Washingtons effort to address job losses amid the coronavirus pandemic. Is next. N journal one month ago today, President Trump declared a National Emergency over the coronavirus pandemic. With wyoming over the weekend, all 50 states have been declared Disaster Response areas. Good morning, its monday, april 13, 2020. This first hour we will ask about your thoughts on the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic so far and how your state governor is handling the crisis. We will look at joe bidens just published plan to reopen america. Heres how to be a part of the discussion this morning. In the eastern and central time zones, but linus 202 7488000. Mountain and pacific, that line is 202 7488001. We welcome medical professionals, to hear from you. That live is 202 7488002 that line is. Is 202 7488002 you can text us at 202 7488003. We have facebook posts ready, we will show you those. As we begin the program yesterday, the New York Times had published a lengthy story on the lead up to the naming of the National Disaster a week ago, a month ago, it was friday, march 13. This was the headline on that story in the New York Times, in the newspaper. Despite timely alerts, trump was slow to act. Usa today has a seat similar story. Squandered week highlights trumps lack of covid19 focus. It goes on to say that,not responding to but yesterday in a series of tweets the New York Times article, President Trump responding, calling it fake. I was criticized for moving too , secretary as are told me nothing until later likely to bes action this week in the u. S. Senate at least on potential additional legislation on top of the 2. 2 trillion passed into law and now in effect. We are joined by jennifer shut, appropriations and budget reporter for cq roll call. Tell us why there is additional Money Congress needs to add onto to the money passed back in march. Guest so, in the large piece of legislation that Congress Passed in march, the aid package, there was a new program that included forgivable Small Business loans. Its known as the paycheck protection program. It was designed really to help Small Businesses that had been shut down because of the social distancing guidelines to try to reduce the spread of the virus. Thems designed to give money to get through this time and a big part of that program is that you know, they continue paying employees father employees are home. , Congress Package approved 300 and 49 billion for this program. Which is a substantial amount of money. At the time they thought this would last for about two months, if not more. But this program has proved extremely popular since it launched. Administration is now asking congress for an additional 251 billion for that paycheck protection program, bringing the total amount of funding for that to 600 billion. So, right now negotiations are underway between the trump administration, republicans, and democrats to try to figure out a way to pass this legislation because democrats want some changes to the ways that Small Business loans are structured to make sure that money is getting to people and businesses that dont have those traditional longstanding relationships with big banks. They are really touting this, they want to make sure that the money is going to minority owned and women owned businesses. Thats a negotiation going on now. On the senate floor i believe we saw what was supposed to be a pro forma session. Ben cardin, senator warner, we to what wasecting being proposed on the senate floor. His more of that likely ahead in the senate . Guest we are not entirely sure that it will happen this morning at the pro forma 10 00 a. M. Session. We have not gotten good guidance about whether or not republicans plan to try to once again bring up this bill that would include additional money for the Small Business program or whether or not theyre just going to let this be the standard kind of session where they come in and they just sort of adjournment immediately. We are all very much trying to figure out what is going to happen this morning. We could see a repeat of last thursday whether our unanimous requests by republicans, democrats object. That is one of the things we are all trying to figure out this morning. What happensess of or passes in the senate eventually has to be passed by the house. Any word on how pelosi views this . Guest Speaker Pelosi and minority leader Chuck Schumer have put out duel statements this last week, saying that they are unified in wanting structural changes to the paycheck protection program. They also want additional funding for hospitals, as well as state and local governments. Thats another thing that republicans are resisting. They say that those programs that already received funding from the previous package are not set to run out of funding. They think those negotiations should hold over to the next bill. So, democrats want to have bipartisan for corner negotiations. On friday we heard from schumer and pelosi after they spoke with , that thechin administration was on board with negotiating. But then on saturday we got a statement from mitch mcconnell, Senate Majority leader, and house gop leader kevin mccarthy, say they hope democrats come around to the republican view of the package and that they want to support a clean funding extension. We are veryight now much in a stalemate heading into the week. One more quick thing we are seeing this morning in your reporting, appropriation process, that the works have been gummed up. Proceed iny going to the house on this process . Guest the senate has been doing a lot of telework with staff. One piece of moving legislation on the house side is that the House Appropriations chairwoman has given the 12 subcommittees their allocation, total spending levels for the upcoming fiscal year. Start onposed to october 1. To draftlooking at how legislation and, potentially, fully could draft