Station: KNUS, 710 am

Show:     Wake Up! with Randy Corporon

Guests:  Gardner, Cory

Link: https://omny.fm/shows/wake-up-with-randy-corporon/wake-up-with-randy-corporon-april-4-2020-hr-1

Date:  April 4, 2020     

Topics: Coronavirus, COVID-19, Quarantine

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HOST RANDY CORPORON [00:00:15] But right now, we’ve got U.S. Senator Cory Gardner on the line. Good morning, sir.

U.S. SENATOR FROM COLORADO, CORY GARDNER [00:00:20] Good morning, Randi. How are you?

CORPORON [00:00:21] I am okay, family is doing well. Really have no buddy in throughout my, you know, kind of circles of influence and personal circles who have been directly impacted by the Chinese Communist Party virus except for what’s been happening to them and their businesses and their ability to work and all of those kinds of things. You’re fresh out of quarantine. You have a similar experience? Anybody in your kind of personal circles that have been affected by this so far?

GARDNER [00:00:51] You know, there have been there have been people I know who have had had the virus who are over the virus. And unfortunately, in Weld County, at least, the one individual that I have known for a long time passed away — Dr. Flack, up there, — of coronavirus. And that’s just something that, you know, where he was a great man and older, but a higher risk factor. And we’ve got to be careful about this stuff.

CORPORON [00:01:13] We really do. And you had a you had a piece in The Denver Post. Seems like a month ago now, but I think was only about a week or so. You talked about three very important things to address the health epidemic, obviously, make sure we get some immediate assistance to people and businesses. But you were courageous enough to throw in there Part 3, which is get our businesses up and running again. It seems like if you mentioned that in some circles that you’re inhumane or some kind of a monster to think that the economic engine, not only of America, but America drives the world to talk about that. And the consequences and the impact that we’re having on that right now is somehow wrong because people are suffering under this horrible illness.

GARDNER [00:01:58] Well, look, that’s a three-pronged strategy that I think is important. And you can’t just do one and then two and then three. You actually have to address all three at the exact same time. How we can make sure we get through this health emergency, how we can make sure that individuals have the anxiety and uncertainty that they face answered with the action. And three, what we’re going to do to prepare business is to keep people on payroll — and to “pray-roll” may be appropriate as well — Payroll. But also then to get them to a place they can snap back once this health emergency is over.  You can’t wait to address that.

CORPORON [00:02:30] What’s concerned me is — and as much as I admire, you know, the experts, the panel of people that is mostly medical right now, sometimes financial, that the president surrounds himself to answer sometimes hours worth of questions from the media and present the latest news that they have. But these models continue to change. And, you know, in my opening monologue, I was just kind of thinking aloud that if this goes on for three or four or five weeks while we try and break the curve of the virus, while we get supplies and ventilators and all those kinds of things under our own control. And definitely want to talk to you about China and the virus and production before we let you go today. But if we start, you know, if all those things were being implemented, then doesn’t it make sense — don’t we have to start letting up on the American economy, focus the resources in the real hot spots, continue to encourage people to practice the safe health tips that we’re all learning and all practicing at work and at home, but get back to work?

GARDNER [00:03:32] Well, I think what you’ve identified is one of the key questions that’s being talked about right now as we follow the guidance of the health experts and the public health experts is what this looks like as we get out of it. And I made the comment earlier as an Eastern Plains kid, you know, I hear a lot of tornado sirens over the summer. And when you hear the tornado siren, you go into the basement, you wait it out and you hope nothing happens. And then you hear the all clear siren and you come back up and again, you hope nothing had happened. There really isn’t going to be sort of that all clear siren where everybody can high five, go out, and just get back to normal again.  We are going to have to have an understanding of what it means to continue to social distance, what it means to not put ourselves in a position where we could create — inadvertently — a second wave of this because our economy, we can’t go through this again. You know, I worry that we can go through a once, let alone twice. And so I do think that conversation has to be held. And particularly, you know, if the scientists who believe there’s seasonality to this are correct, we had better have everything in place by August, September, October, so that we can we can manage this in a way that doesn’t shut down commerce, jobs and the economy going into the next to the next season.

