And out and about, thank you for matching up. I also want to thank the folks that are tuning in from around the state today. I am joined today by a couple of outstanding leaders, the National Guard. A member of the joint chiefs of staff and he works out of washington, d. C. He was here about 40 years ago as i recall for the Natural Disaster but it certainly is a joy to welcome him back here. If there is one consistent theme every time the governor is on the phone, there it is with the president and Vice President or whether it i is to go Governors Association telephone conferen conference, the one thing every governor has in common is how excellent the National Guard performed and that has a lot to do with the generals leadership as well as just the quality of the guardsmen and the airmen around the country. To see the interNational Guard perform this Tremendous Service in difficult circumstances, but this is very different than what we have seen before. We have had more than our fair share of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, you name it. But this pandemic is very different. You should note we have over 1425 soldiers and airmen assisting with the response that you probably dont know what they are doing. These are just some of the things that they are doing. They are providing medical services and doing engineering assessments, commodities distribution support, managing the warehouse and lots of other things. To the Operation Centers they did the assessments for different facilities all across the state in louisiana as we were looking regionally to identify the best places to serve the medical capacity on modeling and so forth. And me, many other functions. I want to thank the general for his leadership and all of the work that is being done by the soldiers and the airmen of the louisiana National Guard. They cannot agree with that and i understand it, but i know he understands just how good the National Guard is. There were those that were deployed overseas right now and by the end of this year we will have 2700 deployed in the brigade. So it is a tough thing to manage, but they do a great job. Any efforts at the National Level one of which is to get the status extended beyond the initial 30 days which would have Tremendous Positive impacts overall of the individuals that are serving and delivering some remarks and going to ask you all if you have questions or. I know he has one more meeting and then he has to leave a out 1 30 or 1330 hours. If you can ask questions while hes at the podium and then i will come back in the conclusion of that portion of the press conference. I would like to add my congratulations and thanks to the general again for his leadership of one of the greatest national records. Thank you for letting me come and see firsthand the department of defense including the strategy. One is keep ourselves safe and able to perform our missions. We want to protect ourselves and weve gone around louisiana today and weve seem to care with which the men and women are complying with the recommendations and social distancing that minimizes the transfer that they are ready so we can respond to the crisis. Let me mention most recently ive seen the in the pacific and they are worldclass soldiers and airmen and i dont think we could be any more proud of who they are and what they are doing. Notwithstanding i want to share the enormity of the impact of the event on the National Guard scale. As of this morning, we had 43,500 National Guard members across the nation including 1200 here in louisiana that were responding to the pandemic. The numbers are continuing to rise over the next week or so and we will cross 50,000 i think men and women in the National Guard that are called in by their states. The response is large from the National Guard. Since 2005 and katrina when we had men and women from every state and every territory participating, more than 50,000, so in every state the difference being this is happening in every state not just in the gulf region of louisiana. So this is obviously a historical event and it is requiring it to historical response. I want to express my gratitude and admiration for the men and women who serve. Where the nation finds these men and women and will both maintain and don the uniform to come to serve the country to come and serve the state and town and homes it is Something Special and we should be among the other First Responders and those that are doing the response to these thing. We thank the employers that share with the nation to come away from their civilian occupation. We lost someone in the tornadoes recently, just last night and the governor mentioned here four years ago for floods the numerous hurricanes between then and now into the louisiana apparatus the National Guard organization for where we bring together the nation every year to plan for the hazard responses that we have learned so much about from a responders here in this part of the country, so not just tornadoes but National Guard members with cyber activities, then somewhere, that unique apparatus of what they are doing not just soldiers or airmen. The guardsmen and that is what makes us special. I would mention one last thing iand closing it isnt what we do in our military specialty that is always so valuable that its the innovation and the skill s set. When they put this uniform on a diff on display and innovative way to display the medical apparatus was around the state and among this notice should people need them and whether it is an infantry running existing facility or a truck driver or Intelligence Officer that happens to be working in a food bank which came to see a big unique contribution and is the military compliments go it was built