Rep. Katie Porter: “Americans Need Straight Answers”

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Our next guest did the math and the research and put it to the government. Democratic representative, Katie Porter from California, sits on the congressional oversight and Reform Committee and she asked the CDC director how much it would cost an American to get tested for COVID-19. And in a feisty exchange that went viral, she got a pledge from him that testing would be free for every American. Our Michel Martin asked her about that and what she makes of the government’s handling of this crisis.

MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Congresswoman, thanks so much for joining us.

REP. KATIE PORTER (D-CA): Absolutely. Delighted to be here.

MARTIN: So, for people who don’t know who you are, we are just going play a short video of you, you’ll certainly be familiar with this. This is where you were questioning the director of the Centers for Disease Control and you’re taking about why testing for coronavirus needs to be free, and here it is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PORTER: Will you commit to the CDC right now using that existing authority to pay for diagnostic testing free to every American regardless of insurance?

DR. ROBERT REDFIELD, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION: Well, I can say we’re going to do everything to make sure everybody can get the care they need.

PORTER: No, not enough. Reclaiming my time. Dr. Redfield, you have the existing authority. Will you commit right now to using the authority that you have vested in you under law that provides in a public health emergency for testing, treatment, exam, isolation, without cost, yes or no?

REDFIELD: What I’m going to say is I’m going to review it in detail with CDC and the department.

PORTER: No. I’m reclaiming my time. You can operationalize the payment structure tomorrow.

REDFIELD: I think you’re an excellent questioner so my answer is yes.

PORTER: Excellent. Everybody in America hear that? You are eligible to get tested for coronavirus and have that covered regardless of insurance.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MARTIN: So, what did you make of that moment?

PORTER: Well, I think two things. One was heard in the moment what my reaction was, you know, it shouldn’t take sort of browbeating public officials into getting them to do their job. So, my staff and I had written a letter to him asking him to use his authority. We followed up the night for the hearing and actually told him, we are going the ask you, I, Katie Porter, am going ask you exactly this question. And yet, he seemed unprepared to give an answer and seemed to expect that if he just said a bunch of mumbo jumbo about operationalizing and assessing that I would go away. And the reality is what the American people need, especially in a moment like this, is straight answers. And they need to believe that their government is using the tools that we have. In retrospect, as I think back about that hearing now, it frustrates me because it fits into this larger pattern, which is our administration not using the tools that it had to prepare for this pandemic.

MARTIN: But that leads me to the whole question of — well, first of all, what do you think is going right at the moment, if anything? And what is going wrong?

PORTER: So, the main thing that’s going right, I think, is the actions of the majority of the American public. One of the things Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx both emphasize is that when they built these initial models, we didn’t really know how good of a job will Americans do with following these rules. And so, they sort of estimated, well, half of all people will follow the rules. And we’re actually seeing a lot of parts of the country much stronger compliance and that is potentially going reduce the toll that this pandemic creates and give us more time to get to get working antiviral drugs, to get antibody tests, potentially to get a vaccine, to improve the supply of protective equipment, all of those things. And what’s not going right for us, I think there’s a lot of anger by the American public about how this has been handled and a lot of fear and a lot of confusion, and I think there remains a really, really strong need for government to communicate in a way that people trust about what is being done, what isn’t being done, what’s coming next and why. And so that’s something that from my role as kind of being known for being a truthteller, being known for being a tough questioner, I think when I say to people, here’s the deal, I hope the American people feel like they can trust me, because I think that trust in government is a really important part of how we get through this.

MARTIN: Well, what else do you think they have been doing though? I mean, they’ve having these daily briefings. It’s true that the president tends to dominate them and he isn’t a physician and doesn’t have medical knowledge, but we are seeing the leader of his task force just about every day, for people who choose to watch it. What else should they be doing?

PORTER: So, I think the more that we can hear from the leaders of the task force, the better. And so, I think that is really, really important. I think the lack of coordination here was notable. And one of the big areas where we’ve clearly struggled is with regard to the supply chain of personal protective equipment and medical equipment. And so, in addition to that, the fact that we mismanaged our exports and imports. We were still exporting. In fact, our supply of masks to China went up by over 1,000 percent from the prior year’s average in January and February of this year. And our import of masks, ventilator, hand sanitizer went down by 11 percent during that January/February period. So, we really failed to do the coordinating and planning. We know that we have tapped into the strategic stockpile and we’ve sent equipment out to different states, but there’s not a good system in place to understand which health care providers have what they have and how to get it to where they need. So, we’re seeing the rear admirable work on that (INAUDIBLE) but it’s clearly coming way, way, way too late to be optimally effective.

