How Do We Start The Economy Again？
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Summary
Ted Cruz and Michael Knowles discuss the impact of the government shutdown on the economy, public health crisis, and the spread of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in the United States. They also discuss the role of the federal government in responding to the pandemic.
Transcript
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3.3 million Americans lost their jobs two weeks ago.
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Another 6.7 million Americans lost their jobs last week.
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And we have got at least another month of shutdown to go.
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Senator, I'm sorry to be joining you in these unpleasant conditions.
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I was hoping by now we could be doing shows in person again.
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Instead, we are quarantined and the economy is collapsing all around us.
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10 million Americans have lost their jobs in two weeks.
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At what point does this shutdown become economically untenable?
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Well, we've got two disasters that are playing out simultaneously.
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Obviously, we've got the public health crisis and it is real.
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And that all of us are struggling to deal with that.
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At the same time, we've got an economic crisis that's playing out.
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And the economic crisis is caused by the government's policies put in place to deal
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10 million people have lost their jobs in the last two weeks.
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Small businesses are shutting down one after the other after the other.
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Restaurants, bars, nail salons, movie theaters.
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People are hurting and we don't know how long this is going to last.
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That being said, we're seeing, I think, the federal government, the legislation that was
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passed last week will begin to provide some much needed relief to a lot of people who are
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That's when the economic calamity is going to end, when we defeat the disease.
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Well, because I noticed that there's this balance that people are trying to strike.
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And yet you hear some people like New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who said, if we can
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save just one life, then all of these policies will have been worth it.
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But of course, people die in economic collapse as well.
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So is there any pushback within the government, people that you're talking to, that perhaps,
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as we've heard, the cure might be worse than the disease here?
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I mean, if we're looking at two, three months from now, 20%, 25%, 30% unemployment, I mean,
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I mean, if we end up destroying our domestic economy and destroying the international economy,
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And you're right that that kind of poverty and suffering will also take lives.
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That inevitably, when you see economic devastation, you know the consequences of that are going
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You're going to have increased depression, increased suicides, substance abuse.
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All sorts of problems flow from economic devastation.
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But on the public health side, look, my view is we need to listen to the science and the physicians
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about how to combat this epidemic, how to contain it so that we don't overwhelm our health system.
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We haven't seen that happen yet, but we have seen it happen in places like Italy.
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What is happening in Italy, none of us want to see happen here.
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And so I think there has to be a balance between the two.
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We have to see when we've got the virus under control, when it's not spreading at dramatic rates,
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that's when we're going to have to be looking to ease up on some of the restrictions.
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But if we do it early, and look, part of the problem is think for a minute about the political dynamics.
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Let's say, Michael, you woke up tomorrow and you were the mayor of a large city.
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Would you want to be the mayor who said, OK, everybody go back to work, everyone go back to the restaurant,
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and then two weeks later, 500 people die in your city?
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And they all say it was Mayor Knowles who killed them.
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And look, as you know, people will use rhetoric that hot and nasty and personal.
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The incentives are such you've got a lot of leaders who are struggling with what to do
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because you want to save people's lives, but there does, over time, there has to be a balance.
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This is what keeps running through my mind when I'm thinking, is President Trump overreacting?
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A lot of the models are disagreeing with one another.
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Do you want to be the guy where the headlines all say, Senator so-and-so,
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or I suppose in this case, Governor or President so-and-so,
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is responsible for killing all of these people?
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However, we don't want this thing to go on forever.
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And I know initially the president had said that he was hoping this would be over by Easter.
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Then now Dr. Fauci is suggesting we might have to maintain the mitigation efforts after April 30th.
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I think what a lot of people want to know is not even when is this going to end,
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but what criteria is the government using to determine when this will end?
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Well, I started this morning on a conference call with Dr. Fauci and also with Stephen Mnuchin,
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And Fauci this morning was talking about how there are all sorts of measures that we're looking at.
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We're looking at those who are in critical conditions.
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And we want to see each of those indicators start to slow the rate of new cases,
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the rate of new hospitalizations, the rate of new deaths.
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But each of those is a lagging indicator to the other.
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So even as we begin to see, hopefully, a decline in new cases,
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the rates of deaths is typically lagging several weeks behind.
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And so we may see those numbers, one set of numbers going down while another is still on the upswing.
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There are not that many people who have been tested.
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So we don't know really how widespread things are.
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The United States is starting to test more widely.
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It was a big problem three weeks ago getting a test.
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It's still challenging in some circumstances getting tested.
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But we're doing a lot more testing, which is one of the reasons our numbers are going up.
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It's clear there are places like New York City.
