Coronavirus Report: The Hill’s Steve Clemons interviews Rep. Debbie Dingell

Steve Clemons talks to Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) about the way we should be approaching safety and reopening the economy. Dingell, a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the Health subcommittee, says that all discussions must start with the workers and establishing an environment where they are safe and that they can trust.

Excerpts from the interview below:

On how her community is doing with the coronavirus challenge

{mosads}DINGELL: Well, Steve, Michigan’s been the third hardest hit in the country. We’re still the third highest number of deaths and on myself, I’ve known almost 20 people that have died this last month as we’ve all been at home and it’s ranged from a relative to a number of older people that I’ve just known for a long time. You can’t grieve. You can’t mourn for them. So it’s been hard. And there’ve been a lot of challenges. The nurses and the doctors that are scared to death asking for and needing PPE. None of us knew what PPE was a month ago. Now we all know it’s personal protection equipment, and it’s been way too hard to get it for those of those on the front line. I talked to my fire and police every day, and they’re facing challenges. And I’m so grateful to our grocery store workers and our drivers and the people that are working in the drug stores. Our heroes are really the front-line people that are keeping a civil society structure in place. 

Some are critical of the role of the federal government right now and seeing mayors and governors stand out. You are part of the federal government. How do you see the federal response?

DINGELL: You know I say to do this. I’m not gonna be political right now. None of us can afford to be political. We’re all in this together and we are fighting an invisible enemy. I have been frustrated on some days, but what I do is — you talked about when you opened the show — I write a personal blog every day because people need to know that how their feeling is normal. And I’m going through every feeling that other people have. I have not been physically with anybody. I’ve kept my physical distance for 30 days. I take my temperature every morning and just the ups and downs of that. But I have a twice weekly call with all of my mayors. … I go to war. Trust me, I try to stay calm but I’ve lost it a couple of times. … My job is to be in touch with everyone in my constituencies. I talk to my hospitals every day. I talk to the police and fire every day. I understand. I’ve been lucky that I’ve got several manufacturers that are starting to produce the PPE. I’ve been on the phone cutting red tape, getting masks flown in from China, finding airplanes to fly those masks, talking to Ford. They were the first people to really make some of the PPE equipment here. And the first thing they made were face masks. I mean face guards. I called every member of the Michigan delegation and got them face guards, we got them to all the fire and police and the hospitals. We are in there every single day. You’ve just got to see what’s the problem? What do we need to solve it? You get people together, you brainstorm, you strategize. You keep fighting until you can deliver and then you hear the next problem. 

You issued a joint statement with five other members about how we should approach tasks during this period. What were you trying to communicate?

DINGELL: Well, the first thing we have to do is to worry about the health of every single American. We need to make sure that everybody has access to to health care, that they don’t worry whether they can afford the test, whether they can afford to stay home. If they are sick. That they’re going to get sick pay. That they see a doctor and they can afford their medicine. These are really scary times. People are losing their jobs or being furloughed, and they don’t know how they’re gonna live or whether they’re going to be paid. And we need to worry about that. What we were trying to do is to set out core values, even in my own state, let alone I’ve said this to the White House. And I’ve said it here in Michigan and some pretty tough conversations, some days with well-intentioned business executives who don’t understand that the worker matters. As you talk about how do you reopen the economy? Quite frankly, I was even having these discussions before the auto plant shut down. Workers were scared to go in those plants. People they were working with were COVID positive. Chrysler has lost 14 employees that were in the plant. Ford’s now lost the dozen. People are afraid to go back in those plants, and any discussion about reopening has to include the worker, the asset, the greatest asset that an employer has so they know they’re going to be safe and healthy when they return to work. I’m not going to get into politics right now … but we do need to make sure that our election process is protected when we have our November presidential election. 

Are we getting the stimulus package right?  

DINGELL: So many of those people that are applying for unemployment are furloughed or they’re on temporary unemployment. We have to figure out how they have a job to go back to when this is over, and what we want to do right now is keep employees. I called for a structure for a civilized society that people know that they have money to eat, that they’ve got electricity, cable, a roof over their head, which a lot of people, you know we’re having to do with significant homeless populations, too. But the unemployment pay, combined with the $600 additional payment in that check, is giving people economic relief for the moment, and we may have to extend the period of time of which they are eligible. We’ll be looking at that in the CARE two package, but I think we all have to work together to make sure that we are giving people that feeling of economic security, and then when we have protected life … we will restart the economy.

What are we going to do to help the homeless? To help the most vulnerable?

DINGELL: We’re not doing enough. One of the things that I’ve been working with my local governments on is what to do about homeless because the homeless shelters, first of all, some of the religious homeless shelters start to close as the weather gets better. So we’re having to make alternative arrangements. But even more frightening is in the tight living conditions that you have in homeless shelters where this virus is spreading very rapidly. My local governments have been renting hotels and making hotel rooms available to the homeless. But there are too many that are still on the street. They don’t know how to get health care. You know, we’re trying to make sure that we’re getting more food to them. One of the first things that we did in our second bill was to make sure that kids who rely on schools to get two meals a day would still have food at home when the schools close. Uh, you know what? One of the things I’ve been working on with [Rep.] Rashida Talib, which I began two months ago was running water. We were telling people the biggest way to avoid this becoming a public health crisis — we didn’t succeed — was to tell people to wash your hands. But how can you wash your hands if you don’t have running water? So we’ve had to really prioritize as a country what some of these basic needs are. Too many of us take running water for granted, and I have come to a conclusion that running water is a human right. Shouldn’t every human being have access to water?

Clemons: I know you issue a thought of the day. What is your thought of the day today?

DINGELL: You know a lot of people are going through tough times, and sometimes they don’t think that they’ve got the confidence or they’ve got the emotional wherewithal to get through this. One, we’re going to get through this as a community, but just remember that a diamond becomes what it is through pressure. An oak tree grows with a lot of hard wind. That was my thought for the day in my daily writing. But we are going to get through this together because we do have each other and it’s hard. It’s scary. You can go stark raving mad like me and even start to see the gray. But we will get through it together because we’re there for each other.