Healths on the States Harris ofthen drew Thomas Jefferson university. Washington journal is next. Is next. Sweep for joe biden in tuesdays primaries in florida, illinois, and arizona. It raises the question of when Bernie Sanders might withdraw. Washington journal this is this is washington journal for march 18. We will talk about that and the latest in the coronavirus responds with a near trillion dollar package likely. For those in the eastern and central time zones, the line is 2027488000. The mountain and pacific region, 2027488001. If you are a medical professional, really appreciate on yourfrom you experience. That line, 2027488002. Tell us where you are texting from in your name and the line is 2027488003. At c on twitter it is cspanwj. And on facebook it is facebook. Com cspan. The president this morning saying for the people who are now out of work because of the important and necessary containment policies, the shutting down of hotels, bars, and restaurants, money will be coming to you. The onslaught of the chinese virus is not your fault. We will be stronger than ever. This is reporting on the potential package from the white house. Wall street journal with their headline, u. S. Seeks to send checks to americans writing the Trump Administration back to plan to send checks directly to americans as part of a stimulus package to help households and businesses designed to cushion the impact of the economic slowdown triggered by the coronavirus pandemic. Steven mnuchin was part of that briefing yesterday and here is what he said. [video clip] you mean direct payments to americans or are you talking about a payroll tax . Although the president likes the idea of the payroll tax holiday, what we have heard from many people in the president said we can consider this, it would get people money over 6 to 8 months. We are looking at sending checks to americans immediately and what we have heard, Many Companies have shut down. Americans need cash now and the president wants to get cash now and i mean in the next two weeks. How much . I will preview that with republicans. They the numbers may be a bit bigger than approximated. Host the results of yesterdays primaries in florida, arizona, and illinois. Ohio canceling postponing their primary until june 2. Here are the results from florida. Joe biden winning 61 point 9 of the vote, over one million votes. 23 ,e sanders with near 395,000. Joe biden getting 43. 6 of the vote with 231,000 voting for him. Bernie sanders with nearly 32 1049. Vote, 168,000 in illinois, joe biden, nearly 60 of the vote and Bernie Sanders, 36. 1 . E note from the trumppenc campaign. Florida puts President Trump over the top as presumptive 2020 nominee. The president ial preference primary in his home state of florida put him above the delegate threshold to become the presumed 2020 republican nominee for president in a primary season that saw him shatter records for vote totals and vote percentages with 122 delegates awarded to the president. He has 1330 above the 1276 needed to win the republican nomination. Greenville, South Carolina to hear from jeannie. Good morning. Caller good morning. How are you doing . Host doing just fine, thank you. Caller of course we are listening to all the programs that will happen because of this virus. I am wondering. I know they said they were going to give a check and help every american and companies i am wondering about the homeless, the people that have addresses, that moved. How are they going to contact and get in touch with these people . Is there going to be a program in each state where these funds are going to be available to you . That is my first question. Degree thatevery ,ou can name doctors, phds and i am wondering why we dont have any idea about this virus. Host what do you mean we dont have any idea . Caller we dont have any idea how to get rid of it or what to do. It says we need to isolate ourselves and stay away so we wont spread it. I dont understand. Host one of the reasons is it is new, novel coronavirus, a type of virus, this covid19. We will go to michael and hear from new jersey. Caller good morning and thank you for cspan. Going to what the previous caller was saying as far as homeless residents or poor residents, there is an article in the New York Times about how famous people and celebrities and professional athletes, ymptomatic areas easily able to get tests while the rest of us have to wait until we are symptomatic. I think this crisis will highlight the wealth gap increasing in this country for the last 40 years and even the low end numbers the cdc is projecting, it will be scary in a couple months. Host this may be the article you are referring to, thanks for pointing that out from the New York Times, u. S. Lags in testing and gaps in the data are not helping, not specifically on the socioeconomic aspect, but the report says testing data has ,een not easily available especially in the United States based on government sources. Here is how testing efforts compare with italy and south korea. Delays in testing have set back the response to the pandemic even though the first case was discovered around the same time south koreas was. Part of the problem has been gaps created by the ways states and federal agencies report the data. Lucius in South Carolina, hello. Lucius in greenville, South Carolina. Go ahead. Greenville, are you on the air . 2027488000 is the line for those of you in the eastern and central time zones. 