Kitchen, jose andres, talked about the coronavirus pandemic, hosted by the Economic Club of washington. David mark is a native of connecticut. He went to 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, 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. Recently you got an enormous yourt of publicity for tuna melt. 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 . Sen. Warner 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 house. Here eachnds me over morning to while away on zoom calls. I saw other politicians playing heartfelt songs or playing 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. Truth be told, i had eaten it for before. White bread, tuna, tons of mayonnaise, two slices of cheese, 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. David and you did not get the recipe from Chef Jose Andres . Sen. Warner jose is a great friend it does amazing work but he created a much nicer version of a tuna melt about one week later. David as a member of the senate , are you pleased with what Congress Passed to deal with a crisis . Do you think it is sufficient or do we need additional legislation . Sen. Warner lets look at the size. The original bill was 2. 2 trillion, and there was another 5 billion at it top of that. While most of the press has reported this is a 2. 7 trillion package, in reality, about 400 million of the first package is ae base that leverages Lending Facility for another 14 million dollars, so youre 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 we saw with and as unemployment numbers today, close to 50 unemployment and 33 million americans filing for unemployment, this clearly has not been a stimulus. We are trying to keep the economy on life support. There are three basic directions we have done. There are direct payments that worked out pretty well. There are greatly extended unemployment benefits. One of the things i supported in a major way our traditional system covers 30 of the workforce. Contractors and freelancers are not covered. There was the 600 per week bump , which means in the short term some may make more in unemployment than at work, and there are the moral hazard issues there. On the Small Business program , it has gone 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 there was consequently embarrassment about Public Companies taking the money. 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 health care, state support, and a host of initiatives. I think it was generally the right direction. Reup thesere we 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 given 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 friends 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 have probably done it the best. The austrians. The british. They have seen unemployment go up to only 4 or 5 . I would say first make sure a business is showing 20 revenue loss and do not have a lot of capital on their Balance Sheet. If they are hurting, lets pay 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. And mark sandy, folks who 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 , and ppp. David do you think it will pass . Sen. Warner it is good question. Pramila jayapal has a proposal in the house. I partnered with someone i do not normally agree with, bernie sanders, and doug jones, conservative, on the democrat accent. Josh hawley, conservative republican senator from missouri, has a slightly different version of the program. Both the wall street journal ande New York Times you know they 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 . It would attach to ppp and deal with middle market firms who have gotten no support so far. I think it will be thoroughly discussed and most folks would had 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 i am quoting him correctly, if there is a payroll tax as part of that. Is there enough support in the senate for a payroll tax cut and why or why not . Sen. Warner the payroll tax is not sufficient. It might have been a good idea at the beginning. But the payroll 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 tax it was broadly dismissed even by a lot of my republican colleagues as too little, too late. David if there is a fourth bill, with your bill as part of it 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 to the economy to reopen, although we desperately need more testing, testing, testing. Testing is critical. And im bitterly disappointed by the administrations failure to organize ppe. It will be a disaster 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 if it happens, it will be 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 cliff on ppp. Week there will be areas like broadband, which we have underinvested in. I have major ideas there. I would like to experiment with portable benefit programs. One thing i hope we have learned is the wide swath of our society covered by unemployment has no benefits now, i would love to make sure no matter what work you do in america, you earn some benefits along the way. And who manages 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 pass an infrastructure bill . Sen. Warner previously, there was lots of interest in infrastructure, but the president was never willing to put forward a pay for it. Mel we are in this moment in again, 2. 