Virginia senator quarter and the founder of world central kitchen jose andres talk about the credit virus pandemic, hosted by talk about the credit virus pandemic, hosted by the Economic Club of washington. Mark is a native of connecticut. He wanted George Washington university where he got a 4. 0 average and valedictorian of his class and later went to harvard law school, came down and got back into washington. He got involved in the cellular telephone business, formed club your capital, made money doing that. And ultimately got involved in government and politics and became the chairman of the Democratic Party in virginia and also later became governor of virginia and then elected senator from virginia in 2018, reelected in 2014 and he is up for election again in 2020. Mark, thank you for joining us. Enormousyou got an round of publicity publicity from your tuna melts. I assume the microwave behind you or the kitchen behind you is where you cook that why was there so much attention to a tuna melt . First of all, david, thank you for having me. I hope you and your family and folks watching this are doing ok and that the families are safe. The tuna melt came about because i was getting quarantine crazy. This is our guest cows. I wife since we overhear each morning to while away on zoom calls. Playingher politicians heartfelt songs are played the piano or making their mothers favorite brownie recipe. My youngest daughter who had done video work on campaigns said lets do something more fun. I tried to create the single grossest sandwich ever. Itth be told i had eaten before, wiper, tuna, tons of mayonnaise, two slices of cheese white bread, and stick it in the microwave. If in the first day or so not much happened, now it lit up the microwave. Fortunately or unfortunately, for one week i got more attention on tuna melt that virtually anything i had been doing on covid19. Get thend you did not from chef ho date jose andres . Sen. Warner is a great friend it does amazing work but he crated a much nicer version of attune about back at me one week later. David as a member of the senate are you pleased with what Congress Passed to deal with a crisis . Do think it is sufficient or do we need additional legislation . Sen. Warner the original bill was 2. 2 trillion and there was another five and a billion dollars added on top of that. While most of the press has reported this is a 2. 7 trillion reality, about 400 million of the first package is 1 a33e that leverages Lending Facility for another 14, so youre talking about 6. 7 between dollars another 14. Llion. Her 4 tri so you are talking about 6. 7 trillion. The fact that it was bipartisan, both bills virtually passed unanimously, the recognition that congress knew we had to do something significant. All that capital being pushed out though, and as we saw with the unappointed never today, close to 50 unemployment and 33 million americans filing for on ,ppointment, unappointed this clearly has not been a stimulus. Unemployment. We are trying to keep the economy on life support. There are direct payments that it worked out well. There are greatly extended Unemployment Benefits which i supported in a major way and our traditional on the plummet system all the covers 30 of the workforce not in contractors are freelancers who are not covered. There was a six underdog per weekbump up 600 per bump which means in the short term some may make more and unappointed than in work and their moral hazard issues there. On the Small Business program has gotten the most attention with 600 billion that goes out to a payroll and overhead. A wellintentioned program but the challenge in design flaws there is not a requirement of revenue loss and constance whiteley there was embarrassment about there was consequently embarrassment about Public Companies taking the money. And it had an eight we length of time. So there was uncertainty in restaurants where people might say if you bring them back and put them in your ppp you may have to refurlough them if your business cannot reopen. So we are looking at extensions there and their things run health care, state support, and a host of initiatives. I think was generally the right direction. I think before we civilly reup these programs we ought to take a step back and say is there a better way . David you proposed additional legislation with another senate cosponsor that wouldve in effect give people their salary. Is that right . Sen. Warner yes, if we look at our response and unfortunately massive amounts of unemployment. While generous it disconnect you from your job and in many cases from health insurance. If we look at what our european prints have done, they decided rather than this massive series of new programs, they provided direct wage support. Government straight to paying worker salaries. The danes have done that. The germans are probably done at the best. The austrians. The british. And they have seen on the plummet only go up to 4 or 5 they have seen unemployment only up to 5 . I would say first make sure business is showing 20 revenue loss and do not have capital on their Balance Sheet. At they are hurting lets pay up to 100 of 90,000 of anyone salary. Im not sure we get that 100 of that through but it would be a direct Payment Program to workers and it would only be for workers furloughed. Folks to make, estimates, assume, while it is costly, it is about 400 billion in a quarter, that really is not much more and could be less than we have totally spent on unemployment, Medicaid Expansion come and ppp. David do you think it will pass . Sen. Warner is good question. Poll and the leader of the progressive caucus has the proposal in the house. I partnered with someone i do not normally agree with, bernie sanders, and doug jones, conservative, and the democrat accent. Josh hawley, conservative publican senator from missouri, has a slightly different version of the program. The wall street journal and