former senator barbara bofxer, seth harris, thank you. heidi, thank you so much for your time.nk you. really appreciate it. >>> coming up, the saga of the south. why many southern states are slow to react to the pandemic. ts to renovate your home, from inspiration to installation. like way more vanities perfect for you. nice. way more unique fixtures and tiles. pairing. ♪ nice. way more top brands in sinks and faucets. way more ways to rule your renovation. nice! on any budget, with free shipping. wayfair. way more than furniture. but right now, the world needs all the good that we can do. to everyone working to keep america strong, thank you. doctor bob, what should i take for back pain? before you take anything, i recommend applying topical relievers first. salonpas lidocaine patch blocks pain receptors for effective, non-addictive relief. salonpas lidocaine. patch, roll-on or cream. hisamitsu. i need all the breaks, that i can get. at liberty butchumal- cut. liberty biberty- cut. we'll dub it. liberty mutual customizes your car insurance so you only pay for what you need. on

joining us now is seth harris, a former acting labor secretary under president obama. mr.arris, great to have you back. so you read the federal guidelines that the white house put out yesterday, i am sure. so what do you think the most important step is to getting workers back into the workplace. >> so alisyn, if i were an employer who read the president's plan, i would feel the federal government was hanging me out to try and providing me with no support. let me talk about three particular areas. there is nothing in the plan about the federal government helping with testing and contact tracing. the plan talks about employers keeping sick workers home. but we know that workers who show no symptoms can also transmit this disease to other people. so employers are sort of left with no way to protect against asymptomatic workers coming into the workplace and making everybody sick. the second thing is, the plan doesn't include anything about the federal government helping to make sure that employers have all the personal protective equipment they need. the n95 respirators, mask

seth harris is here, a former acting labor secretary under president barack obama.ersaw the rollout of the 2009 stimulus package. i'm so glad you could join us, mr. secretary. appreciate it. we learned last week over 3.2 million americans filed for unemployment. we're bracing for the jobs report this friday. just how bad do you think the economic situation is going to get? >> it's bad and it's getting worse. we'll fanind out about last wees new unemployment claims thursday morning. i fear that that number will be even higher than the 3.2 number you just cited, don. the unemployment report we'll get on friday is not going to give us a very good picture because the data that was collected for that report was collected before sort of the big shutdown kicked in. so don't pay too much attention to friday's report. thursday's report, unemployment claims is going to be very important and i fear very bad. >> so the next report you think will be -- will show us will be the most concise indication of where the jobs -- the unemployment numbers are going, correct? >> i think th

estimating the unemployment will hit 20%, shedding 25 million jobs, and that the economy wi will -- >>> seth harris is joining us, former acting labor secretary. he oversaw the rollout of the stimulus package under president obama. mr. secretary, great to have you with us. i want to play some sound from jerome powell how he's assessing the reopening of the economy. >> we need to have a plan nationally for reopening the economy. wh we all want to avoid a false start where we partially reopen and that results in a spike in coronavirus cases and then we have to go back again to square one. we all want to avoid that. >> we want to avoid a false start. that's an economic prings from the fed chair not a medical prescription there. why is he making that? >> well, because there is no separation between how we address the pandemic and how we heal the economy. we're not going to bring people back to work and allow them to get sick and die. that's the wrong answer. i think it's foolish for us to be setting may 1st as an artificial deadline. we need to let the science drive the decision-making, not the politic

seth harris, thank you so much for taking the time. it's good to see you. much anticipa much appreciated. >>> an exclusive taking you inside one of the nation's busiest hospitals as health care workers across the nation continue to fight on the front lines of this pandemic. >>> but, first, cheers ringing out in new york city. this time from the fire department as members of the fdny celebrate hospital workers all across manhattan for their tireless efforts tackling the city's growing coronavirus. a beautiful sign of solitude and gratitude from one group of first responders to the other. you're watching msnbc live. ♪ you should be mad they gave this guy a promotion. you should be mad at forced camaraderie. and you should be mad at tech that makes things worse. but you're not mad, because you have e*trade, who's tech makes life easier by automatically adding technical patterns on charts and helping you understand what they mean. don't get mad. get e*trade's simplified technical analysis. - [female vo] restaurants are facing a crisis. and they're counting on y

