States. The reality is that, yeah, this is where covid19 is taking its steepest toll. This is this is who is feeling the brunt of this disease. Woodruff all that and more, on tonights pbs newshour. Major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by Consumer Cellular offers nocontract wireless plans that are designed to help you do more of the things you enjoy. Whether youre a talker, texter, browser, photographer, or a bit of everything, our u. S. Based Customer Service team is here to find a plan that fits you. To learn more, go to consumercellular. Tv fidelity investments. Bnsf railway. The john s. And james l. Knight foundation. Fostering informed and engaged communities. More at kf. Org. And with the ongoing support of these institutions this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. And by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. Woodruff two different pandemic plot lines are playing out in washington tonight. The president is defending his use of a drug that has not been approved for covid19; and, congress is focused on the relief money that it already approved, and whether it should approve more. White house correspondent Yamiche Alcindor reports. Alcindor washington remains under lockdown. But today, President Trump was out and about. He visited the u. S. Capitol without wearing a mask to meet with republican senators. He also defended taking daily doses of hydroxychloroquine. The drug has potentially dangerouside effects, and it is unproven against covid19. But President Trump dismissed warnings that his actions send a dangerous message. I think it gives u an additional level of safety. But you can ask many doctors are in favor of it. Many frontline workers wont go there unless they have the hydroxy. So again, this is an individual decision to make. Alcindor later, at a cabinet meeting, he spoke again. Alcindor the president also announced that he would gn an executive order directing Government Agencies to identify any regulations that can be temporarily waived to help reopen the economy and promote growth. Republican senator rick scott of florida if its to help Small Businesses that dont have access to capital, i want to be helpful for them. But if its to continue to spend money without any accountability, im going to oppose it. Alcindor minority leader chuck schumer, and other democrats, say the next bill must help workers as well as hardhit state and local governments. Are they for aid to state and local governments . Are they for so many of the things in the bill more money for hospitals, more help for testing, more money for p. P. E. . Alcindor at a senate hearing, conducted via video conference, Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell pledged that a Lending Program for towns, cities and states will be available by the end of the month. Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin defended efforts to have businesses reopenunder questioning by Pennsylvania Republican pat toomey. The longer that we continue a shutdown, when weeks turn into months, doesnt that necessarily increase the risk . Theres the risk of permanent damage, and, as ive said before, were conscious of the Health Issues and we want to do this in a balanced and safe way. Alcindor but ohio democrat Sherrod Brown argued more should be done to protect workers the president says reopen slaughterhouses, nothing about slowing the line down, nothing about protective equipment. How many workers should give their lives to increase the g. D. P. Or dow jones a thousand points . No worker should give their lives to do that, mr. Senator, and i think your characterization is unfair. We have provided enormous amounts of equipment. Alcindor meanwhile, at another white house event today, President Trump threatened a permanent end to u. S. Funding to the world health organization. It has already been suspended temporarily. They have to be much more fair to other countries, including the United States, or we wont be involved with them anymore. Alcindor late monday, the president sent the w. H. O. A letter accusing the group of letting chinas influence deter efforts to prevent the pandemic. All the while, the virus continues its rampage. In northwest india today, people stood in line waiting for covid19 tests, as cases in the country reached 100,000. And, vietnam looked to jumpstart its economy by pushing for more domestic travel. The country has banned foreign visitors, and its Tourism Industry has suffered greatly. translated there are a few domestic tourists, but their spending, on average, is significantly lower than that of foreign tourists. The truth is, the situation is tough, really tough. Alcindor the story is much the same the world over, adding to the pressure that grows daily to reopen. For the pbs newshour, im Yamiche Alcindor. Woodruff the Congressional Budget Office today released the latest look at economic damage from the pandemic. It predicted the economy will contract this quarter at an annual rate of nearly 38 . The agency said it could take until 2021 to recover fully. Meanwhile, on wall street, the optimism that drove mondays rally gave way to new doubts. The Dow Jones Industrial average lost 390 points to close at 24,206. The nasdaq fell 49 points, and the s p 500 slipped 31. As we st heard, the countrys top economic leaders were pressed for answers today on capitol hill about the governments relief and rescue efforts. We are going to speak with two senators who were part of this, starting with senator pat omey, a republican from pennsylvania. He is on the Senate Banking committee, and a member of the congressional oversight commission, a new committee watching over the spending of the cares act money. Senator toomey, thank you very much for talking with us. We heard you express concern today at the hearing about the effects of the economy on the economy long term if people end up staying out of work