[ cheers and applause ] >> a nice note to end our broadcast on for this thursday night. on behalf of all of our colleagues at the networks of nbc news, good night from our temporary field headquarters. in massachusetts, there were 1,838 confirmed coronavirus cases yesterday, 1,838. that number rose today to more than 2,400 cases. nearly 600 new cases in one 24-hour period. and that same kind of story is being told all over the united states today where the coronavirus has extended its reach to every state in the

country, where we are starting to see these rapid increases, in some cases exponential increases in the number of cases and the number of hospitalizations and the number of icu beds occupied and ultimately in the number of americans dead. now, massachusetts is like other states in the country dealing with a rapidly expanding, rapidly increasing epidemic. massachusetts is also known worldwide for its gold standard health facilities, particularly in and around greater boston. the front page of the "boston globe" tonight zeros in on a particularly unnerving aspect of this epidemic specifically in massachusetts. more than 150 boston hospital workers test positive for coronavirus. in a disturbing rise, hospitals in greater boston are seeing a disturbing rise in the number of infected workers from just a handful last week to more than 150 now. massachusetts is a pretty deep blue state, but like deep blue

vermont and deep blue maryland, massachusetts is one of these blue states that happens to have a republican governor. in massachusetts' case, it's a fairly moderate republican governor named charlie baker. and charlie baker does not have a particularly high national profile. if you have ever seen him speak as massachusetts governor, you might not remember it. and i do not mean this in a bad way at all. it's just descriptive. he is what you would call mild-mannered. when he speaks, he is -- you know, he's a big, tall, in command, handsome-looking governor guy. but when he speaks, he's, you know, mr. monotone. nothing wrong with that. he's just very understated in his affect to an almost painful degree, except when he's not, except, for example, today when he erupted in anger and got close to swearing over what is

honestly this insane phenomenon our country is coping with right now, which is that states are being left to fend for themselves and compete against each other in the open market and against the federal government when they're trying to source lifesaving equipment to handle the pandemic and specifically to keep our health workers alive so that they can continue to treat the sick and dying. here's is massachusetts governor, mild-mannered, monotone massachusetts governor charlie baker today talking about the fact that his state is regularly being outbid, including by federal agencies, by our own federal government, when the state is trying to buy critical medical equipment to keep health care providers alive in the state of massachusetts. >> the biggest thing i would say is that we are doing everything we can through an incredibly messy thicket that is enormously frustrating for all of us to try to get them the gear that they

deserve and they need. and i spoke in my opening remarks about compassion and bravery, okay? there are a lot of very compassionate and very brave people here in the commonwealth who are doing what they can to serve people, recognizing and understanding that in this particular area, the entire country is struggling to deliver. and, you know, i stand here as someone who has had confirmed orders for millions of pieces of gear evaporate in front of us. and i can't tell you how frustrating it is. you know, we now have other orders that are outstanding that are probably, quote, unquote, confirmed but we've literally gotten to the point where our basic position is until the god -- until the thing shows up here in the commonwealth of mass, it doesn't exist. but i'm telling you people are spending hours and hours and hours trying to get this stuff here for exactly that reason. our first responders, our health care workers, everybody deserves

to have that gear. and i'm telling you we're killing ourselves trying to make it happen. >> it was never going to be easy. states were always going to be killing themselves trying to make sure that they could continue to operate their hospitals and ambulances and keep health workers alive to treat the sick and dying during this pandemic. but there's no reason, there is no rational reason why part of the reasons states are killing themselves to get this equipment is because every state in the country is competing against every other state in the country on the open market for the same finite supply of equipment. not only is the federal government not playing a role in nationally coordinating the supply lines and mandating the manufacture of this material and coordinating the distribution of this equipment so it gets where it needs to go most urgently first, not only is the federal government not playing that kind of a coordinating role, they

