Parade. Watch first ladies influence in image monday at 8 pm eastern on American History tv on cspan 3. Lawmakers recently discuss the best ways to ease Financial Burdens for those who lost their jobs due to the coronavirus pandemic. They heard from witnesses who shared Solutions Like work from home programs and Unemployment Insurance extension to help those impacted. This house select subcommittee on the coronavirus hearing is two hours. With objection, the chair authorized to declare a recess of committee in time. I now recognize myself for the opening statement. Today, the select subcommittee is holding our First Official hearing which bills on the productive committee we have held over the last several weeks. Todays hearing will address the catastrophic levels of unemployment the American People are facing. Our nations job crisis is a direct result of a Public Health crisis was as our virus spreads throughout our community in january and february we failed to control that one. Leading to an unprecedented outbreak that has killed more people in the United States then in any other nation on earth. By march or drastic measures to slow the spread as states severely limiting Economic Activity. Result, being the worst unemployment in more than 80 years. More than 45 million americans have lost their jobs and just a few months. Jobs that they relied on for their incomes, their Health Insurance and their sense of security. This jobs crisis has not hurt all americans equally. The burden has fallen hardest on those who can at least a forward it. People earning their lowest wages and wealth. Disproportionally includes women, African Americans and other people of color was. According to a Federal Reserve survey, nearly 40 of those earning 40,000 dollars a year or less experienced job loss in march and early april. Today, ministers are trying to reopen and put people back to work but without a nationwide plan to stop the virus, whenever had for the states now face seeing rates of infection. Some states like Houston Texas are considering closing businesses again to protect their residents. Well in other areas that have reopened, Economic Activity is still far below normal and as many people remain rightly concerned about the virus. So the job crisis is far from over one. I was pleased to see what an uptick in jobs in may where we are still facing Unemployment Rate worse than anything this country has faced since the great depression. Just last week, 1. 5 million americans applied for Unemployment Benefits for the first time. One third of the west jobless are still waiting to receive their Unemployment Benefits for which they applied. Well if there is one piece of positive news today, it is that Progress Congress acted and it worked. We came together on a bipartisan basis to provide enhanced Unemployment Benefits and the cares act will and help to save off an even worse economic decline. But with those benefits set to expire next month and millions still out of work, congress once again must act to extend these benefits will work. The 600 dollars a week or standing between Many Americans and financial ruin. And lets be clear, if millions of americans cannot afford to buy groceries or pay their mortgages it will only cause that a humanitarian disaster. But it will also risk a broader economic collapse when. In the long term, we can only resolve Unemployment Crisis if we first addressed the Public Health crisis with a Strong National plan for testing, tracing, isolation and treatment. Only then will businesses and communities be able to reopen in a safe and sustained way. As the Federal Reserve reported last week, what aspects for the unemployed and i quote here, will much depend on the cause of the covid19 outbreak and on actions taken to halt its spread. I couldnt agree more wet. Now some have enhanced a different view. The white house has asserted that the economy is at a turning point and is now in the recovery stage. Unfortunately, the administration is refusing to release Economic Projections that every modern president both democrats and republicans has provided to congress will. Today, i wrote to the white house will, treasury and office of management and budget asking them to release this information so we can Work Together on Bipartisan Solutions to help struggling americans and prevent further economic damage. That brings us to todays hearing was. The question we will ask our witnesses as how to meet the urgent needs of the 45 million unemployed while also rebuilding our economy to put these americans back to work in the future. As we discussed a support issue, i implore my colleagues to keep in mind that these numbers and statistics represent americans will. They represent mothers and fathers were supporting their children. Workers in our local shops and restaurants and our neighbors and friends. We need a plan that recognizes that the only way to protect their livelihood is to protect their lives. I will now yield to my friend, distinguished will ranking Ranking Member mr. Scalia would for his opening statement. Thank you mister chairman and i want to start off by first expressing my condolences to two of our colleagues. Jim sensenbrenner recently lost his wife cheryl and of course andy barr very shocking loss