also let's bring in former acting secretary of labor under president obama, seth harris.th you. 6.65 million claiming unemployment. just an absolutely staggering number. what's your initial reaction? >> my initial reaction is that it is a staggering number. it is twice what the -- most of the forecasters thought was going to happen this week. it is twice more or less what happened last week. to put it in kind of context, two weeks ago, week before last we had 281,000 claims for unemployment insurance and now we're dealing with 6.64 million. it does suggest that we are well on our way to massive unemployment in this country. people are talking about as high as 6% next month. the number we get this friday will not be that meaningful, it is too early, but the one a month from now could be as high as 6%. we could be looking at double digits in the summer. beyond the unemployment number, joe, what that obviously refleblts r reflects is a massive downturn in the level of economic activity in this country. i wouldn't say the country has come to a stop, but, for example, we had c

seth harris is here. he is former acting labor secretary under barack obama. therine lampel here as well. >> seth, i am going to start with you. you sent us a list of some things businesses will need to do, including california governor gavin newsom's point about reengineering workspaces. and we have got your ideas up on the screen now. can you talk us through these ideas? >> sure. well, this is straightforward occupational safety and health planning. you got to start with a plan because what gets planned gets done. so every employer in the country needs to know how they're going to plan to keep their workers safe from coronavirus in the workplace. the starting place for that is to try to keep sick and infected workers and others out of the workplace. give them paid sick leave. give them paid family leave. limit the number of people who can come in. the deliveries that can come in. second is the point that governor newsom was making, and that is engineering controls. the physical distancing we're doing outside the workplace. we need to sustain that in the workp

. >>> meanwhile, seth harris is with me, former acting labor secretary under president obama. e are signs all over this country that the need for food has become especially acute. we took voefolks to los angeles earlier this week. we saw these long lines of people awaiteding to get food from a food pantry. these are people who have never been to a food pantry before, people who have never had to rely on the kindness of others for food. here we are, seth, three weeks into this crisis. more than 16 million people have filed for unemployment. for perspective, that's the population of the state of nevada and pennsylvania combined. my question to you is, are these jobs coming back? is this a situation where, because the economy has shut down, people can't work, but once the economy opens again, people will be able to get back to work? is that what we're seeing, or is it not as rosy? >> well, the sad answer to that question, craig, is we don't know yet. it depends how long this nationwide shutdown lasts. it depends on whether or not small businesses in particular are able to survive

joining me to to discuss, anthony scaramucci and seth harris. former acting u.s. y of labor under president obama and professor at cornell. seth, i want to go to you first. let's start with this ppp program. small businesses employ over 50% of this country. the average one only has 27 days worth of cash on hand. they've been shut down for weeks. are you concerned that the slow roll-out of this much-needed program won't get them the money in time? >> i am, steph. it's started out really stumbling, but, you know, the sba, like the ui system and internal revenue service are totally overwhelmed by the volume of need in our society. just to put in perspective, last year the sba approved loans worth $28 billion to about 63,000 businesses. this year they're being asked to do 13 times more to hundreds of thousands or millions of businesses and not in a year but weeks or months. they're swamped. their portal is crashing. there's a lot of confusion among lenders. it's going to take awhile to get this money out, but if we wait too long, some of these businesses will be gone a

joining me to discuss, seth harris, the former deputy labor secretary under president obama and ben whitehief economic correspondent for politico. ben, your reaction to those numbers. now that businesses are opening, and more businesses are getting small business loans, do you see that number dropping? >> yeah, the unemployment claims numbers are going to continue to drop over the next couple of weeks. just not by very much. and as you noted, this is 20% of the workforce, 1 in 5, 30.2 million over six weeks which is staggering, unprecedented numbers we've not seen in our history since the great depression. even then it wasn't as fast. but i do think reopenings will allow some people to go back to work. the numbers should come down. the big dilemma here is, is it enough to send a small number of people back to work without the testing and tracing we need, without people feeling confident about going back to work and going back to restaurants and bars. you can't force people to re-engage in economic activity. so i fear we do this in a haphazard way. risk new outbreaks and it winds up being

