvanian is not in a nursing home, the 99. 4 of pennsylvanians who do not live in Nursing Homes, the risk is cut by two thirds which means you can do more to reopen the economy and schools and we have unnecessarily harmed populations. [loud beeping] the gentleman from california . From new jersey, mr. Norquest . Thank you. I want to follow up. We hear about the Fiscal Health of our country. Obviously very important. For those discussing the debt, apparently that was not an issue when they get away 1. 3 trillion to the top 1 which now shows they are not paying anywhere close. And the unfunded wars. If we were in a war, would we talk about the debt . No, we would talk do what we have to do is a country. And we are in a war, except it is the virus. Nursing homes, i keep hearing are crucial. So hospitals. The difference is Nursing Homes were not prepared. Nursing homes take into consideration medical considerations. They do not have to ppe, they did not have the respirators or hvac systems. And the workers, pay them a living wage and they would not have to go from nursing home to nursing home. With that said, i want to talk about schools. When we look look at what is going on and my colic talked college talked about the osha standard. Right now there are only guidelines. Can you talk about the difference schools, particularly in areas with challenges to the budget, urban areas, that if you have a standard which we have talked about quite a bit here, we would know how to prepare for it. We are in june, july, august, the construction. For schools. Yet we are not seeing schools follow any standard. [indiscernible] kids are coming back. What is going to happen if they do not have the facility set up for covid, dr. Wilson . That is the question most of us do not look forward to seeing the answer to it for schools and facilities that are unprepared to welcome back students and large numbers as well as teachers and faculty and staff. So, having standards in place, so students are safe. So teachers and staff are safe, is essential to reopening. That is a part of our recovery. Part of the recovery is people having confidence that they can safely return to work, safely return to schools, safely return to their way of living without putting their health at risk. Right now if i understand, most schools [indiscernible] many states have what they call public osha determined by the state, yet even though states are not accepting the standards. Do you see, in september when children go back, what confidence in september when children go back, what confidence with parents have that the school is ready for it . I do not know that parents will feel very confident in sending their children back to school if we do not have consistent enforceable standards that are in place to protect students, teachers and other staff at schools. So what we see is, we heard about safe harbor in that discussion and that can happen. But without standards everyone is doing their own thing. For those focus more on the economy than people you represent, i want to say one thing. Theres an old saying, those with the most toys or money when they die, when. Win. But it does not matter how much money you have when you die. Gentleman from indiana, mr. Banks . Gentleman from North Carolina, mr. Walker . Gentlemen from kentucky . Gentleman from idaho . Gentleman from kansas, mr. Watkins . Gentleman from texas, mr. Wright . From pennsylvania, mr. Mr. Meusser . Thank you. Data suggests we had the strongest economy in 50 years prior to the covid academic , pandemic. Does the data also support that this economy was very beneficial to low income minority americans . Yes, sir. The Unemployment Rate for africanamericans, hispanics and minorities overall was at record lows prior to the pandemic. Would you say the improvement in our economy was a significant improvement economically for americans including low income men minority workers . Having the under plummet rate rate at record lows is obviously an important achievement but not the only thing we have to do to ensure all americans prosper. We have to bring income and wealth up and things like that. But we were headed in the right direction. Thanks. Does the data projections suggest a safe opening will have dramatic improvements for low income americans and minorities . Certainly i think the dispersion of policy responses we are seeing now so if we compare florida which never locked down severely and then reopened early on, relative to other states, the Economic Performance of all people and certainly of economically vulnerable populations is much greater there than elsewhere. So the safe opening of schools . The safe opening of Small Businesses . Very important for our overall economy . As well for low income minorities . Especially so and this is not just 82020 thing. If you look historically at any time in which we have had a severe recession, whether in the early 1980s or 2008, minorities and lowincome income americans were always the ones most harmed. Economic growth helps economically Vulnerable People more than it helps the people who are already prosperous . Right. So Small Businesses and particularly schools are very concerned about liability. Passing liability to hold harmless schools and businesses i am told by schools is critical. A Liability Reform bill would be important for low income and minority students as well as workers . It is essential, obviously a lot of reopening policy its not the state level by congress is in a position to act on the liability issue and it is arguably the most important policy to get reopening to work a safe reopening to work. You would agree that a transportation infrastructure bill would be important for all americans according minority and low income . It depends on the details but it would be useful particularly when you think about Public Transportation and the sanitary concerns about Public Transportation is something we need to address. You are a data driven individual. I want to ask about Nursing Homes. In pennsylvania. And we have 70 of our fatalities Nursing Homes. In Washington State and other areas in early march, we soffit we saw fatalities occurring in Nursing Homes, how can we explain that two weeks after that, on march 18, some states including pennsylvania, order patients from the hospital with coronavirus back to a nursing home . And as congressman smucker said earlier, the Nursing Homes were at capacity with them at its base and hospitals were at 20 capacity maybe. How can you explain that . How can summit he see the data and make that decision . It was clearly a reckless and catastrophic decision. What they would say in hindsight i suppose, is, well, we were worried the hospitals would get overwhelmed with Covid Patients and that is why we wanted the Nursing Homes to accept the least severely l of those actively infected Covid Patients. That was a wrong way to think about it. If you worsen the disease in Nursing Homes you will have more people come to icus and to hospitals because the people most at risk of dying or beaks really help were nursing home population. [loud whistle] gentlelady from washington . Thank you. I have been surprised to share comments around lockdown somehow harming our efforts on covered given that Washington State was the first state to have a case and we have managed it remarkably well. Through aggressive lockdown policies. I think the data has shown this was exactly the right approach. I would like to focus on people of color and health care. We know people of color are disproportionately on the front lines as healthcare workers, janitors, Postal Service employs and farmworkers. People of color are overrepresented among covid19 cases, with black americans four times more likely to die from covid19 than white americans, and latin x people comprising a greater share of covid19 cases than their share of the publishing in 42 states. They have allowed us, frankly, to stay safe, while they have been risking their own lives. Yet we continue to fail communities of color by not insuring Equitable Health care for all. We know that people of color are disproportionately lacking access to health care, representing over half of americas over uninsured population. Why do people of color are lack access to health care . A lot of disproportionate lack of access to health care is related to the fact that for so many of us, Health Insurance is connected to employment. We know there are persistent disparities in the labor market, in terms of implement outcomes and also the kinds of jobs or positions peoples hold and the disparities that exist across those different kinds of occupations. Whether a fulltime employee or parttime employee. Between us disparities in employment, on top of the occupational segregation that tense about workers of color in occupations where they are less likely to have employerprovided Health Insurance, all that contributes to disparities in Health Insurance. The crisis has made it clear need to address these inequities by on tethering health care from employment. What other steps should we be taking right now in the midst of the pandemic to address inequities in access to health care . It is important we consider how in the Current Situation we can make universal coverage available to everyone. That would include people not having to pay additional money to be tested or to get treatment for covid19. This is a unique situation we find ourselves in and it is important people have the confidence to go and get care and testing and treatment that is essential for fighting the virus and for building a followup success. Thank you. This pandemic has made it clear when some members of our communities are excluded from equitable access to necessary resources and services, it hurts us all. The pandemic, obviously free testing and treatment at the eventual vaccine for covid19 is critical. As more and more people lose their