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reopen. now amid on going criticism of the trump administration's handling of the pandemic, the white house is blocking dr. anthony fauci from testifying before the democratically-controlled house appropriations committee this wednesday, calling it, quote, counterproductive and the time not appropriate. on the flip side, just five days later, the white house is allowing dr. fou fauci to abefore the health state committee. the committees blasted the administration for, quote, letting politics overtake public health with partisan games. dr. fauci is also no longer expected to make regular appearances at the coronavirus task force briefings. recent nbc news "wall street journal" poll showed that americans overwhelming trust dr. fauci when it comes to covid-19, while decidedly not trusting president trump. joining me now is nbc news white house correspondent kelly o'donnell. kelly, where does the dr. fauci situation go from here and what should we expect from the

presidenting in the coming days? >> good to be with you, ali. for the president, one of the things we'll see he'll return from camp david today and has a town hall on fox news channel tonight. and it is the start of the president emerging from the white house after weeks here staying inside the grounds, spending some time at camp david focussed on the economic roll out of the country reopening, according to aides. so we'll have a chance when he returns to the white house, we hope to perhaps ask him some questions. big on the board for the president this week, he will travel to arizona and will be visiting one of the mask manufacturers, the honeywell company that stepped up to produce some of that personal protective equipment that medical and front line health care workers have needed. so the president will use his first real big travel out of the white house to emphasize how there has been this public/private partnership and honor the health care workers who have been at the forefront of everyone's concern about the

risks they take and the work they've been doing. but it's a noticeable shift, ali, of the president wanting to be a part of the reopening. wanting to get back into campaign mode. when it comes to dr. fauci, of course, he is a long-time civil servant, not a political appointee and has risen to prominence as he has many other times before when there have been points of national focus on health care, whether it was the aids epidemic or ebola or other things. now a level of prominence that he has not ever seen in his career before and the trust that you described that people assign to him. the white house says that the house appropriations committee had not notified them of specific steps they would be taking to make it safe like social distancing. it's hard to mistake that a democratically-led committee was turned down for an appearance by dr. fauci, who again is not a political appointee but a civil servant but saying yes to the senate later for their inquiry. they said the focus was more appropriate to dr. fauci's

expertise. it will be a battleground because, of course, dr. fauci has been willing to acknowledge when he believes mistakes were made or opportunities were lost. he is considered very candid in these settings. of course that's why democrats wanted to hear from him and republicans, too. ali? >> kelly, there's a pivot under way reportedly at the white house, away from talking just the health effects and the public health matters about the pandemic and shifting to the economic situation. >> reporter: very much so. wanting to give people information where the president will always say we have to do it safely. but the focus has really been about trying to turn on the engine of the american economy and try to figure out ways to get people back into their workplaces and to do that where they will be willing to go because they feel it's safe where customers or clients or the business opportunities would thrive because people still aren't quite sure in many places how ready they are to re-engage.

so that's a big question, how to turn on the economy piece by piece in a patchwork across the country. the president wants to see that. he sees it as really integral to any campaign that will go forward, whatever that will look like because the economy has been one of the centerpieces of what he believed was his leadership until this pandemic cratered the american economy. you hear him say we'll rebuild it a second time. that will be a big challenge for the president especially because we don't know without testing the risk of rebounds or new spikes of illness. and we don't know really the sentiment of the public yet to re-engage in those kinds of places of restaurants and theaters and so forth. al snirks. >> kelly, thanks. good to see you. nbc's kelly o'donnell at the white house. >> good to see you. >> joining me is the republican congressman a member of the the house appropriations committee. good to see you.

