Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us. My name is cliff johnson, the general manager and head of Government Affairs solutions here at Bloomberg Government. I am actually delighted to welcome you to a 2020 springhill watch event. Hopefully by now youve all the chance to take a look at the newest addition of our biannual hill watch report that explores what to watch on capitol hill across more than 20 different policy areas, and of course, this report also examines the effect of covid19, the need for related relief legislation as both parties agendas and plans for 2020. Today were incredibly excited to build upon of a reporting teams expert analysis through conversation with a key lawmaker, and that is senator john thune of south dakota, who is here with us today to discuss the current state of affairs. You can participate in todays discussion on social media by using the hashtag bgovhillwatch to be sure to follow bgov on twitter. I do have a couple of housekeeping announcements just to get us through todays presentation. We are virtual and this is a new world for many of us. This is broadcast live and although we dont anticipate any technical issues, should you experience any streaming delays with audio, maybe video quality, go ahead and refresh your browser. That should resolve the issue. Your browser. That should resolve the issue. This is also an interactive event. We want you to be a part of this conversation. Well have live calls going on and we look forward to you , submitting questions he would like to ask. Now, to ask a question, you will see a q a box to the lower righthand corner of your screen. Go ahead and type in your request and it will pop up in front of us. At the top right of your screen , you will see another box that says slides and polish. Polling. This is a panel where you can respond to a couple of other questions that we will be pushing out during the conversation to keep this as engaging as possible. Should you experience any delays or issues, just refresh your browser. We also have a Tech Support Team online as well but refresh ing is probably the best bet for right now. With that, it is my distinct pleasure to introduce senator john soon. Thune. Senator thune served three terms as south dakota lone member of the u. S. House of representatives before being elected to the senate in 2004. He currently serves as the Senate Republican whip, thats the number two position that Senate Republican leadership. He has served as chairman of the Senate Republican policy as well as chairman of the Senate Republican conference. Currently, senator thune serves as chairman of the Commerce Committee subcommittee on communications, technology, innovation and the internet. As well as chairman of the finance Committee Subcommittee on taxation and irs oversight. And so with that, let me turn things over to emily wilkins, congressional reporter for a conversation with senator thune. Emily the floor is yours. Much cliff. Ks so , senator thune, thank you give us a much for joining us today. We are excited to have your ethics and one who is joining online. I wish would be there in person because these adventures on really good food, but we are glad we could make this work regardless. Senator thune, i wanted to start off by talking a little bit about how you have been dealing with the current shutdown. I know you been up to a couple of things including growing a beard and then shaving said beard. I know youre also been doing some history lessons for kids on youtube. Sen. Thune right. Thanks, emily. Thanks cliff. ,appreciate the opportunity. Thanks to all your audience members out there. Like you, i wish we could do this in person, but this is what were left with these days. As you pointed out, we are doing a lot of things from home. We learned a lot about technology, different platforms. I mentioned before i have learned how to use skype and zoom and google hangout and shindig and Facebook Live an old bunch of other platforms and apps weve used to stay connected. Thank god we got there. Sen. Thune it makes these investments we make in technology and highspeed internet services, i think, all that much more important, particularly when you see how they been used during the virus. So yes, i grew a beard for a while, kind of a quarantine beard and figured when we started flattening the curve i would let the beer to go. Beard go. Which was great for my motherinlaw, who was always complaining about it anyway. Anyhow, weve done some things to try and just stay connected with different constituencies. When i was in south dakota, under normal circumstances, i would be traveling around the state talking to government classes, school oscilloscope taking questions and so we decided, theyre looking for curriculum and probably a little bored out there to put together a few lessons on how the congress and how laws are made, how the congress works. So anyway we did some things , with that, too, but but its all a part of this experience that were going through, and everybody is adapting and doing the best that they can. Emily absolutely. Absolutely. Well, i guess part of the , adaption means we get to integrate new technology into this. I went to see if you could go to our first poll question. Were going to let our viewers take the time to answer this while i asked senator thune a little bit about it. I want to start off i think with the topic that is on everyones mind right now, which is the next coronavirus stimulus package. I just wanted to see if you can talk a little bit this one seems a little bit trickier than the past ones in that there are several issues for state and local funding liability , protections for businesses. What are you hearing from members at this point about what needs to be in this next bill and what should we expect . Sen. Thune right, emily. As you know, we have passed four pieces of legislation already but there will be i think another iteration of this that comes in the next few weeks. And it will depend what it looks like will depend a lot on how things are working out there right now. There will be a need probably