themselves are competing with the individual states to get this equipment as well. and so, therefore, it is bidding wars for one thing. therefore, it's orders evaporating in big states like massachusetts with thousands of cases and some of the best hospitals in the country and 150 health workers already tested positive. it's those orders for millions of pieces of equipment that are evaporating because there's literally competing against the federal government. they're getting outbid. it's all because the federal government cannot or will not get it together. >> this is not the way to do it. this is ad hoc, i'm competing with other states, i'm bidding up other states on the prices because you have manufacturers who sit there and california offers them $4, and they say, well, california offered $4. i offer $5. another state calls in and

offers $6. it's -- it's not the way to do it. i was speaking to governor j.b. pritzker yesterday about this. why are we competing? let the federal government put in place the federal defense production act. it does not nationalize any industry. all it does is say to a factory, you must produce this quantity. that's all. >> when i call these ventilator manufacturers, in one case they told me i was competing with fema to acquire ventilators. so i'm competing against the federal government to get ventilators for the state of illinois. and the federal government is not distributing ventilators to the state of illinois. so i'm literally working against, you know, a competitor. now, here i'm competing with my own federal government. >> right now we're facing two big problems. the first is that we have a critical shortage of medical supplies, masks, ventilators,

coronavirus tests, and more. but the second and potentially even bigger problem is that all 50 states and thousands of hospitals are being forced to fight against each other in a bidding war for these scarce supplies. and in some cases, as governors and hospitals are desperately trying to find suppliers, they're spending precious time trying to figure out which ones are legitimate and which ones are scam artists. this lord of the flies scenario encourages hoarding and price gouging that make it even harder to get these supplies where they need to go. this isn't just inefficient. it's costing us time and lives. we need bold federal action to take over the supply chain and direct the distribution of these critical resources, identify private sector capacity to produce millions more units of ppe and critical medical equipment. coordinate the distribution of these supplies, ending the unnecessary competition between states and health care

institutions for these scarce resources. drastic measures are required, and that's why we need to federalize the manufacturing and distribution of critical medical supplies. >> it may be that we just got unlucky with having the wrong president at the wrong time, right? it may be that a better president, a better-run federal government could do this thing that we need right now, bringing the power of the federal government to bear to assure critical supplies of lifesaving medical equipment, gowns and masks and other protective equipment to keep doctors and nurses alive, ventilators and other complex medical equipment to keep sick patients alive, testing kits and lab capacity to process those kits so we can get our hands around the size of this epidemic and trace of contacts of infected people, find out whose infectious and who must be isolated so they stop making the epidemic even bigger. we need all of those things, right? we need the power of the federal

government to be brought to bear to assure critical supplies of all of those things because it doesn't just happen naturally in the market in the context of a pandemic. but for whatever reason this particular administration, the federal government under this particular leadership, just cannot do it or will not do it. and so you see governor baker there, republican governor of massachusetts, you see governor cuomo in new york, you see governor pritzker in illinois, you see senator murphy in connecticut lamenting and pleading for change over the fact that it really is every state for themselves. literally the states are competing with one another and competing with the federal government for masks and hand sanitizer and all the rest, which is driving up the prices. it's leaving some supplies stockpiled even now. some supplies stockpiled waiting for better bids, right? and it's leaving doctors and nurses in the most hard hit hospitals already using the same masks day after day, shift after shift, patient after patient, and this is only the first hospital influx. this is only the initial

hospital influx, and already the hardest hit hospitals are out of protective equipment for doctors and nurses, which is not because there isn't enough protective equipment in the world. it's that it's not in the right places because nobody is running the supply chain to make sure that it is. and with the united states now leading the world in the number of confirmed coronavirus cases according to statistics from johns hopkins tonight, the united states is now the largest epidemic worldwide. more cases than china. more cases than italy. more cases than anyone. usa, we're number one. in that context, this lack of federal coordination, the fact that we do not have a national response to this crisis is revealing its mortal consequences by the day. on ventilators specifically, right now we've got the engineering labs at mit running open-source experiments to try to invent new lower-tech ones that could be manufactured cheaply. we've got major automakers