employment, lose their source of income, almost 44 million americans without, that have filed unappointed claims unemployment claims and 27 minimum who have lost health care, the reality is they also have other Health Care Needs that are going to need to be covered. And that is why i have introduced the edit care Crisis Program act, which would expand Medicaid Eligibility to those who are uninsured and extend medicare to recently unemployed individuals and their households during the covid19 crisis. Dr. Wilson, should access to health care be tied to employment . Who does this benefit and who does that leave out . Again, when we are talking about what needs to be done to make sure we are living and a more equitable society, [beeping] there are clear and persistent labor disparities Racial Disparities and gender disparities that tying Health Insurance to employment is not the wet best way of achieving a more equitable solution to the lack of Health Insurance, unless we are also addressing those underlying disparities in the labor market. Thank you so much for your testimony and your work. I do not think anyone can make the case that the Current Health care system is working for. Covid19 has provided a clear case that when health care is provided by an employer, and somehow tethered to our work, access to that health care is just as volatile as your employment status. So we are working hard to rectify that. And we must boldly call out this systemic inequities in our Health Care System, and achieve Health Justice as a meaningful and necessary step toward racial injustice. In my view the best way to do that is provide universal Health Care Coverage for everybody, from the government as so many other countries do. Chairman scott the gentleman from kansas . Thank you. It is important now. Chairman scott you are recognized for five minutes. Thank you. Mr. Roy, the cbo estimates we may never return to the record low Unemployment Rates of recent years. I believe we can safely get people back to work faster than economic estimates but what is your sense of how quickly jobs can return . Mr. Roy i think many jobs can return quickly. What i am more concerned with is not so much jobs returning quickly. I think a lot of jobs can return quickly as the economy reopens. I think there are certain sectors that will be more challenging, hospitality, bars, airlines will be more , challenging. The bulk of the economy i think can come back. The one thing i worry about a lot is consolidation. We have had Small Businesses get absolutely crushed, because they dont have the cash reserves and leverage to stay afloat if we are going to lockdown the economy for this long. And i fear what we will see is a lot of bigbox large multinational corporations fill up the space Small Business and entrepreneurs are not able to fill because they are more economically unstable. Thank you. Mr. Or come that we are beginning to understand the impact of covid19, and the impact that the state imposed lockdowns have had on the american worker. How damaging were stateimposed lockdowns, and could you comment on what the impacts were for businesses and Small Businesses . On Small Businesses versus Large Businesses . Rory in the paper included in mr. Roy in the paper included n our written testimony, we document a lot of research out there that Small Businesses have 28 days of cash on average in reserve if they do not have revenue. And for certain types of businesses like restaurants, retail shops, repair shops, it is more like two weeks. Those businesses have gone belly up. Over 100,000 have closed indefinitely. The true number might be much higher. In terms of how to get the economy on track, the states that have reopened have shown a rebound for the most part, with the exception of some sectors i mentioned. Thank you. You mentioned limiting Companies Liability is such a critical component. Is there a precedent i could look back to as a baseline to understand . Roy im sure there is and i would have to go back and look to see if theres one that makes sense here so i do not have a good answer now. Sure, and i mentioned earlier that the tax cuts and jobs act and deregulation were a few of the main reasons for such a Strong Economy and low unemployment before covid19. Can you expand upon that . And touch on how we can continue to grow these policies . And how could these policies help our economy bounce back in response to this downturn . Mr. Roy there are some anything to say about this and we do not have time to go through them all taxcut and jobs cut, particularly reducing the Corporate Tax rate to a level that is more competitive with other countries meant that a lot of multinationals that were moving jobs out of the u. S. To other countries like ireland and canada are moving those jobs back to United States. Watkins understood. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, i yield the balance of my time. Chairman scott thank you. Mr. Chairman, i know that you have favored the gentleman from virginia before, but today, you are disfavoring him. You keep skipping over him. He has been with us from the beginning and you have gone over him time after time. I would ask that you come back to mr. Klein. Chairman scott thank you. I appreciate that and i apologize to my distinguished colleague from virginia. The gentlelady from floor to has returned. Miss wilson, you are recognized for five minutes. Rep. Wilson thank you, chairman scott, and Ranking Member foxx theholding a hearing on covid pandemic has widened racial in the cruising education, health, and workforce. This challenges us to think more critically about the impact of systemic racism in our nation. This is necessary if we are to move this country closer to a more perfect union, spoken about in the preamble to our constitution. We must acknowledge the role that race plays in the distribution of wealth and benefits in this country if we are to address at. Part of that acknowledgment comes in the form of pointing out the disparities, impacts that catastrophic event have on black and minority communities. Many of us have heard the old saying that when america gets a cold black america gets , pneumonia. That happens to black america when america has a pandemic. That negative Health Outcomes and disproportionately negative education outcomes and is purportedly negative employment outcomes. So i have a question. My question is for dr. Wilson. In the aftermath of the Great Recession, you and your fellow economists sounded the alarm about elevated levels of longterm unemployment which disproportionally affected africanAmerican Workers. What is longterm unemployment and do we need to be afraid , that longterm unemployment will surge again among workers of color in this crisis . Dr. Wilson thank you for that question. Longterm unemployment is defined by people being unemployed for 26 weeks or longer. We saw extended, higher rates of longterm unemployment and extended duration unemployment during the Great Recession, because of the length of time it took for the economy to fully recover, thus reaching communities of color later in that recovering as opposed to sooner. I think when we look at our Current Situation, it is reasonable to have concerns about whether we are going to see that same kind of pattern. Looking at one month out of data that we saw in may, where the black Unemployment Rate picked up while the overall Unemployment Rate to client, suggests covering may not be as even as the initial impact the pandemic had on the economy. The longterm Unemployment Rate and the evenness are both issues. Rep. Wilson what policy solutions can prevent longterm unemployment, particularly for workers of color, black workers, hispanic workers. Dr. Wilson to prevent longterm unemployment it is essential to get the economy reopened at people back to work as safely and quickly as possible. Prioritizing full employment, both in terms of policy decisions as well as fiscal policy decisions can help. Targeting efforts to create jobs whereerserved communities rates of unemployment are chronically much higher are ways to address Public Health issues and the jobs. Out wilson as you pointed black and hispanic workers often , continue to experience recessionlevel conditions long after the overall Unemployment Rate drops below 4 or 5 . After the Great Recession black , and hispanic workers suffered for years after the economy appeared to be fully recovered for white workers. Thinking ahead to this economic recovery, im curious whether you believe the Federal Reserve and policymakers need to shift how we define full employment. What effect could shifting this measure have on Racial Equity for workers . Dr. Wilson i think in order to more accurately evaluate full employment, we have to consider the different rates of unemployment that exist across communities. It goes beyond looking at one number. One example that has consistently overestimated where unemployment should be in order to have a full and equally shared recovery requires we Pay Attention to what is going on at different communities. Full employment should not be declared until we see recovery happening in our communities across race. In all communities of race. Rep. Wilson i yield back. Chairman scott thank you. And now, my distinguished colleague from virginia, mr. Klein. I apologize for skipping over your. Rep. Cline i understand, i have enjoyed the conversation. [laughter] thank you. Here in virginia our governor has placed restrictions on places of work. Settings from state to state, workplace settings vary greatly with respect to how much risk of covid19 spread exists for workers, and for customers. Have the restrictions of different states contributed to the impact of covid19 on minority communities, and have the restrictions recognized the differences, and should states refine these restrictions based on actual risk present . One great example of