thank you for being with us. we don't know how people will re-engage with public places like movies and malls and particularly casinos and hotels like you've got in nevada. and of course, the mayor of las vegas create ed quite a dust f how she is willing to have las vegas be a control group, sort of a testing ground for how this goes if you reopen it. what's your take on that? >> well, i think everybody is spot on in terms of testing needs to increase. everybody from the white house down to mayors here in nevada are saying the same thing. we have had good news just recently in terms of testing supplies whether it's the traditional swabs, you know, the nasal cranial thing that people are doing. so, i mean, you have to know what's out there, but that i think is coming on line pretty fast so that we have the ability to monitor who is coming and who is going and who is of interest and who is not. so, i don't think there's disagreement on that. there may be different shades of

whatever the color that is. but i mean, it's an integral part of getting back to having the tax base. some people call it the economy. some people call it the private sector. get the tax base going because quite frankly state and local government can't afford 50% of tax revenues any longer. >> and what should be done about that? because that's a real problem, right? we've heard states, phil murphy in new jersey says 20 to 30 billion there going to be short. new york has said they're going to be short. mitch mcconnell has said states should go bankrupt. i spoke to kevin at the white house who said that's not really how it works. but how does it work? because the federal government can go into debt, which it has done. the federal government can print money. the federal government has the federal reserve. states have none of that. >> that's absolutely correct, which is why -- you know, everybody looks for the differences, but i think what we're seeing here is, listen, it

has to be step by step. everybody on down the line and up says, you know, throw a light switch. so you start with the hospitals. let those folks go back to doing what they're doing because they have payrolls. they have expenses. they have all that. then as you look at the plans for different industries, matt maddox from the ceo of the wynn did a guest editorial a couple weeks ago in the las vegas. here is how we plan to do it with combination of testing, distancing all that. there are solutions out there. you have to multitask. there are several moving parts, but it's like you have to start going. by the way, if you make a mistake and there's a flair-up, then fine. pull back. but quite frankly, it's the varsity time for multi-tasking, ali, in terms of you got to keep your eye on the health ball and keep your eye on the economy. >> yeah. they're not an either or. talk to me about dr. anthony fauci testifying before the house appropriations committee and why that was blocked. >> well, i mean, the white house didn't consult me on it.

i know you're shocked by that. but you know, i'm just guessing -- this is my speculation, quite frankly, you know, it wasn't that long ago -- what was it 120 days ago, something like that, 150 days ago, the house impeached the president. and so quite frankly i'm guessing that, you know, we say well it's politics. yep, you're absolutely right it's politics. and so, i'm assuming that they're going -- we're not sending one of our spokespeople into that and have that done. so i'm assuming somebody in the political shop said we pick not to do that. >> i want to ask you congressman president trump is using this pandemic to help settle an old score with one of america's great institutions, the postal service. this is a real -- there are real problems here, right? if you want to talk about varsity getting this right. the postal service does have real issues.

many of which are not of the doing of the postal service. it's about their pensions. but their in competition with fedex and ups. the president has a real beef with amazon, which uses those private services. but the postal service says it's in real danger of collapsing by the end of summer, by the end of september. i know you and your colleagues are quite concerned about this. >> well, i mean, like it or not, what we've learned in this pandemic with various industries, the airlines, they're not a public utility, quite frankly, what we've done with respect to them, recognizes the fact that they're an integral part of how things move around not only the world but this nation. the post office and even stronger case. while there may be some problems here there, whatever. i don't think we're at the point, ali, where quite frankly, we don't need to worry how letters get mailed for 50 cents or whatever the heck it is on the first class rate. so it's like, hey, there are some issues there. they need to be fixed.

and they need to be fixed long-term in an infrastructure sense and quite frankly while nobody planned to do this right now, the fact that they're okay for a few more months makes them ahead of a lot of industries in this country as we both well know now. so, it's like, hey, all the other stuff aside, let's get to work on doing what we need to do because quite frankly it's part of the fabric of our nation and our communities. >> let me ask you one last question, congressman, because you and i have talked about this in the past about health care. this is -- always been a contentious issue in this country. there are a lot of people, including conservatives who sort of said, hey, maybe what's happened now has given us some sense of you may not want to go down the road of what bernie sanders did but that some sort of universe alty of health care might help us for future pandemics. >> well, i think if you depolite size it, which is impossible in the business you and i are in, but quite frankly -- >> i wish we could.