saying they think within a few months they may be able to pair themselves up with other better suited manufacturers to maybe have something a few months down the road. we've got veterinary schools donating ventilators used for large animals to hospitals for humans because large animal ventilators can be converted to human use. we'll try it, at least. hospitals are now raiding the stash of anesthesia machines from their operating rooms because those machines can maybe be used as ventilators for some of the patients who are crashing from coronavirus. as of today one of the premier hospitals in new york, one of the premier hospitals in the world, new york presbyterian, is starting to split ventilators between multiple patients. and you're sick enough when you need a ventilator that i don't mean they're taking turns between patients. i mean they've literally got the same machine pumping oxygen through its usual machinery and tubes, but then they're splitting the tubes. so instead of that machine pumping into the lungs of one

patient, that one machine is pumping into the lungs of two patients simultaneously. and this is something has been innovated before. it was done, for example, in las vegas on an emergency ad hoc basis on the night of the mandalay bay massacre when in october 2017, a gunman shot and wounded hundreds of patients at a country music show. so they tried it in the trauma centers there in las vegas when those las vegas hospitals had hundreds of people with gunshot wounds to try to keep alive all at once, all in one night. they split the air tubes on ventilators then as the very last gasp, as the last thing they could do in that incredibly, incredibly, just imaginable surprise, shock situation. splitting ventilators between multiple patients, it's a technique that has been explored by critical care physicians in some other places as well, just in case there's ever such an

apocalyptic scenario in terms of health care that you might have to try something that risky, that extreme. this, for example, is a critical care doctor in detroit, michigan, who helped try to develop this technique as just an experimental protocol for the most dire situations. >> i always hoped that you would never need to use it in this way, but you can never predict what's going to happen in a disaster. and if it was me and i had four patients and they all needed intubation and i only had one ventilator, i would simply have to share a discussion meeting with all four families and i can say i can pick one to live -- this is clearly off label and would only be used in a dire circumstance. >> only in a dire circumstance would you every try something like this. well, that's where we are. with even premier new york city hospitals now resorting to this, even though it's dangerous, even though these machines are not designed to be used this way,

even the non-doctors among us can understand that if one machine is pumping oxygen into the lungs of two patients, that can't be calibrated to the needs of each patient individually. each patient is going to get what the other one is getting because the machine can't do two different things at once, not if it's one machine designed for one set of lungs and you're just splitting the air tube. and so by doing this, by having to do this already, american hospitals already are turning this sophisticated, lifesaving machine for the sickest patients into this blunt instrument that can maybe do this job but maybe not. but what are you going to do? what are you going to do? one new york doctor telling "the new york times" tonight, quote, nobody believes this is the best way to ventilate somebody. this is for the doomsday scenario. it is suboptimal, but the other option is death. the shortage of ventilators is

real, but it does not need to be this dire on the front lines this fast. i mean not every ventilator in the united states is in use right now. so why are they already having to split them experimentally at new york presbyterian? they're having to do that because even though every ventilator in the u.s. isn't in use, the ones that need -- the places that need them can't get them. there isn't any national coordination of how we're using them, and so we're not maximizing the use of the ones that we've got. frank kendall, who served as undersecretary of defense for acquisition and logistics in the obama administration, tells "the new york times" tonight, quote, this is a national crisis. in a time of scarcity, you can't leave it up to companies and governors to manage it themselves. "the times" says, quote, what is really needed, a number of public health experts and stormer government officials say, is for washington to take control of the nation's existing ventilator supply because peak coronavirus infections will hit

cities and regions at different times in the coming months. a centralized federal effort could send unused machines to hospitals that need them most. could. could. we could do that if we had a national response to what's happening in our country. we could be doing it that way if there was a federally led national response to this crisis. but instead it's every state for themselves. it's everybody who wants to help for themselves. and so, okay, veterinary hospitals, do what you can. see if that might help. "the washington post" reporting tonight that on a conference call between the president and the nation's governors, the president once again said that as far as he was concerned, the role of the federal government is to be, quote, backup for the states. washington state governor jay inslee reportedly told the president in response, quote, we don't need a backup. we need a tom brady, meaning we need a quarterback.

