May 6, 2020 253 PM
FAR WEST TEXAS — Congressman Will Hurd held a conference call with reporters on Friday to discuss the coronavirus crisis and the government’s response to it.
Part of his reason for organizing the call, Hurd said, was to highlight some of the work that he and other members of Congress are doing.
Hurd described congressional action on coronavirus as coming in three to four phases. First, in early March, lawmakers approved almost $4 billion to amp up coronavirus testing, he said. Later that month, they approved other emergency measures, including emergency paid leave and funding to make sure low-income children are still getting free or reduced-price meals even if their schools are closed.
Then, on March 27, Congress passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act. The bill approved a range of additional emergency measures, from beefing up unemployment benefits to extending Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans to small businesses.
Around 135,000 businesses in Texas got PPP loans, Hurd said. But the program was “so successful” that “after eight days of use, it ran out of money.”
Finally, in what Hurd described as “phase 3.5,” Congress approved additional funds for hospitals and to make sure “the PPP program had money in it.”
Hurd also took time to address Texas’ phased reopening, which began that day. Noting that Texas has the 10th largest economy in the world, he stressed that political leaders needed to “make sure we have an economy to go back to” when the coronavirus pandemic is over.
“We fuel a lot of the success for the entire U.S.,” he said. “We can protect public health and see economic activity go forward.”
Still, he said that Texas officials are “leading with health decisions” rather than financial ones. And he stressed Governor Greg Abbott will be reviewing the public health consequences of his reopening plan to determine whether “we need to throttle back” on a return to regular business.
Then came the questions. The conference call was lightly attended, with reporters attending from only three outlets: The Big Bend Sentinel, Marfa Public Radio and a local paper in Hondo, a town in the San Antonio area.
The Big Bend Sentinel asked Hurd whether he agreed with Abbott’s reopening plans — and whether he agreed with the assertion made by Abbott and others that Texas’ new-case count is falling.
The date Abbott picked to argue that cases were falling — April 10 — saw a huge jump in cases, as Texas Monthly first pointed out. And “if Abbott had picked for his reference point any date other than the outlier of April 10,” the magazine argued, “he could not plausibly state that the ‘infection rate has been on the decline.’”
Hurd said he did agree with the state’s numbers and data interpretations. “I trust our healthcare professionals to reflect those numbers appropriately,” he said.
“And yes,” he reiterated, “I do think we can continue to protect public health and start slowly restarting our economy.” He stressed that the idea of returning to business “actually has fairly bipartisan support.”
“We should be concerned with public health,” he said. “But we can do both.”
Hurd noted that different states are reopening with different timelines, adding that he is a “firm believer in local control.” The Big Bend Sentinel took that opportunity to ask him about the situation in the tri-county, where Governor Abbott has thrown out local emergency orders reflecting the area’s tourist-dependent economy and short supply of medical resources.
Hurd did not speak for or against Abbott’s decision to supersede local orders but again emphasized that “you should listen to the folks on the ground.”
He brought up his hometown of San Antonio, where officials had required face-coverings until Abbott also overruled those orders.
But required or not, Hurd said, “I’ll be wearing a face-covering, because that’s what medical professionals suggest.”
Mitch Borden, a reporter at Marfa Public Radio, asked about economic fallouts from the coronavirus crisis, particularly in the Permian Basin. Presidio County’s unemployment rate is now over 10 percent, Workforce Solutions Borderplex said in a report last month, while the Permian Basin has been hammered by plummeting oil prices.
Hurd acknowledged these grim realities. “The number of folks on unemployment is skyrocketing,” he said, “and not through any fault of their own. It’s because of this global pandemic.”
Hurd said Congress is “ensuring that we’re stabilizing the housing market,” including through Housing and Urban Development grants. And he said he worries about food insecurity and disruptions to the food supply chain, citing a rise in demand for food banks and food pantries and the fact that businesses like restaurants are scaling back their food orders.
“Food security is national security,” he said. “If people lose hope that they can feed themselves or their family, that’s when you could see chaos.”
Diane Cosgrove, a reporter at the Hondo Anvil Herald newspaper, asked about a conspiracy theory, promoted by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and others, that COVID-19 is a form of Chinese bioterrorism.
“What is your perspective on the China lab and their level of responsibility for this?” she asked, referencing rumors that the virus started in the Wuhan Institute of Virology rather than emerging organically from animals, as experts believe. “Do you think it’s a case of bioterrorism? Do you think this is a case of partisanship and trying to attack the president for what he’s done for the economy?”
No, Hurd said: He didn’t think so. Evidence suggests the disease “metastasized naturally.”
Still, he stressed that a “lack of transparency” from China “exacerbated” the problem. He said the country’s leaders initially “outright lied” about the severity of the outbreak and have spread disinformation about the disease’s origins in an effort to quell anger among Chinese citizens.
“The Chinese government is using this as a tool,” he added, “to continue their drive to surpass the U.S. as the sole superpower in the world.”
