Station: KNUS, 710 AM

Show: Jimmy Sengenberger Sh0w  

Guests: Gardner, Cory 

Link: https://sengenberger.podbean.com/e/jimmy-sengenberger-show-march-21-2020-hr-1/

Date: March 21, 2020

Topics: Coronavirus A

CLIP-CGardner.SENGENBERGER_3.21.20.mp4

ANNOUNCER [00:00:29] Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. A special edition of Jimmy at the Crossroads. It will include an interview with U.S. Senator Cory Gardner in just moments. Stay tuned. […]. 

ANNOUNCER [00:00:41] And that, my friends, is how America was made great once again, breaking at this hour, Jimmy saying hamburger is currently at the crossroads of politics and economics. Radio broadcaster master,  now the Celeb on the Web. He’s the smartie of the party. He’s in cahoots with the grass roots. Jimmy at the Crossroads brings you proper booking commentary, hard hitting interviews, original satire, and the best bumper music known to man! Jimmy at the Crossroads!  […]

SENGENBERGER [00:07:28] Hello, everyone. Good afternoon and welcome to a special edition of Jimmy at the Crossroads. I’m Jimmy Sengenberger, your host for the program. Just doing a special interview today with U.S. Senator Cory Gardner from Colorado. Senator Gardner, welcome to Jimmy at the Crossroads. It is such a pleasure to have you here. And I have to say, I appreciate you joining us, especially from Cory in quarantine right now. 

GARDNER [00:08:01] All right. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate that very much. 

SENGENBERGER [00:08:07] Yeah. So, Senator, tell us why you’re in quarantine right now over in Washington, D.C.. 

GARDNER [00:08:13] You know, I had been meeting with constituents last week when I was informed by the tri state, excuse me- Tri-County Health Department, which covers Adams, Arapahoe, Douglas counties that I had met with the constituents of that tested positive or covered 19. And so I was on the March, the 11th of March. And so I was told by them that I needed to be quarantined for 14 days from the 11th of March. So here I am in my 300 square foot studio apartment that, as you can tell, it doesn’t even really have anything on the wall. 

SENGENBERGER [00:08:44] Well, you need to get something there on the wall. Senator Cory Gardner. But that’s OK. All right. So let’s talk about the environment right now in Washington, D.C. There is a lot of concern from Americans across the country about what’s happening in the land all around, what Americans are dealing with, but also a lot of curiosity about members of Congress like yourself, your United States senator, one of several now in quarantine. And you can’t vote when you are not on the floor. What can you do moving forward if Congress needs to address situations and this expands among members, or at least the concern and you have to self-quarantine? 

GARDNER [00:09:22] You know, that’s a great question. The irony, Jimmy, is that I was asking on the day that I ended up in quarantine, I asked my staff to give me a primmer, basically on what happens in the Senate. What can we vote on with a simple majority vote? What can we vote on it with 60 votes? What can we vote on with a majority of those members present? If there’s only 60 members in the Senate, what can we do with the simple majority of 60 members? So 31. And later that afternoon, of course, I get the notice that I have to go into a self-isolation. And so here we are. But there’s a bill that’s been introduced to try to allow for remote voting. And it’s something that I think Congress is going to have to consider with proper safeguards to allow this to happen. Should we have a similar or ongoing situation? 

SENGENBERGER [00:10:06] Again, we’re talking with U.S. Senator Cory Gardner, Republican of Colorado. Let’s talk about the economic policies in Washington, D.C.. There’s debate, discussion going on right now about a trillion dollar stimulus package, including sort of a universal basic income for Americans across the country. I’m curious, Senator Gardner, on that and other issues relative to the economic fallout, what do you think Congress should be doing right now? Do you agree with the approach being taken this weekend? 

GARDNER [00:10:36] Yeah. So basically what happened when Corbett, 19, hit the United States, hit the world, quite frankly, inserted a circuit breaker into our commerce. And that circuit breaker has been tripped by this pandemic. And it’s kind of ground everything to a halt. And we have an obligation or responsibility to make sure that our economy, people who are suffering right now because they’re out of work, they don’t know what’s going to happen to their jobs, are able to snap back once this healthy emergency is over. And so we’ve been focused on three things. Number one, address the health emergency number to address individuals and how we make sure that they are going to be OK. And number three, what we’re doing for businesses around the country, particularly small businesses, to make sure they can continue to keep people onboard, continue to pay, and then get back open once this emergency is over. And that’s what we’re dealing with right now. As you mentioned, a number of different debates that are still being negotiated. A number of technical details still being negotiated. But I’m participating in every single one of those fighting for Colorado. 

SENGENBERGER [00:11:36] Senator Cory Gardner, I agree wholeheartedly with the idea that if the governments across the country are going to be shutting down businesses, that the federal government should step in with some sort of relief, particularly with expanding unemployment insurance to furloughed workers and so forth. But where I get more concerned is the idea of sending out checks to Americans who may not be out of work right now. Do something broad-based. Especially because I look at history and I see a lot of instances where politicians will go ahead and implement policies during a crisis. And even after the crisis abates, a big expansive government policy doesn’t go away. What assurances do you think we can have that if there’s some variation of a UBI- universal basic income- that it doesn’t stay permanent or come back in the future when somebody says, well, we have a president from Coronavirus in 2020, so we should act similarly. 

