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Coronavirus Federal Response Update From
Congressman Andy Barr
China Task Force
Last week, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy announced a special 15-member congressional task force to investigate China over its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. This comes after over 80 of my colleagues cosponsored my bill to establish a joint select committee to investigate the origins of the novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China and the role the Chinese Communist Party played in enabling its spread. I am grateful to Leader McCarthy for creating this important oversight panel and for appointing me to serve on it. Since the outbreak of the pandemic, I have called on my colleagues in Congress to investigate China’s coverup and malign conduct, which has led to a global public health emergency and more than 80,000 American lives lost.
The Chinese Communist Party lied from the very beginning about the origins of the novel coronavirus, and their coverup enabled this virus to spread throughout the world, threatening us all. The totalitarian leadership in Beijing silenced whistleblowers who attempted to sound the alarm, they underreported their initial cases, they manipulated the World Health Organization (WHO) to spread lies about no human-to-human transmission, and they embarked on an elaborate scheme to hoard personal protective equipment and weaponize the global supply chain of medical and pharmaceutical products against the international community, including the United States. I look forward to working with my colleagues on the task force to provide policy recommendations to hold China accountable, confront this most consequential foreign policy challenge and prevent this from ever happening again.
I appreciate Leader McCarthy’s kind words announcing my appointment to the task force: “As the ranking member of the Financial Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight, Andy has invaluable insight into how China uses the financial system to control the world’s most crucial supply chains and technologies --- from medicine to semiconductors,” said Leader Kevin McCarthy. “In a painful sense, ‘Made in China 2025’ is being paid for by America. We cannot allow this to continue. I know Andy will paint a full picture of what went wrong and offer strong recommendations for how we can fix it.”
During the last Congress, I served as Chairman of the Subcommittee with jurisdiction over the Treasury Department’s implementation and enforcement of sanctions, authored and passed legislation imposing secondary sanctions on Chinese financial institutions for facilitating illicit trade with North Korea and led the successful effort to reform the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to strengthen the U.S. government’s review of Chinese investment in American companies and critical infrastructure, theft of intellectual property and forced transfer of technology.
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Meeting with President Trump
On Friday, I joined several of my colleagues at the White House to meet with President Donald Trump and his economic team, including Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow, Senior Advisor to the President Kevin Hassett and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. We had a productive discussion about the need to reopen the economy in light of the successful efforts we have made to slow the spread, “flatten the curve” and buy time to build up resiliency within our health care system. I was able to report to the President several examples of how his Administration has provided effective assistance to constituents in our district in responding to the COVID-19 crisis. You can see a video of that here.
Paycheck Protection Program Update
Last week, lenders across the country continued to distribute the second wave of Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) funding to American small businesses and nonprofits. According to the latest data from the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), over 4.1 million small businesses have been approved for forgivable PPP loans for a total of over $530 billion through both rounds of funding. As of Sunday, May 10, over $5.3 billion in job-saving loans had been approved for Kentucky small businesses since the initial rollout of the PPP.
Additionally, the average loan size for round two of the PPP is just over $76,000, meaning that these loans are going to the smallest Main Street businesses that are the backbone of our economy. Nearly one-third of the approved loans from this round have come from lenders with less than $10 billion in assets.
Of course, there is no substitute for allowing small businesses to reopen and get their employees back to work. But until that time, the PPP is a crucial lifeline for many small firms and their workers. That’s why we have worked so hard with community financial institutions and their customers to help them access these loans, as described by James A. (Ja) Hillebrand, CEO of Stockyards Bank & Trust Co. in this column published by the Lexington Herald-Leader. I will continue to monitor and support this program, in addition to the SBA’s Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) Program and the Main Street Lending Facility through the Federal Reserve, until this crisis subsides. If you own a small business and need help accessing one or more of these programs, or would like to receive regular e-mail updates and support from my office’s Small Business Response Team, please contact Anthony Allen at Anthony.Allen@mail.house.gov or by calling (859) 219-1366.