CORPORON [00:04:38] Talking with U.S. Senator Cory Gardner. It’s one of the things I’ve been so incredibly impressed with is, you know, I’ve watched the president wield the power of the Defense Production Act a few times when he’s needed it. But it really seems to me when the call was put out to American manufacturers, the vast majority have really stepped up to the challenge that you see patriotism in action, you see the power of the American economic engine, and my hope and goal is not only we come up, that we come out on the other side of this with a better understanding of how sometimes it’s appropriate for government and private industry to work together, but how critically important it is that our supply chains, our manufacturing for essential items like the ones we’re so short of right now during this health crisis, are manufactured right here in America, where we always have control.

GARDNER [00:05:29] I think a perfect example of what you’ve just said is playing out before us and compare our healthcare supply chain for medical devices and pharmaceuticals to our agricultural food chain. Thank goodness we get most of the food that we eat from the United States. And as a result, we have that right here. And we don’t rely on other countries for our food, but we do for many parts of our medical supply chain. And we’ve seen in some cases 70% of pharmaceutical supply chain comes from somewhere else, particularly China. And when that happens, when you are reliant on somebody else for your life — you know your vital necessities — and we have something like this unexpected pandemic, it creates a very, very big problem, on the equipment side, on the reagents side, on the pharmaceutical side. You go up and down the list in what we’re facing, thank goodness we don’t have in agriculture. But I think agriculture is a good example of what happens when you have it here; we can continue keeping that supply going.

CORPORON [00:06:36] Today, I’m in congressional District 6, I’m running for national delegate. You know, obviously the election is something that’s done online. And yesterday, [there were] a lot of phone calls, emails, people putting up their videos. We really have learned a great deal about how to facilitate business, facilitate politics and continue to advance agendas, advance some level of business, even though right now, for the most part, we’re staying out of each other’s way and primarily staying at home. How does that impact what’s going on in Washington, D.C. when you’re out of session right now? Is there no senatorial activity going on? Is. Are you guys holding any kind of, you know, Zoom-level meetings or holding votes? Is Washington, D.C. virtually shut down right now except for the handling of the virus epidemic?

GARDNER [00:07:27] Well, you know, I think that the conversations are obviously continuing between members of the Senate and the House. Yesterday, I did a conference call between, oh, probably about six or seven senators and a dozen or more House members. The day before, we had a conference call with all Republican senators. We were joined by Secretary Mnuchin, Dr. Fauci and Secretary Acosta — Secretary Scalia, excuse me. And we had conversations about, you know, with the virus, what’s happening. Obviously, legislative ideas are being exchanged between everyone about, “Hey, what what did we get right in the CARES Act? How do we make sure this paycheck protection program that just, you know, parts of it were unrolled yesterday — How do we make sure —  that we’re rolled out yesterday, excuse me– how do we make sure that we get this right? And do we need to fix it?” So it very much continues. Obviously, there’s no voting taking place. There’s no mechanism for remote committee hearings or or voting. So that’s that will be the standard way that we’ve done it for over 200 years in this country.

CORPORON [00:08:25] Do you think that’ll change in light of what we’re going through right now, that in the future –?  It doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense now, given the quality of video meetings and that sort of thing, for even for you to have to be flying back and forth to Washington, D.C. every single week.

GARDNER [00:08:40] You know, there is something to be said about having people together in order to talk about challenges and solutions that you can’t do over the phone or over conference calls. But with a big caveat, there are certain existential circumstances like a global pandemic, that we had better be able to function without having those in-person votes or in-person meetings or in-person committee hearings. So I do think in extraordinary circumstances there should be a mechanism that allows the Senate, the House to act remotely without having everybody, you know, in the same place, because you never know. I mean, whether it is a terrorism attack, whether it’s a chemical attack or whether it is a global pandemic. And we’ve seen these corona viruses now — SARS and this COVID-19 and others that have really wreaked havoc — and, you know, maybe something even more severe happens, and we didn’t have a chance to act as much as we did with Phases 1, 2 and 3. So, I do think that that is something that modern technology will allow us to do in extraordinary circumstances.