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You have a lot of people close in, in a close geographic location.
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And the challenge is, listen, I've asked the CDC, I've asked the medical experts over and over again,
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Is this another two weeks, four weeks, six weeks, eight weeks?
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They have lots of models, but the models, if you adjust the variables even slightly in terms of the rates of contagion,
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how many people have it, it makes a massive difference in terms of how widespread this is.
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So, listen, when the president said that he hoped everything would be open by Easter,
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I think that was a perfectly good aspiration to say, listen, we all want to get back to work.
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And you saw the media kind of lose their minds about it.
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And obviously, if the numbers are spiking and more and more people are getting sick,
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nobody is going to step in and say, all right, all right, let's all go to a basketball game.
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It's also the case, so for example, all of the American press really gullibly reported
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that America has now passed China for infections.
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Well, that's only because China is absolutely lying about every aspect of this pandemic,
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including, look, China claims in the last month that their cases went from 80,000 to 81,000.
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So it spread like an epidemic and then suddenly halted altogether.
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And to see the American media just parrot propaganda, I don't think is helpful.
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We do know the Chinese communist government, they tried to cover up this outbreak.
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They were complicit in, I think they didn't want to be embarrassed.
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So imagine a different world of when this outbreak first started in Wuhan.
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If the Chinese government had brought in health experts, if they'd quarantined the first people,
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we could have stopped maybe this epidemic from becoming a pandemic.
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We could have held it to a regional location, but instead they covered it up and tourists and
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You had Chinese travelers going to Italy, which produced a big outbreak there.
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And so their cover up played a big part in the worldwide catastrophe we're seeing right now.
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And speaking of parroting this Chinese communist propaganda, I mean, one of the
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institutions that did that most persistently and successfully was the World Health Organization.
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And yet, for some reason, it would seem that they've installed a patsy to run the WHO.
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They didn't send experts over there for months and months.
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I think the question on a lot of people's minds here is, how are we going to hold people
00:10:10.080
One, how are we going to ascertain the guilt here?
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I mean, one study said that China could have reduced the spread of this pandemic by 95% if
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How are we going to hold them responsible once this is all said and done?
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Well, look, I think the first step is accountability.
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We need to find out where the virus originated.
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We've talked before about how where the virus originated is just miles away from the Wuhan
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Institute of Virology, one of only about three dozen P4 testing facilities that test and
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Not only that, we know that at that institute, they weren't just testing viruses.
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And the odds, I mean, if you think of all the towns, all the cities in the world, the
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odds that this outbreak just happens to occur miles away from a lab that is testing coronaviruses
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Now, here's what here's what a lot of the American mainstream media is.
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There was a very concerted effort to respond to questions like that.
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But by screaming, this is a tinfoil hat conspiracy and conspiracy theory.
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And we know they say that this virus wasn't manufactured, that that was their response.
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And I'll tell you, that's what the CDC doctors have told me.
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Look, there were questions about, is this a bioweapon?
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And I asked our doctors, is there any evidence of that?
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They said, looking at the genome and the sequencing, it does not appear to be anything that was
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It appears to be something that occurred in nature.
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But the next and obvious question is, okay, fine.
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If it wasn't created in a lab, was this novel coronavirus a virus they were studying at the
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Wuhan Institute of Virology, that they'd gotten from nature, that it occurred naturally in a bat
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or some other creature that they were studying?
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There have been numerous stories written in the press before this outbreak about the poor
00:12:28.880
efforts at security and keeping the viruses contained at that particular institution.
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They more or less admitted it in certain documents that were distributed at that Institute of
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And so it strikes me as entirely plausible that it accidentally escaped.
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That explains why the Chinese government would be so embarrassed about it, why they would work
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so hard to try to suppress any evidence of it, why they would punish the whistleblowers,
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including the doctor who lost his life to COVID-19, but who first blew the whistle where the Chinese
00:13:09.440
And that dynamic, and I got to say, with the exception of a handful of journalists, and I'll
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I think Tucker Carlson has been courageous in addressing this.
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I actually called Tucker yesterday as I was going for my walk with my family.
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Thank you for having the backbone to ask these questions because most of the mainstream media,
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The network executives want to be in the Chinese market.
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The Chinese market is billions of dollars, and because of the money, they won't raise
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And the first step is ensuring that we have accountability, that we know what actually
00:13:56.000
You know, I have to tell you, yesterday was April Fool's Day, as you know, Senator, and
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I was just waiting for that government bulletin to come out and say, hey, guys, it was all a
00:14:08.220
Well, I will say last night as I was going to bed, the girls, you know, called me in.