>> yeah. the pandemic thing is like all hands on deck. so, i mean n a pandemic we now know very well federal government is the insurer of last resort. not that the state and the local health districts and those folks on the front lines haven't done a pretty darn good job with no warning, but quite frankly pandemic is a federal thing every bit as much as national defense is. so i think that's just the reality in terms of lessons learned and where do we go from here in terms of being ready for if and when the next one comes. >> congressman, good to see you. thank you always for joining me. i want to bring in mark deman stooen, representing more than 220,000 postal workers. mark, good to see you again. you heard the congressman. there seems to be bipartisan support for the american postal worker and, in fact, it seems to be universal. people don't want the postal service to fail. and yet the president has

dangled that concept out there. >> well, good morning. and you're right absolutely right that there's tremendous bipartisan support for the public postal service. congressman amonde is an example of that himself. he and some of his colleagues just formed a house postal preservation caucus urging immediate financial relief. the postal service, look, this pandemic has caused economic havoc. the postal service is no exception. it's a non-taxpayer based public entity. a lot of people don't realize that. as a nontaxpayer based entity it runs off postal revenue from postage and postal products. what this pandemic caused a precipitous drop in mail volume, therefore drop in revenue and it's a dire situation. the post office will some time late this summer probably run

out of money. and we have a universal serviceman date we believe in. the postal service goes to every address 160 million addresses 6 days a week, sometimes seven. uniform and reasonable rates. and to be able to do that, the finances have to be there. the postal mission is very simple in the laws. bind the country together. we can see that no better than we do in this crisis. >> how right is the president about rates? could the postal service solve this by raising rates? obviously when somebody raises rates that can cause people to use the service less. but is the president right that the postal service is underpricing its services? >> no. i think the president is completely misinformed. every independent entity that looks at the pricing in the post office says that they are making money off the products that they use. it's interesting and should be

to the viewers. the president never told the airlines to raise the price of airplanes or the hotels that are getting all sorts of bail-outs that they should raise the rate of rooms or the restaurants have gotten a huge, huge restaurant chains raise the price of the steak or the hamburger. but when it comes to the postal service, he's demanding a raise in rates. look, the postal service is public. it's there to serve the people of the country on a break-even basis. we're proud of the reasonable rates. obviously the rates have to be fair. but to have somebody come in and say -- the president of the united states come in and say raise package rates four to five times. that would drive the package business out of the postal service and it would actually cause the postal service's demise. 30% of the postal service revenue with this ecommerce revolution is coming from package rates. so you and i as individuals can take a flat rate priority mailbox, put anything we want in

it, send it any weight, send it anywhere in the country for little over $8. the president is telling us we need to pay $40 for that. obviously that isn't going to work. >> mark, thanks for joining me. this continues to be a serious issue. we will continue to cover it. mark dimondstein the president of the american postal service union. our lawmakers are working to boost the health of the american economy, the health of the american people is on the line. time to put science before politics. later, "shark tanks" mark cuban joins me. a plan to get more americans working again. this is velshi on msnbc. velshi . complete your 2020 census today. 2020 census data helps communities plan funding for hospitals, clinics, and emergency services across the country. an accurate count helps public health officials know who is at risk, and first responders identify the resources they need to protect our communities.

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♪ fight against coronavirus is increasingly become a battle of science versus economics and politics. two thirds of states have either eased some restrictions or plan to do so in the coming days but not one state has fully met the guidelines recommended by the white house, including a 14-day downward trend in cases or increased testing. on friday, president trump repeated a point he often makes about how the death toll could have been significantly higher. >> not long ago models predicted that between 1.5 million and 2.2 million people would have died in the united states without the mitigation through our aggressive response and the remarkable commitment and bravery of american people we have saved thousands and

thousands of lives. and hopefully we're going to come in below that 100,000 lives lost, which is a horrible number nevertheless. >> our next guest says there seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of what it's going to take to reopen the economy and get back to some semblance of normal and that models like the one trump referred to are based on assumptions that might be out of date or don't apply to the united states. joining us now to talk about this is dr. jim young kim, the former president of the world bank, the former president of dartmouth university and the co-founder of partners in health. he's been helping to fight pan demmics for much of his life. hiv and aids in the 2000s and cholera and ebola. these patterns show the ultimate

