In an interview Monday morning with James T. Harris, U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Gilbert, said that he believes it is time for America to get back to business.
When Harris, morning host on KFYI, asked Biggs when businesses should be reopened, he said “this morning.
“Look, if you’ve got a retail shop, and you open up, nobody’s going to stop you,” Biggs said. “You should be exercising wise social distancing mechanisms, let only so many people into your store. People need to stand back behind lines.”
Biggs reasoned, if grocery stores are doing well, why not other retail shops?
“Why couldn’t you do it in a furniture store, a bike shop, a florist shop, a bookstore, whatever it may be?” Biggs said.
“Americans are not stupid. We are smart people. We are capable. We can monitor this stuff. If you can trust grocery stores and other facilities, why can’t you trust other normal retailers?”
Harris brought up the latest controversy surrounding Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a prominent member of President Donald Trump’s coronavirus pandemic task force.
“I think it’s time for Dr. Fauci to move along”
“In the daily pressers, you see some strange interactions between Dr. Fauci and the media, which has them socially isolated in the room,” Harris said. “Now, the opinion has begun to turn against Dr. Fauci. That’s probably because there hasn’t been a whole lot of balance on that stage between what’s happening medically and what’s happening with the economy.
“Yesterday, the president retweeted a story about Dr. Fauci being fired, and you retweeted a question about whether Dr. Fauci should be fired. In your opinion, should Dr. Fauci be replaced?”
“I think it’s time for Dr. Fauci to move along,” Biggs said. “He shouldn’t have a seat at the table. He shouldn’t be making decisions that are basically impacting this country in a way that he hasn’t even considered.”
Biggs said that Fauci admitted that he has not considered economic or societal fallout for his remedy for the epidemic.
“I think he gets credit for where we stand today but I think it’s time to move on”
“Wow!” Harris exclaimed, in response to the influential congressman’s recommendation of relieving Fauci of his duties. “Is there a souring on Dr. Fauci on the hill?”
“That is growing on the hill,” Biggs said. “The reason it is growing is because you can’t have members of Congress back in our districts, as long as we’ve been back in our district, talking to industrial groups, manufacturing groups, commerce groups, small business groups, restaurants — you can’t talk to anybody without realizing this is emasculating the United States economy.”
“The reality is that he’s emasculated the economy and is totally tone deaf on that.”
Bigg said Fauci took “a generic meat cleaver approach” to this pandemic, in which everybody has to be isolated, and almost every business has to be closed.
“You’ve got governors in this country that have basically said that they were going to prosecute you — even though they have no authority to say this — they’re going to prosecute people for not staying in their homes.
“The reality is that he’s emasculated the economy and is totally tone deaf on that.”
On CNN’s “State of the Union” show on Sunday, Fauci implied that he made a recommendation for the president to implement social distancing measures earlier, in February rather than mid-March, but the recommendation was not taken.
“I mean, obviously, you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives,” Fauci told Jake Tapper during the CNN interview.
But in an interview on February 29 on the NBC Today Show, Fauci advised that Americans did not have to change their lives by avoiding public gatherings like malls, movies or gyms.
Pundits on social media quickly pointed out that Fauci was blaming President Trump for not acting fast enough in February, while he himself had advised against acting at all at the end of that month.
A hashtag #Fire Fauci was established. President Trump sent out a retweet Sunday night with that hashtag on it.
Another stimulus package
Harris asked Biggs about the possibility of another round of stimulus payouts.
“It is pretty obvious that the Democrats are going to get in the way of spending packages that would merely offer relief to small business owners,” Harris said. “What are the odds of another package coming along before we start opening up for business?”
“I don’t know James T.,” Biggs said. “The president wants to do a funding mechanism for small businesses and sole proprietors. The Democrats want to add hundreds of billions of dollars, 500 billion at least to that package. And next week they want another $2 trillion package.
“It’s amazing to watch this thing unfold up close, and it’s got to be demoralizing to the American people to watch it from a distance.”