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Congressional Corner With Paul Tonko

Congressman Paul Tonko
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Public domain

Public health officials say passing the mashed potatoes to grandma isn’t worth the risk this year.

In today’s Congressional Corner, New York Congressman Paul Tonko, a Democrat from the 20th district, speaks with WAMC’s Alan Chartock.

This interview was recorded November 23.

Alan Chartock: Paul Tonko, we love having you on the show. We love calling you “The Tonk”. We love your incredible work on the environment, which has all too often been given short shrift. And you’re chair of the subcommittee on that on that subject. I wanted to ask you about Thanksgiving. What do you do on Thanksgiving, usually? And what are you going to do this time?

Congressman Paul Tonko: Well, you know, usually it's been pretty good size family gatherings, and then perhaps even a second round with friends. But because of the COVID challenge, we're gonna narrow it to a very, very few, maybe three or four of us, that will be socially distanced, and enjoy a meal and then call it Thanksgiving. Because I could continually reach to the scientists and the medical community and the epidemiologist for the guidance. I think it's our best chance to get to the other side of this virus and grow our economy. And that is a prerequisite to nail this thing, this challenge, and crush the virus
Paul, do you think that this Coronavirus thing could have been handled better by the President?
By President Trump? Absolutely, I think that in the very beginning, it needed to be taken more seriously. You know, I recall how, in a whimsical fashion, they suggested it would be gone soon, almost like magic, when in fact we saw the numbers growing, we had that epicenter of involvement in New York that I think really showed how very concerning this virus is. And now is a second round of peaking in all regions of the country. We are threatened yet by no strategic plan, you know, trying to get a plan in place so that it could be updated constantly and certainly implement it was a big part of the solution here and having not done that, I think produced the failure that we saw. And, you know, really, in so doing, it split the country too which was tragic, because we know that there are simple things that need to be done from a public health perspective and a public safety perspective, that just didn't get encouraged simply by behavior of the President and his team, which in and of itself was a huge failure.

Do you think on some level, somebody like myself, is wrong to basically accuse him of, well, murder? Because after all, you know, a kid walks into a grocery store with a gun, you can spend a good deal of his life in prison, but here's a guy who's responsible, in my mind anyway, and in yours a little bit, because you just said so ,for 10s of thousands of deaths. So it's, to me that adds up to an ugly, ugly thing.

Right. And, you know, I think president, Vice President Biden, President-Elect Biden was responding in a similar fashion when asked about the transition here and having a seamless move forward on this virus and having the updates and moving in tandem, here. And when asked about what happens, if that doesn't occur, you know, there is very direct answer; more people will die. And, you know, again, we as public officials, policy developers need to be there for the for the public, and again put together a strategy, you know, and have, even as you're negotiating our stimulus bills, the fact that we didn't do a stimulus bill where we focused on testing and tracing, where we put money into development as a vaccine, and made certain that there were the protective opportunities, the investment that needs to be made by schools, so they could be open safely. All of this was about crushing the virus, about not spreading the virus, of containing as best we could, and when you don't put that together appropriately or when you don't invest even what was included in the CARES Act, it's problematic. And so yeah, the result is more people die, and needlessly, and we hopefully will turn the corner and start the New Year with a far better response.

Okay, so let me ask you this. So the kids, I have three grandchildren, they were in school, I don't know what's going to happen here, I know that my son's son, the schools are closed. Is there something that Congress can be doing to make what is a really bad situation better?

Well, I think certainly technology, if you're going to do virtual learning, technology needs to be available. Otherwise, we're going to have, you know, different levels of achievement, which is unfair. It will broaden the gap that we see so many times that is socially economically unacceptable. We need technology retrofits in the schools, we need personal protective equipment, we need to make certain that, you know if you're going to have safety be your guidance in these schools, it even applies to the air circulation within that infrastructure. And so in our Heroes act, we wanted to make certain that there were the retrofit dollars, there were the technology dollars, the testing, tracing the PPE, the personal protective equipment, schools are, you know, an important place, but on underscore the element of safety. And people will say, well, the kids don't get the virus, the kids can spread the virus. And there is growing evidence that it can affect the very young too. And so we want to protect our children, we want to make certain that we don't if we don't enhance the level of contamination, and that we're enabling them to go forward with their social and educational needs, which education provides. It's a social fabric along with education, that's so important to the development of kids. And, you know, they shouldn't be victimized by a paralysis that has beset the congressional officials.

What is the status now of the Heroes Act? You guys passed it months ago.

May 15th Actually. And the status is that, you know, look just weeks before the election, in an attempt to try to bring reasonableness to it so that we could get something done, because of the evidence of spiking numbers, we cut back from our 3 trillion down to about 2 trillion. And what the Senate did, you know, we're hoping that that would bring them to the middle, I think they had a $1 trillion plan, they took it to $500 billion. So they went the opposite direction, when in fact, you needed the help. You needed to help for the local governments, municipal governments are hurting. They provide essential services, essential workers that keep our economy and our quality of life afloat. So when you don't do that, you lose those services, or they're greatly diminished. And you add to the ranks of the unemployed, which again, becomes another expense for government. So we needed that, we needed the strategic plan of testing tracing, we needed the retrofits for the school systems, we need the childcare investments that we included in Heroes, because, again, the uncertainty of some people being able to go back to work. And if they could than they needed to if the schools were closed, you had to have some sort of childcare opportunity available for working families, for the great many of us in the middle income category or those looking to ascend to the middle class. So it was holistic, and rightfully so, they wanted to suggest that this along with food insecurity and all were not should not be part and parcel of that whole effort when I would argue that it is holistically justified to do the Heroes bill, I'm hoping yet in this lame duck period, is that there will be a willingness with a Republican leadership in both houses, and with Secretary Mnuchin to kind of guide us to something before a huge, huge impact is felt with these spiking numbers.

Really so. Paul Tonko, I love having you on the show. It's great when you come on and you tell us what you're thinking and catching us all up on what's going on down there. Again, congratulations on your huge win.

Oh, my pleasure. My thanks. And I look forward to working with you in the next term. You folks are great to communicate to the public.

Dr. Alan Chartock is professor emeritus at the University at Albany. He hosts the weekly Capitol Connection series, heard on public radio stations around New York. The program, for almost 12 years, highlighted interviews with Governor Mario Cuomo and now continues with conversations with state political leaders. Dr. Chartock also appears each week on The Media Project and The Roundtable and offers commentary on Morning Edition, weekdays at 7:40 a.m.
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