number of cases going down to zero. at some point we peak and go down. the peak looks like it's the middle of the chart. what's the issue with the models? >> well, so the most optimistic model that's sited a lot is done by one of the best groups in the world in terms of health metrics, but what they assume is that if three or four out of four of social distancing measures are put in place, then the infection rate goes down to 0. and we just haven't seen that anywhere in the world. it's actually not based on the wuhan model because the wuhan model went down to zero because they didn't just do social distancing, they did massive testing, they did contact tracing and they did what they call central quarantine and isolation. anyone who was either covid positive or suspected covid positive, they moved them to separate quarters and the reason they did that was they wanted to stop the transmission within

households. what social distancing does very well is it stops transmission between households. but what happens and this is happening in spain and italy and certainly would happen in china, all of your transmission or a big chunk of your transmission comes from family members, household members infecting each other. you have got to get at both. stop the tran mission between households, you have to get at the transmission within households and transmission in health care settings and the only way to do that is on top of social distancing you've got to test much more widely. you have to do contact tracing. and you've got to isolate and quarantine, you know, in different countries they'll do it in different ways. you have to do all of those things in order to first of all get that curve going downward instead of just flattening and then if you want to get out of the lockdown, you have to have this system in place so you can jump on top of new infections immediately. and we're also now learning just from a jam-up piece journal in

the american medical association a study of the first 100 patients in taiwan. what we learned is that people are infectious four days before they show symptoms and about five days afterwards. totally different from sars and different from other viruses. but this is very important information, which means that our testing, contact tracing, isolation and quarantine have to be even faster and better than we thought. >> it's kind of amazing because every public health expert has said exactly the same thing from the beginning. i haven't yet talked to one public health expert who says that without understanding the denominator, given to you by testing, you cannot make proper decisions. last sunday, we talked about a great piece you wrote in the new yorker you outline five element anti-pandemic arsenal. we put some on the page. who is doing it well? china, hong kong, new zealand and rwanda is doing it well. but who in the united states is

doing it right and what can we replicate that's being done here? >> well, i think see a lot of governors who are extremely committed to doing it right. you know, we started and we were about three, four weeks in in massachusetts. and you know, governor baker was incredibly courageous. when we first talked about starting a contact tracing program, i told him, you know, nobody is talking about contact tracing right now in the united states. there's this sthaens this will all go away with social distancing. ali, you understand that. people say we're sacrificing so much, we're suffering so much, this has got to work. but the evidence is it only works to a certain extent. it gets you flat, doesn't get you going down. so when he agreed to do it, he was taking a risk. i told him he was taking a risk. but in the three weeks, ali, we learned so much. the lesson i would give to other governors is start now. because to work this out with your existing health infrastructure, to make sure that you're not violating the hippa regulations, the privacy

regulations, you've got to get started right away. but here is what we really need, ali, you know, i've been talking to a lot of members of congress, we've got to get the federal government to support major public health initiative that puts in place this five-step program. i think more and more people are understanding that this is what we need. but you and i have talked about economics a lot before. now, in the realm of fiscal and monetary policy, you're hearing about bazookas, the nuclear option. we're putting 2.5 trillion already in fiscal stimulus. this is really important. but we're giving squirt guns in public health. we are not given anywhere near the resources we need to do the thing that will actually solve the problem. >> this is really an important point. this is the important point. you come from academia. you come from the world of public health, but you also happen to have run the world bank. so you understand the incentives in the system and how it works. but a point you made to me that really stands out is exactly

that. with economics, we have a bazooka. we have the federal reserve and congress on a bipartisan basis able to come together to put lots and lots of money into the economy. but when it comes to public health, we simply do not have that moon shot manhattan project style approach. >> part of it is because the public health departments have been starved. my tom freedman, friend, published an article said in 201 we spent $11,000 per person in the united states on medical care. and $286 per person for public health. so, it's not -- it shouldn't surprise us that public health departments throughout the united states gave up so early because they had no resources and they just couldn't even imagine they would have the kind of resources they need. we need to start hundreds of billions of dollars to put into a program that would make sure the testing is up to speed, that

