Charles Schumer praised Donald Trump for the guidelines to reopen the country; however, he added he believes that more testing still needs to be made available, reiterating Democrats’ call for a national testing program, The Hill reported.
“The plan is a little more measured than what the president said in the past, which is good but there’s a key thing missing in all this,” Schumer said in an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
“If we don’t have a strong, adequate testing regime, we’re going to have real trouble,” he added. “You have to know who has the illness, who’s immune from the illness and who could get the illness before we can determine who can go back to work and who can’t.”
The Senate Democratic leader argued that it was necessary to allocate $30 billion for nation-wide testing and contact tracing, which was specified in a plan previously proposed by Democrats this week.
Schumer said it needs to be included in the interim coronavirus relief package that he, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin are negotiating.
He said Trump should invoke the Defense Production Act to “take over the factories and their supply chains” to make tests and distribute them across the country.
The Democratic leader said the current testing regime is “scattershot and totally inadequate for the job that needed” to get Americans back to work.
“Each state can’t come up with its own test. Many of the states are inadequate to come up with their own tests. We need a national program distributed to the local governments,” he added.
Trump and the White House coronavirus task force announced a detailed set of new guidelines Thursday evening for reopening the country, which governors would use to make decisions for their own states.
The three-phase plan provides ground rules for bringing employees back to work in phases, reopening schools and organized youth activities, permitting elective surgeries again, reopening gyms under strict physical distancing protocols, and allowing nonessential travel to resume — among other loosenings of restrictions now in place.
Trump’s plan also assumes the “ability to quickly set up safe and efficient screening and testing sites for symptomatic individuals” and contact tracing for those who test positive for COVID-19.
Schumer said he, Pelosi and Mnuchin will negotiate through the weekend on a package that would provide $250 billion for the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program, which ran out of money on Thursday, as well as $100 billion in new money for hospitals and $150 billion for state and local governments. Schumer said the $30 billion national testing proposal should be included in the package.
“We’ve had constructive talks. They’re going to continue through the weekend and I don’t see any reason why we can’t come to an agreement soon. The president even was more positive about coming to an agreement last night in his press conference,” Schumer said.
Schumer warned that if local governments don’t receive an infusion of federal money soon, they will be forced to layoff thousands of workers.
“When they lay off hundreds of thousands of people, which they will before May 4 when we come back, that’s just as bad as a small-business person not being able to employ people,” he said.
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