CORPORON [00:09:41] You mentioned Phase 1, 2 and 3. We’re already hearing talk about Phase 4 before any –we really have seen the results, the efficacy of Phase 3. What are you hearing that we might be looking forward to? I hear the president talking quite a bit about infrastructure. We’re talking about trillions of dollars again. And of course, we’ve always gotten Nancy Pelosi. And I know the spending originates in the House. You guys have to react to what comes your way. But I hear Nancy Pelosi talking about all of the wishlists — leftist wishlist stuff — that she wants to see in there. And that’s the biggest concern I have when we have these emergencies that result in these massive, massive spending bills.

GARDNER [00:10:20] Well, I think that’s a big question. I mean, some people may see this as a chance to drive their political projects for the last decade or more, or maybe there will be a sort of economic base to it, like the infrastructure project kind of package or you know, we’ve been looking at a number of things that could be in the next phase, things from, hey, you know, under the paycheck protection program was rolled out yesterday. There are there are some issues that we should look at, some issues relating to affiliations, business affiliations, you know, franchisees, and making sure that it’s got enough resources. You know, that bill — Randy, this is a stunning number. The CARES Act will address the needs of 17 million small businesses who employ one hundred and forty-two million people and whose payroll for those 17 million small businesses annually is 6.2 trillion dollars. That is an economic powerhouse that is really hurting right now. And that’s why Phase 3 was so important. And so, we get to Phase 4, maybe it’s something like, you know, our ski areas in Colorado, for instance. They had to shut down the months and months early, but yet they still have to pay their forest service permits. And so maybe there’s a way that we could have those waived and not be paid when they’re not being used. Well, that takes statute to do that. The secretary of agriculture cannot do that on on on their own. And so we need to make sure that we provide the statutory authority to do that, if that’s the right remedy. So, you know, there’s a lot of things that could be big or small, or clean ups, or everything. Here’s what I want to do. I want to make sure that we don’t let this COVID-19 bring America to its knees. We will not let it happen. We will keep those small businesses going, we’ll keep this economy running. We’re going to beat this thing. And that’s what we have to do. And that’s what I want to see every action we take at the end have.

CORPORON [00:12:10] I absolutely agree that that is essential. And yet I don’t hear anybody talking about how in the world we’re going to pay for this on the backside. What is the conversation — the long-term impact on inflation, on the debt that we’re sending on to our kids and our grandkids? I understand it. You know, this is a war. And so we react now, solve — save lives, keep our economy and our livelihoods afloat. But how are we going to deal with this on the backside? Are you guys talking about that as well?

GARDNER [00:12:39] Well, I hope that people will realize now is not the time to do things to hurt our economy, like make it too difficult for a business to operate by putting rules and regulations in place that strangle our businesses. And so, you know, we we are talking about that. Obviously, we were on a path that we could see a 300 percent debt to GDP ratios in just a decade or so. And obviously that would be catastrophic, and that was without the spending that took place under the current emergency. So we will address the health emergency, and then we have to address those challenges at hand dealing with our fiscal crisis that we will be facing. So, you know, that’s why I believed in the necessities of things like a balanced budget amendment, constitutional balanced budget amendment. It would have obviously exceptions for emergency spending to address things like a health emergency need, but it would put restraints on Congress’s ability to spend unfettered amounts of money. That’s what we need in this country. Our states have it. Colorado has it. But it’s something that I think we have to look at now more than ever going forward.

CORPORON [00:13:37] It’s funny, you know, I had three things I wanted to talk to you about. The second one would have been the election. It seems so incredibly unimportant right now, and in the few minutes we have remaining with Senator Cory Gardner, I think we’ll just skip over the election for right now and have you back on some time soon, I hope.  You wrote a very important opinion piece that’s up on Fox-News-dot-com, “Coronavirus spread because of Chinese Communist Party’s ineptitude and deceptions.” I definitely want people to read it, but talk a little bit about it while we’ve got you here today.

GARDNER [00:14:08] Well, that’s exactly right. Look, we started to hear about this virus in January and we started to hear what China was doing.

