Absence of a quorum. Madam president , across our country were seeing cities, schools, businesses, and other organizations take the necessary and serious precautions to keep the American People safe from the spread of the coronavirus. School districts, colleges, universities are canceling inperson classes, churches are moving to services online, professional sports teams are hitting pause on their regular season, airlines are canceling flights and many main street businesses are closing their doors. I know that all of this is a little disorienting and certainly alarming. But while these measures arent normal, it is a sign that were heeding advice from the experts, people like dr. Fauci, organizations like the center for Disease Control. Its a sign that were doing what we can to prevent or at least slow down community spread. And its a sign that were standing together and making progress ultimately expecting that we will get through this together. The difficult decisions that need to be
They, in the early days, didnt have the testing capacity. When it came online in meaningful amounts, it increased significantly. I think the big frustration in the u. S. Has been that there is this inability to go out and do widespread Disease Testing and surveillance. David explain that to me. We heard alex azar saying everyone who needs to be tested can be tested. Where are we on that . Weording to secretary azar, are in good shape. Drew that is misleading. All of the testing that is being done is essentially boutique testing, where someone gets a nasal and throat swab, and someone has to basically go and handle this sample. It is a human process. It is not the take a swab, it goes into a machine, and you are running 2000 of these a day, or a rapid strep test that you would get. That is where the real testing volume and surveillance happens right now. Even if there are test kits available, you still need the people available to run them, and that is a major bottleneck. David very hel
Unfortunately, theres still desperate for testing kits. Illinois has about 5000 more kits that were provided yesterday by private company at the urging of our governor, but weve never seen a number of test kits that we believe are necessary to measure the current state of this coronavirus in her home state of illinois. The official count, and i might add that word official, is that we have had 288 illinoisans affected, and one fatality. I believe the number of infections in the official report grossly understate the exposure and in my home state f illinois. And once more tests are administered and we received the results come unafraid we are going to see a dramatic increase in that number of reported infections in the state. These cases yesterday, 128 new cases were announced yesterday in our state. It is the largest single oneday increase since weve been reporting. We have two additional counties that have now been touched out of 100 you, we are not up to 17 counties with infections.
Following the Senate Foreign hearing, committee befor witnesses and director m. Night joined the witnesses at a press conference. [indiscernible conversations] all, for being here and for your interest. I am the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task force. We are an organization that does humanitarian work, political work and legal work. Ourre proud to have organization an amazing family and m. Night shyamalan, caesar and omar, who play an Important Role in the work that we are doing. Kikoler is at the center for prevention event prevention of genocide at the u. S. Holocaust museum. The museum has been an amazing resource and ally to innocent civilians in syria, taking trips to the region and back to shine a light on atrocities. Left is the cohead of the m. Night shyamalan foundation. They have visited the borders and met with victims, medical workers, detainees, chemical weapons survivors. Their foundation has played a key role in helping evacuate a Womens Center and a schoo
So, this sounds really loud to me. Does it sound okay to people . Yeah . Hello everybody. Im maya mcginnis. I run the committee for responsible budget. Im pleased you joined us for our forum. Many of you probably know this, but the committee for responsible federal budget is a Bipartisan Organization focused on fiscal responsibility. And if you look at the world right now where the debt is at near record levels, never been this high relative to the economy since world war ii and the deficit is the largest its ever been when the economy is this strong its a really important issue to focus on right now. Im smiling so i dont cry. I was thinking i look really happy. Its a troubling time for fiscal policy. Theres no question about that. Let me just tell you quickly about two projects that we are doing before i kick off our really great panels and speakers for this afternoon. The first project were doing right now is something we do every year on Election Year called u. S. Budget watch. And