Scalise: We Must Get Back to Work in a Safe Way

WASHINGTON, D.C.—House Republican Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) joined Fox News Channel's Mornings with Maria to discuss how our country can reopen without tradeoffs between safety and economic health to rebound from Coronavirus.

Whip Scalise also emphasized the need to bring America's supply chain back from China so we don't rely on them for PPE and so many other key ingredients for life-saving drugs.

On balancing safety and economic health to reopen our economy:

"I think the President and [Louisiana] Governor Edwards have been on same page on a lot of fronts over these last few months, but, you know, the Governor is announcing that [Louisiana is] going to have a mid-May opening, so that businesses in Phase One would be able to start opening. He did just allow elective surgeries to start. And frankly, I think you're going to see a lot of governors around the country move to open elective surgeries. I mean, I'm hearing so many stories of people that are missing those mammograms, those colonoscopies, you know, the lifesaving procedures. You don't want to see those pushed off, and yet they've been pushed off for weeks now. So, hopefully that can get started again and other segments of our economy starting to open safely. We're not talking about tradeoffs between safety and economic health. You can do both, you have to do both, and I hope to see more of that in the weeks ahead."

On reopening areas of our economy in a safe manner:

"Well, we've seen the devastation in so many different areas, of course, the biggest number is the [20] plus million people who are on the unemployment rolls, Maria. We've seen the Paycheck Protection Program working incredibly well at holding businesses together, it's been a lifeline, but it's not going to last forever. Even if businesses get that, it still means they have other problems because they have no cash flow. So, it saved over 30 million jobs as President Trump pointed out earlier in that segment, but it's also only going to do so much. Businesses need to get open again, people want to go back to work again in a safer way.

"The technology is catching up with this disease, and medicine is catching up with this disease. We don't have a cure yet, but every day we hear about more breakthroughs and things that we can do even more in testing, but also more in treating this disease and ultimately finding a cure and a vaccine. But in the meantime, you're seeing more and more people that recognize, even when it's amongst us, when this disease is still out there, they want to start getting out and doing more things than just going to a grocery store. We've proven how you can do that safely. Why don't we look at doing that in more and more areas of our economy while we're battling the disease at the same time."

On blue state governors seeking bailouts for their states when they faced economic problems before COVID-19:

"That's interesting because, you know, the state of New York just got $7.5 billion last week from the taxpayers of the country in the CARES Act. That money just went out the door and Mayor de Blasio is going to get a large percentage of that. You know, let's keep in mind, some of these states and local governments, including some of these big cities like New York, had their own financial problems before COVID-19, and it was because of things they were doing to run businesses and people out of their cities and states. They really need to look in the mirror right now as they're re-imagining how they're going to reopen their city and state, and address the problems that they had before COVID-19, before they look to the federal government and think there is going to be some endless pot of money – there's not – to bail them out for their previous problems. They really need to be confronting the challenges that they had going into this. And everybody is trying to figure out best way to reopen their communities, whether it is the governors, of course, are going to be the ones that lead that charge in each state, but each community is going to have to figure it out too. To think that you can just look to Washington to bailout every problem that's out there, look, we're trying to hold on to communities, we're trying to hold on to our hospitals, businesses, and make sure families can get through this. But you can't just keep printing money and expect that to solve all the problems, it's not. People know we've got to learn how to come back out of this smarter and safer, and reopen our economy as soon as we can."

On the need to bring America's supply chain back from China:

"But, you know, you did touch on something important earlier, Maria, and that's the supply chain. What they really ought to be doing is figuring out how to get those jobs back into America, including cities that are having problems. Here's a great opportunity to bring back the manufacturing of PPE, for example, we shouldn't rely on China for that. Ninety percent of the products and the components that make up a lot of our generic drugs are made in China. We've got to bring that back too, rare earth minerals, you pointed these things out as well. Those were problems before COIVD-19, but China's exposed why a reliance on them is dangerous to our national security. We ought to work on that as we're looking to reopen other parts of our country now."