Democratic lawmakers are sticking by their state governors in saying coronavirus-related openings should happen slowly, providing a new cudgel with which to hit President Trump less than six months out from Election Day.
Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, defended remarks made by Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who said, “Until we have a vaccine or an effective treatment or enough widespread immunity that new cases fail to materialize, the option of returning to normalcy doesn’t exist.”
Durbin told the Washington Examiner, “He’s looking for some guidelines, indicators from the statistics in terms of infections and hospital capacity. Sounds to me like the same thing the president announced two weeks ago.”
Durbin disagreed that the reopening map bore a resemblance to any political map of red and blue states, an analogy that has become more widely used in recent weeks.
“That’s what the president stated. He’s just flat-out wrong,” Durbin said. “We can’t wait to get our economy reopened to save these businesses and put people back to work and, from a governor’s point of view, to start generating more tax revenue so they can run the state.”
In Michigan, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer applied some of the most stringent social distancing and shutdown measures, including prohibiting the sale of nonessential goods, such as clothing and gardening seeds, and banning visits to another private residence, including a vacation home or a neighbor’s house.
“It’s about medical science. That’s all this is about. And I’m really proud of what’s happened in Michigan and our governor, who’s gone to the medical professionals. And we were No. 3 in deaths, as things are going up a month ago,” Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, told the Washington Examiner. “We’re now down below, and it’s because she’s doing what’s best to keep people alive and not worrying about the politics.”
“This is not about Democrats and Republicans. For us, it’s not about Democrats, Republicans. It is for the president. The president sees everything through that lens,” she added.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, whose state is governed by a Republican but has an overwhelmingly Democrat-led state legislature, told the Washington Examiner, “This is about public health. And that’s what we need. We need to be guided by what keeps people safe and by our public health professionals, not by Donald Trump’s politics.”
“I haven’t looked at the [reopen] map. The question is, how it is that we follow the best public health guidelines. We had a hearing this morning with Dr. [Anthony] Fauci, and he said if we try to reopen too soon that lives will be lost unnecessarily,” Warren said.
Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, testified before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee on Tuesday about the Trump administration’s COVID-19 response and whether the country should reopen the economy.