this is the towns on the border between virginia and tennessee. Tennessee has pursued a policy of opening. They have also done a far better job of controlling the spread of covid19 in Nursing Homes and have also had a more open economy. So, in tennessee, we are seeing a better performance for economically vulnerable populations and also a better turnaround for medically vulnerable populations, a better performance than virginia. Yet virginia is continuing to lock down in one of the most aggressive states in the country with economic restrictions relative to their actual Public Health utility. You. Cline thank we are hoping we can see some loosening of those restrictions and some improvements in economically vulnerable areas of the state, i think it goes to your point. Another question relating to Higher Education, some students are really yearning to participate in normal oncampus college experience. What should they be aware of as in ahead to a school couple months, and what can they do to minimize the risk of contracting the coronavirus . As a followup, how can students diminish the likelihood of passing the virus on to older family members they have at home . Mr. Roy another good question. It will be part of the oncoming report who will be putting on reopening schools, including secondary educational facilities. You want to obviously adjust campuses to have a little more physical distancing. Students, may be some particularly for most colleges, you dont have to have everyone in the dormitories. In fact, most colleges do not have enough housing spaces to house most students. Allowing students and enabling students to come to class from home is going to be very important, particularly those who are in more vulnerable populations. On the flipside, maybe you have a student who needs to live in the dormitory because that is a way of avoiding being around their grandparents or other atrisk individuals. So it is important for the housing policies of colleges and postsecondary facilities to take into account the individual risks of students. Safe,nt to be careful and particularly around older staff. Of the but in general, people in the age bracket of colleges are very low risk of severe illness and mortality from covid. I would recommend to this committee if members have not already reviewed it, the testimony to the Senate Health committee from the purdue president , mitch daniels, which was very compelling on these points. Rep. Cline i appreciate that. Not only does the sixth district has more colleges and any otheres than Congressional District save one we also in boston, but have James Madison university in harrisonburg, which is a coronavirus hotspot. A scenario to be when they return to campus, where there is going to have to be a lot of education and a lot of work on the part of the whole community to ensure that the Community Stays safe and our efforts to bring the numbers down continues aggressively. So thank you for your answers to those questions. Whatever time i have remaining, i am happy to yield to the Ranking Member. Ranking member foxx thank you. Mr. Roy , as you mentioned in low incomeony, students and students of color have experienced disproportionately negative impacts from the School Closures. Given the body of Research Showing improved educational outcomes for participants of choice programs and their overwhelmingly bipartisan support among the public do you think congress should examine ways of expanding school and choice as we to consider the possibility of future aid packages . Mr. Roy there is a lot to consider. One is that School Choice can be useful in allowing students to have inperson instruction in lesshotspot areas. If you live in areas where the pandemic has had an outbreak needed education, School Choice might allow you to get education somewhere else. Also what is important as a component of choice is not just choice of school but choice in a particular class. Maybe there is a student who is really good at math, but his high school does not have the capacity to teach him say ap calculus, he can i through a educationallar choice, he can get instruction from a Different School or teacher. There are elements to disaggregating School Choice into a broader concept of educational choice. Our scholar has been one of the pioneers in that area. Ranking member foxx i would like to note that Thomas Sowell has a wonderful in the wall street journal about School Choice among minority and low income students. [beeping] chairman scott thank you. Gentleman from new york, mr. Marelli . Mr. Marelli thank you, mr. Chairman. I want to acknowledge and appreciate you and your staff. You for providing this committee with yet another opportunity to continue this work. I appreciate all the work you and your staff have done, just wanted to acknowledge that. Since march, our nation has faced insurmountable challenges and heart changing losses. The virus doesnt play by the rules. Largely relied on reacting to these unprecedented crises to support communities and constituents. As we regain footing in many places, we have a real opportunity and responsible date to take intentional and preemptive action to safeguard the nation against further fallout. We talked about that racial and ethnic inequities that have existed for generations, but the virus is bringing that into stark relief. And demonstrating to our nation how deep these in a these go. I want to point out a bit of data from a group called common , a notforprofit in rochester, and the Monroe County Public Health department. Here in rochester we have four times the rate of infection and five times the hospitalization rate and 2. 5 times the mortality rate among our lack citizens and our black citizens and people of color in our community. The statistics are unacceptable and represent the deeply entrenched inequalities and inequities and barriers to communities of color. So, as we have discussed in the hearing today and the hearing depths go deep. Last week we talked about education and inequities in our educational system which are staggering. The digital divide. How difficult it is and how unprepared and under resourced many of our institutions serving low income students are. As we begin to rebuild our community, it is critical we look at recovery through the lens of addressing these underlying social determinants of health, education and economic stability. Im got a couple of questions. But before i do that, i want to acknowledge my good friend, mr. King. Before serving as secretary of education, he was commissioner of schools in new york and he and i worked on several projects together. To thank him for being here as well as all the other panelists. I do that, dr. Jones, you mentioned in your testimony that you essentially invited a question or ask about an allegory which talks about structural racism. I dont think anyone has done that. I would like to hear that. Dr. Wilson i will do it quickly because i know you also want to ask a question of the secretary. This is an allegory based on my life. The moral is racism exists. So when i was a medical student, i was studying long and hard one saturday with some friends. We got hungry and i had no food in the apartment, and we decided to go into town to find something to eat. He find a restaurant, we walk in a sit down menus presented. , we place our order and food is served. Not a remarkable story yet. But as i sat there with my friends eating, i noticed across the room a sign, it was a startling revelation about racism. What did the sign say . The sign said open. , if i had not thought more about it, i would have assumed that other hungry people could walk in and eat. Because i knew of the twosided nature of the sign, i recognize now that because of the hour, the restaurant was closed, and other hungry people just a few feet away from me on the other side of the sign would not be able to come in and sit down and order food and eat. I understand how racism structures open and closed signs in society. For those in the restaurant at the table of opportunity eating they look up and see a sign that says they dont recognize that there is a twosided sign going on because it is difficult for any of us to recognize the system of inequity that over privileges us. It is difficult for men to recognize centuries of sexism. It proclaims closed to them, but vacancy people inside eating. For those inside the restaurant to ask, is there really a twosided side and does racism really exists . I would say, yes. It is part of your privileges not to know. If youn you do know, care about those on the other side of the sign, you can talk to the Restaurant Owner inside with usa, there are hungry people inside with you and say, there are hungry people inside, open the door. At least you will not be sitting back saying, wonder why they dont just come in and eat. Because now you understand more about the sign. I will not go much more deeply into it, thank you for asking. Rep. Morelle i appreciate all the panelists and all the work they are doing. Chairman scott thank you. Gentleman from south dakota, mr. Johnson . Mr. Roy, i was intrigued by the conversation you and representative cline were talking about reopening in the fall focused largely on the collegiate system. Lets talk about the k12 environment. If you were giving advice to School Board Members or administrators who wanted to make sure that they reopened in an appropriate and safe way in the fall, what guidance would you provide them . Chairman scott mr. Roy, you are muted. Mr. Roy excuse me for that, i m sorry. As i mentioned in my testimony, we have a paper forthcoming on this topic, which i am happy to share with you once it is out in a few days. Let me start with one thing, we are going to have to make some accommodations for people who cant physically attend school. So if you are a child who lives with you grandparents or other atrisk individuals in your