GARDNER [00:12:30] Well, I think that’s a big concern, and as I have said with, you know, the ideas that get brought up in presidential elections, a lot of times those ideas don’t become the ceiling for what somebody does next. They become the floor for what somebody does next. And all of a sudden you try to build off of that. So we have to be very careful about what happens with these policies. It sounds like there may be some debate right now moving away from or toward a lesser direct assistance and more towards an unemployment insurance model. That’s actually something that I had been pushing for, was let’s use our existing unemployment insurance system just scalable and already set up and running to provide a covered 19 furlough with assistance. And that, I think is more direct help, less fraud, less potential to get this wrong in an existing system. So that may be the direction that we’re able to get through after the agreements are made today. 

SENGENBERGER [00:13:23] And on Thursday, I published a piece in The Washington Examiner entitled Corona Virus is No Excuse for a Trump New Deal. That expressed exactly that view is that there’s an existing system already in place. 

GARDNER [00:13:35] If you provide benefits to an expanded number of Americans who are temporarily out of work from an existing system because of Coronavirus, you provide something that doesn’t open up the floodgates to a brand new expanded federal program. But Senator Gardner, how about support for businesses, especially small businesses, self-employed — loans in that regard or what have you? What do you think for the business side? 

SENGENBERGER [00:13:59] Yeah, absolutely. So so you have the health emergency, you have the individual assistance, and then you have that third bucket that we have to address and at the same time that we’re addressing the other two. And that’s the business assistance. And so a couple of things that are taking place right now as we negotiate the details. The idea that we create a small business stabilization fund, another proposal that I had been pushing through the American Workforce Act, that we would create a loan to small businesses, 500 people or less, that would basically be forgiven as long as it was paid toward as long as you use that loan to pay for salary of your your workers, keep them on payroll wages of your workers that you keep on payroll, that you pay for rent, mortgage payments between March 1st and June 30th, then that would be forgiven. It’s a way to jumpstart the economy during a time when we know most of these businesses have been shuttered and shut down, especially if you’re a restaurant or hotel owner. So that’s what we’re looking there. 

GARDNER [00:14:56] That’s where businesses are, 500 or less. If you’re a bigger business than that, there’s just going to be a series of known proved to be loan programs that are going to be set up and established to varying structures. So distressed industries, whether that’s a hospital or whether that is a a bigger hotel or a bigger restaurant chain, or they’re going to find the ability to get help through those. Bottom line is we’ve got to get this economy going once we get through this health emergency. 

SENGENBERGER [00:15:23] Final question, Senator Cory Gardner, when it comes to the trajectory here of the economy, of the economic policies, of what Congress may do and the virus itself, what do you think the American people should know most during this time where a lot of folks are looking around saying this is kind of crazy and I’m feel like I’m living in a twilight zone? 

GARDNER [00:15:44] Yeah, you know, I think a couple of things. Number one, it’s most important that we we’ve never faced this kind of challenge in our lifetimes, but we know we’ll get through this together. We’re a great country. Perseverance builds character. Character builds hope. And that’s something that we have to keep in mind throughout all of this. If they need help, call our office. Go to Gardner. Does Senate dot gov, email us, give us a ring and let us know what’s what what you need. And we’ll try to do our best to provide that level of assistant level of assistance that we expect in Colorado. 

SENGENBERGER [00:16:13] Senator Cory Gardner, I just have one other thing I do want ask. Were you able to hear that show intro? 

GARDNER [00:16:19] I was! It was great! Talk about great bumper music, holy cow! 

SENGENBERGER [00:16:22] What did you think of my harmonica playing with it? OK. Those the tops. Those are some real chops. That’s pretty incredible. 

GARDNER [00:16:27] With the great Biff Gore on the vocals, we wrote the song together — well, Biff did most of the writing, I just contributed a little bit. 

SENGENBERGER [00:16:35] And then the Hardwells. 

GARDNER [00:16:37] All right, well Senator Cory Gardner of Colorado, [it is] always great to check in with you. 

SENGENBERGER [00:16:42] And I really appreciate you spending time with us today. 

GARDNER [00:16:46] Thanks. Thanks for having me.

SENGENBERGER [00:16:46] Best of luck, by the way. 

GARDNER [00:16:46] Thank you very much. Thanks.

SENGENBERGER [00:16:49] All right, once again, U.S. Senator Cory Gardner joining us here on the show. Always great to check in with the senator from Colorado, which, of course, is my home state and the one from which we broadcast. All right. That is it for this special short broadcast today. I will be on this evening 5 to 8 p.m. on Newstalk 710KNUS, here in Denver, Colorado. If you want to tune in, you can also get details on the link, how to listen live no matter where you are around the country, at JimmySengeberger.com. Remember, there’s no ‘A,’ there’s no ‘I’ there’s no ‘U’ in Sengenberger. It’s all ‘Es’ all the time. God bless America, stick with it and have a great weekend!