00:14:16.680
And as I walked in, Caroline had set a cup of water on the door to dump on my head.
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Then as I was putting him to bed, it was kind of late.
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And Catherine said, I'm not going to bed until you pull an April Fool's prank on us.
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So I went to our bathroom and I got a can of shaving cream.
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And came in and sprayed the girls with shaving cream, which which obviously they run and
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Then the door opens and Caroline has a full can of shaving cream she had hidden in her
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So we had a giant shaving cream fight last night.
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Note to self, never get on the wrong side of Senator Cruz's daughters.
00:15:02.880
They really sounds like they were planning this out long before April Fool's Day.
00:15:06.700
I think also another bit of evidence that all of us staying at home, whether we're in
00:15:14.280
senator, we're all going a little bit crazy with this quarantine.
00:15:17.260
And so now shaving cream everywhere and a cup of water on dad's head when people are
00:15:22.220
I mean, there are only so many things you can do.
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Is Tiger King not the most surreal thing you have ever seen?
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You're like, all right, it cannot get any more insane.
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And then the episode ends and you go, you got to be kidding me.
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You know, I mean, those are all the positive aspects of it.
00:15:46.700
And I think it is very important in times like this not to panic, not to only look at
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We're getting a lot of mailbag questions in because because people are sitting around at
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And so I think it's important if we can get to as many as we can, because there are a lot
00:16:03.800
I obviously don't know the answer to any of them, but possibly, Senator, you do.
00:16:09.220
I heard that if you're on Social Security, you have to file a new and separate tax return.
00:16:16.580
Well, there was guidance that came out earlier this week in which the Treasury Department said
00:16:21.400
that if you hadn't filed a tax return in 2018, if you're on Social Security and you didn't
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make enough that you had to file a tax return, that you had to file a new special tax return.
00:16:36.820
And thankfully, yesterday, Treasury rescinded it.
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They said, you don't need to file this special tax return.
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If you're receiving a Social Security check, you will receive your relief check.
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It's where they should have started, but I'm glad they got there.
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Of course, you don't want people who are on a fixed income, who are particularly vulnerable
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to this virus, to be specifically the ones excluded from receiving the relief.
00:17:04.480
JJ asks, can required minimum deductions from 401ks be relaxed due to the stock market being
00:17:14.920
depressed, meaning every year, at a certain point, you will have to pull a certain amount
00:17:21.840
But if you do it now, obviously, we're in the midst of an economic crisis.
00:17:31.500
So the required distributions from 401ks and IRAs are halted for the year precisely for that,
00:17:40.880
If they don't have to withdraw the money, you don't want to force them to do it.
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But also in the legislation passed last week, there is the ability, if you need to access
00:17:51.380
your retirement savings just for cash flow to provide for your family, the penalties have
00:18:00.520
So there are positive policies on both ends on that front.
00:18:06.060
Well, for those of us who haven't read every single page of that relief bill, that's very
00:18:10.840
From Mike, when is the Small Business Administration going to provide responses to applications and
00:18:20.580
Nobody's getting any information or updates or funding.
00:18:23.800
So how can small business owners who are probably under a lot of constraints right now get that
00:18:31.600
It is supposed to be live and starting as soon as tomorrow, as soon as Friday.
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I'd say your resources, I'd go, number one, to the Small Business Administration website.
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That's one resource there that should be able to answer some questions.
00:18:46.640
And number two, if you're a small business owner, go to your local lenders.
00:18:50.760
The way that this program will be implemented is through local and community banks.
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And any small business and any business that has 500 employees or fewer will qualify for
00:19:07.640
And that loan, if you use those loan proceeds to pay for payroll for your employees, to pay for
00:19:17.080
mortgage or rent for your business, or to pay for utilities, that amount of the loan that is
00:19:23.960
paid for, that is used for those purposes will be forgiven.
00:19:28.880
And so that's designed, the whole purpose of that is to keep as many people as possible
00:19:39.400
And by the way, if you're a small business owner, let's say two weeks ago, you laid off
00:19:44.300
or you furloughed a bunch of employees, you can bring them back and the loans will apply
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So if you've already laid off workers, don't, it's not just the workers you have today.
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If you, if you have workers that you laid off a week or two ago, you can hire them back
00:20:04.100
But from the small business owner's perspective, that amount will be forgiven.
00:20:13.100
And I know that nobody's read this entire bill.
00:20:15.120
So that is extremely hopeful news and good news for small business owners and for employees
00:20:21.260
That even if you're one of the 10 million people who lost your job in the last couple
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of weeks, if you're working for a small business, uh, you, you can be rehired.
00:20:32.480
Is there a limit to how much money the federal government can borrow without severe consequences?