household, those are individuals who will need to stay home. Who aree teachers elderly or atrisk who similarly will need paid leave or other accommodations. Leaving those two aside, what can we do for other individuals . One thing we have been working on with some of my coauthors is at the state level, centralizing the virtual curriculum, so you dont need the burden on an individual School District to create the virtual curriculum that runs in parallel to the inperson crew . Have that done at the state level so if you have a student who needs to stay home, there is a process that is scaled up more and runs in parallel to the state. And leverages resources of a state rather than a district level. For people who are able to go to school, we can be more confident the risk of transmission is low. We have a lot of research from outside the u. S. That shows transmission of covid19 in children is very low. For example, in iceland, they did a study of the entire population of iceland and found there was not a single incident of a child transmitting covid to his or her parents, which is pretty remarkable given that they live together and are around each other all the time. That gives us a lot of confidence that children are not vectors of transmission and that means a lot of the precautions schools are making regarding we , we only have to have classes of six people, say, or desks have to be six feet apart we dont necessarily know if that is true. I think School Districts should take that into account. Rep. Johnson thank you, mr. Roy. I would like to yield the rest of my time to the Ranking Member. Thank you,ber foxx mr. Johnson. Mr. Roy, lets follow up on mr. Johnsons questions. As these restrictions are being raised, they are very blunt instruments. Everything shuts down. They are being lifted now. How should states continue to approach their decisions to lift restrictions allowing businesses and schools to reopen while keeping people safe . It is a very instructive example that you gave us from iceland. Know for example, at least there is a lot of evidence accumulating that children are not vectors of transmission, which gives us more confidence when it comes to reopening Childcare Centers and k12 schools, even potentially Postsecondary College instruction. We have to obviously do more research to confirm this but we have good reason to believe that will work. Mentioned, a lot of European Countries germany, gotzerland, austria, i could on, have reopened schools without an impact on their caseload and hospital load, etc. , from covid19. All that seems to indicate that your vulnerability to covid is the degree to which you are a vector of transmission. So again, for those reasons, we have a reason to be hopeful and optimistic that younger populations can go back to work, and also younger workers can go back to work. When it comes to reopening workplaces, states can think about industries, sectors and businesses in which the workplace is disproportionately younger. Those are things you can bring back more quickly for states that are even more hesitant. Yeah. thank member foxx than you, mr. Johnson. I yield back. Chairman scott thank you. Gentlelady from pennsylvania . Wild . Rep. Wild i am here. This question is for dr. Jones. 60 jones, only eight of the retail drivethrough covid19 that have opened a spot of the president ial administrations Publicprivate Partnership are located in black communities. A company in my Congressional District has received grant money for the development of rapid self covid tests an an athome test. , how important is it that the federal government permit these tests to be purchased overthecounter and without a prescription . And subsidize the cost of these them, and or somehow make free, and also require that insurance covers these tests and alsoostsharing, fund the u. S. Postal service so that people can receive these tests without having to travel to the store . Jones it is very important that we increase testing in the commodities hardest hit. That is the first thing. I have not researched the new athome tests you were talking about. I would say additional ways to support testing in communities is to work with community organizations, work with the y, work with others who are placed in community. Because i dont not about that particular test rep. Wild just to clarify, the test is not yet available. A company is working on it and developing it, but it is anticipated and it will be available this year. Dr. Jones i do not think it should be about the test center is not in your neighborhood you will have to default to a home test. I think we need to make sure we have the same level of testing availability in all of our communities, and perhaps more in the hardesthit communities. So, nothing good or bad about that test, it doesnt answer the question of why we dont have more testing in our most heavily hit communities . We need to have different partners and different strategies. We need to invest in minorityowned businesses in those communities to do the testing, because it could be that if you do your home test that something about the communication where should you go based on those results, how should you perceive you extra health care, might be lost. So yes, good for that. But not as a substitute. Thank you very much. Very helpful. I would like to address the next question to dr. King. I wanted to make this quick. We know that even before covid struck, far too many students were leaving college before earning their certificate or degree, and this has been disproportionately likely to occur among low income and students of color. I am deeply concerned with the health pandemic, that the small progress we may have made on increasing the rate of College Completion will vanish. Could you discuss the inequities in College Graduation rates among different types of students, and whether we have actually made progress in closing that completion gap among lowincome students and students of color . It is on mute. Rep. Wild that is to dr. King. Chairman scott dr. King, you are still on mute. Rep. Wild did we lose dr. King . Can you hear me . Rep. Wild now, we can. Yes. Thank you. Dr. King thank you. We absolutely have significant disparities for low income students and students of color in completion, and we know some of that is driven by financial gaps. Those students are more likely to be negatively impacted by a loss of employment, change in their Family Financial situation. They are particularly vulnerable if the universities are struggling financially, which is the case for many of our public institutions, particularly if they make cuts as a result of the covid19 crisis. We need resources. We also know that targeted sfvestments like the cuny program just doubled completion rates in committee colleges, a mix of Financial Support and better advising. Those can actually lower the per graduate cost in the long run if we make those kinds of investments. Rep. Wild thank you very much. With that, i yield back, mr. Chairman. Chairman scott thank you. Gentleman from pennsylvania. Thank you, mr. Chairman. And thank you to the Ranking Member and our panelists today. Mr. Roy, i wanted to cover a couple of things. I know that a lot has been discussed about Nursing Homes and what happened in my state of pennsylvania as far as how it population. Nursing homes are relatively smaller and the deaths are relatively high. Other 45 governors in the states that handled it better, were they looking at different information . What might have led them to make decisions that protected the population versus the governors like pennsylvania, new jersey, and california that had the problem with deaths in these facilities . Mr. Roy i wouldnt want to at this point in time rank pennsylvanias governor 45th or could i dont know if we do that at this point, but i would say that in terms of the state, look at it this way, the states that have done this best, i will use florida is an example, what florida did early on, their Health Secretary was very aggressive in resisting hospitals that were lobbying actively to have the permission it covidinfected patient, to offload them into Nursing Homes. She fought them on that very hard. It was not an easy decision to fight the hospitals, which our very powerful lobbies in every state, and say, you will not get them out of your hospital and stick them in a nursing home, because you will only get more patients with covid later. She was aggressive about that and also about limiting visitation rates, which is also heartbreaking. If you have a loved one in a nursing home, you want to see them and make sure they are ok. That was a very difficult and painful decision that florida did take early on that protected the population far better than other states did. Keller thank you. One other thing i want to talk about, having the experience of having worked at a faste factory and having run a facility, employers care about their employees and want to keep them safe. We look through the hope and the make of the shutdowns of larger operations and retailers being able to stay open, we know in, as is their any reason to believe the Small Business cannot practice the same guidelines given the rules by c. D. C. And so on, but the larger retailers were able to do it during the time the economy was shut down. Mr. Roy if you are referring to the fact that in some states large retailers were allowed to open and smaller retailers were on, absolutely, that was asymmetry and terrible policy because Small Businesses are the ones that help communities thrive and help competition and help lower costs to the consumer for all reasons, not only for employment. It is important to have those Small Businesses competing with the larger businesses. Absolutely, they have the capacity. We are seeing that in restaurants. For example, in austin where i live, texas has allowed restaurants to open to a certain