new york timesand as you know the do not agree on anything, both have said this would be a better way. The question is, can we move all of these recently stood up programs to kind of a new glide path . Dealuld attach to ppp and with middle market firms who have gotten no support so far. I think it will be discussed and most folks would agree that if we have the benefit of hindsight this would have been a better approach to start with. David the president has said he would support a fourth bill only, i think im quite him correctly, if there is a payroll tax as part of that. Is there enough support in the senate for a parol tax, a payroll tax cut and why is there a why is there not . Sen. Warner the payroll tax is not sufficient. It might have been a good idea at the beginning. But the parol tax now presumes you have people on payroll. That payroll tax is a minimum amount of assistance when we are talking about people going from with revenues down 70 to 90 . If people of already been furloughed or put on unemployment, cutting a payroll tax does not provide much help. Obviously that payroll tax would help pay for the longterm issues around social security, fica and those issues. So i do not think the payroll , it was broadly dismissed even by a lot of my republican colleagues as too little, too late. David if there is a fourth bill itith your bill as part of or other features, do you think that will happen in the next month or two, or how long . Sen. Warner lets hope the economy is reopening. The president put me on his reopening task force. I want the real economy to reopen although we desperately need or testing. We desperately need more testing. Testing. Testing. Testing. Testing is critical. And im bitterly disappointed by the administrations ability to organize ppe. And if we do not organize testing, and have the same competition state against state and hospital against hospital, will have huge economic as well as medical issues. I think the next bill will not happen in the next week. It could happen. I think that happens it will happen before the end of may. In addition to my approach or replenishing the existing programs, even if we were to replenish, we realize we cannot havent eight week club on ppp. There will be areas like broadband which we under invested in. And i have major ideas there. I would like to experiment with portable benefit programs. One thing i hope we have learned as the wide swath of our society that was covered by unemployment or has no benefits now, i would love to make sure in a matter what work you do in america, you earn some benefits along the way. And who manages though those . It does not have to be government, it could be a private sector or it can be a jump ball. But we should not have 50 of our society losing a job and have nothing to fall back upon. David everybody seems to be in favor of infrastructure, no one is against more infrastructure, but why does congress not passing it her structure bill . Sen. Warner previously, there was lots of interest in infrastructure, but the president was never willing to put forward a pay for it. Now there is a moment in time directing 2. 7 trillion and four chile more in Federal Reserve lending, there may be four chile dollars more in trillion more in Federal Reserve lending, maybe we do that but we may not be able to do dollar for dollar paid for. I think both local parties have lost credit billy on gushing deficits. Credibility on gushing deficits. Deficits. David you mentioned bipartisan. Do you think the senate is more bipartisan the before covid19 . Or due thicket is the same . Or do you think it is the same . Sen. Warner the optics to the public is people snapping at each other. Macconnell puts out a position. Schumer puts out something. The backandforth makes my head hurt, and probably most of your viewers. Below that westep are actually talking about and working through these ideas, whether it is paycheck security or broadband or a portable benefits legislation. Everyone of these ideas i am working with republican colleagues. I do think there was this moment, and it was fascinating, the week that we passed the major legislation, where the weekend and people knew things were weird to the middle of the week when the seriousness of the virus hitting our country was driven home, the senate actually did work. We were 96 senators and they all voted for the bill. One week later well past the bill by unanimous consent. As dysfunctional as a place i work in is, it was a good sign. It was a moment of common sense over partisanship. David what about the debt. We are adding a lot of debt. Maybe 5 trillion dollars of Additional Debt over a 22 trillion dollar debt that we have. Are you not worried about the inflationary impact or how we will pay this off at some point . Recall, backas you the mid to thousands, i was the leading senate cassandra. Mid2000s. To leveling off entitlement spending and raising additional revenue. All of that argan meant went away when we never saw Interest Rate hikes all of that argument went away. And when the republican colleagues did eight to trillion dollar tax cut, totally unpaid for. A 2 trillion tax cut. The debt is now 27 chile dollars in total. Just the cash 27 trillion. The Interest Rates on that could be crushing. We are seeing the new normal without rates rising. And then steve who writes for the post wrote a great piece about six or eight weeks ago thatgave me some caution in this moment of crisis, if we do not spend an extraordinarily, our debt could be worse. I think over term we are leaving our kids with a Balance Sheet that is far out of whack. David once you think the commonwealth of virginia it will be able to open up . You are close to the governor and talk to him. What do you think he is thinking and when is it safe to open up . Dr. Asrner if the only a governor i think he will follow the Health Recommendations of the professionals. He has talked about entering