2027488001 mountain and pacific and medical professionals, 2027488002. Isk to the primaries, this the reporting of the miami herald with their headline joe biden romps in florida delivering damaging blow to Bernie Sanders writing nothing was protectable about the Florida Democratic primary accept the results. Joe biden beat Bernie Sanders soundly in the largest swing state affirming his standing as the front runner in the primary and pulling him closer to the president ial nomination. At the former Vice President was poised to beat the vermont senator by 40 points. A crushing blow delivered in one of the biggest prizes left in the primary map. Steve in connecticut, good morning. Go ahead. Just reported on msnbc the army corps of engineers have received orders to build hospitals and they were trying to help the cruise lines that try to avoid paying taxes in our country. Why are we helping these out . Ordereduntries ventilators on hand and we are behind the eight ball. That is my comment for today. Host some comments on twitter. We are cspanwj. This one talking about the potential of a thousand dollars for every american. What good would 1000 check do for a family where the wage earner is without a job . I would like to discuss the 1 trillion stimulus and hear from those who support the idea. Will it be the people who scream socialism and what about the debt during the obama administration. The Airline Industry spent 90 stop reaks on buybacks. Most big cruise lines are not even domicile in the u. S. Biden florida saying joe won every county in florida. I dont have a socialist in the fight, but it seems time for bernie to bow. The briefing at the white house mid afternoon with the president and his Coronavirus Task force, the president said this calling for medicare to expand the use of telehealth. [video clip] medicare patients can visit any doctor at no additional cost including with commonly used Services Like skype and facetime. In addition, states have the authority to Cover Telehealth Services for medical patients and by doing this, the patient is not seeing the doctor, per se, but there is no getting close. Enforce applicable. Ipaa penalties they will not be enforced. We encourage everyone to maximize either telehealth to limit exposure to the virus. It has been a successful method of communication, but never used on a scale like we are going to use telehealth. Host taking a look at the reporting on the coronavirus, the reporting from Johns Hopkins center for systems science and engineering, the total cases worldwide, nearly 200,000 specifically in the u. S. And the worldwide, 7955. In the u. S. , cases rising by 1700, 1800 from yesterday. In theth 114 deaths u. S. Lets hear from sherry in st. Louis, missouri. Your volume and go ahead with your comments. Hit the mute button and go ahead. Sherry in st. Louis, go ahead. In chattanooga, tennessee, good morning. Trump can take pride in the fact he has exceeded obama and several areas, playing more golf, putting us in deeper debt, and this virus. Exceed 12,000 like he said the swine flu did . He has exceeded obama in every area. Maryland. Rd in how are you . I want to enlighten all of our viewers and listeners that barack obama had a program installed to prepare us for these kind of things that are going to happen right now. One of the reasons why the United States is behind other countries in the testing is the technology. Barack obama already installed in office these kind of things to prepare the United States for testing. For example, china and south korea is ahead of the United States in testing. They are testing to the tune of thousands every day. The United States does not even have the people in place to do the testing. I wish cspan would enlighten our viewers. The reason the United States is behind is because this president acquitted or it he has been impeached. We are in a constitutional crisis. We will talk more about the testing later on. There is data from the centers for Disease Control and convention. We go up a little bit on this to the chart. It is near the top of the page between the United States, south korea, and italy. I dont have china, but the ones we know, the numbers we know through march 16th. Through monday, the United States through monday and you can see the rise of the numbers. 25,000 specimens tested. 4400 cases confirmed. Italy, 134,000 tests. 8,000 confirmed cases in south korea, they have the jump on testing from early february, south korea has tested nearly 300,000 people. 8300 confirmed cases. There is more data and more charts and i assume that is online as well. Lets hear from ron in california. Go ahead, ron. Actions have consequences. Lack of actions also have consequents. I happened to do a Little Research on the comparison between what the United States has done and what europe has done. Denmark,country like for example, made this conclusion, lets close down the borders. No one in, no one out and as a result, they let commerce continue. What we have done by the lack of action or in this case, action, is cutting all of our economic engine to. Fullwill take to a stop. That will take a tremendous amount of time to recover. It will cost a lot of time, almost a year to recover. The bottom line is we should have tested early. We should continue to test now. The sampling the data sampling should be selfevident and it should be broken down. Here in california, we have a state senator who broke it down who was causing it and it is a lot coming in from other countries. Just want you to know how much we appreciate what you do and thanks for being cspan. Host george in mount olive, welcome. Noter one thing i have heard anyone talk about is people in prison. We all know prisons are overcrowded and filthy and i think we ought to consider the prisoners that are nonviolent and let them out. When it hits a prison, it will cost us. Host you are on topic of what the Washington Post one of the things they are writing about. The