for this and then if you are going to decide a component you would invest who we are and what we are doing today so thank you all very much for letting me stay and with that i would be happy to take any questions you might have. General, thank you so much. I appreciate it. They believed that it was related and likely the result of the tornado and the second was a victim of flash flooding. We also have thousands of people that were left without power. It appears to be destroyed and there was some damage as well from the shelter in alexandria which we used as an evacuation shelter. It wasnt damaged significantly but we are going to have to do some work there. The Severe Weather continues today in Southeast Louisiana as the storm pushed away across the central gulf coast. So obviously our hearts go out to the families that were affected, especially those that lost their loved ones. I know people have a lot on their minds already where they covid19 pandemic that we are all going through and to encourage all to Pay Attention to the weather today and Going Forward and watch the forecast. Pay attention to the notice and the advisory. Make sure youve got your cell phone where you can monitor it for warnings when there is an enhanced risk of Severe Weather. Weve had a lot of inquiries about what we are givin doing te sure that as we plan for the Hurricane Season that starts july 1 that we make sure we are intentional and deliberate about how we approach this Hurricane Season because of the posture that they are in, which is very different because of covid19, and we are going to have exercises here with all of the state agencies and various Emergency Support functions in an exercise that will be facilitated by the National Weather service and we plan to do so in coordination with fema as well so we ask everyone to be mindful of the fact that its happening more frequently and with more severity. It is more important than ever to have a game plan and that you prepare your self and your family and you can go to game plan. Org. We report 48 480 cases today foa total of 25,739. We also are reporting 67 new deaths very sadly which brings the statewide total to 1540. Its my understanding the current discount exceeds the death count that was attributable to Hurricane Katrina in this Historical Context we are reporting there are 1727 covid19 positive patients in the hospitals and ventilator usage is an increase by 13. So it appears the hospitalizations and the usage have been pretty steady over the last several days. I do have some questions from the public before i get to your questions. Mike asked i if id seen the senior class of 2021 participating in sports at the start of the 2021 school season. I said it before, i am a huge sports enthusiast. Its hard for me to envision a full without the fault and if for no other reason than being aspirational i dont have the ability right now and april to know where the circumstances are going to be. With all of its member principles we will be making the best decisions they can about whether it is safe to resume and if so under what conditions. What i can say with confidence is in the event that we have fall athletics whether it is college or otherwise, it isnt going to look exactly the same as it did last fall because we fully expect there will continue to be social distancing requirements and protective measures that we will ask individuals to exercise for their benefit and the benefit of others as well. The department of education will be working on exactly what the school year will look like and working with the cdc and others in the department of health and here in louisiana so that they do what is in the best interest of the students and that adequately protects both Public Health and safety. If theres medical systems available for employees that have been laid off before your income is reduced and you may be eligible for medicaid now after we did the expansion the Eligibility Criteria 138 of the federal poverty level, so they have individuals out there that may not have been eligible before but they are a watchable now and you can apply for medicaid online at buying medicaid. Gov or call 3426207, that is 888 3426207 to inquire about your eligibility. In the Public Health emergency, louisiana medicaid is keeping members covered and will not lose coverage for any reason other than death, moving out of state or requesting to have their coverage and additionally the federal stimulus check issued under the act will not impact the medicaid which believes we will not count towards the cap of the poverty level. So with i am going to open up for questions. In the back. The governor of new york right now is getting his own press conference the numbers could be ten times higher than the initial account of. Are you going to bow to that same kind of pressure or use georgia as a guinea pig . We are planning to move forward in louisiana as we were able to if we meet the criteria, the threshold criteria to move into phase one. They are going to continue to move in that direction and well know more soon and it would be my expectation that at some point early next week i have to tell the people of louisiana what to expect by the end of the week. Hospitalizations are down and the usage is down as well and it appears that we have pretty much plateaued on the daily reports of the deaths as well and of course we dont want anything over zero when it comes to deaths but they intended to move forward in a way that is hard to protect Public Health and reengage as the economy and what i have said before and i think that it bears repeating now, i want people to have their expectations in check because phase one is the gradual easing of current restrictions and it isnt