U.S. Rep. Rick Allen, in an interview last week, described the development of a COVID-19 vaccine as the nation’s Number One “public safety” goal and identified his priorities for a further economic relief and stimulus package.
The Republican from Augusta, who has represented Georgia’s 12th District in Congress since January 2015, faces a re-election challenge of his own from Democratic Party nominee Elizabeth “Liz” Johnson of Statesboro. But Allen has also been campaigning for other Republicans. After attending President Donald Trump’s rally Friday night, Oct. 16, in Macon, Allen was with Sen. David Perdue when Perdue’s campaign bus stopped last Saturday morning at Anderson’s General Store in Statesboro.
Allen had visited the Statesboro Herald for an interview Oct. 15 on his way to the Middle 12th District BBQ, an event hosted by Screven County Republicans.
“This is the most important election in the history of this nation, as it seems like every election is the most important in the history of the nation,” Allen said.
He said it presents “a great contrast” in the approach to governing presented by the two parties.
‘Warp speed’ vaccine
“Our commitment, Number One, is public safety, meaning to beat this virus, to develop a vaccine that is being developed in short order,” Allen told the Herald. “It’s got some people nervous because it’s quick, but what we did in Washington is … we’ve taken the risk away from several drug companies through what the president calls Warp Speed to get a vaccine out there as quickly as possible.”
The approach taken by Congress and the Trump administration has also eased the development of a number of therapies, he said.
“In fact the therapy the president took has not been approved by (the Food and Drug Administration), but we passed a law in the 115th Congress called Right to Try, and the reason the president was able to provide that drug to any American is that under this law, you have a right to try that drug even though it hadn’t been through the final FDA approval,” Allen said.
The 115th Congress was the January 2017-January 2019 session, and Trump signed the Right to Try Act into law May 30, 2018, a year and a half before COVID-19 appeared. It allows patients considered terminally ill to get experimental treatments that have completed Phase I testing but, as Allen indicated, not final FDA approval.
Relief package position
Allen voted for the original $2.2 trillion CARES Act for economic recovery during and after the pandemic shutdown, and he particularly supported the Paycheck Protection Program. The PPP created forgivable loans for small businesses to cover payroll, utility bills and rent for up to eight weeks. Businesses that kept their employees on the job, without layoffs, are eligible to convert the loans to grants instead of repaying them.
For a further COVID relief and economic stimulus package, negotiating positions have ranged from a $700 billion Republican bill in the Senate to the initial $3.5 trillion package in the Democrat-controlled House. At the time Allen was interviewed, Trump's proposal was in the middle, at a projected cost of about $1.8 trillion.
"We’ve already replaced half the jobs we lost in the economy and we’ve got 10 million to go," Allen said. "As far as restoring this economy, once we get COVID under control, the next thing is to work on the economic recovery, and the stimulus is part of that plan.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the leading Democrat, has been negotiating further this week with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
Election pressures
When interviewed the previous week, Allen agreed that passage of any relief package before the Nov. 3 election appeared unlikely. But he said some House Democrats, in closely contested races for re-election, would be putting pressure on Pelosi for an agreement.
“There’s a lot of pressure from both sides," Allen said. "Certainly those people in the toss-up districts, if they’re sitting in a Democratic seat they need to get help to their small business community, and it’s no secret that the speaker is kind of holding up everything, and so it’s putting a lot of pressure on those toss-up seats, 55 of her members.”
Besides development and delivery of a vaccine and treatments, Allen said that the next priorities for a COVID-19 relief package should be continuation of the Paycheck Protection Program, utilizing funding left over unclaimed by the deadline in the original CARES Act, and targeted assistance to industries hardest hit by the pandemic slowdown.
"There are businesses that need the PPP money now," he said. "Hospitality, it’s going to take a while for it to recover; the restaurant business …; the airline industry needs some help. So there are a lot of targeted industries out there that we need to make that available to."
In separate interviews last week, both Allen and Perdue indicated they could support a more costly compromise proposal than the $700 billion GOP Senate bill. But they objected to the amount earmarked to state governments in Pelosi's biggest proposal.
“They want to give a trillion dollars to these states that have these unfunded retirement (system) liabilities, like California, Illinois and New York, and I just don’t think that’s right for the taxpayers of Georgia to have to pay more taxes to cover and bail out the irresponsible states that have not run their business as well as Georgia has,” Perdue said.
Police reform
Allen listed police reform as Republicans’ second public safety priority after a COVID-19 vaccine.
"We want to return civility and law and order to our cities in this country, and we’re going to do that through a $1.75 billion grant to police departments," Allen said. "We want body cameras on every policeman, and then the proper training on community policing."
That, he noted, was the essence of legislation introduced earlier this year by Sen. Tim Scott, R-South Carolina.