00:20:38.540
You know, now president Trump is talking about a possible infrastructure bill that could,
00:20:43.180
I mean, we're, we're not talking in even 1 trillion anymore.
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Is there a limit where we say we can't do anymore?
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Last week, Congress spent $2 trillion in an afternoon.
00:21:02.000
I mean, that's nearly 10% of our total national debt.
00:21:07.180
And, and it's worth noting in, in, in the Senate, it passed unanimously.
00:21:18.660
I mean, I mean that, and the reason is this, this is a crisis unlike any we've ever seen.
00:21:24.840
Um, and it's a crisis that, that the people who are hurting, they didn't do anything to cause this problem.
00:21:32.360
All the restaurant owners, the, the, the bar owners, the movie theater owners, that they didn't, this is not like TARP.
00:21:39.300
This is not like where the financial firms, uh, were taking advantage of the system and, and, and created a crisis here.
00:21:46.100
It's not their fault that, that this, this, this worldwide pandemic began.
00:21:51.080
And from a governmental perspective, the costs are coming anyway.
00:21:55.220
So for example, let's take the loans to small businesses that $377 billion was appropriated.
00:22:03.260
Well, we could have not done that in which case those small businesses all would have gone out of business and those employees would all filed for unemployment.
00:22:11.540
And, and, and, and you would have seen in more and more employees on a, on, on, on unemployment, on welfare.
00:22:17.900
That's, those are massive government expenditures anyway.
00:22:21.140
And so we made the determination, you know what, it's, we're in a better situation to try to essentially give a bridge loan to the small business owners to try to keep that business in existence.
00:22:32.560
Try to keep them hopefully in, in a few weeks or, or, or maybe longer, we will get past this, this, this shutdown and, and go back to work.
00:22:45.920
And we'd like to have as many of those small businesses still viable.
00:22:49.420
And as many people still have the jobs that they had a month ago.
00:22:54.340
I mean, you've only got bad options here, right?
00:22:56.560
You're, this is going to have an, a major cost just by virtue of it being a pandemic.
00:23:01.020
So the question is, do you have that cost and lose all your businesses?
00:23:04.360
You try to keep some of your businesses, very difficult decision.
00:23:07.260
Last question is a little controversial, but people sometimes forget there's a presidential election going on.
00:23:14.400
I know that it's not exactly in the news these days, but we will elect a president in November.
00:23:19.480
Question is from Twitter, uncomfortably quarantined.
00:23:23.060
What happens if Joe Biden is found to legitimately have competency issues by a physician, yet he was selected as the nominee?
00:23:31.020
What happens then as far as who is on the ballot?
00:23:38.760
Listen, Biden, I'll tell you one of the odd things about Biden, it seems like the guy is in witness protection.
00:23:46.320
I mean, it's, can you recall in your lifetime ever seeing anyone effectively wrap up a nomination and then disappear?
00:23:59.800
A Facebook, uh, live town hall that, that he like wandered off the camera and, and
00:24:08.920
He's an affable guy, but, but, you know, I gotta say he has slowed down more than a step or two.
00:24:16.420
And I've heard more than a little speculation that get to the convention, Democrats are going
00:24:23.520
to want to pull the plug and, and abandon ship.
00:24:26.580
I don't know if that happens, uh, under their rules, the superdelegates, you know, it's
00:24:31.580
interesting that Democratic party believes, believes in the state and believes in government.
00:24:39.660
So they have these things called superdelegates, which are elected officials that are basically
00:24:50.200
Republicans, Republicans don't have superdelegates.
00:24:52.460
Republicans actually follow the votes of the people.
00:24:56.280
The Democrats have, have a much more top down power driven system.
00:25:02.240
Uh, you know, I've heard interesting speculation about Andrew Cuomo suddenly becoming the dark
00:25:11.040
Um, it, I will say this, the longer this crisis continues, the more the question for every
00:25:20.580
voter is going to be, what leader do I trust to lead this country in a time of, of crisis
00:25:29.560
I, whether it's a public health crisis or an economic crisis.
00:25:33.160
And I, and I think that issue is likely to become the only issue for the Democrats at
00:25:38.640
their convention and, and the only issue, uh, or at least the dominant issue in November
00:25:45.320
I mean, that's the theme that everybody's talking about is unemployment and it could affect
00:25:48.680
a restaurant worker and it could affect the democratic nominee for president.
00:25:52.860
Uh, there's a wide spectrum here and a lot of uncertainty.
00:25:56.420
We will try to clear up more of it next time as things are changing day by day, but that's
00:26:06.400
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00:26:19.020
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