To tear gas and crisis in hong kong. To a historic launch three, two, one. That may forever change the way humans go to space. Cnn is everywhere. And we begin with america on the verge of reaching a crushing reality in this crisis. 100,000 lives cut short by the coronavirus. At this hour, the death toll is 99,123. 99,123 people taken from their families in just four months. Infections are approaching 1. 7 million. And as the march to reopen also progresses, all 50 states are relaxing restrictions to begin to revive economies. This is the map showing the trends of each cases, of new cases in each state. Overall, there is a gradual downward trend of daily new infections, but notice that their areas define this. There is an uptick in new cases from last week to the previous week in some places. 14 states are in shades of red. Lets listen to new York Governor Andrew Cuomo right now. Washingtons history and the legacy. And i want to thank Michael Friedman very much, who is the president of the National Press club, thank him for his hospitality and courtesy for having us here today. We are in washington. I spent eight years in washington during the clinton administration. Secretary of housing and urban development. Came down at the beginning of the clinton administration, stayed until the end. Lived in virginia. Thats where i got my southern accent. Really southern queens, but and we had good discussions today and well be heading back, but we wanted to do a briefing from washington so it was timely. And lets talk about some facts as to where we are. Number of hospitalizations in new york are dropping. The total change in hospitalizations is down and continuing to drop. The intubations are down, and thats a very good sign. Its rare that good things happen after an intubation. And the number of new cases is down, which is very encouraging news. These are the number of new cases that are walking through the door. In terms of number of new yorkers that we have lost 74 yesterday, which is just about what it was the day before, which is the day before was an alltime low at 73. 74 is not as good as 73. Again, only in this time of crisis would 74 deaths would be anything less than truly tragic news. But when you have gone through what we have gone through, its a sign that were headed in the right direction. And we are, when you look at the curve in the state of new york, we are down. Were on the other side of the mountain, as we say. And the decline is continuing. Thats different than what were seeing in some other parts of the nation, where you see the curve either going up or just starting to flatten. So, were pleased with the progress that were making in new york and were ready to go to the next phase, open a new chapter. Memorial day is often a time when society transitions. Memorial day, normally were getting ready for the summer and people are starting to think about summer vacations and summer activity. We have that on a moderated basis in new york, but its also a time of transition for us. And were transitioning to a new chapter on reopening, restarting the economy. This is all a situation that has never happened before, so this is a first case for all of us. And were trying to learn as we go along. And we dont want to just reopen the economy. We want to have a really smart reopening. We want to watch those numbers as we go forward. And we want to reopen the economy to make it stronger than it ever was before. How do you learn from this . And thats the beginning of the new chapter that were going to write. And we started yesterday by reopening the Stock Exchange in new york, where the Stock Exchange actually had people in the building, rather than just electronically. Were doing it on the numbers. Numbers matter. This is not about politics. This is about science, right . Were fighting a virus. The virus is not a democratic virus. Its not a republican virus. Its a virus. And viruses respond to science. And science is about facts and about numbers. And thats how were doing it. Were doing it on the metrics. Were looking at the hospitalization rate. Were looking at the death rate, how many new people are coming in the door into hospitals, how many hospital beds do we have available, how many icu beds do we have available . Do we have testing in place and do we have tracing in place . Just take the politics out of it, right . Just do it on the facts and do it on the science, and thats what were doing in new york. And then you wouldnt reopen everything immediately. You would do it in phases and you would phase it by the most important businesses, the most essential businesses that pose the lowest risk first, and thats exactly what were doing. And we then have several phases for the actual business openings. But were in washington, and the parameter is what should states be doing and what should the federal government be doing . I understand that states are responsible for the reopening. Thats been the position of the states. Its also been the position of the federal government. So, states are doing reopening. States are responsible for testing. States are responsible for tracing. States are responsible for their health care system. States are responsible for the enforcement of all of the procedures around reopening. But at the same time, the federal government has a role to play, and the federal government has to do its part as we work our way through this crisis. And they cannot be a National Recovery if the state and local governments are not funded. That is a fact. Washington is now debating their next bill that would aid in the reopening and the recovery. Prior bills have helped businesses, large businesses, Small Businesses, hotels, airlines, all sorts of business interests. Thats great. But you also have state and local governments, and state governments do things like fund schools and fund hospitals. Do you really want to cut schools now . Do you really want to cut hospitals now, after what weve just gone through, when were talking about a possible second wave, when were talking about a fall with