point. Every restaurant cares not just about its workers, but its customers, to be sure they have the confidence to patronize that restaurant knowing that they are , doing what they can from a cleanliness point of view. So businesses have a powerful incentive to not only ensure that their employees are safe, but that customers are safe. That is far more powerful than any government mandate. Rep. Keller i agree with you, and i think that is part of the reason why we should look at some kind of Liability Protection for these businesses, that way people can make a decision about whether they feel safe internet thing a restaurant or business operation. I have heard it talked about a resurgence of cases when we start to reopen our economy. I want to talk about the positive cases. We are doing a lot more testing. Is there another metric we could look at to make sure we are understanding the spread of this disease . Maybe the percentage of cases that are positive . So we understand and make decisions based on rational information . It roy i am glad you brought up. Such an important point. We are seeing a rise in cases in part driven by the rise in testing. Right . If 5 of people test positive and your double the number of tasks, you will have doubled the we are notases, but seeing a corresponding spike in deaths. That is because the people tested positive at this point in the pandemic are less medically honorable. Either they are relatively. Edically vulnerable either they are relatively younger people or dont have as many preexisting conditions like heart disease, and diabetes, etc. We do not have a granular level of detail. We do know that the death rate appeared to be significantly lower. In pandemics of all kind, you see that most of the Vulnerable People died first and then the virus starts to affect less Vulnerable People who dont die at the same level of frequency. Rep. Keller are you back. Chairman scott thank you. Gentleman from california, mr. Harder. Young lady from georgia, miss mcbath. Thank you mr. Chairman, thank you to our guests for joining us today to talk about these pressing issues. Clear,to be considered covid19 did not create these inequities we are talking about today, is simply has revealed ne suffering of minority communities in america. Years of racism, restricted access to services and high rates of poverty. These symptoms are manifested in poor outcomes that are present in every part of american life. As we learned from last weeks hearing on the k12 funding ,udget cuts due to covid19 will this approach than the impact students and low income School Districts where black and brown students make up a larger share of the student body. The students unequivocally deserve better. Research shows that black populations are at least 3. 5 times more likely to die of covid19 on their white neighbors, and the hispanic population is at least two times more likely to die. It is incumbent on every member of this body, every citizen of the nation, to take seriously what we are witnessing before our eyes, whether democrat or republican. Whiter you are black am a or brown, it is time for us to take seriously the challenges we are facing. Dr. Wilson, my question is for you. Section that you entitled in your report that states, and i quote the fallacy of raceneutral policy is further exposed my covid19. Why, in your observation must have raceneutral policies failed to offer general solutions to the inequities, and what is an example of this failure in the covid19 area . Dr. Wilson so i think the issue policymakingal ignores many of the disparities that i highlighted in my testimony today that you just cited, and ignores the fact that even if a policy on its face is raceneutral, meaning it doesnt reference race in any way, it will not have raceneutral in int, because the structures the society are not raceneutral. So any policy, every policy will have an effect on the way income, wealth, and opportunity will flow. That is no different from the current crisis. We talked a lot about the efforts to slow the spread of the virus immediately by shutting down. Thathe disparate effects has had on workers of color who already face higher rates of unemployment, already have lower , lower levels of wealth, and other resources critical to weather the economic downturn. So even when we implement a policy that is good for the nation as a whole in terms of the Public Health and safety issues, because of its underlying disparities in health, wealth and other economic outcomes, we get these very different results in terms of how it impacts communities. Rep. Mcbath thank you. Even in my own community, i represent a district in georgia, and there is the northern half russian of my districts, where i see it plain as day, the disparities. The larger cases of people we have that have contracted covid19 and the large numbers of individuals in the district that have been seriously affected and even died, have been on the part of my district that has the most number of diverse individuals and Diverse People within my community. So, thank you for that. Thank you for your answer. These problems are enormous and they continue to raise the disparities we see every single day. But no problem is greater on the american spirit. I know that americans have never shied away from the fight. I know that we will continue to work as hard as we can and we face no better challenge at this point in creating an equitable society. Challenge to my colleagues and all my neighbors to think very seriously about the type of society want to live in. The type of society want your constituent to live in. One where those with the least suffer the greatest in times of tragedy. Is that what we want . I dont think so . Nationope parts of this are neglected and feel they have no value. They deserve better. Perfecting this union looking toward the future and fight for a society that strives toward justice and equality . I would ask that of all my colleagues today. Thank you, mr. Chairman, and i yield back the balance of my time. Chairman scott thank you. Gentleman from North Carolina dr. Murphy. Gentlemen from new jersey, dr. Van drew . Gentlelady from washington, dr. Schreier . Mr. Schrier thank you, chairman and thank you to our witnesses. A quickwant to make comment mostly to mr. Roy about schools, simply because the vast majority of people commenting about schools say that we really dont know the role of children in transmission. We know that they get it less often, they dont really have symptoms, but there is still a big black box that we really will not know until schools reopen. I also wanted to say that there is a general understanding that kids are better off at school, there is no question about that. Affected, atly least acutely, but we dont know all the outcomes. No question there. The United States is not iceland. Is fatter,states more unhealthy, we have type two diabetes kidney disease, heart , disease, all conditions that put you at much higher risk of this disease. Not only that, the kids who need most to be in school come from families who we are talking about today that are most risk of getting this disease and dying from it. I just wanted to clarify that as a pediatrician. I wanted to direct my question today to dr. Wilson, because my district has a large latino population. We have seen them disproportionately hit by this disease. First because of working conditions that we have to about , which are more crowded, packing and agricultural jobs, but then, because 80 happens in the home, and homes are more crowded, we have seen a greater amount of community spread. That, because housing is part of how covid is spread, we have always known that housing is tied to Health Outcomes. In recent weeks, we have been talking about how housing is fundamental to Building Wealth and building a nest egg. You talk aboutld housing the changes we could the difference between policies that help with the versus ownership in longterm outcomes of a change in policy . Dr. Wilson thank you for those questions. Again, there are structures and patterns we observed in terms of Housing Access and housing affordability, that are directly related to the long history of policies that excluded certain populations, in particular, people of color, from Building Wealth through homeownership, but also concentrated people and isolated people economically and socially in communities where the quality of housing was less dust the stock of housing was less available and the quality of housing was lower, thus driving up the cost of housing in many communities. I think the issue of affordability as well as housing equality are an important step in addressing inequities that we see in terms of housing, and also spill over into outcomes in health, as you indicated, as well as employment and schooling. Rep. Schrier thank you. I had another question about paid and sick leave and family leave. We are finding that the same communities are affected by not having the same access to leave. Then ino, they are close precipitate to people who are infected, they might need several series of quarantine time off. I wonder if you can speak to two weeks of sick leave and family three months of paid family leave. What happens in these particular atrisk communities when you have to take time off perhaps multipletimes when close colleagues at work get this disease and you need to quarantine . Dr. Wilson so, the connection between lack of paid leave and other outcomes really puts workers in an impossible situation, to make a difficult choice. Choosing between their health or their economic wellbeing. Without paid sick leave, workers forgo earnings that are essential and critical for the economic wellbeing of their household because they are making decisions that are better for their health. So by having paid sick leave more equitably and more broadly available to workers, we empower workers to make