Trump ratchets up virus efforts
He inks aid package, uses emergency power
WASHINGTON — Confronting health and economic crises, President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he will invoke emergency powers to marshal critical medical supplies against a coronavirus pandemic threatening to overwhelm hospitals and other treatment centers. Trump also signed an aid package — which the Senate approved earlier Wednesday — that will guarantee sick leave to workers who fall ill.
Trump described himself as a “wartime president” as virus cases surged and the markets fell, and he took a series of extraordinary steps to steady a battered nation, its day-to-day life fundamentally altered.
Most immediately, Trump said he would employ the Defense Production Act as needed, giving the government more power to steer production by private companies and try to overcome shortages in masks, ventilators and other supplies.
Trump also said he will expand the nation’s testing capacity and deploy a Navy
hospital ship to New York City, which is rapidly becoming an epicenter of the pandemic, and another such ship to the West Coast.
The Housing and Urban Development Department will suspend foreclosures and evictions through April. A growing number of Americans face losing jobs, and missing rent and mortgage payments.
But as Trump laid out efforts to steady the economy, the markets plummeted. Gone were the last of the gains that the Dow Jones Industrial Average had made since Trump took office.
Administration announcements came on a fast-moving day of developments across the nation’s capital, its empty streets standing in contrast to the whirlwind of activity inside the grand spaces of the White House and the Capitol.
The Senate overwhelmingly passed a second coronavirus response bill, which Trump signed Wednesday night. The vote was 90-8.
The bill would spend some $100 billion on paid leave, unemployment insurance, and free testing to people affected by the coronavirus fallout. That followed the passage of another law earlier this month of an $8.3 billion emergency spending package for the public health system.
The government would reimburse businesses, but business advocacy groups say the plan isn’t workable for many small firms.
“This legislation is not perfect, but we cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” said GOP Sen. Todd Young of Indiana.
Two Republican U.S. senators from Arkansas, John Boozman of Rogers and Tom Cotton of Dardanelle, were among the 90 lawmakers favoring the coronavirus assistance bill.
COTTON BILLS
Also on Wednesday, Cotton introduced four bills addressing the pandemic and its financial fallout. They include:
■ The Coronavirus Economic Stimulus Act, which would authorize issuance of $1,000 checks to each adult tax filer making less than $100,000 per year, coupled with $500 for each dependent. Couples filing jointly but making less than $200,000 per year would get $2,000 checks. The 2018 tax information would be used to determine eligibility.
■ Under Cotton’s Coronavirus TANF Expansion Act states would receive block grants if they expand the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program so that it covers “any family with children under 18 whose income has been reduced due to coronavirus and that earned less than 400% [of the federal poverty level] last year,” a summary of the bill explained. “This new class of eligibility would receive a one-time payment of at least $500 and no more than $1,000 per dependent; states would have flexibility within that guidance.”
■ Cotton’s Coronavirus Unemployment Insurance Expansion Act would give states block grants if they expand their existing programs to cover coronavirus-related job interruptions. States would need to offer assistance to employees when employers “temporarily cease operations”; when employees are completing an unpaid quarantine; and when coronavirus-related disruptions force someone to leave the workforce and care for a family member.
■ Cotton’s Coronavirus Credit Expansion Act would cap small-business disaster loans at $20 million, up from $2 million.
Cotton had unveiled his plan Tuesday. Wednesday, it was formally filed.
RESCUE PLAN Meanwhile, the administration pushed forward its broad economic rescue plan.
The administration’s $1 trillion proposed rescue plan, includes sending two large checks to many Americans and devoting $300 billion toward helping small businesses avoid layoffs. Priorities laid out in a two-page Treasury Department document also include $50 billion to help rescue the airline industry and $150 billion to prop up other sectors.
Treasury would determine the interest rates and other terms of any loans, but they would include limits “on increases in executive compensation until repayment of the loans.”
All told, between several legislative packages advanced on Capitol Hill and other actions the government has taken, the White House is pushing an economic plan that is “over $2 trillion and counting” to try to arrest the coronavirus’s economic wrecking ball, a senior administration official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to reveal details of the planning.
The new $1 trillion Trump plan would seek to spend $500 billion toward the cash payments to individual Americans, though some people wouldn’t qualify if their incomes are over a certain level. The Treasury Department outline says the funds would be paid out in two equal amounts, beginning on April 6 and then again on May 18. White House officials have eyed making each check $1,000, but those talks remain ongoing and the amount could grow.
The Senate plans to remain in session until the third coronavirus bill passes. But the House will have its own version and for now isn’t slated to return until Tuesday, and any final compromise measure probably won’t reach Trump’s desk until late next week at the earliest.