MARTIN: Yes. But what about the Democratic leadership? I mean, couldn’t they have been asking these questions? Couldn’t other Democrats other than you have been asking these questions?

PORTER: So, I think there were two things going on. One is a specific problem, which is that once you’re in a crisis or an emergency, then it becomes very — we’ll say — I don’t want say justified, but I’ll say understandable why administrative officials say, we can’t come and sit around all day and answer questions for Congress. We are out there actively trying to solve the problem. So, I think the problem here was that Congress didn’t begin to have hearings early enough. Instead, what we have, beginning in late January, is we had the second case in the country, it was right here in Orange County, where I represent. So, I wrote a letter asking for a briefing. And what we kept having were these briefings. They were unclassified. So, we were able to talk about what we learned, but they weren’t really visible to the American public in the way that a hearing is. And so, I think the fact that when we finally had the hearing, that’s why you had such a dramatic moment of questioning between Director Redfield, director of the CDC, and me. And then, I think, the larger question is just that oversight is kind of a subspecialty of Congress pass. A lot of those people live to pass a bill with their name on it, right? The congressman so and so act. The — you know, these catchy acronyms, C.A.R.E.S., Families First. The oversight work that Congress does is, in my view, equality important. It’s making sure that when we have passed a law that it is being used to address the problem. And that’s where I have devoted a lot of my time and energy, is really being able to make good use of that five minutes I get to try to figure out what’s actually going on and to hold government accountable rather than adding layers of law. Well, let’s make sure the laws we have are being used properly.

MARTIN: Well, you talk about the fact it oversighted something that you consider a part of — core part of your responsibility in Congress and certainly it’s a priority for you. So, I have to ask you about the fact that President Trump, in recent days, has removed the chair of the panel that Congress created to oversee this $2 trillion coronavirus rescue package. He’s removed two inspectors general, as we are speaking. He’s criticized the third. People might say, well, the president does have the authority to remove these figures. But why does that matter?

PORTER: So, look, what the president is doing with these inspector generals is terrible. It’s a disservice to the American public. Inspector generals exists to provide accountability and to root out waste and fraud and abuse. The president’s argument based — it boils down to, these people are part of the executive branch. I’m the president. I can control the executive branch. So, I can fire and hire these people.

MARTIN: But what are the Democrats going to do about that, except express outrage? Anything?

PORTER: I think there’s very little we can do, frankly, which is why, I think, we need to be stepping up our alternative oversight mechanisms. So, one of my things I began to work on months, I guess it’s been over a month ago now, was remote voting for Congress. We’re talking a lot about how people should vote. And, of course, that’s an incredibly important issue. But one of the problems with this pandemic is that we are not able to gather in our traditional way to have oversight hearings and to have public hearings. And so, we need to begin to activate those tools and use technology to have remote hearings so that the American public can get answers to their questions, so that the administration is being forces to be accountable, is being forces to acknowledge where there are shortcomings and where things are going well, frankly. And so that we can show the American public, too, the bipartisan way in which we’re approaching this. And that’s something we can do through public hearings. So, I’m again repeating my call on House leadership to begin to have video based hearings and to being to have remote voting so that we’re not having to fold everything into one ginormous 800-page bill that passes on voice vote, but instead we’re able to move legislation that would address the pandemic in the ordinary voters so that we can hear from our constituents, craft legislation and move it forward with the feedback of the American people.

MARTIN: What response are you getting to your call for remote hearings?