of the legislation remotely so that when the committees are able to come back and meet again, they could quickly move on the markup process. But obviously we dont have a timeline right now for when congress would fully returned to washington, d. C. Washington, d. C. We dont know when the various curves in the country are going to start to end and the social distancing will relax. Host we appreciate you covering this story. Covers theutt appropriations process. Thank you so much this morning. Guest thank you for having me. Calls, youro your comments. A couple of Facebook Comments before your calls. Host lets get the calls. David, first. Apoplectic over the pelosi moves. Ive been working, ive got a Small Business, i do website development. Employ five, counting myself. Working out of my home office for the last 20 years. The part in the plan where they refer to the fact that they want to make sure that the larger businesses are not the only ones to benefit, i agree with that seen it,because i have its true that it happens that way almost out of necessity because of the way banking far asres are set up as this came down the pike. Theres also confusion because there are three plans out there, the covid19 Disaster Recovery plan that was out there before the payroll retention plan that started on friday that week officially. But i have got a client whose business is actually up because of this. Got his stuff through and qualified and everything before i did. He has got a banking relationship, the biggest issue. He has got a banking relationship in commercial loans. Those of the guys that were in first position to have something happen. Second was you have got to have a banking relationship of some sort. Everybody wasnt even accepting. Hat to begin with bank of america wasnt taking anybody unless they had a commercial lending relationship with them at first. So, i spent the better part of over a day just finding someone to take my call it my bank, where i have had a Checking Account for 20 years, but no lending relationship. It took me a day to get a phone call through or a contact. Finally got contacted. I was happy to see it was a local banker that i actually knew. After working with him that day and thinking i had gotten everything done that i needed to do, i was contacted over the next week and was told that my application is going to be put is the scarythis part to me, because i filed a schedule c as far as tax returns were concerned. I looked at this stuff up this morning. Is soleusiness proprietorship. The majority of Sole Proprietorships are going to file a schedule c of some sort and he told me that they are Holding Things up and i am being put aside because they didnt have clear enough guidance for them on schedule c. Heres the thing that scares me about nancy pelosi and the democrats at this point. I agree that they need to make ,ure that the banks understand Sole Proprietorships, loan to those who previously wouldnt be qualified for these things beense the economy has destroyed by the standdown orders as far as doing business. But they also want to ensure sorry,s, excuse me, im making sure that minority and women owned businesses, they shouldnt need to do anything by a special in edict. That is going to cripple the ability to get these things through fast. There are very few lines on these forms. Theres very few lines on them, maybe three that have to do with numbers you are actually producing. If you have to produce proof having to do with mayor the, women ownership, anything to do with the order in which these things get done, i cant even imagine how this comes up the works. My biggest fear is that they will come back and say groups, anybodys application has been processed yet, you will have to redo it. One quick thing before i let you go, you said you had five employees. How much of your business are you asking for in this Small Business loan . The calculation works out to about 53,000. My employees are all for load. They would be on the payroll right now immediately if i had the funds. Appreciate you, sharing your experience there. Lori, long beach, california, next. Hi there, laurie. Hello. I was a nurse for 42 years. Hospital nursing mainly. I did get a notice from governor newsoms office through the union. We had plans and 66, they were semi retired. They did try to get us to go in and do the retired nurses work. Just cant, really. I would but i cant because im, you know, at the age that i am. That being said, i would. I told them to keep me in the it gets desperate, i certainly would. That aside, im calling about the stimulus checks. Its a mess, a hot mess, in my humble opinion. I just found out, i filed my paper taxes. Filed in midmarch. That all of the irs offices are closed due to coronavirus. They are closed. The only people getting stimulus checks are the people doing turbotax and tax online. Go to those websites. I went to fresno, california, my federal place to send it. But all over the country their closed. These are mailin returns. There are none. Eventually they said they would do it, but right now they are all locked up in a lockbox somewhere due to safety concerns. They will get to them when they can. In that ins more terms of dependence. I have an adult son with high functioning autism. He wont get a check because he is still on as a dependent. Host have you tried reaching tollfree lines . You should be able to reach them through the national tollfree line. I have already read extensively, i already know. I contacted the union and i know whats going on. Its messy, he should be eligible and of course i should be eligible but of course unfortunately for me, because i filed paper taxes before this became a big crisis, those are going to be delayed for months and months and months and months. Host todd, redwood, california, welcome. Caller i am very disappointed in cspan. Is now the same as watching cnn, its