of his wife carol just a few days ago. We send our prayers and all our support to their families. I also want to express my sympathies to Congress Woman ilhan omar who recently lost her father to covid19. Mister chairman, i know we are all joining together in lifting our colleagues up and prayer at difficult times like this and i know congresswoman waters has experienced a similar loss and we continue to extend our prayers to her to. Mister chairman, i want to thank you for starting off with this hearing talking about the economic recovery and what we can do to continue to help people get back on their feet, get back to work. The american recovery is definitely in a new phase. Back in march and april, the country made a decision to shelter in place and to stop this novel unknown virus from overwhelmingly our Health Care System and for costing needless more like being lost. By necessity, that period required the government to step in and provide relief and provide relief we did. President trump and a bipartisan majority in congress, we all joined together to enact a cares act. As you mentioned, mister chairman, that act which included the Paycheck Protection Program did just what we intended. A protected paychecks and it saved millions of jobs. The average ppp loan has the amount of less than 120,000 dollars, which means the majority of those loans went to Small Businesses so that they can keep paying their employees. As of june 12th, there are more than 4. 5 million ppp loans totaling 512 billion dollars. Lenders of all shapes and sizes including Community Banks, Credit Unions and even large bags has participated in this program allowing the ppp to reach Small Business borrowers in every state and territory in our country and around these territories. More than 5400 lenders have participated today. In fact, the majority of those lenders have less than one billion dollars in total assets, which means that most ppp lenders our local Community Banks that serve exactly the job creators we set out to help. The program reached far and wide including underserved in historically disadvantaged areas. 424 Different Community developments, Financial Institutions and minority depository institutions participated in this program. Those firms issued almost 16 billion dollars in ppp loans to their Small Business customers. Many of which are in distressed areas. The ppp will continue to be an important resource moving forward. President trump just signed legislation that we passed a few weeks ago with overwhelming bipartisan support to further strike in the ppps ability to save jobs and help Small Businesses through this difficult time. But america was not built to shelter in place. Americans do not hide in the face of crisis. Americans want to get back to work. We want to care for our families. Students want to return to school. Our children want to play with their friends and americans demand the freedom to build a more prosperous country with greater upward morbidity and of course equal opportunity for everybody who seeks it. America has quite naturally entered a new phase, a recovery phase led by the energy, hopes and determination of the American People. The American People helped create 2. 5 million new jobs in may, which completely shop the experts who predicted the opposite that there would be seven and a half million job losses, so thats a 10 million jobs swing to the positive for our economy, which shattered postworld war ii records. Retail state retail sales had the biggest one month increase ever rising 17. 7 , we just got those numbers the other day. Make no mistake, we still have a great deal of work left to do. Over 40 million americans, as a chairman pointed out, falls for unemployment since the shutdown began. As we discussed in previous briefings, the steep Economic Cost were not born equally. Low income americans have suffered disproportionately. 40 of individuals are earning less than 40,000 dollars who have lost their jobs. A recent study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found the number of open black home businesses fell 41 . Hispanic own businesses fell 32 . Asian owned businesses fell 26 and immigrant own businesses drop by 36 . Reopening and recovery are critical to bettering the lives of our fellow americans. Unemployment insurance can provide temporary relief but it cannot provide upward mobility that people want. The recovery must include a resurgence of made in america manufacturing. Weve learned that too much of our ppe came from china and china lie to us while hoarding ppe. And the world suffered from that with the further spread of the coronavirus. We can make ourselves better prepared while creating new jobs. This subcommittee could be helping by investigating china, try to hold them accountable and also finding out why they try to corner the market on ppe hoarding that Vital Equipment while lying to the rest of the world about the virus is dangerous. Thaw just released a 42page report detailing chinas lies and cover ups. I would, mister chairman, call this subcommittee to hear from the Chinese Ambassador and to start focusing on Holding China accountable for what they did. Americans died because of the actions of the chinese but the members and the majority will not let us