Reopening Our Economy
Over the last two months, the United States has made tremendous progress in “flattening the curve” through stay at home efforts and social distancing, buying us valuable time to strengthen the resiliency of our health care system. Not only have our efforts prevented our hospitals from being overwhelmed by COVID-19, the efforts of the private sector, in partnership with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), have substantially enhanced the medical supply chain to increase access to critical pharmaceuticals and personal protective equipment (PPE). As of May 8, FEMA’s Project Airbridge had completed 124 flights with an additional 34 scheduled for a total of approximately 158 flights to surge delivery of foreign-made PPE into the United States. With these efforts, combined with enhanced domestic production, FEMA, HHS and the private sector combined have coordinated the delivery of or are currently shipping 87.2 million N95 respirators, 124.8 million surgical masks, 8.6 million face shields, 20.5 million surgical gowns, 974.2 million gloves, 10,663 ventilators, and 8,450 federal medical station beds.
We have also dramatically increased diagnostic and serologic (antibody) testing capabilities across the country. Over 9.3 million tests for COVID-19 have been performed in the United States with more than 250,000 tests performed per day and rising. According to the COVID Tracking Project, the percentage of positive tests based on a seven-day moving average has steadily declined nationwide since the beginning of April. As a result, and because of what our epidemiologists and health care workers have learned to prevent the spread and track the disease over the last two months, both our state and our country are well positioned to begin the process of safely reopening our economy and getting Americans back to work.
Dr. Mark Dougherty, hospital epidemiologist at Baptist Lexington, the largest private hospital in the Sixth Congressional District, told me recently that because of increased access to both high-volume and high-throughput tests, we can begin reopening our state without further delay. Dr. Dougherty has stressed that with maintenance of hand hygiene and social distancing practices, along with in-public and at-work use of face masks, we have a simple, cheap and effective way to re-open the economy while minimizing the risk of new outbreaks.
Last week, because of greater access to pre-operative testing, many hospitals safely resumed elective procedures. This is a positive development for our hospitals, clinics and medical providers which will help them regain financial stability, while at the same time begin to address much needed but delayed care for patients, including preventive care.
In a column published in The Washington Post last week, the Governors of Arkansas, Wyoming, Missouri, Iowa and Nebraska outlined how their states have remained “open for business” without compromising public safety and highlighted how their approach could provide a potential model for the nation. Also worth reading is an analysis in the Wall Street Journal last week of the Swedish response to COVID-19, where the government has implemented social distancing guidelines without mass shelter in place orders or closures of businesses and still managed to avoid a collapse of their healthcare system similar to what devastated Italy and Spain.
Protecting Americans from Frivolous Lawsuits
As we begin to reopen our economy in Kentucky and nationally, we must protect small business owners operating in compliance with federal, state and local laws from frivolous lawsuits. Without liability protections, businesses may choose to remain closed out of fear of being sued by an employee or patron for contracting the COVID-19 virus. Litigation like this would be enormously complicated since very few plaintiffs would be able to prove negligence on the part of the business or rule out infection from an alternative source, at another time or at another location outside of the business which is the target of the lawsuit.
Regrettably, this will not stop plainitffs’ lawyers from filing lawsuits to force companies into nuisance settlements where it makes more economic sense to settle the case than assume the significant cost of defending the litigation. Typically, employees do not have to prove that their employer acted negligently in order to collect on a worker’s compensation claim. They need only prove that their claim is work-related (for example, they contracted COVID-19 at work). But because worker’s compensation benefits are capped, many employers are anticipating meritless lawsuits alleging negligence or worse solely to circumvent the worker’s compensation system.
That is why I support federal legislation to limit state and federal claims to instances where the business had “actual knowledge” an employee would be exposed to the virus and “acted with reckless indifference or conscious disregard as to whether they would contract it.” Last week, the State of Utah enacted legislation that follows this approach, protecting businesses operating in good faith and in compliance with the law while allowing lawsuits against businesses that exhibit “willful misconduct; reckless infliction of harm; or intentional infliction of harm.”
I am presently evaluating a bill introduced by my colleague Congressman Mike Turner which would provide a federal liability shield for businesses that comply with social distancing and other safety guidelines while allowing employees who are unsatisfied with their working conditions and have “legitimate fear” of contracting the virus to terminate their employment without losing their eligibility for unemployment compensation.