will hire an army of contact tracers. oh, by the way, ali, a lot of people out of work. we've had now close to 40,000 applications for the 1,000 contact tracer jobs that we have in massachusetts because first of all people need a job. the other thing we have been hearing, though, people want to go on the offensive. they feel so good about getting on the offensive and, you know, i'm an immigrant. i came when i was very young. it just strikes me that it suits americans more to go on offense and hunt down the virus than just to sit in their homes waiting to see what the virus will do to them. congress has to legislate this. we have to have hundreds of billions of dollars and we got to start now. >> thank you for joining me again, dr. jim young kim former president of the world bank and co-founder of partners in health. now a moment to honor,

standing 6'7", 69-year-old shelly york a towering presence in north little rock, arkansas. shelly played basketball for oklahoma christian college before marrying veranda williams in 1976. he drove trucks for arkansas's best freight way for over 30 years. shelly was a deacon at gospel temple missionary baptist church and a member of the male choir there. although his two children said they admired his effort more than his singing. his son dominic said his dad taught him to be more affectionate. being a man isn't about being tough. it's about telling people you love them. people you love them.

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♪ while many small businesses in desperate need of funds have been struggling to obtain federal paycheck protection loans, the nba los angeles lakers were one of many companies who were questionably

awarded federal funds during the first round of the program. the organization received $4.6 million but following pressure returned the money. joining me now the owner of the dallas maverick, the entrepreneur mark cuban of "shark tank." i want to start with ppe. the second version is out now. the first version 350 billion was exhausted within two weeks and the second one is experiencing a lot of the same issues as the first one. vast technical issues, backlog of applicants from the first round. a number of banks saying they're not going to loan to people with whom they don't have a pre-existing relationship and that's a big deal because for a lot of the smallest businesses, including some of the people you meet on "shark tank" they don't have relationships with bankers, accountants, laurs and things like that. you have an idea because we need more money, you have an idea that you think is much more efficient than the current ppp program. >> yeah. i would have done an overdraft program made it much easier for banks to support.

you know, right now banks are having to go through a typical credit process which takes time and we have seen them make decisions that really are more in their own self interest. but ali, before i go there, i want to make a point that the sba just released figures not long ago saying they're still tens of billions of dollars left. so, if you are a small business or independent contractor watching right now and you haven't been able to get a loan, the problems with your bank. so it's not a bad thing to bank shop right now. find a small community bank that you can work with. it doesn't matter if you apply at one bank, five banks or 20 banks as long as you only take one loan. while i thought an overdraft protection program is better, the best advice, stop what you're doing, go apply, go talk to your bank tomorrow and apply again and again. doesn't matter how many banks you apply with. >> the problem is not with standing, it could be the next time we have to do this or for the third one we can fix the technical problems. it is 2020. we can figure that out.

but you're thinking the reason an overdraft works better for a lot of businesses is because a business can't necessarily know how much money they have to borrow from the bank. a lot of small businesses are boot strapped, right? they finance themselves. they go on "shark tank" use their credit cards, ask family for money. they're not quite clear on what size of loan they need. they haven't run those kinds of numbers. they're busy working seven days a week in some cases, 80 hours a week. >> the real challenge is, again, not only do you not know but you need to be able to just act quickly, right? right now you have seen a big part of the problem with the economy is that everybody is at a standstill particularly if you need funding because you have to go through the multi-step process. if you're already doing business the way you have always done it, writing checks, doing deposits and allows to overdraft when you don't have revenue coming in, there's reduced friction and the economy continues on. that's why i propose the overdraft protection and would

have been far better and it's easier for small businesses to continue to participate. you know, they don't have the relationship like you said with the bankers, but the banks that they do do business with know their statement history, know their checking account history so it would have been much easier to just say, you know what, as long as you don't write more checks than you did in the previous months, just continue to write. the bank would cover the overdraft. the fed would make the bank whole and repeat that process and the economy could have continued with a lot less friction. right now with the ppp program there's so much friction. here i am telling small businesses to apply to as many banks as they can until they find one they can get them the loan. that just shows you the problems of the program. >> right. right. because that's actually harder thing than it feels like, right, applying for a loan. the banks no matter how frictionless you want to make it, somebody who is going to give you money wants some financial details. that's a lot of stuff that a lot of businesses have to pull up. but you're talking about this overdraft being available for rent, for utilities, basic overhead, bay roll and

