business. all of thesehat folks all lived through that and don't want to see it happen again. covers theen denis senate for bloomberg news. yuval levin is joining us from his home in maryland. he is with the american enterprise institute. thanks for being with us. guest: thank you very much for having me. i hope you and your family are doing well. host: we are, and to you too. time fromate your your home. let me begin with asking about the president, his performance so far in this pandemic. how is he doing? guest: dan to that question you have to acknowledge this is a very difficult situation that no president would find easy and the federal government was

always going to have to go through some mobilization, being overwhelmed by a crisis and rising to it. the question is how are they doing at that and obviously there are weaknesses to the response we have seen from the white house and i think above all there has been a certain kind of dysfunction where there has been an unwillingness to confront some of the top or realities of this crisis, or at least to acknowledge them publicly. in a lot of ways the federal government has mobilized and certainly the country has, where people are willing to put their lives on hold in order to respond to a public health crisis. unwillingnessome to confront basic realities at the top and still now we are seeing the system overwhelmed in such a way that people are not inking strategically about what the next step has to be, how we gradually return to normal has to be the question that policymakers are dealing with.

understandably we are seeing policymakers trying to confront the minute by minute pressures they are facing, so things like the failure of testing early on has made it very difficult to come back and try to get on top of this problem that this is a challenge that would be a massive problem for any president. it is not a function of just this particular white house. is a packageponse well in excess of $1 trillion, perhaps totaling close to $2 trillion, the largest package in american history. this is a crisis, an emergency. we also have a $23 trillion debt. guest: there needs to be a massive response, given the economic cost of the social distancing and the shutdown of our service sector that we are going through. the question is, is that response geared to enabling the next phase? ultimately we are trying to find a way to live relatively safely

with this virus for some time until there is a vaccine, until we have a better grasp of its characteristics and are able to handle it. the question policymakers have to ask themselves is having taken a hard pause and needing to do that for some time, how do we gradually resume our natural life anyway a way that is sustainable? that means the kind of package congress is looking at needs to look at enabling this pause to be sustainable to helping people keep their place in our society, upping employers retain their workforce so people are not fired or lose their jobs. helping the economy hold on for a matter of what will be weeks and then gradually enabling people to return to the economic and social life. the package that congress is passing that looks to be passing earlier in the week does some of this but i think it is also

somewhat confused between that and a traditional stimulus. this is not a situation for traditional stimulus where the goal is to spur economic demand. there is nowhere for that demand to goal right -- nowhere for that demand to go right now. be helpingeds to employers hang on and then gradually enabling a resumption. a hard pause and a soft return is how we have to think about this. then yous the goal, have to give a pretty mixed picture, a pretty mixed grade to the packages that have been passed so far but there will be more to come. host: let me ask you about a caller we had in our first have, katie works in maryland and she is now out of a job as restaurants across the country are shut down. she is a waitress, dependent on that to pay her rent, her car insurance, her automobile payments each month. what does she do, and people

like her in the short term? guest: unfortunately a lot of people in our country are going to find themselves in this situation, at least temporarily while everything is closing down. first of all there is some help she can find by going to her state government. maryland has been distinctly helpful. governor hogan and the state government -- stick government have been helping people deal with creditors to make sure you don't find people being kicked out of their homes or coming under credit card debt. they will also be some help from the package that is likely to pass in the coming weeks but i think it is on people like her that the federal support needs to be focused. the united kingdom has enacted a package of responses that includes what they call job retention. in return for employers not firing their workforce, the government is taking over paying 80% of the salaries of that workforce during the public

health emergency. at significant cost, the national government is helping sustain payrolls. that support is provided through employers rather than around them, having lost your job. that would be expensive but what we are doing is expensive too and i think we have to think about how to take on the problem we face in ways that allow people to hang on. at the same time, this period has to be weeks and not months. we have to be finding ways, public health and economic ways to start returning gradually, carefully to our national life and start allowing people to work again, allowing schools to open again. that has to be done in a way that helps us gain control of the public health situation. that means it can't be done for a few more weeks. hospitals are going to be going through a very difficult period in the next few weeks but once that begins to decline, the goal

has got to be to return to normality and i think at this point, the discussion in washington is not focused enough on that as the goal. ust: yuval levin is joining from his home in maryland. we will get to your phone calls and you can send a text message at (202)-748-8003. i want to share with you this headline from the washington post to go to my earlier question on the president and his response. u.s. intelligence reports from january and february warning about a likely pandemic. this from shane harris, and a team of washington post reporters. quote, u.s. intelligence agencies were issuing ominous classified warnings in january and february about the global danger posed by the coronavirus while president trump and lawmakers played down the threat and failed to take action that might have slowed the threat of the pathogen -- slowed the spread of the pathogen.