[00:14:15] They were saying that all this only affects older people and there’s no human to human transmission. Even convinced the World Health Organization that that was the case while they were denied access to China from, you know, scientific missions by the United States and others. They were just letting people be led to believe that everything was fine here, nothing to see. And now we know that is not the case. Now we know that, in fact, this virus does affect people of all ages and certainly people with higher risk are going to be more vulnerable. But, you know, if you go into the hospitals, there are a heck of a lot of people who are aged 20 to 54 in there.  In some cases, over half of the people in the hospital are of that age. And so, there were a lot of things that China, had they been transparent, had they been honest, had they not disappeared the scientists and the doctors who were first finding this, had they not disappeared the journalists who were trying to blow the whistle, maybe the world would be in a different position today. Maybe this could have been dealt with in a different manner. But what’s disgusting is to see organizations like the World Health Organization just say, if I had coronavirus the police, I’d want to be treated as in China. This is just outrageous, what they’re saying, in fact, today. I just had a tweet about this. This is not related to exactly the question you said. But the United Nations just gave China a seat on a United Nations Human Rights Council panel. And my tweet this morning says, “Maybe the U.N. should have checked with the Wiggers and prison camps for a reference.” We are not dealing with a safe and enlightened democracy in China. We are dealing with a Communist Party whose sole mission is survival of the party.  And they will put people in prison camps and they will torture them and they will lie about viruses and they will lie about its spread and they will lie about what it means. And they will hoodwink its regional neighbors and try to hoodwink national organizations into believing there is nothing wrong here and we cannot fall for that.

CORPORON [00:16:11] Senator Cory Gardner, I know you’ve got to go. We’ve got national best selling author Amity Shlaes coming up at the top of the hour and full lines. But are you hearing — do we — should we as citizens be believing that the one prime lesson and the one prime result that can really guarantee that we have better responses available in the event that this thing resurfaces or something like it happens again, is our manufacturing of those central items — essential items that we talked about — going to be coming out of China and back to the United States or at least more reliable allies?

GARDNER [00:16:46] Well, Randy, If you think about it, testing is going to be the key, not only in how we get out of this and how we deal with it, but how we prepare and plan for the future so that we don’t do this again. And we cannot rely on other nations for that testing, for the reagents, for the swabs. We need to have that supply chain here. That is an absolute game changer in how we would address what comes next.

CORPORON [00:17:06] I know you’ve been doing town halls, phone town halls in congressional districts and all around, trying to keep the campaign active. But I’m assuming you probably have a little more time on your hands and I’ll leave you with this. Have you heard of Event 201 —  Two Hundred and One?

GARDNER [00:17:21] I don’t believe I have, no.

CORPORON [00:17:23] It’s a test. Johns Hopkins Mental — Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins University, in partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates [Foundatioh] and World Economic Forum, ran a high level pandemic exercise on October 18th, 2019, with the premise being a massive coronavirus–.

GARDNER [00:17:43] Yes, I have! Yes, I have heard this. I didn’t realize it was 201. I’ve read that the Gates — that study. Yes.

CORPORON [00:17:48] Yes, it — is there something valuable out of that kind of work? Did those — I guess my question is, and it will be the last one because I know we’re running late. Does that kind of modeling –? That was all pretend. The best, the smartest people coming together with the best computer models to put something in action. Can we actually learn from that? How much can we rely on modeling and even the modeling that’s telling us what we have to do right now?

GARDNER [00:18:11] Look, there’s always going to be a margin of error in anything that we don’t have the actual hard concrete facts on. But the fact is, models give us great tools and data and ability to predict and to prepare. And I think out of those models, we were able to increase funding for things like the CDC, the National Institutes of Health for BARDA, which is dealing with vaccines. We’ve been able to look at those kinds of things and say, “Hey, we’re going to have to respond quickly to the approval of new drugs.” And we have shaped policies around models and projections. And that’s — whether that’s the military response, whether that’s an economic response, or a health care response, modeling and kind of those exercises give us great insight into what we need to be doing. And that’s why we should pay attention to these things and act upon them as Congress has tried to do.

CORPORON [00:18:55] [I’m] getting a couple of texts in:  [reading the text]  “This is the Cory I know and love!”.

GARDNER [00:19:01] [laughs] Is my wife texting you?

CORPORON [00:19:02] Yes! I didn’t know she had my number. It was top secret. Hey, we really do appreciate your time. These are odd times. I hope, you know, as it warms up, that things get back to normal. We can get back to talking about beating Democrats and all the important policy decisions coming up. But in the meantime, we appreciate the generosity — your time this morning on a Saturday.

GARDNER [00:19:21] Hey, thanks for having me, Randy. Be well and be safe. All right? Thanks!