CLYBURN CLAIMS TRUMP HAS NO PLAN TO STAMP OUT COVID-19

Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina said Wednesday (Thursday, August 6, 2020 in Manila) the COVID-19 crisis is “much, much worse” than the 2008 Great Recession because the US is without a national strategy to contain the coronavirus. “Our entire economy is at stake,” Clyburn told the Associated Press (AP)in a Newsmakers interview conducted by Lisa Mascaro and Padmananda Rama. 

The third-ranking House Democrat said he’s hopeful that negotiators on Capitol Hill can reach an agreement soon on a new virus aid package. But he said it’s a direr situation than the financial crisis more than a decade ago. “We’ve got a health care crisis wrapped into an economic crisis, and they are so interwoven,” Clyburn said. “You can’t solve the economic crisis without solving the health care crisis, and the problem we’ve got is that we do not have a national plan to deal with this virus.” Clyburn said “that’s not the way you run a national government.” 

As the virus crisis scrambles the summer political conventions, Clyburn said he won’t be attending the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee, which officials said Wednesday will be almost entirely virtual. But he said it’s not appropriate for President Donald Trump to use the White House as the backdrop to accept the Republican Party’s nomination, as Trump has suggested. “Let him do it from the golf course,” Clyburn said. He warned that Trump may be trying to sway the election by discouraging voter turnout or the use of mail-in ballots during the pandemic.

“We got bar codes that can identify every stick of chewing gum in a grocery store and you are telling me that we cannot have bar codes to identify every ballot that goes out and certify it as it comes in?” he said. “We can do this. That’s what we’ve got to do. Put the money in this budget. And so that we can have a fair, unfettered election,” said Clyburn, who is the House Democratic whip. “This guy is trying to do everything he possibly can to prevent that from happening.”