all about alarm and a blame. But your blame is selected. If trump was slow to react to this, who was fast . Walmart, jay inslee . He welcomed this eight patricks day parade. Everyone partying on mardi gras. You have people from all over. Is cspan trashing any of these new treatments . They offer the normal people, they call it plasmid transfer. Governors asiew on reflected by joan, texting us from minnesota. Host schaumburg, illinois. This is charles. Hi, there. In response to last caller, the president of the United States has over a dozen intelligence agencies telling him whats going on all of the planet. The problem is donald trump doesnt listen to them. He spends more time talking to fox news tv personalities than the important people who know whats going on. Reports are coming out now, President Trump was told about this, probably in late december and he chose to do nothing. Because it would affect the stock market and he is more worried about himself than anyone else. Instead of standing up and being a leader in taking this by the horns, he laid back, pointed fingers, trying to push the blame onto the governors. Of course, governors have made mistakes. Everybodys going to make mistakes. But donald trump is not being a responsible president. He has cemented his position as the worst president the United States has ever had. Presumptiveden, the nominee for 2020 the democrats, an opinion piece. My plan to safely reopen america. In the piece heres what he writes, first, we have to get the number of new cases of the disease down to significantly. Meaning social distancing has to continue and the people on the front lines need the supplies and equipment that they need. And there need to be widespread testing and Contact Tracing that protects privacy. Host read all of that at nytimes. Com. Connecticut, good morning. Field, connecticut. Youre on the air. Go ahead. Caller can you hear me . Host yes, we can. Go ahead. You are on the air. Hello . Ok, we will go to diane. Hello. Caller good morning. My hope. Expressing please, lets have national a la thing by mail. Registered voters should vote by mail and if they need to, begin the preparation for this now. Its six months away. In place. System everyone can get a ballot by mail. Its called absentee ballot. Lets not even have a absentee. Every registered voter gets a ballot sent to them. Plus to this, it would be if we have paper balloting, we have a paper trail, so no one can complain or hold up the election, the National Election results by saying that there was something going on. We will have the paper ballot trail. What thedont know status of the virus pandemic is going to be. Prepare ahead of time, get the ballots going, send them out, have an election and call it from there. But they need to begin now. I do hope that they will do that, get ahead of the problem and lets move on. Host how would you rate Governor Whitmer in her response, your government response to the crisis . I cant say enough good things about her. I know unfortunately this pandemic is hurting people. Its unfortunate but it is where we are right now. She has, i call her the peoples governor. She has been great. She thinks things through, she gets ahead of the problem. I feel in good hands with her. She is on top of it and is a great governor. A reminder that our website, cspan. Org coronavirus, thats where we archive all the coronavirus briefings. Ensure several will come up today. Nothing on the schedule just yet , but keep it here for updates on that. The governor of arkansas, asa hutchinson, was on state of the Union Yesterday. On that program he was asked if he thought other governors had made a mistake by putting stay in place orders in their state. Heres what he said. It just reflects the flexibility of state needs. New jersey, new york, they have really had to lock down. Y have hide it highdensity populations. We have less density are in arkansas and we cannot take this and we can take this targeted approach that has proven to be effective. On the first day we had one case i declare public emergency and we proceeded as you said, to those the schools and other things and were targeting where we need to. Look at the result. Right now we have about 80 hospitalizations. We have 8000 hospital beds. Of course, they are empty because we are not doing elective surgeries. As we are meeting the trendline in terms of our cases, its better. We are increasing our testing. Right now i would like to think that we are at the peak, or at least flat and, hopefully, we wont peak later, we will peak sooner. There is a lot of hope and optimism this easter that are tough time is behind and we are going to be getting better. I sure hope thats right. Let me ask you, you talked about density playing a role. I understand that arkansas is not like new york in that respect. But little rock is and you are towns orng different cities or localities in arkansas make their own stayathome orders if they want to. The mayor of little rock says its making his situation more difficult. Why not let mayors impose a stay at home if they want . We have a Good Partnership with the mayors. We have negotiated curfews where its helpful, they can close the park if they need to. Those are some of the targeted responses. But if you look at this, we want to take a longterm approach to this. You are not going to win simply to lock down because there is no such thing as a true lockdown where everybody stays at home and does not go out. You are going to have, if we put a shelter in place order in have or tomorrow, we would 700,000 people going on the streets and going to work. The most Important Message is that you wear your mask, you do your social distancing and the people of arkansas have embraced that and it has given us success. Federal coronavirus National Emergency one month old. How is your State Government doing . Randy in michigan, good morning. Go