the first stage on the eighth and that is coming up monday. It may be today. And i think he is going to do a first phase. I have urged him, he has been trying to thing about reopening virginia at once. I think we could do it on a regional basis. In northern virginia, would be the most in need. Reopening in concert with washington, d. C. And maryland. Our dmv region may have a different opening routine than southwest virginia. , and ing we are watching hope it does not board bowed poorly for the folks in georgia, where the georgia governor was so aggressive about reopening, even to the opposition of trump, they are the canary in the coal mine of reopening and see what happens in that state. Say this as a former governor, i would like to get the economy reopened. But if you get people back out and see a spike, and you lose folks confidence, that second reopening is going to be exponentially harder. David mark, youre the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence committee. Are you worried theres going to be foreign interference in the 2020 sen. Warner i can answer that in two ways. I am extraordinarily concerned that this president has completely disrespected the Intelligence Committee community from day one, increasingly politicizing the Intelligence Community leadership. The person he has now is an no experience, a partisan hack. I am fearful that our intelligence professionals, their job is to speak truth to power, and literally every person this person this president appointed inside the office of the director of National Intelligence, he has fired because they have done their job. Because they told him things he did not want to hear. Im afraid that yes, the russians will try to interfere, and that if our Intelligence Community doesnt feel they can cannotpendent, they sound and early enough morning because of fear of losing their jobs. Distractedhen we are with this national emergency, it could allow russia, china or others to play a lot of mischief in our election systems. David speaking of china, is there anything you can tell us about what the Intelligence Committee may know about whether it was a wet market or a lab that released, intentionally or not, the covid19 virus . Again, this is an area ive spent a lot of time on in the last 2. 5 years. I have extraordinary concerns about the communist party in china and xi jinping and his aspirations. But this is with the communist party, not with china as a nation or the Chinese People and certainly not with chinese americans. I feel that the president with a broad brush attacks and does not make that distinction. It was very believable to me when there were first stories that said the Chinese Government were opaque about letting experts in, that the virus could have been sourced somewhere other than the socalled wet markets. But all of the intelligence we had no basis for that. The intelligence has been similar to what has been in the Public Domain that this originated, was not manmade,. Manmade, a. Have originated in the market. Think the president needs to show the socalled gang of i gang of eight, we have basically said, if you have information, you got to show it to us. You cannot go around making these statements that he has intel and not at least share it with the oversight committee. David the Democratic National convention is supposed to be held this summer. You think it will be career completely virtual . Sen. Warner i dont have the foggiest notion. At the end oft this month, we will be making enough progress that we can see reopening. I would urge people not to make rash decisions about cancellations too early. I have a daughter i hope will go to Business School in the fall. As somebody pointed out, i am not sure a Political Convention gives the same boost. Give thesure they candidates necessarily the boost they used to give. David how are senators staying healthy . Average are probably older than the average american, and probably subject to getting the virus. Are they shaking hands, are they Wearing Masks . What are they doing . Sen. Warner at 65, i work in the only place in america where i am still one of the young guys. To see little bit weird the senate react. I think for the most part, with the exception of summary like rand paul, who is kind of off on wearing a mask, the same guy who did not tell his colleagues he had the virus or had been tested for the virus virtually everybody else is good about Wearing Masks. No handshaking. The nominee for director of National Intelligence with elbow bumps the other day. For the most part, one of the things that is remarkable about the senators even though a number of them are in their 80s, just the nature of this job means that when you are on the hill, you are walking a couple of miles a day, even with subway cars, as you move from meeting to meeting. Impressed thaty senators are in good shape. David what have you been doing with your family . You have three daughters. Are you isolating together or are they tired of being with their parents . Sen. Warner they are definitely tired of being with their parents. Here, myo of them third is with her boyfriend. They were in new york and went to our farm, so they got out and have had a nice seven weeks. I am very fortunate, i have resources in my family is safe. Why is one of the reasons peoplem sure you know who have had the virus avenue i had, and it is ugly circumstances. David final question, do you expect be the chairman of the Senate Intelligence committee after the next election . Sen. Warner i hope i am the chairman of the Senate Intelligence committee. If i am chairman, what i continue to do is same as vicechairman. Im really proud of that committee. Its one of the last fully bipartisan, functioning committees. Its not getting the attention of everyone right now, but we came out with the fourth volume of our russia investigation report, still 100 bipartisan. The questions around china in a bipartisa