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Members of the House will spend Friday morning going over the details of a massive emergency stimulus package that was passed by the Senate late Wednesday. NET’s Jack Williams spoke with Congressman Don Bacon, who represents Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District about the bill and what’s ahead.
Latest news & resources: netNebraska.org/coronavirus
NET News: Congressman Bacon, what do you know about this bill so far?
Congressman Don Bacon: Well, there's a lot of different great aspects of this bill, but the most important one the US Government will help small businesses do their payroll and pay rent. This will be a loan to the Small Business Association, but those loans will be forgiven and if we can keep people on payroll for the next month, we'll come out of this in good fashion. But there's some other highlights too, hospitals will be getting necessary dollars for support to get through this. We're going to be propping up also some key industry, otherwise will collapse. You know, our hotels are down to five percent occupancy for example. I think there's very necessary work in this bill. I don't think it's perfect. But I will take a good over nothing.
NET News: What are some of your concerns?
Congressman Don Bacon: Well, I would like to targeted more the money towards people that are out of work or businesses are struggling. In some cases, there's money being put out there, that'll go to people that have not lost their jobs as I know, reduction in pay. I was worried about our deficit and so, you know two trillion dollar bill and our normal budget is four and a half trillion a year to put a prospective. It looks like that almost half of our annual budget. I'd like to just made sure that the money was going to people that were out of work or had their hours cut at businesses that were struggling to get through this and so it would have been my wish, but you know, you don't get everything you want in these things. You got, you know got hundred Senators, four hundred thirty five Congressman and so I will take good over nothing. If we don't do anything, we will have a collapse, a small business collapse, and major industries will fall, fall under and that will be, that's three half million people employed. We're talking tens of millions of people going on unemployment and that would be terrible.
NET News: You've spent a lot of time over the last couple of weeks on the phone with constituents. What are they telling you that they're concerned about?
Congressman Don Bacon: Well some of our business leaders have communicated grave concern that like, I had one CEO that has fourteen hundred people in his business so without help that they will go bankrupt. And this is a business that has been very profitable but it's very travel oriented, it's put a lot, lot of business owners that are concerned there. From this last fear serious the average citizen about getting the coronavirus and they're 80 year old father and their grandmother isn't maybe being vulnerable to these. So there's a lot of personal concerns from individuals on the health side of it. I hear just a lot of I would serious probably the right word, I guess y'all, just will I have my job next week and will people in my family be sick. And I think we try our very best to mitigate the healthcare side of this and the economic problems to the best of our ability, but we're still going to be a tough work and we had some tough days ahead. I know that our country will get through it. We've been through worse and we'll get through this.
NET News: We've seen some mixed messages from the White House on measures needed to slow coronavirus and also the need to save the economy. Do you think Americans are confused when it comes to what's the most important, the pandemic or the economy?
Congressman Don Bacon: Well I think we're trying to do both and however, if you go a hundred percent on the health prevention, you can be there for a couple weeks. But once you go beyond that, you can crush our economy. Then yet there you have, at some point you need to have jobs to help pay for healthcare and it has to be enough economy out there to keep our hospitals going and all the health care. So there has to be a smart balance there, but I think right now we put most of our emphasis on the healthcare and preventing the spread of this virus. But after two or three weeks the economy would probably need to make some adjustments so we can get some people back to work. And I think it's what the President's saying. I hear from a lot of folks, hey we need to do everything we can to protect our elderly, so the younger folks the viruses as much a threat to them. So maybe after three weeks in just don't want folks back to work. I think it's going to find the right balance after we get through the 15-day period where we're keeping our distance from everybody.
NET News: What has this whole experience taught you as a lawmaker? What do we need to do to make sure this doesn't happen again and that we're ready for it next time?
Congressman Don Bacon: One of the things I've been working on is pandemic emergency response capabilities for our country and I've been working with UMNC on this. We want UNMC to be the Midwestern hub for disaster preparedness for pandemics just like we're seeing. We want to have the capacity of a thousand bed or twelve hundred bed area where we can put people who are, you know get a flu like this or some other kind of disaster, but we could take care of a large group of folks and have that expertise right here in Omaha. And so we've been working on this for the last six months anyway, and this pandemic with the coronavirus shows that there is a need. That we're seeing a lot of hospitals going to the max capacity and so we need to expand that capacity for the future because this will not be the last time we have something like this. So my main takeaway is I want prepare for the future and expand our healthcare capacity for emergency.
NET News: Congressman Don Bacon, thanks for your time today.
Congressman Don Bacon: Thank you very much.
Latest news & resources: netNebraska.org/coronavirus