to reload and perhaps even expand the ppp program, but we expect the funding there to carry through most of the month of june. Unemployment insurance runs out in july so that will be another deadline. We will have to deal with that issue. You mentioned state and local government funding. Theres been a fairly robust debate about that. In our own republican conference, not to mention with democrats and across the country. So i think there are a number of potential issues that will be front and center again as we look at the next benefit phase, but one of the things that we are focused on in the republican conference is trying to get some Liability Protections for businesses, schools, and hospitals as they open up again , thinking if we dont have those in place and there is a mountain of litigation that is enormously costly, that it could have a pretty profound and adverse impact on the recovery. That is something that will be important for us. I would say the interaction between Unemployment Insurance and getting people transition ed back into the workplace is something, too. Theres a concern that because of the Unemployment Insurance benefit being fairly robust, particularly in some states, that it is acting as a disincentive for people to go back to work as economy begins to open up again. And i would say a really heavy emphasis on testing. Theres been a lot of emphasis on that already, but i think even more as we get into the fall and schools and making sure that were doing everything we can short of a vaccine and an antiviral therapeutic to determine who has it and who doesnt so we can open up safely. Those are probably three components that will be pretty vigorously debated in the next package and things we care about , and of course, the democrats will come with their own list, and that will get the negotiations going. Emily i want to to dive in particularly on the legal liability debate. I know theres been some tension between democrats and republicans on that. Is that an issue you think you might be able to find some sort of middle ground on, like perhaps only include Certain Industries in the protection . Sen. Thune i hope we can. That should be something that will be bipartisan agreement about. I think that, you know opening , up safely and making sure that we are doing every everything we can to protect people who are doing all the right things, as they are practicing the guidelines following the laws, adhering to what the cdc is saying, and then, are subject to these frivolous lawsuits, and that again cause them lots of money to defend themselves against, that could be very harmful as we try to gradually ramp back up and get the economy going again. So there ought to be some Common Ground. Hopefully we can find it. Obviously, the democrats are just sort of generally speaking resistant to any kind of Liability Protections and theyve got a part of their constituency, and trial lawyers are weighing in heavily in this debate as well, but in my view, at least this is something we , ought to be able to find some Common Ground on. And if you are just protecting people from the bad actors, the types of lawsuits that really are clearly frivolous, then you there ought to be some Common Ground. If theres willful misconduct, gross negligence, clearly those , are not the types of things we are interested in protecting people against. We want to predict the good actors, people playing by the rules and doing everything they can to get the economy going again. Emily sure, and you also mentioned that with state and local funding, that there has also been some debate within the republican conference as well for this at this point i one. Understand one of the biggest concerns is states would use this money not to help with side effects from the coronavirus but perhaps other budgetary issues that existed before. Do you think that there is going to be some compromise on that as well . How confident are you we might see something on states and localities . Sen. Thune think there could be something, particularly with regard to state and local governments, with regard to funding that is already out there. There were restrictions on it. There are a lot of stipulations when that was passed. There were members in our conference that felt very strongly that they didnt want states using this for anything that wasnt related to coronavirus, and so, there was 150 billion put in the pipeline specifically for dealing with that, and that was on top of already about another 350 billion that went out to state s in the form of medicaid, medicare reimbursements, of the, other forms of assistance coming through the federal pipeline. Zone sort of flooded the already, but it does have restrictions. We have members, republican members, as well as a lot of democrats, who would like to some of those restrictions lifted and some of those dollars being able to be used for other things like revenue replacement. That will be a fairly spirited debate. I will tell you, within the republican conference, because we have very strong views. To your point about it being used for sort of bailouts, that also was something that was totally hotly debated when we looked at the amount that was put out in the first place. And that is states that we reviewed to have pension systems that were not run well and bloated budgets that there , wasnt much appetite among republican senators at the time for bailing out those types of bad practices. That will continue to hover over any discussion we have about this. But again, the democrats, a big priority for them. They dont want just the flexibly with the current money, that is out there. They want another trillion dollars on top of it. That is something that it will be very hard to get republican votes for in the senate. Emily i just wanted to draw everyones attention to the poll numbers. Thank you for everyone who participated. Senator it seems like a lot of , our viewers agree with you about the importance for liability shield for businesses. I know theres also some discussion about having tax breaks for employers. More than 50 people on the this