headline says covid19 will not stay behind bars and part reads like a cruise ship like cruiseship passengers, inmates in jails and prisons are at heightened risk of contracting and transmitting the coronavirus. Prisoners at two dozen institutions in italy rioted after the government, seeking to contain the virus, imposed a countrywide lockdown that curtailed prison visits. It is critical u. S. Officials focus right now on how to limit the effects in federal and state facilities. To north carolina, beverly. Caller good morning. Over this virus and i am upset over the united president s lies. He knew about this back in november. It was called fake, fake, fake until a couple of weeks ago. All the other countries have just about taken over everything we need now. We are not able to get anything and he is going to give us now 1000 a person or family or whatever . He is not telling you how much he is giving to the top people he just bailed out. It is notabout money, about our health. It is not about the people suffering here. I am totally disgusted with him and i wish he would realize he is not equipped and just resign. You have a good day. Host President Trump meeting today with a group of nurses. We may see a briefing later this afternoon. Our text line is 2027488003. Here is bill in new jersey saying one thing is clear, how they handle this Coronavirus Crisis will make or break President Trump being elected to a second term. So glad our government balanced the budget and pay down the 23 23 trillion in debt so we were use to financial crisis. Front page of the Washington Times this morning, going big to rescue the economy. With reporting saying President Trump said tuesday his administration is going big with a 1. 2 trillion rescue package planned including a proposal for direct payments of 1000 or more to most americans for an economy rocked by the pandemic. The white house announced the Steven Mnuchin said after an urgent afternoon meeting with Senate Republicans, the white house proposal had grown from 850 billion earlier in the day. The senate is in session coming back at 10 00 a. M. Eastern and that will be live on cspan 2, returning to finish work on the original house bill, the legislation the house passed. Senate coverage on cspan 2. Next is wisconsin, good morning to bill. Caller good morning and thank you for taking my call. I would like to make a recommendation to the white house that during the press conferences, they add a couple microphones and start leading by example saying keep your six foot distance. American see the president surrounded by people including president , who should be distancing himself, and the governor from the state of wisconsin sat elbow to elbow at a conference yesterday, shutting restaurants. S and our leaders have to set by example. We need more microphones to separate these extra witnesses. I think they are doing a great job. I think President Trump is doing a great job. Democrats if the democrats were making this decision, nothing would have been done by now. I am proud of our president , but more concerned about setting an example with the six foot distance, protecting our president. That isthis money getting sent out will be free. We will pay for it in taxes down it is necessary and needed, so everybody should be working together. Keep your distance. Host are you concerned at all you said protecting the president , are you concerned in some of these briefings where they have a number of people very close behind the president , do youriefing stage think you talked about leaders setting an example, do you think that sets an example . Think we need to have more microphones. Your picture you are showing, we need a microphone on both sides of the president , he needs to be up in the middle and when he needs to defer a question to an expert, that expert should be off to one side or another. Move that press Conference Room however it needs to be to show leadership this is what we need to do. Host in the Briefing Room for the reporters anyway, they have they have insisted, they have made it so reporters are at least one seat apart. They have reduced the number of reporters in that room. We will see what next step they take because the number of people on the stage seemed to be fewer than the past couple days. Three primaries yesterday. Keep in mind ohios governor postponing theirs until june 2. The illinois primary, the lead story at the chicago tribune. Com, former Vice President wins illinois, dealing another blow to Bernie Sanders. Here are the results, nearly all the results 99 with joe biden winning 59. 9 . No coverage because there were with the candidates. Either Bernie Sanders or joe biden. Joe biden did release a video. [video clip] senator sanders and his supporters have brought remarkable compassion and tenacity to the issues and they have shifted the fun a metal conversation. Fundamental conversation. Let me say to the young voters, i hear you. I know what is at stake and i know what we have to do. Our goal has a campaign and my goal as a president is to unify this party and for them to unify the nation. We realize we need to put politics aside and Work Together as americans. Coronavirus does not care if you. Re democrat or republican it will touch people in positions of power as well as the most Vulnerable People in our society. We are all in this together. This is a moment for each of us to see and believe each and every one of us, to look out for our neighbor and understand the fear and stress so many are feeling to fear care for the. Lderly in one another. When we do that, when we see the best in each of us, we lift this nation and we will get through this together. Host joe biden winning the democratic