as if we are going to be opening up just going back to where we were before this pandemic. That isnt the case. So we believe when we meet the criteria we will be able to go to phase number one accompanied. Are there other factors that you are looking at . We are talking to folks at the department of health. We are talking to people who are in the business sector in louisiana and others. I dont think what you are going to see is an exact whenever we get to it. If its next week or two or three weeks. You are not going to see us execute a plan that is exactly the recommendations. I dont want to stand here now and get in front of where we really are we are still going gg through the analysis and putting together the plan. By early next wee week you wille me at the podium and it just wouldnt be responsible for me to get ahead of that today. Spinach can you give us an update. We were doing everything we can to make sure that we expand the capacity. And we will continue to engage as we need to come up with to be in control of the situation we want to allow the en instate laboratories and creating a spoken model. In the capacity. When i am participating in the Conference Calls at the white house had Conference Calls for the national Governors Association, the problem i isnt the lack of capacity. The challenges are trying to source the medium. So you can get a reliable test result from it so we are really focused on those things right now, sourcing those items and starting to manufacture more of them here in louisiana and we are going to have a much more detailed explanation of what that looks like that we have the education of these three d. Printers making what we need, and not the number that we need but its certainly helping. We have manufacturers here in the states now and so forth and so we are working very hard with fema because they are the agency we have been instruct by the federal government to work through to try to source more of these materials. We would like to get over that to make sure we have a picture of what was going on in the state of louisiana. Weve been in the site for six. I think weve done 142,000. This is achievable. If at some point that Testing Capacity stalls we feel comfortable about phase number one, that is where we are right now and anytime we try to meet the criteria to get the next phase whether it is phase two or phase three, and you dont just have to meet the criteria, you also have to look at your ability at that point in time to do the testing and the tracing that we are not going to get ahead of ourselves. We are talking about phase number one and we will be able to meet the criteria for. Would you like additional money from the federal government and have you go gotten the 1. 8 billn bits received . I think you know the answer to that question before you asked it. Obviously very disappointed in senator mcconnell. And the much better approach is the one taken by senator cassidy working in a bipartisan fashion with senator menendez of new jersey. They would appropriate about 5 billion not all of which would go to states wit but muchf it would with tremendous flexibility to the states didnt have to do things like declare bankruptcy and have massive layoffs and other things. Publicly the president has agreed that in the next phase. Im hopeful that when senator mcconnell has a change of heart on this it would just be horrendous for the states to have to declare bankruptcy. I am not saying that louisiana would have to declare bankruptcy but to say we would rather or he would rather see the state declared bankruptcy then they receive help, second, the guidance from the treasurys office came today on the 1. 8 billion which is the states share of the act and its four x. Then the jurors own money as they caught the lost revenue. There are still some questions and it is our intention to honor the spirit of it and what we have been asked to do wit we wod be allocated to the government. It would be under the same obligations as we are to only send the money on the expenditures that have been incurred in relation and not to make up for the lost revenue. If they are not flexible enough. We will do everything we can to bring that money back to bear to address the problems related to covid19. I had no conversations with commissioner gardener about returning any part of that mon money. First of all it would be premature to say that because it remains possible in subsequent back of congress they can retroactively increase the flexibility is as it relates to the 1. 8 million i can call you that continues to be a major focus in the national Governors Association and it is at least once a week we are making the case to congress and the Vice President about the need for more flexibility so we will keep making that case and in the meantime taking the guidance as it is and have the best plan for the state of louisiana. Yes sir. Yesterday you encourage the people of louisiana to start Wearing Masks when they go out. Also yesterday it came out that they are going to start fining people for not wearing a mask. What are your thoughts on that and there seems to be more people coming about now. As it relates to what happened april 30 i will tell you it is not my inclination to start arresting or fining individual members of the public for not wearing a mask, although im absolutely encouraging everyone to do that. Like i said yesterday, you know, its like opening a door for somebody. When you wear a mask you are protecting someone else and when they wear a mask, they are protecting you. What you are likely to see its requirements that if you want to run a business and perhaps they come in from the public in order to Purchase Services or goods from you tha then the workers