for such a long time. Is that now a greater concern for you than covid19 coming back later in the year, there being a resurgence of it . How do you weigh the two . You know, judy, its a great question, but, you know, im reminded of the reason we took the extraordinary, draconian step of closing the economy for the first time in the history of the country the government made it, you know, just forbid economic activity, forbid people from earning a livelihood. There was a very specific and clearly articulated reason for doing that, and the reason was to prevent the spread of the virus from happening so quickly that so many people would get sick all at once that they would overwhelm our hospital capacity. It has been abundantly clear for weeks now that were not going to overwhelm our hospitals. We have all kinds of excess cacity in hospitals, and much of pennsylvania we have halfempty hospitals some that danger has long since passed, and yet every day that goes by that we continue the lockdown now presumably for some other reason, were destroying livelihoods. Were destroying businesses. We have bankruptcies. Some will never come back. And well undo a lot of the good that we were doing for an awful lot of americans and pennsylvanians. So at this point i really think the best course of action is to proceed with a cautious, prudent reopening that includes the kinds of measures thawe all have learned, the c. D. C. Guidelines of keeping physical distance and Wearing Masks and washing hands, those are behaviors we didnt engage in at all whatsoever in january and february. Well engage in those behaviors now. So i think the risk is much, much lower. We know much more about this. We have much greater capacity to fight any kind of resurgence of the virus. And we need people to be able to get back to having a livelihood. Woodruff as you know, the folks on the other side of the aisle, a number of them are saying they are still worried about health effects. They dont think enough has been done, has been put in place to make the workplace safe enough for workers. What do you say to that . Well, so thats a new argument, right . The initial one was we couldnt overwhelm hospitals. Now that thats not a risk, we have a new argument, but the fact is this is a disease that is very, very dangerous for a very, very small percentage of our population. We know who is vulnerable to this. Its older people and specifically people who have underlying healthcare problems, especially the elderly some in pennsylvania for instance, i think this is probably pretty typical across the country, fully 69 of all fatalities have happened inside Nursing Homes, where this disease spread. Thats a whole issue about how that happened. But it tells you something when the overwhelming majority of the deaths occur in the most vulnerable subset of our most vulnerable age group. Those people need to be protected. We need all kinds of security measures to protect peple who are living in assisted living and nursing home, but the fact is 30yearold factory workers are not vulnerable anything like older folks are, and with the safety precautions that the c. D. C. Recommends, they can be kept safe. Woodruff let me ask you about attempts by the congress to help people who are hurting, whether people own a business or whether people are out of work. As you know, the how has passed a bill that would aim be aimed in part at helping state and local governments. We hear leaders of state and local governments now crying out for help, saying they are either. They have already laid off people, furloughed people, or are about to have to do that. Theyre having to cut back Important Services to the public in their communities. Why isnt this more of an urgent need in your mind on the part of other republicans who say, lets go slow . Well, in part, judy, because of what weve already done. We have sent hundreds of billions of dollars to our states, 150 billion right off the bat to deal with anything remotely related to covid19 to be allocated by governors across their states, their commonwealth. Some of it went directly to the largest counties, of which we have handful in pennsylvania, for instance. But thats not all. We also increased the federal share of medicaid. The federal government has already paid a majority of the cost of medicaid. Now we pay an even bigger share. We spent a tremendous amount of money to hospitals, billions and billions of dollars for primary and secondary and tertiary education, all of which relieves state budgets from those cat goirs. So again, i think given that we have spent hundreds of billions of dollars, we have sent that to the states, its probably time to pause and say, what exactly are the other needs, why did they arise, and whether its appropriate for that to be dealt with at a state and local level or the federal level, and thats a subject for a robust debate. Woodruff so very quickly, when fed chairman Jerome Powell says hes concerned about state and local Government Employees being out of work and worsening the economy long term, because theyre not working, whats your response . Well, it could. Launching another round of hundreds of billions or trillions if nancy pelosi had her way is not necessarily a better outcome. Theres in free lunch. This doesnt come at zero cost. If there were no cost to distributing money, we could send a Million Dollar check to every man, woman, and child in the country. Everything would be great. I dont think anyone thinks you can do that and not have really, really dire consequences. We have pumped out trillions in matter of weeks. Nothing like this has ever handed before. I think prudence suggests we need to proceed slowly here. The other thing is lets be candid, not all states are in comparable situations. Some states have been fiscally very prudent. They have modest budgets relative to their population. They have rainy day funds. Other states