we need the federal government itself to be using its unparalleled, sole power to mandate the production of critical medical supplies and to coordinate their distribution, to get them distributed where they need to be without the states doing it themselves, all 50 of them all at the same time, fighting it out among themselves and even fighting it out with the federal government in competition over who will pay the highest price. "the post" reports that the president responded to governor inslee by being, quote, defensive of his efforts. at least he's defending someone. meanwhile it really is a free for all in the united states of america. the seiu, the big service employees union, they took it upon themselves to try 0 source masks for use by california health workers. they think they found 39 million n95 masks inexplicably park the at one supplier in pennsylvania. okay. what were they doing there? thank you for finding them,

seiu. if that fishing expedition pans out, well, that's how california health workers will get some masks. and, you know, the national cathedral in washington, d.c., they found 5,000 masks stored in a crypt, 10-year-old masks stashed in a crypt in the national cathedral. sure. so that's how d.c. areas will get some masks. i mean this is national crisis governing by tag sale. this is national crisis governing by dumpster diving. but this is the federal leadership that we happen to have when this crisis arrived, and so this is how we are doing it. "usa today" leads tonight with a story about florida. and florida frankly looms right now in terms of serious worries about what may be coming for that big, frankly poorly governed state with millions of elderly residents. florida knows that it has over 2,000 coronavirus cases right now, but as alan gomez reports

for "usa today" this evening, the state of florida also has had next to no testing. so who knows what the real number is in florida? quote, in naples, a city in southwest florida, where the median age is 66, a hospital abruptly stopped a drive-thru testing site this week because they ran out of testing kits. doctors in winter haven, a city in central florida where a quarter of the population is 65 or older, they're waiting up to ten days to get results on coronavirus tests. in south miami, a neighborhood surrounded by retirement homes, the president of one community hospital took out a $380,000 loan on his own house to secure the delivery of 1,000 test kits per week for the next few months. he just did it himself with his own money, a loan against his house. florida officials have completed 27,000 tests so far in the

entire state, total, cumulatively for the duration. 27,000 tests total. new york is doing more than 18,000 tests a day now. because, sure, every state for itself. and in florida, god bless its 20 million residents, the governor there so far doesn't even think they need a stay at home order. why bother? i mean it seems like there's only a couple thousand cases. if you don't test anyone, maybe that number won't shift too fast and maybe you won't do anything. see how it goes. in new jersey, they are testing. in new jersey the number of cases rose by 2,500 overnight. in louisiana, their number of cases went up by over 500 cases in 24 hours, which is bad on its own terms. but it's particularly bad when you realize that in the new orleans area, which seems to be the heart of louisiana's fast-growing outbreak, they've only got 500-something icu beds in the whole region.

and as of today, they're getting more than 500 new cases a day. this is the grand lobby of one of new york's fancy hospitals, mt. sinai in manhattan. they are fitting out in that lobby what they call patient pods in the public access area, the public lobby of mt. sinai, the lobby. there's word today, welcome word, that the first hospital beds are about to go into operation at the cjavits center. the first 250 or so beds in the convention center apparently should be operational by monday. amidst a federal government response that has been absent in the most important ways, the military is starting to move. the military has not been fully tapped by the federal government to join this response yet, but

it is starting up. and the army corps of engineers is moving. yesterday you might have seen the army put out this request for veteran retired soldier army health officers to please return to service to their country. it's interesting to see it. date, wednesday, march 25th, 2020. subject, army announces voluntary recall of retired soldiers for covid-19 response. quote, the u.s. army is reaching out to gauge the interest of our retired officers, non-commissioned officers and soldiers who would be willing to assist with the covid-19 coronavirus pandemic response effort. if interested and you remain qualified to serve in any of the following health care specialties, 60f, critical care officer, anesthesia, nurse aness theytist, critical care nurse, nurse practitioner, e.r. nurse, respiratory specialist, medic, if you remain qualified to serve in any of these health care