ot to be wearing a mask. So that is more likely to be the requirement and the public. But you know, we need people to exercise common sense and understand that we are not asking people to wear and a 95 mask. A simple face covering. Theres all sorts of ways to do this. You can do it at home and we are going to be providing a lot of information about this. And we are going to be distributing significant numbers of masks that will be available for distribution as well. But they are a central component of making sure that they slow the spread so we are going to be on the one hand in certain circumstances directing and on the other, highly encouraging. But i do not see us getting to the point that we are on the streets arresting people who dont have a mask. Last question. And by the way, i think the way they are seeing this whole issue around covid19 if you want to successfully reopen your business, people are going to expect to see that the cashier is wearing a mask if we get back to where people stocking shelves or wearing a mask otherwise you are going to run the risk people are not going to come to your store. So this is something that we think the Business Community is going to largely take care of on its own because they are going to want people to be comfortable coming back into their stores. Can you talk about why that is. Weve already made announcements different from the white house and the white house guidance looked breathtaking on emergency medical procedures and reopening them where we issued the order already to do that. And one of the reasons we do that is because we are less healthy than people elsewhere. We want them to be healthy. If you want people to take themselves and make themselves healthier, theyve got to be about to get treatments for hypertension and diabetes and other conditions so that is a big part of this. We also know the people put off routine things the more likely it is in an emergency that is relative to the Health Condition but the dripping of treatment for her and so in consultation with hospitals and various medical professionals across the spectrum, they came to me and said we think that this makes sense. I think that youll see some other deviations because there are somethings we are just not comfortable with that they ought to be part of and so there will be more information on that on monday and if i try to get more specific than i just did, im kind of getting ahead of where we are because we are still going through this analysis. There is nothing easy about what they are doing. It hasnt been done before. We are working in concert with our partners at the cdc and talking to Health Care Professionals across the spectrum here in louisiana. And look, we are going to do everything we can to be smart about this and to get it right. Im pretty sure we will make a few mistakes but because we are going to be testing and monitoring, we will pick up pretty quickly and working with the Business Community and other stakeholders, we just believe that they are going to be in pretty big positions to move forward. And i both believe that we are doing is not necessarily inconsistent with what the president put off, because what he put out was the guidance guidelines. Here are some guidelines as to what we would like you to consider. They were reasonable and consistent in the discussions we had already been having here. So i think that they are very hopeful. You will see a lot of things in conformity so with that i want to thank you all again for being here today and i want to encourage the people of louisiana to know we are going to get through this. It remains essential that we follow the stayathome order. Im asking you to minimize your social contacts come if youre sick, continue to wash your hands frequently with soap and water, use Hand Sanitizer when you cant and when you do go out and keep your distance from other peopl people at least 6 fd wear your mask. Do all these things we have been talking about and lets continue to make sure we are heading in the right direction so that we can get to phase one and start gradually re opening the economy and getting people back to work and back open it would encourage you to be focused on this and lets all do our part. There is a role for everyone to play and it is important that everybody plays a role and that is what i am encouraging you to do. I want to thank all of the people out there that have been doing so well. It is not lost on me every night when i say my prayers and im thanking god for our blessings one of those is that we are not anywhere close to the trajectory that we were on a month ago. It was actually leading the world. We are in a much, much better place because of the people of louisiana and if we continue to behave in this fashion it will get better as we move forward and we will get through this in better shape. The most important thing is that we minimize the number of people who are dying and if we minimize the spread of disease the diseae will minimize the deaths that we see. Thank you very much. I will see you a added to aftra. Thank you very much. Members of congress testified before the House Small Business Committee on the Paycheck Protection Program and other measures intended to provide relief to small businesses. Shortly after the hearing the house voted on a 484 billion package. This hearing is two hours and 15 minutes. [inaudible conversations] we are going to get started. Thank you. Good morning. The hearing will come to order. I thank everyone for joining us this morning and i want to especially thank my colleagues for joining us today for the House Committee on business hearing the response to covid19. We have had a ha
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