decisions that are best for optimizing both their Health Security as well as their economic security. Rep. Schrier thank you very much. And i yield back. Chairman scott thank you. Gentlelady from illinois, ms. Underwood. Rep. Underwood thank you, mr. Chairman. The coronavirus pandemic left no corner of our communities unscathed. Livelihoods have been lost in my lives andlivelihoods have been lost in my district in northern illinois, and in communities across the country. Which is why i am also concerned with mr. Roys comments about the role of children. As carriers of covid19. There is a lot we dont know. Current guidance from the centers of Disease Control and prevention does point out that ofldren are in fact at risk contracting this disease and could possibly be carriers. I think that when we are addressing the United States congress, we should continue to have suckedbased findings factbased findings to present and also make sure we are encouraging the american paper to consult with the National Experts on the issue, which is the centers for Disease Control and prevention. The damage from this crisis has not been reflected equally in our communities. The pandemic inside the pandemic is the disproportionate Health Consequences on communities of color particularly black americans. One study found that black americans between the ages of 6574 are dying and five times the rate of their white counterparts, and the disparities are even larger for young adults. These gaps are glaring, but not surprising, they reflect a deeply entrenched racial inequity in our entire health system. One of the key drivers is unequal access to care. The uninsured rate of the americas is more than 1. 6 times higher in the rate for white americans. To reduce disparities in Health Outcomes for both of it 19 and other conditions, we must expand access to a formal health care. Which is why i introduced the health care for doubl affordabiy act. Dr. Jones, enhanced premium tax bring affordable Health Insurance to more americans. Dr. Jones it is very important and one of the ways you value all you people equally is bad. If we really care about those people, we need to take away any economic barriers. We needo say that to make sure that the last visit, the ambulance at the bottom of the list is there, but that does not absolve us from addressing health is not created within the health sector. We need to actually strengthen in all the ways you said, strengthen the aca to actually get to universal access to highquality health care. Lower the age of medicare eligibility and all of that. Rep. Underwood thank you. As a cofounder of the black Maternal Health caucus, i have been committed to addressing the disparities in maternal Health Outcomes. I have also supported bipartisan efforts to extend medicaid coverage for 60 days for one year postpartum. Coverszing that medicare more than 55 of africanamerican births, can you describe the full importance of extending Medicare Coverage for a full year postpartum to close racial gaps in maternal Health Outcomes . Dr. Jones, the maternal is higher. Te mothers who are dying within the first year of childbirth is alarming. So we need to support them in all the ways that we can. Yes, it is about saving lives. Expanding beyond medicaid coverage, why do we need Maternal Health policy to improve care and adjust social determinants of health and provide targeted investments to improve black but to the Health Outcomes . Dr. Jones we need to know what the problems are. We need to have a committee with all the data they have. To listto be able social determinants of health as risk factors so we can address them. Rep. Underwood thank you. Scientists are working tirelessly to develop a safe and effective vaccine for covid19. Development of a vaccine is only the first step, we will need to deploy in to every community in the country in an equitable way and we know African Americans currently have loan unitization lower immunization rates than their white counterparts. I will submit the question for the record on that issue. Chairman fornk the having this hearing and opportunity to discuss this issue of critical importance. As the community knows, i am a Public Health nurse. We need to end disparities whether it is in covid or our Health Care System and make sure that when communicating with the American People doing this pandemic, we are lifting up factbased and evidencebased information to inform the American People. I yield back. Chairman scott thank you. The gentlelady from connecticut, es. Hay rep. Hayes thank you, mr. Chairman. And thank you to other witnesses who are here. Today, i have just been just beenand overwhelmed because i recognize that once again, so many of my colleagues just dont get it. Like the too, gentleman from wisconsin, look forward to a time when people dont look at me racially and we dont have to deal with these issues this way. Last week, we had a hearing on shutting down schools and what the budget would look like postpandemic. That is so much bigger than just how the economy looks and how we will deal with things economically. I can assure everyone on this committee that when my husband was diagnosed with covid19 and waitingover him to make sure he was breathing, and never once did i think about his job, about the economy reopening. I thought about my has been getting healthy. I thought about us being safe. , i amt same vein thinking, as we look forward to september and our schools opening up i was on a call last week with f. E. M. A. , and they indicated they have no intention of supplying p. P. E. For our schools. I live in a state that is already to supposedly impacted and has very large equity gaps. Our students graduate high school and a less than five miles down the road in bridgeport, 74 of students are graduates. A parent was sentenced to 12 years in jail for what they call stewing education, for sending the child outside of her School District. That is how desperate people are to provide a good education for the children. Dr. King, it is so good to see you. He opened up your comments with something that, as you know from prior conversations is near and dear to me, the brown v. Board of education decision. Like it, dont like it, whether it is uncomfortable or not, we have racial inequity disparities in our school and public indication system and we as a committee have an ability to change those things. As we look forward to september, we have heard about maximizing testing and opening earlier to make up for academic loss. But i am thinking about the trauma and what our teachers, and all the other things that will have to happen with children when they return to campuses. Can you talk a bit about what those inequities will look like after the covid19 pandemic, in the state financial crisis if we do nothing to intervene . Dr. King sure. It is good to see you, congresswoman. The impact of covid19 for kids, when i think about that, i think about the kid who relies on school, as many of your students did, for positive relationships with adults and peers. And they have been without that. Some kids who are in homes where there is addiction, abuse, where there is domestic violence, homes where there is economic trauma, and they have been without all the support. When they come back to school in september, they will need more support, which means we need more counselors, Mental Health services, and an investment in the socialemotional support students need. That will not be there if School District are forced to make huge cuts as a result of the lost state revenue. Thank you. Thinking forward, if we were to look at what type of investments we need . Sorry . Rep. Hayes to make Public Education more equitable and issues, wenderlying invested in Small Businesses and in a larger economy. Our would investments in Education System and our children look like moving forward . Dr. King we ought to close the 23 billiondollar gap the chairman talked about between students of color and white students and school spending. That is what a good investment would look like. Good investment would mean addressing the learning loss and socialemotional needs of students with supplemental dollars. Investment would mean making it possible for low income students to successfully pursue Higher Education. Rep. Hayes thank you. ,r. Jones, you hit on something because i know that most of our Education Funding comes from municipal taxes, which already puts our kids at a disadvantage. Dr. Jones we need to change local property taxes as the basis of funding schools, because if you have a poor neighborhood, poorly funded schools, another generation lost. We also need to invest vigorously in childhood indication, in teacher education, and we need to have a model like finland where you have a mentorship position for teachers for two years after thank you. I am done. Rep. Hayes thank you. Obnoxious. [laughter] those bells are obnoxious. Chairman scott especially the second one. [laughter] thank you so much, mr. Chairman, and happy pride month, everybody. President trump and secretary devos just last week claimed School Choice is a civil rights cause of our time. That is honestly comical, but it is unsurprising. In michigan, we know that School Choice causes segregation in our time. We are seeing the impacts of these policies right now in michigan the ninth district. District Mount Clemens School District has seen massive numbers of white students partaking in schools of choice to go to nearby whiter School Districts. Michigans School Financing moves with the student. Meaning that when a student leaves to go to another School District, that funding goes with them. As a result, Mount Clemens School District, with a majority black squid in body student body, has faced major budget differences for the last two decades and struggled to rebuild infrastructure that the students are being intentionally left behind. There