associated payroll costs. here is the challenge, the payroll protection paychecks protection program, the one great part about the design if everybody who qualified for it could actually get the money is that if you use it to pay your staff, that money is forgiven. it's a grant. it's a great system. it's the idea that rather than you having to fire your staff, put them on unemployment, have them apply, struggle through the state programs for applying, then get on medicaid, cobra or whatever they need for health care, this keeps everybody as an employee. that's the one thing that this does that an overdraft might not do. >> you can still do the same thing, right? you can still forgive it. any of the moneys you overdraft, you'll have a check or you're going to have a transfer specifically for your rent, your utilities, payroll, your cobra, your health care, whatever it may be. and so, there's nothing that says that that can't be forgiven. it's just a question of when you do the analytics, once a week, once a month, once a quarter, once a year.

the other problem right now, ali, with ppp is that businesses aren't open. and so if you have to bring all your employees back by june 30th and spend within that eight-week period, you're not open, you're effectively paying them to not work. now, that's not necessarily always a problem except when they're collecting unemployment because when you ask them to come back, they lose their unemployment and so a lot of them don't want their employer's even to open so they don't face that catch 22. >> that's a different discussion. our wages are such that getting unemployment benefits is more advantageous than working, that's a separate problem we need to have and we're gaining ground in conversation about increasing wages in america. but you're on the front line of businesses. you deal with entrepreneurs who are really struggling to figure this out. one thing you know that entrepreneurs you work and fund on "shark tank" create actual jobs. every entrepreneur has the good part of what we complain about

the infection infecting more than one person, but actually entrepreneurship is employing more than one person per entrepreneur. what does the government do after june 30th, september 30th when we start to see higher structural employment, in other words, once we reopened we still see higher unemployment, what can the government actually do to try and fix this problem so we're not sitting around with extra employees for five years? >> dr. kim your previous guest was 100% right. we should be hiring millions of people for contact tracing. we should be hiring millions of people to support those who can't go out because they have compromised immunity system or elderly or more at risk for whatever reason. we should be hiring millions of people to deal with our ageing population in terms of long-term care because we're just going to have more and more people that are going to need health care services. we have to train them and hit the regulations. we have to train them in all the things health care workers need to know in order to be able to do these things. you know, there's just so many

ways that we -- so many things that we need right now with the nation that the federal government even more so than the states can start hiring for and doing right now that not only create jobs, not only can pay them a great wage but also can start working on these problems and to dr. kim's point, we can go out and get ahead of it and attack it rather than waiting for it to attack us. we haven't been doing anything there and that's not starting to discuss health care in general. right? so many people losing their employer insurance, what are we going to do? that will take more people. contrast that with hospitals laying off people, there's so many issues that we are not addressing as a country that need to happen now. >> yeah. i know a lot of my viewers would like to address the nba with you, but you're a small business expert and right now that's what matters the most. i appreciate having that conversation with you and i hope we continue it. "shark tank" mark cuban, entrepreneur and owner of dallas

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the effectiveness of the paycheck protection program designed to help the country's economy stabilize is in doubt. small business owners tell "the new york times" it's unclear how to spend any funding because, because, quote, it is impossible for businesses to have any degree of comfort that they're following the rules when the rules are still being written. the $660 billion program would help allow businesses to keep employees on the payroll. joining me now, the host of the podcast into america and nbc news correspondent tremain lee and also gretchen morgan sson t author of "reckless endangerment." obviously this is a story that is very close to us, we talk about it a great deal on this -- on this show. gretchen, small business is the job creation engine of this country. doesn't employ more people than big business, but it actually

creates more jobs than big businesses do. so recovery depends on not allowing small businesses to fail. >> absolutely. and employment -- employment is a huge issue in small businesses. they are absolutely at the backbone of the nation, and, of course, it is the american dream to have your own business. so this was a crucial program, a crucial program for the economy and this country, and it really, really has fallen down. >> tremain, one thing you do is you have a chance to get right in there with people and sort of feel the pressures that they're feeling. most small businesses in america do not enjoy a banking relationship. they may have -- they have bank accounts, but they're not top of the list on their bankers calls, they don't necessarily keep accountants on hand for regular work, they don't have lawyers on hand. they really are struggling with