the intelligence reports did not predict when the virus might land on u.s. shores or recommend particular steps as public health officials should take. the spread of the that in china and warned chinese officials seem to be minimizing the severity of the outbreak. a virus that showed the characteristics of globally circling -- globally circling pandemic. despite the constant flow of reporting, trump continued publicly and privately playing down the threat of the virus posed to americans. lawmakers too did not grapple with the virus in earnest until this month as officials scramble to keep citizens in their homes and hospitals bracing for a surge in patients suffering from covid-19. this reporting, blaming both congress and the president. guest: i think there was certainly an enormous degree of avoidance early on, a sense that

this will pass, that this won't happen. at some levels there have been passed warnings about these kinds of challenges. i worked in the bush white house and we confronted the possibility of avian flu at that time which thankfully did not happen but there were a lot of preparations made in that period and it was taken seriously. tended president trump to rely on hoping this would not happen. there is no question that when this began there was going to be some period of being overwhelmed and needing to mobilize. we don't keep in reserve thousands of icu beds or the kind of response that would be needed but once it was clear that this would be coming, there was a need to begin the oval is asian and there is no question the united states began several weeks too late. there is no question other --tes in the west

the question in assessing the government's response is has that mobilization and response happened in a effective way and the country has shown a willingness and ability to disconnect, to move to a kind of social distancing situation where schools were closed, workplaces were closed but while that is happening, our government needs to milk -- needs to be mobilizing in a massive way, it needs to be building surge capacity in hospital systems, needs to be leapfrogging the testing question and moving to a different approach to testing where we use blood tests to get a sense of who has antigens to this virus, who has been exposed to it. let us where our response things to be right net -- that is where our response needs to be right now. host: you write that the trump administration has never been prepared for this type of disaster, saying the staffing

structure around the president has always been too flat and chaotic. you wrote, the problem is not that our government was not fully prepared for the swift global spread of this virus or even that it made serious mistakes as a result. the problem is that upper reaches appear to be overwhelmed by choice. guest: this has been a problem from the beginning in the trump the timestion, that when we most need our president to function well, times like this, times of crisis, the administration has to prepare for those moments by building a staffing structure that is capable of bearing the burden of an emergency, moving information in an effective way, formula and questions for presidential decisions in a clear way. that has always been a problem in the trump white house. the staffing structure is very flat. there is not a clear hierarchy

or chain of command. the chain of command that does exist has never been trusted by the people within it. they have always been people who have gone around trying to reach the president. there has been a tendency to ignore president directives, something we saw in the mueller presidentere when the orders something his senior staff thinks is unreasonable, they just ignore it. that could be a good thing if they are averting trouble but in a moment like this where decisions have to be made under intense pressure, they are not ready. they have not built a functional decision-making system and we are paying a price for that now. host: let me share you a moment -- share with you a moment that has been getting a lot of press, the daily briefing on friday with peter alexander and this from the president. [video clip] >> i am not being overly optimistic. i sure think we ought to give it a try. there has been some interesting things happening, very good things. let's see what happens. we have nothing to lose.

what do you have to lose? >> what do you say to americans who are scared though? millions who are scared right now. what do you say to americans who are watching you right now? >> i say you are a terrible reporter. that is what i say. that is a very nasty question. that gives a very bad signal that you are putting out. the american people are looking for answers and they are looking for hope and you are doing sensationalism, the same with nbc and comcast. that is really bad reporting. you want to get back to reporting instead of sensationalism. let's see if it works. it mightn't -- it might and it might not.

who knows? i have been right a lot. host: that was the president and nbc reporter jason alexander. that was on drugs being discussed to potentially treat the pandemic. your thoughts? guest: there is no defending what happened. there are two things happening that should not be going on. one is the president talking about a set of malaria drugs that may or may not be effective. he could certain >> secretary mnuchin, the democratic leader, we are working toward bringing us together. we are very close. we have integrated a number of ideas, the democrats have over the last 40 and hours.

-- 48 hours. shortly wilson have to say yes or no. confident given the desire of the country to see an outcome , the closer vote is on a shell. we expect to get it on the shell. hopefully we will have cooperation. give us a time to get on the bill without burning all of the time on the motions to proceed. -- what webe alert have to be alert to hear, one house democrats says this is a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision that is not with this is about. this is not about unrelated policy change. this is about direct assistance to the american people, small

businesses, hospitals and others who are in need because we in government at all levels, in order to deal with this pandemic have basically shut the economy down. thecrisis is bringing country together. we are seeing inspirational stories about how people are reaching out to others. they are expecting us to do our part. we intend to do that tomorrow. with that, i will take a couple of questions. that is basically all i can tell you at the moment. >> speaker pelosi came out of the same meeting and she said that -- she intends to introduce her own bill. it might be compatible. are you on the same page with house democrats, or will a different bill entirely come from them? >> what we intend to do in the senate is to move forward with

this senate bill. i am hopeful and optimistic we will get bipartisan support. has been negotiated on a bipartisan basis. it would be best for the country if the house would take it up and pass it like we did this week. the house passed a bill i had marginal precipitation in -- participation in. the country was desperate for results. i hope that is the way this ends. that is the way we are going to go forward. >> [indiscernible]

>> we are still talking to them. closure will be invoked on a shell, not the actual bill. there is 30 hours of postclosure time. i hope we don't use all of that 30 hours. we are still talking about those issues where there are still disagreement. make no mistake, we will be voting tomorrow. the wheel has to stop at some point. to buy want any of you the notion that this is not a thoroughly bipartisan proposal already. maneuvering,l some as you can imagine, but this is a pretty solidly partisan proposal agreed to by a lot of rank and file democrats involved in drafting it. time here, we will have

to stop and that will be the bill we vote on. in my opinion that will be tomorrow. thank you. backncer: the senate comes at 2:00. until then, here is somewhat what -- some of what steven mnuchin said on fox news this morning. >> we have ordered a major part of the economy to shut down the president wants to protect them. callirst part are what i