is no coincidence here. Betsy devos is trying to push these harmful policies on the entire nation as secretary of education. The department of education last week finalized a rule that would funnel critical emergency money away from School Districts and students most impacted by covid19, as congress intended, and send it in to private schools, even those serving the wealthiest students. I would like to ask you about this. Would you agree that School Choice policies with funding models like michigan has disproportionately harms students of color by funneling money and other resources away from schools flex the choice that secretary devos favors is one that is harmful. The evidence is clear in michigan. It is a problem of funding structure and unregulated charter, which allowed for profit charter operators not serving students, without meaningful accountability. This narrow vision of schools is part of the problem that we have to solve. Here in michigan, secretary devos has had an impact for many years, charters have had no regulation ended its been a harmful thing. What happens to Educational Equity if we do not save Public Schools . If we shift to the gop idealized free market Education System, which students will be hurt the most . It will hurt students of color and low income students the most. Public education is the foundation of our economy. The majority of kids in Public Schools today are kids of color. We have no future as a society if we do not invest in their education and in the short run, one thing they have to do is make sure that we correct the misinterpretation of the cares act, literally taking dollars intended for Public Schools and taking them to private schools. How will they propose rules we have been discussing in equity and systemic racism in our Education System . You have almost a minute to answer. The blinders that do not want to invest the ghettos in the reservations, we can get along very well. The blinders hurting those children, they are sapping the strength. We can be doing so much better as a nation if we invest in Public Education. You are seeing the whole community and said the he valued. And yes, vigorously investing in Public Education is one of thank you very much. Before the horrible second bell, i yield back. Ok. Thank you. The gentlelady from minnesota, the gentleman from maryland. I am ready, mr. Chairman, if i am up. Five minutes. Thank you. The business has been hard because they are disproportionately owned in industries that are vulnerable to shutdowns. We note that black families face vast wealth gaps compared to whit the wealth gap is one of the reasons we have seen the disparate impact of covid19 in communities of color, at least in terms of economic outcome. Eae reasons we have seen the disparate impact of covid19 in communities of colors color, at least in terms of economic outcome. As i mentioned before, having wealth and savings puts you in a position shutdowns in the things we have had to do, without adequate savings and wealth, you have no cushion or you will rapidly teary raid. If you do not address the crisis, that is in terms of as well as broader disparities. They are not starting the businesses. They are building up equity. Homeowners the other piece where equity is and that legs. We need ideas to stimulate its and find the pump. In terms of Small Business, it is important to recognize that Business Owners are less than 2 in the United States. If we think about the larger businesses that employ people, africanamerican owned businesses are only about 4 . The issue also wealth building tool is about having opportunities to expand and grow the businesses so they are able to build the wealth important in communities in terms of making Jobs Available as well as building personal and community well. We have to address the weight that Racial Disparities. Another reason why black is the sister not have as many opportunities to expand and grow, because of the predatory that exclude that they need to expand businesses. A large income gap and wage gap to make them. Lets jump to the racial inequities of the criminal justice system. 40 and that is the reality for this community of color in an unjust justice system. What things do we need to do to drive unemployment numbers down for impacted individuals so when they come out, they can stay out and not have a circular recidivism . There are a number of things being attempted in communities across the country. Dan the box provisions that employers from asking about prior incarceration. How big of a difference do you think the ban the box makes . I think it is exactly that for the whole country. Talk about the difference it makes. It is an important first step but there are other things that need to be put in place. It only gets your foot in the door. There are policies that are important. Thank you. I yield back. Thank you. Thank you. The lady from michigan, and from nevada, and from massachusetts. Thank you for the panel today. This is a terrific hearing. Communities of color have always experienced Racial Discrimination in health care settings. Dating back hundreds of years, race has been used as a weapon to undermine and dehumanize black patients. As my colleagues from georgia mentioned, covid19 did not create the disparities, but it has exacerbated them. Black and brown patients struggle to access covid19 testing and treatment, dr. Jones, according to the american medical association, only 5 of physicians are black, 5. 8 are latin and only 24 are native american how does the covid19 pandemic underscore the importance of increase diversity in medicine . It is always been an important issue because if we train more physicians of color, they tend to serve communities of color in a more respectful kind of way. On that would be less likely to happen. It is a chronic problem and we need to dress it. The pipeline starts very early on. Great. If you can elaborate on how increasing diversity in medicine and Public Health prevents discrimination. Implicit bias exists within medical providers. Physicians might look at understand. Not there are so many ways that biases actually impair care they can then change some of the things. When you have systems that dont take medicare. The more providers of color, they are at the table that can change things. What recommendations would you like to offer . Are there incentives or programs to address this . Something that has been in place for decades is the National Service corps. That enables students from low income communities to actually go to medical school in the first place. They are then more likely to stay. That is a very specific thing. If that can become huge, that would go a long way. Thank you. I yield back. Thank you. Has anyone here not been recognized . If not, a couple of questions starting with ms. Wilson. We have responded trying to stimulate the economy by using primarily unemployment compensation, Food Assistance, and other things. There have been other suggestions like a payroll tax and a Capital Gains holiday. Which initiatives can incentive it the economy the most . Which gives you the best bang for the buck . According to a recent analysis, Food Assistance programs, snap in particular, has the largest bang for buck. One dollar spent in Food Assistance generates 1. 67 in gdp a year from now. Unemployment Insurance Benefits are second with 1. 46. What about the payroll tax and the Capital Gains holiday, how do they score . I do not remember off the top of my head the number there. They are typically under one dollar. Direct assistance programs such as Unemployment Insurance, well over one dollar payroll tax and other kinds of tax incentives. Can you tell me about the importance after we have been out of school for so long of potential summer programs . Yes. Summer creates an opportunity of trying to make up for the law, we have to put in place summer programs in person when possible. We know students will come back to school having lost as much as 70 in math, 30 or more in reading. The way to address that is providing additional structural support. Particularly critical for English Learners who have been without Services Since march. Thank you. Can he Say Something about how funding schools with the property tax affects equity . Yes. The results of property taxes are huge disparities. One thing to address this is to require as a condition for new stimulus dollars that states have to protect their highest need districts from cuts and districts have to protect their highest need schools from cuts. If you have property taxes, that inherently creates inequity . It does. In an environment with the financial crisis, it means wealthy districts will be able to go back to the property tax owners, increase a small amount and generate significant revenue to absorb the cuts, whereas poverty districts do not have that in the cuts will fall hardest on them. Dr. Jones, we have talked about cobra subsidies. It is my understanding, if you lose your job, you lose insurance but if you get the subsidy, you can continue insurance. If you have to switch into the marketplace, you end up having to get a new insurance policy, new providers, and start your deductible all over and when you get your job right back, you have to tell those providers it is nice knowing you for a couple of months, and then get back your own providers, then start your deductible all over. Doesnt it make a lot of sense to do anything we can to maintain the continuity of your insurance . I think subsidizing coverage is a good idea. Thank you. Finally, i think we can all agree it is a good idea to open schools as soon as possible if it can be done safely. If tests are not available, how do you reopen schools safely . Testing is not the only part of the equation. In texas, where summer schools are able to reopen, a lot of schools are applying a hybrid approach where they are using temperature checks, which