Protecting Civil Liberties and Religious Freedom
Recently, United States Attorney General William Barr sent a memorandum to all 94 United States District Attorneys advising them to evaluate recent directives at the federal, state and local levels to ensure that policies to combat COVID-19 do not violate the constitutional rights and civil liberties of Americans. I commend Attorney General Barr for taking this action to protect Kentuckians and Americans from overzealous government overreach in contravention of basic civil rights.
The First Amendment, which explicitly safeguards the peaceful practice and free exercise of religion, has been incorporated against state and local governments which attempt to impose an undue burden on the rights protected by it. So, I was distressed to see that in our home state of Kentucky, Easter service parishioners at drive-up churches had their license plates recorded by law enforcement even though they followed social distancing and hygiene guidelines.
Let me be clear: Any attempt to apply different or more stringent rules and restrictions on faith-based institutions than those applied to secular organizations is unconstitutional and should be distinguished from reasonable, neutrally-applied public health guidelines instituted to protect the public from COVID-19.
That’s why I was encouraged to see U.S. District Court Judge Gregory F. Van Tatenhove grant a temporary restraining order on behalf of Tabernacle Baptist Church in Nicholasville after Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron joined the case last week on behalf of the church. Judge Van Tatenhove got it right when he wrote in his order, “If social distancing is good enough for Home Depot and Kroger, it is good enough for in-person religious services which, unlike the foregoing, benefit from constitutional protection.” Rest assured, I will continue to advocate for the protection of all Kentuckians’ civil liberties, religious freedom and constitutional rights throughout the duration of this public health emergency.
State and Local Government Funding
Although I have supported federal funding to assist state and local governments in their response to COVID-19, and although I am open to providing some additional help for state and local governments that are reopening their economies and rebuilding their tax base, I continue to strongly oppose federal bailouts of state and local governments for the purpose of resolving budget challenges and unfunded liabilities that predate the pandemic. For example, New York State was projected to have a $6 billion budget deficit before the COVID-19 outbreak.
It is important to note that legislation already passed by Congress in response to the pandemic allocated over $765 billion to state and local governments to help them combat COVID-19. Most of this funding, although appropriated by Congress and received by state governments, has not yet even been delivered to local governments and includes the following:
- $260 billion for unemployment insurance for states
- $150 billion for the Coronavirus Relief Fund for state and local governments
- $175 billion for hospitals and health care providers in local communities
- $50 billion in increased Medicaid funding
- $45 billion to FEMA state and local disaster relief
- $30 billion to K-12 and higher education
- $25 billion in mass transit funding
- $5 billion for Community Development Block Grants to local governments
- $4 billion for homelessness prevention grants to local governments
Moreover, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department announced the Municipal Lending Facility, which will provide liquidity support up to a total of $500 billion for states and mid- to-large cities and counties. I worked with my colleagues on the House Financial Services Committee to produce a document outlining the full accounting of federal assistance to state and local governments which you can here.
Vaccines
Last week, AstraZeneca and Oxford University announced an agreement for the global development and distribution of Oxford’s vaccine candidate against SARS-CoV-2. Under the agreement, AstraZeneca would be responsible for development and worldwide manufacturing and distribution of the vaccine. Pfizer and German pharmaceutical company BioNTech began human trials of their SARS-CoV- 2 vaccine candidate in the United States this week. The two firms are jointly developing a vaccine candidate based on generic material known as messenger RNA. In anticipation of a successful clinical development program, Pfizer and BioNTech are working to scale up protection for global supply. Pfizer anticipates that millions of vaccine doses could be available in 2020, increasing to hundreds of millions in 2021.
Conclusion
I continue to seek your feedback and ideas as Congress works on a bold agenda to guide America through the COVID-19 pandemic and engineer the great American comeback that is forthcoming. You can always reach out to my Lexington office (859) 219-1366 or my Washington office (202) 225-4706 with your input. If you would like to stay informed on what is happening in Washington, D.C. and around the Sixth Congressional District, again, I encourage you to sign up to receive my e-newsletter by visiting https://barr.house.gov/newsletter-subscription. If you want to unsubscribe to my e-newsletter, you can do so by clicking here. |