PORTER: I think we’re starting to see more acknowledgment about the need for Congress to implement technology during this pandemic and as part of the response to the pandemic. And I think — you know, I was questioned for this a month ago. I wrote a bipartisan letter. At that time, House leadership, both Democrat and Republican, was resistant to this. But I think a we are starting to see progress. I can see more and more people are talk about it. But I think there’s a couple of different issues at play. One is, the fact that Congress, for too long, has acted like we get to be the exception rather than we should set the example. And there’s, frankly, an ugly history of that with regards to how Congress treats interns, for example, how Congress deals with sexual harassment in the workplace. So, here we are, public health guidelines, we’re asking businesses, schools, nonprofits, local governments, all these local entities to think differently and to do things differently. We should be holding ourselves up as an example of being willing to that rather than saying, were an exception. The second point about it, I think, is that we’re some hearing people say, well, but, you know, Congress isn’t good with technology. We have a lot of older members. We have members who don’t know how to use their phones or use iPads or whatever. So, one, is you can train people to get better. And as Congress members, we should have that mindset that we can learn. And the second thing is, there are a lot of other barriers at play. So, the technology barrier might be more likely to affect older people or people who are more used to have these secretaries of assistants. For someone like me, the first single mother of young children to serve in Congress, the physical need to travel and to leave my children during this pandemic is a really serious barrier and it’s not something that I can do a tutorial to improve. It’s — so, I think there’s a sort of an interesting aspect of kind of who serves in Congress to how Congress is reacting to the idea of using remote technology.

MARTIN: And one of the things that, you know, we’re seeing right now is the data seems to be suggesting that, you know, women accounted for 60 percent of the job losses in early March. It could be worse as the figures come out. But it makes me think about the industries that have been hardest hit, hotels, bars, restaurants, health care offices, retail.

PORTER: Yes.

MARTIN: Do you feel that that is kind of understood by the people who are crafting these packages to trying to figure out how to frankly respond to it?

PORTER: No, I don’t. I don’t think Congress is sensitive to this issue yet, but it was one that was very much on my mind right away. We know that nurses, for instance, disproportionately women. So, one of the early calls I had was with my hospitals talking about what kinds of emergency health — child care they were going to be able provide to keep help keep their nurses coming to work. Not only keep them healthy, which incredibly important, but recognizing that without child care we don’t have a lot of these essential workers. But there’s all kinds of assumptions built into the legislation. I’ll just give you a couple of examples. One is the way that they way that we treat heads of household. So, we have these stimulus checks and they begin to phase out for single people at $75,000 and for married couples at double that amount, $150,000. I’m listening to this briefing and I say to the chairman of the ways and means committee and to the staff, well, but I don’t file at single — I don’t file as married. And he was like, well, how do you file? I was like, it’s a little thing called head of household, which millions of American families have that filing status. When I started thinking about it, and I may be the only member of Congress that actually files as head of household. And guess what? Heads of household who are in the worst shape economically. Because definitionally, they only have one worker and they have a bunch of — or one or more dependents. They get half way between the single and the married on the stimulus phase out. So, they’re being disadvantaged because nobody is advocating for the needs of single parents, for example. The result of this, I think, is that you see women, in particular, they’re not just (INAUDIBLE) economic harms of this pandemic, but also a lot of the strain, both emotional and physical of doing not just the health care, but the shopping, the distance learning, all of those things fall disproportionately on women.

MARTIN: Right. How are you keeping it together, if you don’t mind my asking?

PORTER: Yes. I mean, I have my good — I’m going to be honest with you. I have good moments and bad moments keeping it together.

MARTIN: Yes.

PORTER: And being honest about that is really helpful. I have appreciated the people who have spoken up, who said, like, it turns out that I don’t want to homeschool my child. It turns out that I hate making bread. It turns out that I don’t want to sew face masks and don’t know how to sew. I mean, sort of — some of this honesty about each of our individual limits, I think, is helpful. But, you know, each person is going through this experience differently. And in a way, we talk about the virus as this equalizer, that is, we’re all at risk of getting sick. But let’s be clear, we are not all at equal risk of getting sick. Those essential workers, who more likely than not are lower wage workers who are brown and black, women, men, immigrants, all of these people are at much higher risk than the rest of us. And so, I think about sort of my single mom perspective, I think, helps me then think about what other perspectives is Congress not considering and not thinking about in this moment?

MARTIN: Congresswoman Porter, thank you so much for speaking with us today and I hope we’ll talk again.

PORTER: Absolutely. Thank you for continuing to keep the American public informed about what’s going on.