specialties, quote, we need to hear from you stat. quote, if you are working in a civilian hospital or medical facility, please let us know. we do not want to detract from the current care and treatment that you are providing to the nation. the army sent out that request after 5:00 p.m. yesterday. the army says today that they have heard from more than 9,000 retired soldiers who raised their hands and said yes in less than 24 hours. more than 9,000. the army corps of engineers, as i mentioned, is moving. this he have been building field hospitals and converting other facilities to hospitals and hospital overflow in new york and washington state and around the country at a time when the federal response has been importantly lacking. seeing the military come online, seeing the army corps of engineers come online has been an important thing. the commanding general of the

army corps of engineers is going to join us next. stay with us.

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and then lastly, how do you convert a room to negative pressure? >> i'm going to make it super simple. it's actually the little tiny unit. almost every hotel room has a little tiny unit back in the corner and actually it is a self-contained for that particular room. you actually want to -- we want

to bring the pressure down two or three psi and you actually adjust that unit to be able to suck more out down through the bathroom vent to be able to have a negative pressure. on the door, you put a great big piece of plastic with a zipper on it. it's a relatively simple process, and if we can't use the existing unit, we're going to rip it out and put another one back in that is higher pressure. we're trying to suck the air down so we have a negative pressure. >> the army corps of engineers deploys in a national crisis, tailoring what they do to the crisis at hand. 9/11 required a different response from, say, a hurricane. and in this moment, what this national crisis requires is, a, speed, and, b, building. and that is something that the army corps of engineers can provide in both counts. what they are building now is hospitals, lots of them in different parts of the country, in federal partnerships and state partnerships where they're

most in demand. the commanding general of the u.s. army corps of engineers, in normal times we civilians do not hear from him all that much. watch the lectern in this clip. notice how he starts getting down to business even before he puts his papers down. >> can we get a quick update on new york? >> sure. so before i talk about a specific state, i think it's important to lay out our concept here because you've not heard this. this is an unbelievably complicated problem and there's no way we're going to be able do this with a complicated solution. we need something super simple. we want to use new york as the standard. the biggest thing is they need to start identifying facilities. he said, how fast do you need them? he said, i need one tonight. i need three by tomorrow night. the bottom line is we've got to

do something very, very quick. most of the governors are saying their peak is somewhere around the middle of april. this is not take all the time in the world to do it. this is what are the most important things we have to do and to be able to come up with a good enough solution. >> when a reporter asked about states beyond new york that have asked the general and the u.s. army corps of engineers for help, he responded by saying, quote, it's too long a list right now. in other words, i don't have time to reel that off to you. joining us now for the interview tonight is the lieutenant general, chief of engineers andan. it's an honor to have you with us. thank you for making time. >> rachel, first of all, thanks for having us on. for all of us in the department of defense, our thoughts and prayers go out to all those families affected by this terrible virus. we in the corps of engines, whatever we can do to mitigate this bed shortage, we certainly want to be able to do that. >> tell our audience in general

terms what the army corps of engineers does and what you've been asked to do so far as part of this pandemic response. >> so we primarily do all the construction for the army, and we do a lot of other construction for the navy, the air force, and other key elements in the department of defense. we've also been asked to step up for the interagency and specifically tonight i'm really talking on what we do on behalf of fema and hhs. so it's almost a national engineering capability to be able to step up and provide options. this is where you heard in that clip where a lot of governors said, we've got to be able to build hospitals in a couple weeks. you can't build a hospital in a couple weeks. and the whole goal of what we're trying to do is to go into an existing facility, something that's already built, and therefore move it dify it. think if you've got a hotel or a sports arena. it's already built to code. it's got water, electricity, fire safety. then to be able to go into that