At the Capitol on Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell prepared his colleagues for unprecedented steps to deal with the epidemic’s assault on the economy.
“I will not adjourn the Senate until we pass a far bolder package,” McConnell said. “We aren’t leaving until we deliver.”
FUNDING REQUEST Trump also has sent lawmakers a $46 billion emergency funding request to help the government fight the coronavirus and to reverse cuts proposed just last month to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the front-line agency in fighting the battle.
The request would deliver more than $20 billion for the military and for veterans health care. It would fund production of vaccines and treatments, bail out Amtrak for $500 million in revenue losses and build 13 quarantine centers along the southern border to care for people who are in the U.S. illegally.
The funding is sure to get quick approval from Congress as part of a third emergency coronavirus bill that’s being developed on Capitol Hill.
The White House urged hospitals to cancel all elective surgeries to reduce the risk of being overwhelmed by ris- ing cases. The president was pressed on why a number of celebrities, like professional basketball players, seemed to have easier access to diagnostic tests than ordinary citizens.
“Perhaps that’s the story of life,” Trump said. “I’ve heard that happens on occasion.”
Trump dismissed talk from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who suggested that the nation could face 20% unemployment at least in the short term.
That’s an “absolute total worst-case scenario,” Trump said. “We’re no way near it.”
The administration has told Americans to avoid groups of more than 10 people and the elderly to stay home, while a pointed reminder was given to millennials to follow the guidelines and avoid social gatherings. Trump likened the effort to the measures taken during World War II and said it would require national “sacrifice.”
Trump later met nursing leaders and expressed “gratitude for those on the front lines in our war against the global pandemic.” A limited number of people gathered around a large table, their chairs spread apart in a display of social distancing.
The Defense Production Act gives the president a broad set of authorities to shape the domestic industrial base so that it is capable of providing essential materials and goods needed in a national security crisis.
The law allows the president to require businesses and corporations to prioritize and accept contracts for required materials and services. It also allows the president to provide incentives for the domestic industrial base to expand the production and supply of critical materials and goods, according to a March 2 report by the Congressional Research Service.
BORDER TIGHTENING Trump also said he would soon invoke a rarely used federal statute that would enable the U.S. to tighten controls along the southwest border because of the coronavirus, based on a recommendation of the U.S. surgeon general.
The president said the law, intended to halt the spread of communicable diseases, would give authorities “great latitude” to help control the outbreak. Earlier, U.S. officials told The Associated Press that the administration would invoke the law to immediately turn back all people who cross the border illegally from Mexico and to refuse people the right to claim asylum there.
More than eight weeks after the first U.S. case of the virus was detected, the federal government is still struggling to conduct widescale testing for the virus. Compounding the problem is that laboratories are reporting shortages of key supplies needed to run tests.
Vice President Mike Pence reiterated Wednesday that testing should give priority to those most likely to have covid-19.
Deborah Birx, who is coordinating the White House response, cautioned that there has been a backlog of swabs waiting in labs to be tested, and as that backlog clears “we will see the number of people diagnosed dramatically increase” in the next few days.
CANADA BORDER
Also in a drastic move Wednesday, the United States and Canada agreed to close their 5,500-mile-long border to nonessential traffic.
Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made the decision to close the border Wednesday morning, Trudeau said at a news conference. People will no longer be able to traverse between the two countries for recreation and tourism, Trudeau said. It was not clear when the border will reopen.
Trudeau and Pence said essential travel, including for employees who live on one side of the border and work on the other, will continue. Trade and trucking will not be affected.
Trudeau also announced a $27 billion program to directly support Canadian families and businesses affected by the virus, and an additional $55 billion in aid through tax deferrals.
Trudeau spoke in Ottawa, where he is working in isolation as his wife, Sophie, recovers from covid-19.
Canada has confirmed around 600 cases of the coronavirus, according to a count kept by Johns Hopkins University. At least eight people have died. The United States has confirmed more than 6,400 cases, with cases in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. More than 110 people have died. Information for this article was contributed by Jonathan Lemire, Jill Colvin, Andrew Taylor, Matthew Perrone, Darlene Superville, Robert Burns, Deb Riechmann, Lauran Neergaard, Matthew Daly, Lisa Mascaro and Mary Clare Jalonick of The Associated Press; by Katie Zezima, Rick Noack, Erica Werner, Jeff Stein, Mike DeBonis, Paul Kane and Seung Min Kim of The Washington Post; and by Frank E. Lockwood of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
The new $1 trillion Trump plan would seek to spend $500 billion toward the cash payments to individual Americans, though some people wouldn’t qualify if their incomes are over a certain level.