ICYMI: Rep. Hill on Bloomberg Surveillance: “Wear a Mask”
Little Rock,
July 10, 2020
Little Rock, Ark. — Today, Rep. French Hill (AR-02) joined Tom Keene and Francine Lacqua on Bloomberg Surveillance where he discussed upcoming changes to health guidelines in Arkansas, the need for more contact tracing, and the coronavirus’ impact on the economy.
To watch to the full interview with Rep. Hill, Tom Keene, and Francine Lacqua click HERE or on the image below.
Key quotes from Rep. Hill are included below: Rep. Hill on recent changes made in Arkansas regarding the pandemic: “Governor Hutchinson here, the Governor of Arkansas, has recently signed an executive order for a common mask requirement if mayor’s want to pursue that, so that it would be consistent across the state. I think we all now know after these months that we have to live with this virus and to live with the virus people have to follow the CDC guidelines of wearing a mask in public and having social distancing. That would be the number one thing we can do as you say in the sunbelt would be to follow those CDC guidelines.” Rep. Hill on the trace program guidelines: “We’re doing about 12,000 per 100,000 testing here. We've put a lot of money in testing, we've hired a lot of tracers that are working to keep up with the caseload. We're using the CARES act money here in the state of Arkansas to pay for our tracing program and of course the testing funds for expanding testing. What we’ve run into now is because of the hot spots, which Arkansas has been one, in Northwest Arkansas, and in Florida and Texas we are back to needing more reagents for testing to speed up the turnaround time for testing. We’ve written, our delegation has written Vice President Pence on this, I know [Governor Hutchinson] has called President Trump about it and that’s something we need to consider again using the federal government power to increase the production of those reagents or we’re not going to be able, Francine, to keep up with the testing that we need. Not only here but across the country.” Rep. Hill on Senate plans for the next round of stimulus payments: “Well I've heard numbers smaller than that coming out of Senate discussions in the areas of extending and reforming the unemployment payment, continuing the PPP program for small businesses, giving more guidance to our governors on how to use that state and local money that we sent out to all the states, and dealing with the liability issue, and I have a real need from talking to my teachers and our school superintendents do we have the right amount of funding to get our schools open safely for both our teachers and for our families. So, I don’t know that it’ll be that large, but I know that members on both sides of the aisle are working hard at looking at those gaps that we should try to fill as we continue to fight the virus.” Rep. Hill on wearing a mask: “Here's the bottom line, it reduces the spread, if people wear them when they cannot socially distance it reduces the spread and you are doing your part to stop this virus so we can get this economy fully open. I was thinking Tom, I bet people complained like hell during World War II about gas rationing coupons, well but they were necessary to fight the war and wearing a mask is a modest thing to do to help fight the virus and get our economy back open.” |