facility and modify it just enough. we can talk about the javits center, but that's exactly what this great team is doing right across the street here tonight. by converting a convention center into a potential hospital that can hold up to 2,900 people. >> about how many different facility conversions of the time that you're describing is the army corps of engineers right now involved in around the country? >> so i'm going to break it down. there's really four different standard designs and that's the real beauty of what we're trying to offer to states here. we don't have time to site adapt every single one and redesign every single facility. so we're really going into a college dorm or a hotel, or we're going into a large sports arena or a convention center. those two types of facilities are either going to be covid or non-covid. it's up to the state and the local mayors to decide what they want. it's very, very hard to take an arena capability like the javits center and to be able to make it

covid comcompliant. you heard on the clip it's relatively easy to go into a confined room like a college dorm or a hotel and be able to modify that just enough to be able to put in a patient there to be able to put a covid patient in. you asked about how many. tonight we've got 103 different assessments we're doing in 50 different states, in eight different territories. i think we've got 78 done right now. the main thing is writing contracts tonight, tomorrow to be able to make sure that contractors can be boots on the ground to be able to make something happen. this is not where i ask our guys, how long do you need to do it? this is where you got to tell them, you got 2 1/2 weeks. you've got three weeks. every single governor knows exactly where his peak is. if we can't get ecclesiastthese completed, we've missed this valuable window to be able to take care of that shortage. >> i know every situation is a little different but you're talking about standardized

facilities. if you had, say, a college dorm-type facility and you were going to try to turn those into covid beds in a college dorm, what range of time would you need in terms of these contracts you're doing to get that actually up and running from the first day you were called until they actually were admitting patie patients? >> that's the great thing about going into an existing facility. they're all to code. you have to do a couple conversions. i talked about the pressure piece. you do need to put other modifications back in. these college dorms are relatively empty. these hotels are relatively empty. president trump said a couple days ago, this is the time when we need the entire nation to rally to step up, and we're seeing this. we're seeing contractors calling to us and saying, what can we do to help? the hotel industry is calling us saying, i'm willing to give you some of our hotels. how can we work it out? so working with fema, we

provided a kind of a standard lease. we'll give it to the state and say here's what you can do with a local hoe tell. the unique thing is we have to site adapt these. in the corps, we delegate this down to the lowest level. our colonels, our senior civilians can site adapt it and put it on the ground. we can give our designs to any state in the united states. they could go to their contractors. they've got to get -- they've got to do paperwork with fema on it, but the bottom line is we don't have time to do all this with a very, very strict governance. we've got to be able to trust our engineers and be very, very aggressive in trying to find ways that you can take facilities that are pretty close and modify them accordingly. >> let me ask you one very practical question and this is a weird thing to sort of litigate on national tv. i know from the feedback we get from our audience every night that some of the people i'm about to describe are watching here. if there are local officials, if there are big city governors or county executives or even state

officials right now who are concerned about what's going on in their state, who are seeing the numbers rise, who believe that a local, you know, disused convent or a local college dorm or a local hotel that might be able to be purchased publicly needs to be the kind of facility that you're describing, what's the chain of command that they need to activate in order to get the army corps of engineers on site locally doing that work soon? >> vice president pence said this very, very clear. we're going to use normal fema processes, so they've got to nominate those facilities back into their states. our engineers are embedded in each of the state's emergency management capabilities and then the governor's gives us a lit. that's the governor's call. we're in right now seattle seahawk stadium is the next one we're looking to design. to be able to put hospitals back in there around the underneath

part of the stadium. call your state, get it on the list. then our engineers will pull that off. we will advise the state of here's a, can it be covid, can it be non-covid. that will go up through fema, hopefully get approved and then come back down to us. and either the state can build it or we can build it. >> lieutenant general todd semonite, sir, thank you for speaking about this with such clarity. thank you for speaking and moving quickly. it inspires confidence, sir. good luck with your work. >> you've got to come out and see what all the team is doing. that's the big thing. this is not the army corps of engineers. this is fema. this is hhs. this is state. i was with the mayor of new york city an hour and a half ago. this is leadership getting involved by trying to figure out, don't wait to ask. don't try to wait till the phone rings. get ahead of it and then predict what's going to go wrong and have the good enough solution on time. >> general semonite, thank you very much. god speed to you.