a shifting set of rules, and a lineup and technical glitches that are not allowing them to get this money. >> that's part of the real frustration for small business owners. you think about what happened in 2008, decimated small businesses, and their relationship with lending institutions changed any way. after that when banking institutions shifted more towards the bigger companies, it was tough for the little guys to get access anyway. when they did, they were high interest loans, or in recent years turning -- they had to turn to online lenders. the stress of running a business during the best of times, the stress of making sure you're employees are taken care of and customer service and everything is, you know, in tip-top shape is tough anyway. now they're dealing with the stress of the ppp program, while many small businesses like the one in massachusetts, the one we spoke to said he couldn't get access to it, all the money was gobbled up within two weeks and they had to watch the big boys, the big dogs swoop in and get an outside piece of the pie.

what this relationship, what will it look like going forward with all the stipulations and the small business administration rules on 75% of the funding going towards retention of your employees? if you get the -- forgivable loans. what about your rent? we're going on, what, three months now. the rent checks are already starting to pile up. it has been tough for a lot of folks. >> so, gretchen, rent, payroll, the costs associated with payroll, paying suppliers, that stuff exists for small businesses when times are good. when they can measure the people coming in the door, when they know what a good day is going to be, when people get their paychecks. how do you calculate, you know, one thing mark cuban and i were talking about, how do small businesses calculate what their payroll is going to be in a time when things are shut down? >> it is a great question, honestly.

the guy we spoke to in massachusetts who owns these pet supply stores said that his sales were down 60%. and he still wants to keep his employees, and so that's an enormous imbalance. he has to pay his rent. he has to pay his utilities. he told us that he hasn't taken any money out of the business for months, and it is really going to be tough for these guys, they employ a lot of people across the country. and the fact that they're not able to access this money is a real problem. and i think it really is an extension, unfortunately, of the main street behind the eight ball story that we have been seeing as trymaine pointed out since 2008. i'm hoping this isn't the last stop for main street businesses. >> trymaine, we talk about imbalance, there is within the imbalance of small business and big business, the imbalance of minority business and mainstream

small business, largely again because of banking relationships, because of the fact that if you are on your bank manager's speed dial, you probably got your application in and may have been put to the top of the list. for small businesses, minority businesses, there is even that much more distance to a banking relationship. there are community banks helping, but it hasn't bridged all of the gap. >> you know, similar to what we have seen in the covid cases, the disparities we're seeing in communities of color, black communities in color, the lethality of covid-19, the same could be said for businesses, now, there is that old saying that when white america catches a cold, black america catches pneumonia, we can swap that out and say white businesses catch a cold, black businesses catch pneumonia. equity is baked into the structure of our society, we see it revealing itself in all forms and fashions, especially in businesses already marginalized during the best of times. when we come out of this, what

we're able to get through the damage here, we'll see many really struggling to get a grip. also because their communities, the folks are the most unemployed are the most impacted. it is bad across the country, period. you dig down, and just really reveal itself from the inequi inequitys, it is even worse. >> thanks to both of you for doing this. trymaine lee and gretchen morganson. subscribe for free wherever you get your podcast. that's all for me this morning. next up on "am joy," tammy duckworth will talk about returning to d.c. as reopening protests take an ugly turn. tomorrow i'm filling in for brian williams on "the 11th hour." i'll see you then. "the 11th hour." i'll see you then. we've worked to provide you with the financial strength, stability, and online tools you need. and now it's no different. because helping you through this crisis is what we're made for.

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♪all strength ♪we ain't stoppin' believe me♪ ♪go straight till the morning look like we♪ ♪won't wait♪ ♪we're taking everything we wanted♪ ♪we can do it ♪all strength, no sweat me too. me too. and if you're a small business, we're with you. standing by you every step of the way. bye bye.

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we have gotten to where we have gotten because people have stayed home. they have gotten, i think, the vast majority of chicagoans have gotten the message that restricting our movements, avoiding large congregate settings, ones where you can't socially distance easily those are the very breeding grounds for the virus. and i'm -- i'm watching very carefully not just across illinois, but really across the country, and the world, places