are essentially insolvent. Theyve been extremely inprudent. It will be difficult to figure out, well, why do the taxpayers of the states that have been more cautious, prudent, why are they supposed to subsidize the other states, and whats the formula by which we do that . Im not sure anybodys got abeasy answer to that just yet. Woodruff senator pat toomey, pennsylvania, thank you, sir, very much. Appreciate your joining us. Thanks for having me. Woodruff senator Sherrod Brown is the highest ranking democrat on the banking, housing, and urban affairs committee, and he joins us now from cleveland. Senator brown, thank you for being here. Let me start by asking you about what senator toomey said, and this is that in his view its now clear that covid is mainly dangerous to the elderly and that its time for young, Healthy People to be able to go back the work. Well, what senator toomey said essentially is its not governments role to protect workers. I dont know if hes not seeing the numbers. Abraham lincoln, one of my favorite quotes is, i have to get out of the white house and get my Public Opinion back, meaning i need to talk to people about their lives and where theyre hurting and what theyre doing. I spend every day talking to people that are staffing homeless shelters and talk to people at food banks and talk to people that are laid offer, and the pain is great out there still, and in the end, that hearing today showed that the administration continues to care more about the stock market than it does workers. We have had were 5 of the worlds population. Weve had almost onethird of the worlds death. He can say, well, theyre just people in nursing home, we dont care that much about them, theyre old anyway, or he can say, we have to protect workers. The president just a couple weeks ago a slaughterhouse in south dakota, hundreds were infected at work. We know that Prison Guards are infected in large numbers. We know that 35 or 40 i havent seen the most recent numbers bust drivers have died from coronavirus. We need the start putting workers first. As we reopen the government, we need to scale up testing,ing . Administration has taken to leadership on. We need to increase the protective equipment we get, not just the hospital workers, but the laundry, people doing the laundry, people doing food service, people driving buses, people stocking shelves at supermarkets, because the next big outbreaks are going to be in workplaces, because were not setting the guidelines and enforcing them on what employers must do to protect their workers. Woodruff senator brown, you put it in pretty stark terms today with treasury secretary mnuchin. At one point you said, how many workers should give their lives to increase the Gross Domestic Product or the dow jones average by 1,000 points. He pushed back. He said that is not fair. The administration has put a lot of money into protecting workers. Is that an answer that. How does that answer sit with you . Well, you heard the previous interview with my colleague from pennsylvania that its just like these are numbers. Never do we hear out of the administration the human, the pain about people dying alone. They cant sit withheir spouse of 06 years or sit with their 45yearold daughter as there dying in the last few days of coronavirus. And you can see that this administration is all about the economics of it. I want people back at work. I want a more prosperous country, a more prosperous economy, but if you start putting people back to work without the safeguards and nobody really believes this president has led any National Effort to scale up production of protuck tef equipment for all workers. Nobody believes hes worked to scale up testing. Thats why weve had one third of the worlds death yet were only 5 of the worlds population, even though we found out about this coronavirus pretty much the same week or maybe even the same day they dd in south korea, yet in south korea, fewer than 500 people have died, and their economy, their Unemployment Rate is 3 point something per sengtd. Its just because the president never scaled up testing. The president has shown no interest in building a move. And an effort to produce protective equipment for workers, because frankly, the president in and senator confederates in the attic senator senator mccoblg always side with wall street. Too many workers going to die on the job regardless of what my colleague from pennsylvania said. You have to focus on workers going back to work as you reopen this economy, otherwise there are more outbreaks and more deaths and more Economic Hardship that will be visited on the whole country. Woodruff senator, what about their argument that if you keep people away from work for too long, you destroy livelihoods, that businesses cant open again, jobs cant get recreated again, that youre doing a different kind of damage but an equally longlasting damage . Well, of course we want to put everybody back the work. They just make up these arguments when they say, we dont want people to go back the work. I want them to go back the work safely. The president. My governor in ohio, a republican, im a democrat, this isnt a partisan state. My governor has saved lives because he early and aggressively went after this virus. The president of the United States, who is in denial about this virus and has never stepped up and led an effort for protective equipment and for scaledup testing, this president hacost americans lives, and if you go back the work without protective equipment, if you go back the work without a plan to really scale up testing, the economy is not going to grow, and we could easily fall back in to more people getting sick and more people dying. Were still seeing roughly 2,000 people a day die, but you take new york and new jersey out of this, and many states around the country, infections continue to go up because the president and people in the sen