bring that accountability to that committee. I hope we can change. At last week, my republican colleagues and i raised a disturbing gesture to force covid positive patients back to Nursing Homes. This was in contradiction to cms guidance. Those decisions led to thousands of unnecessary deaths across our country just in those five states. The governor of new york recently resorted to namecalling to try changing the subject rather than actually being transparent and answering our questions. But mister chairman, no one has disputed the facts that we raised last week. In fact, the Fact Checkers have even called Governor Cuomos excuse falls. Once again, i would ask that this committee hear from those governors who violated cms guidelines resulting in thousands of unnecessary nursing home deaths. We owe it to our nations seniors and their families who want to know why their parents and grandparents died, who shouldnt have died. So hopefully we can work to get to the bottom of that to find out what happened, hold people accountable and prevent it from happening again. With that mister chairman, i look forward to hearing from our witnesses and i yield back. Thank you congressman. Now i would like to introduce our witnesses. Our first witness today is chief economist and Howard University economics professor, Professor William sprigs. We are also joined today by michelle evermore, senior counselor advocate with the National Employment law project. We welcome richard grass so. Research fellow in economics budget at the heritage foundation. And finally we will hear from professor of the practice of Economic Policy at harvard university, doctor jason foreman. The witnesses will please on utensils so we can swear them in. Affirmative. Without objections, your written written statement will be made on the record. With that, professor you are now recognized under your testimony. Thank you chair James Clyburn and Ranking MemberSteve Scalise and also thank you to Committee Chairwoman maloney. I appreciate this invitation that your testimony before your committee today on our nations Unemployment Crisis. Im happy to offer this testimony on the aflcio, americas house of labor representing the United States and based on my expertise as a professor at Howard Universitys department of economic. My written testimony focuses heavily on the 600 dollar one Unemployment Compensation benefit and i will mention briefly the key points of that, but i also want to discuss other paths for my oral testimony. So despite a slight improvement in may by the records reported in april of unemployment, we remain in the worst crisis the American Labor market has faced on record. We faced this dilemma because the United States chose to lay off workers and use the Unemployment Service as its labor policy when companies were close to practice social distancing. Most other industrialized nations instead chose to subsidize employers to keep workers on payroll while they shut down or reduce hours to comply with social distancing. This is going to be a test of what workers call would trust transition. A large segment of our workers are unemployed because of a policy choice from which we all benefit. Emerging studies show huge benefits from social distancing and has limited hospitalizations and deaths. In an early attempt to begin in march to estimate the value of this, its clear that we have saved a trillion dollars conservatively, we have saved a trillion dollars because of the projected lives that we have saved through social distancing. The clear benefits mean we have large latitude of implementing economic policies to mitigate Economic Costs and still come out ahead as a society. And the room to properly account and address for the racial and gender inequalities that are becoming apparent and that will slow the recovery if not corrected. I just want to highlight some parts of why the 600 dollars is important and these distortions that are ahead. First, clearly from the macro policy perspective, as chair clyburn mentioned, the swift action by congress will to step and fix whats at least amend a broken unemployment assured system helped to save the economy. In 2018, a typical labor market in most recent data we have from the bureau of labor statistics, and a normal normal labor market, only 7. 8 of unemployed workers and leisure and hospitality industry, the industry most affected by the shutdown, received Unemployment Benefits. What had congress not stepped in, we would have been in for a much worse situation. The pandemic unemployment assistance helps those workers with low wages that would not otherwise receive benefits and looking at the difference between march when the policy was not in place and april one it was, the clear recovery of wages and lost to personal income is huge and significant and very different than the experience we had in the 2009 recession. So this benefit is necessary for maintaining aggregate demand and oyster in the economy. But its also necessary on a set of other dimensions. Among them is maintaining equity. If you are one of the workers in the affected industries, the affected Unemployment Rate, the Unemployment Rate for workers in those industries is 34 . If you are black or latino in those industries, its 38 . So it is fa