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what you see here on this chart is a troubled time. it is not, i should mention, the troubled time that we are in right now. this shows the number of americans putting in claims for unemployment benefits going back to 2007. at the apex of the job losses from the financial collapse, from the great recession, look how bad the great recession was. in march 2009, look at that peak. 665,000 job losses in one week. but again that's not the crisis that we are in now. to see what's happening now in this new troubled time, you need a whole other chart. you need a whole other scale, which shows that that little bump that we saw in the great recession, that peak that seemed so terrible at the time is nothing compared to right now. over on the very far right side of that chart, not in the hundreds of thousands but in the millions, that's where we are right now today at nearly 3.3 million people asking for

unemployment benefits last week alone. we have never seen anything like this before in history. and it's actually even worse than it looks because those job loss numbers don't include people who lost their jobs just this week. they don't include self-employed people who aren't eligible for unemployment benefits. and they don't include the many people around the country who tried to reach their state unemployment offices but failed to do so because all of the state unemployment offices were overwhelmed by the numbers of people who were calling in to apply. this week's jobless numbers were just a wholly different order of magnitude than anything we've ever experienced as a country since we started keeping records. you can actually see what "the new york times" is doing with their report on this. tomorrow morning they're going to be blowing out their usual layout of the front page to make this new scale of economic disaster physically fit onto that front page. that's not an ad, some sort of wraparound ad. that's the chart. but this is our new reality now, and now a new $2 trillion bill

to try to hold the economy together is due to be voted on by the house tomorrow somehow. literally the logistics of how they're going to try to get together to cast their votes on this don't even make sense at this point, but, again, that's our unimaginable reality now. we've got that story next. stay with us. so what are you working on?

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the $2 trillion economic relief bill that was approved 96-0, was approved napounanimou by the senate last night, it tends to stimulus package. but a stimulus package would be

designed to stimulate the economy, to get people spending money and boosting business in order to put people back to work at those businesses. this is not that. this is a different kind of government action that is designed simply to keep people alive and basically freeze the economy in place explicitly without people going back to work because it's not safe for people to go back to work. this is something that's designed basically to artificially mimic economic activity until real economic activity can come back without millions of americans dying as a consequence. we expect that this $2 trillion replacement for a real economy bill will be approved by the house tomorrow. but exactly how it's going to happen is hard to say. a bunch of members of congress are home in their districts far from washington. it's not easy to get to washington because travel of course is not recommended right now. several members of congress just can't be there to vote. two members of congress have tested positive for covid-19, including, for example, utah's ben mcadams, who remains

hospitalized and he is receiving oxygen. more than a dozen other members of congress are self-quarantining because of contact with known positive folks, including some of the known positive members of congress. i mean how exactly is this going to work tomorrow? are members of congress going to have to show up and all get in the same room and be together in each other's company in order to get this thing passed? that is what the senate did. there's more members of the house. are they going to do that too? joining us is congressman jamie raskin, democrat of maryland. congressman, it's great to see you. thanks for taking time tonight. i want to start by asking you how you are, how are you doing? >> hanging tough, rachel. i've been working hard to get a lot of our people out of different countries abroad, whether it's morocco or uruguay or peru. people are still stuck all over the world, so we're trying to

get them back, and we're trying to help the hospitals get, you know, the personal protective equipment they need for the nurses and for the health care providers, and we're trying to work on this legislation at the same time, and we're trying to do it all from our living rooms and our dining rooms. and i should say going on the rachel maddow show gave me the occasion to shave for the first time in five days, so that was good. >> well, you haven't forgotten how to do it. you look fantastic, congressman. well done. let me ask you, in terms of the content of this bill tomorrow, seeing it pass the senate 96-0 gave me two feels. number one, wow, unity, and unanimo anonymity. it's good to see that all partisans divides have been set aside. also, though, there's the mostly elderly senate all getting together, 96 of them all in the same place. that doesn't seem wise. i know that you and your colleagues in the house are confronting some of those same concerns just about the