possible more cases . Do you really think we should starve state governments and cut hospitals . Would that be smart . Do you really want to cut local governments right now . Thats cutting police. Thats cutting fire. Is now the time to savage essential services . And dont you realize that if you do this, if you cut state and local governments and you cause chaos on the state and local level, how does that help a nation striving to recover economically . The covid states, the states that bore the brunt of the covid virus, theyre onethird of the national gdp. How can you tell onethird of the country to go to heck and then think youre going to see an economic rebound . Also, state government, state economies, local economies, thats what the National Economy is made of. What is the National Economy but for a function of the states . There is no nation without the states. They tend to forget that in this town. But its the obvious fact. And weve made this mistake before. Again, look at history. If you dont learn from the mistakes, youre going to repeat the mistakes. Its that simple. And we have seen in the past what has happened when state and local governments were savaged and how it hurt the National Recovery. Wall street journal. Not exactly a liberal publication. It makes the point that on the economy, cuts to employment and spending likely to weigh on growth for years. So, even if you believe the rhetoric, were about reopening, were about getting the economy back, great then if thats what you believe, you would provide funding to the state and local governments. The Federal Reserve chairman, powell, very smart man, respected on both sides of the aisle, said, we have evidence of the Global Financial crisis and years afterward where state and local government layoffs and lack of hiring did weigh on economic growth. We want to reopen the economy we want to get this National Economy better than ever fine. Then act accordingly and act appropriately. This hyperpartisan washington environment is toxic for this country you have people saying, well, we dont want to pass a bill that helps democratic states. It would be a bluestate bailout is what some have said. Senator mcconnell stopping blue state bailouts. Senator scott, were supposed to go bail them out . Thats not right. On fox tv, laffer, you want us to give our money to cuomo and new yorkers . Hello, not this week. First of all, this is really an ugly, ugly sentiment. It is an unamerican response. Were still the United States of america. Those words meant something. United states of america. First of all, mr. Federal legislator, youre nothing without the states, and you represent the United States. Not only is it ugly, it is false. It is wholly untrue what they are saying. 100 . And there are facts, if you want to pose the question, which is, i think, divisive at this period of time. But if you want to pose the question, what states give money and what states take money, right . There is a financial equation that is the federal government. If you want to ask what states give money to other states and what states take money from other states, thats a question that senator mcconnell and senator scott and mr. Laffer dont really want to ask, because the truth is totally the opposite of what theyre saying. You look at the states that give more money to the federal government than they give back you know the top, what they call donor state . You know what one state pays in more to the pot than they take out of the federal pot than any other state in the United States . Its the state of new york. New york pays more every year, 29 billion more than they take back. You know the second state . New jersey, massachusetts, connecticut, california. Every year, they contribute more to the federal pot. You know who takes out more than they put in from that pot . You know whose hand goes in deeper and takes out more than they put in . Virginia, maryland, kentucky, alabama, florida. Those are the facts. Those are the numbers. The great irony is, the conservatives want to argue against redistribution of wealth. Why should you take money from the rich and give it to the poor . Thats exactly what you are doing. That is exactly what you have done every year. So its only the redistribution unless you wind up getting more money. Then its fine. Then its not redistribution. Take from the rich, give to the poor. Thats redistribution. Yes, unless youre the poor, senator mcconnell, senator scott, because you were the ones who have your hand out. Youre the ones who are taking more than others. Redistribution. Youre against it, except when the richer states give you more money every year. And then the great hypocrisy they actually made the redistribution worse when they passed three years ago a provision ending whats called state and local tax deductibility. That didnt level the playing field. What they did was they took the states that were already paying more money into the federal government. Quote unquote richer states. And they increased the money they were taking from the richer states. They took another 23 billion from california, another 14 billion from new york, new jersey, massachusetts, illinois, connecticut. The hypocrisy is so insulting, because when you start to talk about numbers, there are still facts. And people can still add and people can still subtract. And they know what they put in and they know what they take out. I know its washington, d. C. , but the truth actually still matters. And americans are smart. And they find out the truth. Even in the fog and the blather of washington, d. C. So my point to those in congress, stop abusing new york. Stop abusing new jersey, stop abusing massachusetts and illinois and michigan and pennsylvania. Stop abusing the states who bore the brunt of the covid virus. Through no fault of their own why did new york have so many cases . Its nothing about new york its because the virus came from europe and no one in this nation told us we were told the virus is coming from china. Its coming from china. Look to the west. Yeah, well, they missed it. We were looking to the west. It came from the east. The virus left china, went to europe. 