are not nearly as definitive, but temperature checks, to look at whether children might have covid infections, but again, it is more about Risk Management on the other side. Before you get to the testing stage, making sure the kids are not transmitting the disease and that people at risk to work at those facilities and people who live in households with elderly grandparents, that they are removed from the setting. It is more about preventing the risk of infection from happening in the first place that about testing, but testing can be a part of the solution if we scale it up. You do not need testing to open the school. You do not know whether people are transmitting or not, if you wait until they are symptomatic because many will be transmitting before they are symptomatic. One thing the heroes act includes is money for school construction. A lot of schools do not have proper ventilation. That is a key safety requirement, to make sure you have good ventilation. We will do everything we can. Everyone wants to open up the soonest possible but if you cannot do it safely, i think we may have a problem. I want to thank all of our witnesses for their testimony. Any other business . Anyone else have comments . I want to remind my colleagues that pursuant to Committee Practice materials, the hearing record must be submitted to the Committee Clerk within four days following the last day of the hearing. Preferably in microsoft word format. Only a member of the committee or invited witness may submit materials for inclusion. Documents are limited to 50 pages each. Wander than that, they can be incorporated at a it may not be available in the future. Items for the record should be submitted electronically by emailing submissions. Without objection, i would like to end with the following into the records, the following report. Black workers face two of the most lethal preexisting conditions for coronavirus. Racism and economic inequality. Published by the Economic Policy institute. I want to thank our witnesses for their participation today. Members of the committee may have additional questions they will submit. We will answer them as soon as possible. I want to remind my colleagues that pursuant to Committee Practices, questions for the hearing must be submitted by the majority, Committee Staff or Committee Clerk within seven days. Questions submitted must address the subject matter of the hearing. I now recognize the Ranking Member for a closing statement. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I want to thank witnesses for participating in the hearing today. We should return congressional precedent and hold our hearings in person. Running the country through virtual proceedings is unacceptable. As we consider how to mitigate the impact of covid19 on families and communities, we must highlight the benefit to children and families in two parent households. The likelihood of poverty draft 9 versus single parent families. This is crucial to remember. The percentage of two parent households has dropped from 88 to 69 since 1960. While single pass me tremendous efforts and may not have other options, we can encourage and remove barriers to raising children in two parent homes. Before covid19, unemployment was at record lows, including minority unemployment and a flourishing economy ushered in under a republicanled congress, and the Trump Administration benefited workers, employers, and families alike. The coronavirus and the shutdowns have caused devastating job losses. The positive news is there is a path forward. We have seen from the jobs report last month, 2. 5 million jobs added to the economy, that reopening our economy safely is helping america get back on their feet. I would like to ask unanimous consent that the june 21 editorial from the wall street journal, failure in the virtual classroom, be included in todays hearing record. I want to give quotes from it to explain some of the problems we are having now that no one has discussed. The Remote Learning experiment is not going well. The university of Washington Center on reinventing Public Education published a report looking at how 400 School Districts nationwide has responded to the covid19 crisis. Findings reveal widespread neglect of students. This should concern all of us, mr. Chairman. The report found 27 of districts required teachers to record whether students participate in remote classes, while remote attendance has been abysmal. During the first two weeks of the shutdown, 15,000 los angeles students failed to show up for classes or do any schoolwork. 10 weeks in, the philadelphia School District registered just 61 percent of students attending schools on an average day. The same week, the boston globe reported that only half of students are logging into online classes or submitting assignments online. Students have an incentive to ditch digital classes because the work counts for little to nothing. Only 57. 9 of School Districts do any progress monitoring. The rest have not even set minimal expectations that teachers review and keep track of the work students turn in. We are failing our students. It is because, primarily, as the article points out, of teacher unions. They go on to quote people in the teacher unions. We need to get schools open and do anything we possibly can. I also want to point out, to tie it back into the economic situation, yesterday, the wall street Journal Editorial Board pointed out that states that are reopening faster are recovering faster and easing more economic suffering, specifically the Editorial Board rates, nine of 10 states with highest jobless rates are run by democrats, who have tended to demand that the economy should stay locked down and in some cases are still resisting opening. One exception is colorado, where our former colleague, democratic governor jared polis, was one of the first to reopen. His decision is paying off as colorados jobless rate in may fell to 10. 2 from 12. 2 in april. To lead our country back to a thriving economy, we can and must reopen america. There is one other thing i noticed in one set of comments that were made near the end of the hearing. That was the comment that it is better to basically give welfare than it is to help people get a job. Mr. Chairman, that goes against everything we have ever known in the country, which is that you get a better bang for your buck from welfare than by people going to work. I just do not think that is true. I think everything we can do to help people go to work, it diminishes poverty and gives people options. I hope we will take more focus on that in the future and talk about those statistics. With that, i yield back. Thank you for your comments on the Economic Impact of certain initiatives. That is arithmetic, some investments in the economy do better than others. That is just a fact, the tax and the Capital Gains tax, they do virtually nothing to stimulate the economy where other supports do much better. There is a lot we can do to help the nation get to the pandemic. And also reduce Racial Disparities. We want to thank our witnesses for their guidance and pointing out that the heroes act is a major step in the right direction to get us through the pandemic. If there is nothing more to come before the committee, the committee now stands adjourned. I thank our witnesses again. Thank you. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, sees fans washington journal cspans washington journal. We are taking your calls and discussing policy issues that impact you. Coming up this morning, traditional Crisis Network discusses the Supreme Court term , major cases already decided. An important ruling has yet to come. Also, look at the lunch counter protests of 1960 with university of massachusetts amherst assistance professor cindy parker. Watch washington journal, live at 7 00 eastern this morning and be sure to join the discussion with your phone calls, facebook comments, Text Messages and tweets. Eastern0 0 p. M. The room where it happened on his time in the Trump Administration. Today at 3 30 p. M. Eastern, faith and Freedom Coalition founder on his book for god and country, the christian case for trump. Eastern,t 9 00 p. M. Author and robin hood ceo westmore on his book five days, about the 2015 baltimore uprising following the death of freddie gray. He is interviewed by the most senior fellow. 2 00 book tv, sunday at p. M. , 3 30 p. M. And 9 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan2. Tonight on q and a, the university of california at berkeley historian and author of vaccine nation on the lessons polio vaccine in the 50s can teach us about a covid19 vaccine. We will face distribution problems, we will face problems of equity, even if we have enough vaccine for everybody, there will be those who have the privilege to say i am not comfortable getting it until 5 Million People have been vaccinated and then there will be those who say i have to get a vaccine because i have to go to work and make sure that i am safe and that i can provide for my family. I guarantee that we will see problems in equity. Historians arent supposed to guarantee about anything in the future but this is something i feel concerned about. Watch tonight at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspans q a. During the summer months, reach out to your elected officials with cspans congressional directory. It contains all the Contact Information you need to stay in touch with members of congress, federal agencies and state governors. Order your copy online today. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke about the legislative agenda with Washington Post National Political reporter robert costa. She was also asked about her views on the removal of historical statues depicting the founding fathers, and whether the house might pursue articles of impeachment against attorney general william barr. This is half an hour