logistics of voting tomorrow. >> well, yeah. everybody's in a different position because everybody's in a different place in the country. and people's families are in different places and so on. but everybody is committed to getting the work of the country done, and we see what the health care providers have been doing and what the first responders have been doing, so we understand that we've got an obligation to conduct the legislative business of the country. but we do want to do it in a responsible way. so because the bill was passed unanimously in the senate, we're hoping that we can get unanimous consent to pass it in the house. and the way we actually work, rachel, is when we start off a session, that's when we have the first quorum call. and we don't have a quorum call really until the end of the session. what we do is we operate by unanimous consent. now, somebody could try to block unanimous consent and demand a quorum call, which would be a very heavy thing to do in this environment given that we have

sick colleagues, we have people who are self-quarantined. really everybody is on a continuum of quarantine and social distancing. and the bill is going to pass overwhelmingly. it's not because everybody loves every part of it. there are parts of this bill that i really love, and there are parts of it i'm not fond of at all. but it is a compromise, and if we felt that we could kind of go behind the back of the senate republicans and pass something and then they're just giving in, then we would have passed the universal criminal background check on gun purchases more than a year ago. we would have passed the $15 minimum wage. we understand we've got to deal with them and they've got to deal with us. we've got strong provisions in here on unemployment insurance, for example. hundreds of billions of dollars we're putting into it. we're going to basically make everybody whole on unemployment insurance by adding $600 a week to what the states are currently putting in. so people are going to be

essentially getting 100% of their salary up until the point that their benefits would end in their state. then we're going to extend it another 13 weeks, pay the people what they would have gotten from the state. so that's a really robust protection for workers in a dangerous moment for millions of people across the country. the republicans didn't like it. they tried to slice it and dice it in a whole bunch of different ways. you know, they want this $500 billion aid fund, some people call it a slush fund, that the treasury secretary will have to hand out to different businesses. we were able to attach restrictions to that. for example, money cannot go to executive bonuses during that time. money cannot be spent on buybacks of stock and corporate dividends during the period of the loan extended to businesses. so we were able to improve it somewhat. also the democrats were able to

get a provision in there saying that money could not be given to the president's businesses, businesses owned by the president or businesses owned by members of congress. so we were able to legislate around the edges. still a lot of people feel like that's a huge amount of money, a half a trillion dollars to give to the department of treasury to distribute as they see fit to businesses in the country. so we don't love that part of it, but we're willing to go along with it. we put an inspector general in the treasury department to oversee it as well as a congressionalal congressionally appointed panel. so there's a lot of stuff we've done that's great. hundreds of billions of dollars to the hospitals and health care providers to get the personal protective equipment into the hands of the people who need it. that's terrific. housing assistance to people who

would be evicted from their homes. there are things we can be really proud of in here. it's a compromise and we need to pass it for the good of the country because our people are hurting and it's a decembsperat circumstance for tens of millions of people across the country. >> it's going to be fascinating to watch tomorrow. thank you for helping us understand what's in the bill. >> thanks for having me, rachel. hang tough. >> all right. we'll be right back. stay with us. we are t-mobile. covering over 200 million americans

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you know, people in new york city have been saying over the course of this crisis just anecdotally that they've been hearing a lot more sirens sires but feeling that they are much more ominous than they might be in normal circumstances. well, the ominousness notwithstanding, tonight we have data that would appear to back up the perception that there are more sirens going off in the city. the "washington post's" james hellman tweeting just tonight, "new york city ems received 6,406 medical 911 calls yesterday." that's the highest volume ever recorded in new york city. it surpasses the record that had been previously set on september 11th, 2001. that is going to do it for us tonight. we will see you again tomorrow. now it's time for "the last word" with lawrence o'donnell. good evening, lawrence. >> good evening, rachel. and i have to tell you,