3 million europeans come to new yo york, land in our airports, january, february, march, and bring the virus. And nobody knew. It wasnt new yorks job. We dont do International Global health. It didnt come from china. It came from europe. And we bore the brunt of it. And now you want to hold that against us because we bore the brunt of a National Mistake . And because we had more people die, we lost more lives, you want to now double the insult and the injury by saying, well, why should we help those states . Those states had more covid deaths. Thats why youre supposed to help those states, because they did have more covid deaths. And this is the United States. And when one state has a problem, the other states help. I was in the federal government for eight years. When los angeles had earthquakes, we helped. When the midwest had the red river floods, we helped. When florida had hurricane andrew, we helped. When texas had floods, we helped. When louisiana had hurricane katrina, we helped. We didnt say, well, thats louisianas fault. They had the hurricane. Well, thats texas fault. They had the floods. It was nobodys fault, and we were there to help, because thats who we are, and thats what we believe. What happened to that american spirit . What thoopd the concept of mutuality . You know, there is still a simple premise that you cant find in a book, and washington hasnt written regulations for, called doing the right thing. Theres still a right thing in life. The right thing you feel inside you. The right thing is a calibration of your principle and your belief and your soul and your heart and your spirit, and we do the right thing in this country. Not because a law says do the right thing, but because we believe in doing the right thing, as individuals, as people. We believe doing right by each other, by living your life by a code where you believe you are living it in an honorable way, acting on principle, and youre doing the right thing. Why cant the government . Why cant the congress reflect the right thing principle that americans live their life by . Pass a piece of legislation that is honorable and decent and does the right thing for all americans. Why is that so hard . And if you want to talk about reopening the economy, then do it in a productive way. People think this economys just going to bounce back. I dont think its going to bounce back. I think its going to bounce back for some, and i think theres going to be Collateral Damage of others. We already know that tens of thousands of Small Businesses closed and probably wont come back. We already know that the large corporations are going to lay off thousands and thousands of workers and theyre going to use this pandemic as an excuse to get lean, to restructure, and theyre going to boost their profits by reducing their payroll. We know it. Weve been there before. We saw this in the 2008 mortgage crisis, where the government bailed them out, the big banks that created the problem, and they used the money to pay themselves bonuses and they laid off their workers. Theyre going to do the same thing again. Thats why i propose the Americans First legislation that said a corporation cant get a dime of government bailout unless they rehire the same number of workers they had prepandemic as post. Dont take a gift from the taxpayer and then lay off americans who are going to then file for uninsurance paid for by the taxpayers. Dont do that again. And if you want to be smart, we know that theres work to do in this nation. Weve known it for years. You can fill a library with the number of books on the infrastructure and the decay of our infrastructure and how many roads and bridges have to be repaired, how this nation is grossly outpaced by nations around the world in terms of infrastructure and airports and development. Now is the time to stimulate the economy by doing that construction. If you want to supercharge the reopening, thats how you do it. This nation was smart enough to do it before. We did it in the midst of the great depression. We created 8 million jobs. We built an infrastructure that were still living on today. Were still living on the infrastructure built by our grandparents, not even our parents. What are we going to leave our children . And now is the time to do it. We have major Infrastructure Projects in new york that are ready to go, that are desperately needed, that were desperately needed 30 years ago. Build them now. Supercharge the reopening. Grow the economy. Thats what we would do if we were smart. Youre not going to have a supercharged economy, youre not going to see this nation get up and start running again, unless we do it together. Thats states working with other states. Thats a federal government that stands up and puts Everything Else aside. They were elected to provide Good Government. Nobody elected anyone to engage in partisan politics. There was a time when as a nation we were smart enough to say, you want to play politics . Thats what a campaign is for. Run your campaign against your opponent. Say all sorts of crazy things. Thats Crazy Campaign time. But when government starts, stop the politics and do whats right and smart. Dont play your politics at the expense of the citizens you represent. There is no Good Government concept anymore. Its politics 365 days a year, from the moment theyre elected to the moment they run again, its all politics. And that is poison. We have to get to a point, if only for a moment, if only for a moment, if only for a moment in response to a national crisis, where we say, its not red and blue. Its red, white, and blue. Its the United States. And were going to act that way. In new york, we say that by saying new york tough. But its america tough. Which is smart and united and disciplined and loving, and loving. Thats what makes america america. Thank you for having. Any questions . Spoken to washington. You met with the president , obviously. I was wondering, you were ta