7 trillion, 4 trillion more in Federal Reserve lending, there may be a moment where we say we have to do that to trillion dollar Infrastructure Program trillion Infrastructure Program. I think both parties have lost credibility on cutting deficits. David you mentioned bipartisan. Do you think the senate is more bipartisan than before covid19 . Or do you think it is the same . Sen. Warner the optics to the public is people snapping at each other. Mcconnell puts out a position. Schumer puts out something. The backandforth makes my head hurt, and probably most of your viewers. I find at one step below is where we are actually talking about and working through these ideas, whether it is paycheck security or broadband or a portable benefits legislation. Every one 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, when people new things were a little weird to them, and the middle of the week with 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. Sed thelater, we all pas 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 of additional over already 22 trillion in debt that we have. Are you not worried about the inflationary impact or how we will pay this off at some point . Sen. Warner as you recall, back , we came close to leveling off entitlement spending and raising additional revenue. Frankly, all of that argument went away when we never saw Interest Rate hikes and when my republican colleagues did a 2 trillion tax cut totally unpaid for. Is closer to 27 trillion. Just the Interest Rates on that could be crushing. But the fact that we have seen this new normal without rates then the Economics Writer for the post, he had a great piece about six or eight weeks ago that gave me some caution that in this moment of crisis, if we do not spend an rate, ourordinary debt could be worse. Term, wever the long are leaving our kids with a Balance Sheet that is far out of whack. About what do you think the commonwealth of virginia being 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 . 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 think about reopening virginia at once. I think we could do it on a regional basis. In northern virginia, i think it , the resthe smartest reopening in concert with washington, d. C. And maryland. Our dmv region may have a different opening routine than southwest virginia. One thing we are watching, at least i am, and i hope many folks are and i hope it does not bode 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. My fear, i say this as a former governor, i would like to get the economy reopened. But boy, if you get people back out and see a spike, and you lose confidence, that second reopening is going to be exponentially harder. David mark, youre the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence committee. Are you worried theres going to be foreign interference in the 2020 elections . Sen. Warner i will answer that in two ways. First of all, i am extraordinarily concerned that this president has completely disrespected the Intelligence Community from day one, and is increasingly politicizing the Intelligence Community leadership. The person he has now is an acting director, the ambassador has no experience, a partisan hack. Ratcliffe does not have much experience. I am fearful that our intelligence professionals, their job is to speak truth to power, and literally every 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 be independent, they may not warning early enough because of fear of losing their jobs. At a time when we are distracted 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 . Sen. Warner 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. I think it is important to note the my beef is with communist party of china, not china as a nation or the Chinese People and certainly not with chinese americans. I sometimes fear that the racistnts broadbrush, and xenophobic attacks do not make that distinction. It was very believable to me when there were first stories , since the Chinese Government were opaque about letting outside experts in, that the virus could have been sourced somewhere other than the socalled wet markets. But all of the intelligence we have had to review had no basis for that. The intelligence has been very similar to what has been in the public the main, that this originated, was not manmade, appeared to have originated in the market. If the president or secretary of intelligence real that shows otherwise, i think hes under an obligation to show the socalled gang of eight, we members nd ranking and the chair and i feel the same way if you have information, you got to show it to us. You cannot go around making these bold 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 completely virtual . Will people actually show up . Sen. Warner i dont have the foggiest notion. My hope is that at the end of 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 still gives the same boost. Are a good party generally but i am not sure they give the candidates necessarily the boost they used to give. David how are senators staying healthy . Senators on average are probably older than the average american, and probably more 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. It is a little bit weird to see the senate react. I think for the most part, with the exception of somebody like rand paul, who is kind of off on his own without wearing a mask, which was the same guy who did not tell his colleagues he had the virus or had been tested for the virus virtually everybody else is pretty good about Wearing Masks. No handshaking. I were greeting the nominee for director of National Intelligence with elbow bumps the other day. It made the front page of the post. 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 the subway cars, as you move from meeting to meeting. From the senate floor back to the office. Ive been pretty impressed that senators are in good shape. David what have you been doing with your family . You have three daughters. Are your daughters and wife with you and are you isolating together, or are they tired of being with their parents . Sen. Warner they are definitely tired of being with their parents. My 25yearold youngest daughter says it feels Like High School again in terms of eating meals together. I have two of them here, my 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 and my family is safe. That is one of the reasons why , again, i hope everybody viewing this can say the same. I am sure you know people who had the virus and it is an awful circumstance to go through. 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 will continue to do is same as