call are in agreement with that. Looks like extending the 600 per week for those on unemployment is less popular, only 32 . And then slightly less than half said there should be another round of stimulus checks given directly to americans. Senator i know something youre , taking into consideration here as well as other Top Republicans , is that before the next stimulus bill is passed, you wanted to see, in effect how , funding from previous stimulus bills was being used. And i wanted to see its been a month since the last bill got past are you satisfied with how you are saying federal funding been used . Do think there can be various improvements that can be made in the next round . Sen. Thune we do. We think are some things, for example, the paycheck protection program, which has been largely very successful, heavily subscribed to early on, the first 350 billion went really 10 billion going on top of that. That program is about 660 billion. It slowed down a little bit now but its designed to keep people employed, keep workers working and so those jobs stay there. I think there have been a lot of suggestions about how, if we go back in and we extend that program which is a possibility, it, ate trying to extend least in terms of companies being able to use it beyond the eight week window. If we have to add additional dollars to it, my guess is the will be a number of suggestions, many of which are good ones, and i think theres probably general consensus on them that we could make some adjustments to that program. But i also think that when you look at some of these other elements of things that are out there right now, we mentioned , talked about earlier state and , local government funding, whether not restrictions ought to be lifted there. Thats something were monitoring. Trying to get an assessment from states about what their actual revenue losses are. Its hard to just throw money out there, not knowing what the need is and what a lot of our members want to know is, ok, what are the losses . What are we trying to fix . Were just not writing a blank check. A blank check, by the way, that is with borrowed dollars. Theres a lot of concern about what happens next. And then i think im in issue of the interaction between the ui program and additional 600 per person per week that was added , federal benefit on top of the state benefit, in some states is acting as a disincentive for people get back as the economy opens up. And so, figuring out how, when the Unemployment Insurance runs out at the end of july, does that ramp down at the end of the year . Is that bonus payment for people to go back to work . One of our colleagues, rob portman, would fix it that way. I think thursday going to be a really spirited discussion about whats working, whats not working, what do we need to fix . We are seeing things within the ppp program, probably a hard look at state and local funding, and how that is being used, and whether or not they should be more flexible that he there. They tried to fix this sort of glitch that we have that is been created because of that conflict between the Unemployment Program and the need to get people back in the workforce. Those are several things that will be a good amount of discussion in the weeks ahead. Emily a lot of very spirited debate right there. When do you think we might see the text of the bill . When might the senate get around to passing something . Sen. Thune well, i think, the liability language, the text is actually should be out fairly soon. We have folks working on that, the Liability Protection language, and again, trying to write that in a way that could actually get 60 votes in this hopefully pass the house which will be very, very challenging, by the way, as i mentioned earlier. That will get the negotiation going. But i think, from a timing standpoint we should start to , see some of these ideas percolate and come forward. We are not am not there yet, and i do not think that our members are ready to vote on anything just yet. Whether that happens in june or whether that gets pushed to july, sometime in the timeframe where we will have some items teed up and probably ready to go, at least to be debated. And hopefully, you know, something ultimately can pass and then get signed into law by the president. Its a challenging dynamic. You have got the democrat run house, republican run senate, where it takes 60 votes, so a certain number of democrats will pass anything. And then you got the administration who in many cases is in a different position entirely. What we are hoping this time around is that the white house will work with senate and House Republicans to put together the things that we are for, so that when we start the negotiation with the democrats, where at we are at least united on what we want to do. I hope that that way, this works because some cases we have had secretary minutia and was negotiating directly with the democrats in the house, and that tends tends to end up with a much bigger, more costly and more government Centric Program that i think many Senate Republicans will be willing to go for. Emily have you guys started talking with secretary mnuchin a bit on this . Sen. Thune some of those discussions are underway. We have had, as i have said a , number of discussion among our own members. We have been in session the last three weeks and the senate will be in session again next week. At least three times a week, socially distanced, but where we have a lot of these discussions. So the ideas are coming forward. Weve asked and the leader has, too, for individual community of jurisdiction to put together their list of ideas, present them, and get them into the mix. Whip office, has been collecting a lot of those ideas from the various, not only the committees, but also individual members who have ideas, things that they want to see for a phase four or a cares package that might come in the next couple of months. Were not there yet and it takes a little time for the things to ripen, and hopefully that will happen. In the meantime, were doing our best to make sure were listening carefully t