Somebody’s going to be very, very angry about this:
Mick Mulvaney, the former acting White House chief of staff, wrote in an op-ed published Monday that the United States still has a “testing problem” and said policymakers need to realize that the “current economic crisis is public-health driven.”
“I know it isn’t popular to talk about in some Republican circles, but we still have a testing problem in this country,” Mulvaney, who left the White House in March, said in the piece published by CNBC. “My son was tested recently; we had to wait 5 to 7 days for results. My daughter wanted to get tested before visiting her grandparents, but was told she didn’t qualify. That is simply inexcusable at this point in the pandemic.”
The assessment of Mulvaney is at odds with that of President Trump, who has repeatedly touted the country’s testing capacity and argued that U.S. case levels of the novel coronavirus are increasing because so much testing is being done.
Mulvaney, a former South Carolina congressman who now serves as the U.S. special envoy for Northern Ireland, argued that in crafting another stimulus bill, Congress should realize that “using ordinary fiscal tools might not be particularly efficacious.”
“Put another way, the fact that people aren’t going on vacation probably has more to do with fear of getting sick than it does with their economic condition,” he wrote. “Giving people a check, or some financial incentive to travel, won’t solve their problem. Make people feel safe to go back on an airplane or cruise ship, and they will of their own accord.”
Trump must be fuming about this. As I write this he hasn’t said anything publicly but that’s probably because he busy screaming into his pillow that Mick has betrayed him!
I mean, the whole White House has been working overtime to discredit Fauci for saying that there’s no way we can say that things are going well. What are they going to do to Mick?
Having said that, people do need money even if they aren’t going ton vacation. If he’s talking about the daft martha McSally idea to pay people 8,000 if they agree to go on vacation and risk their family’s health that’s legit. It’s just stupid. There aren’t enough reckless people in the country to rescue the travel industry with a program ike that.
But Mick is a tea partier from way back and part of his agenda is undoubtedly to stop any more financial support from the government. So beware. But this op-ed was not about that’ It was a straight up criticism of the testing regimer which his boss Donald Trump says every day is too good!