Hi Jim,
I'm writing about COVID-19. First of all, thank you for voting for the CARES Act in March. I think it's a necessary step towards getting the pandemic under control.
My main point in writing, though, is that I am extremely disappointed in the response of the federal government to the pandemic. There seems to be a lot of focus on the economic effects of the crisis. The economic effects are quite bad. But I think a lot of the emphasis on the economy is misplaced. Regardless of the official restrictions on activity, the economy will not recover as long as coronavirus transmission is still happening. Instead of focusing on re-opening the economy, we, as a nation, should be focused on eliminating the virus. When the threat of infection is gone, the economy will take care of itself.
States, including Indiana, are taking cues from the federal government. I think that Indiana is opening too soon, in large part because of the lack of strong leadership from the federal government. Please support measures that would increase surveillance of the disease and that would allow more people to stay home so that we can starve the virus of its chance to spread. This includes continued increases in the availability of testing and contact tracing, and ongoing direct payments to people making less than $75,000 per year. And please do whatever you can to help focus the public discourse on defeating the disease.
Respectfully, Matt Burke