COVID19

Mitch McConnell’s disastrous tenure as Senate majority leader went to an even darker and more dangerous place this week – in the midst of Congressional efforts to make up months of inaction by the President, Mitch McConnell left town and let the Senate adjourn.  The delay of the House package which passed Friday night will literally cost American lives and further erode the public’s confidence in their government at this critical time. 

We write to once again ask you to contact your Federal representatives and demand that they do not recess until we have a clear and comprehensive national response to the COVID-19 pandemic in place.  Call every morning, twice a day if necessary.  Beyond the House package waiting to get passed, we will still have so much to do – ensure our national testing regime is in place and working; initiate Herculean efforts to build hospital beds and provide the proper equipment needed by our health care professionals; establish a clear national policy on social distancing; launch a comprehensive and effective screening system for the millions of people who come into the country each day; create a national advisory board which will study how other nations are tackling COVID and rush successful tactics to deployment here in the US; stand up a public temperature measurement corps which will identify carriers in public spaces and rush them to treatment (something being done in many other countries); and nominate and confirm people in every agency involved in the national response for every unfilled position immediately so that we are at full strength to fight in the days ahead (DHS Secretary for example!). 

It is hard to put into words how far behind we are right now.  The President squandered seven weeks, and still has done almost nothing to establish a comprehensive response to COVID-19.  Much of what has been done – the testing, the travel bans, the Google triage system, preparing the public for what is to come – has been an extraordinary failure.   Congress must stay in and be vigilant now for we simply cannot trust the President and his son-in-law to do the right thing, particularly as things get worse in the days ahead.   We applaud Gov. Andrew Cuomo for demanding that the federal government do more – more in this case are things which should have happened months ago. 

In an essay I wrote last week, I argued that because Mitch didn’t remove the President when he had the chance it was up to Mitch now to lead us out of this COVID crisis which has been made so much worse by the President’s inaction, lying, and Olympian incompetence.  Instead, Mitch chose to leave town at this critical moment.  We all need to demand that he, and all of our Representatives, stay in Washington in the coming weeks to ensure that the government does everything it can to battle and ultimately defeat COVID-19.