joining us, seth harris, a visiting professor at cornell institute for public affairs and former acting of labor under president obama, josh brown, ceo of ritholtz wealth management. seth, let's go to you first. the government, it's not just the public, the government is now shaming some of these businesses saying you better give the money back. but here's the thing. the spirit of this program was the paycheck protection program. so we're talking about keeping businesses from laying off their low-wage workers. how is it that the government is now saying they violated the terms of this thing? the government made the terms. >> you're exactly right. i agree with the point that this is the government's fault. businesses have, as their job, making profit. and so companies that can squeeze inside a program that gives them extremely low interest loans that are then forgivable are going to try to do that. so government failed here. the sba, treasury and congress failed to set up rules that made it impossible for publicly traded companies, companies that are sitting on huge pots of capital, comp

joining me is seth harris, former acting labor secretary under president obama.us. you say there has been too much focus on the when to reopen, and not on the how. explain. >> well, we hear the president of the united states talking about a rush to open and, you know, supporting protesters who want everything in our economy open right now. but there are very complicated details of how individual employers open up their work places. we're not getting a lot of guidance on that from the white house or the former labor department. this is a difficult task. they're subject it a legal obligation to make their workplace as safe and healthy as possible. it is different in every workplace. they need a lot of help and i don't think they're getting it. >> georgia is way out in front on this with governor brian kemp allowing nail salons, barbershops, tattoo parlors, massage parlors to reopen friday. they have some safety guidelines that they have put out. let me put those up on the screen. touch free temperature checks for employees, limiting those inside, additional spacing

joining me now, author of revive us again and seth harris, former acting secretary of labor in the obamast to put a finer point on what the governor said, governor cuomo said he treated out these numbers. kentucky mitch mcconnell's state takes 148 billion more from the federal pot than they put in but we don't deserve help now because the 15,000 people who died here were predominantly democrats, he asks? and here are the maps that show the states most dependent on the federal government. this is from u.s. news and world report. notice those states are heavily in the west, very republican states and in the south. and we've talked about this before, the fact that these states don't want to tax, they don't want to pay for education so they don't like to tax rich people and so now they wind up in trouble but new york is the one that mcconnell wants to punish. >> that's exactly why on june 20th, 2020, we are having a poor people assembly to deal with this very question. poverty amidst a pandemic and many of these states who are high povertywell, with lack the health -- but i have a bit of a p

without being there. ♪ ♪ >> seth: our next guest is a senator from the state of california and a former presidential candidate please welcome back to the show senator kamala harrishow are you, senator? thank you so much for making time for us. >> of course, of course. >> seth: we were talking for a second right before we started you did not go home to california where i assume you would be happier and more comfortable. you stayed in d.c. what led you to making that decision >> i -- we need to work on the next bill. that last bill, $2 trillion, it provided some relief but it really is inadequate to meet the needs of the 10 million people just last week who are now unemployed, the small business owners who need support so they can sustain their business, the hospitals that need masks and ventilators and support so that they can help support their workers. and, you know, get childcare for them, because they're coming to work every day, risking their own health for the safety of their community. so, there's a lot of work to be done and so i'm here, and, you know, we're having marathon phone conferences to work on the substance of the next bill but we need to -- we n

we had a former obama official on the show yesterday, seth harris, who said the president should resign, that this is failed leadership that has put us in a catastrophic position. pretty harsh statement. but i'll ask that you debunk that. we have a government that ordered up 100,000 body bags at this point. they won't streamline. the president will not streamline the dpa to focus on masks and ventilators getting directly to the people who need them. he's leaving it to the governors. you have california that's doing pretty well in leadership. started early, and the numbers are going down. then you have places like georgia, where the governor just figured out this week that there are asymptomatic carriers. i mean, the stupidity level on the highest levels of leadership in states is showing itself during this crisis. and you have the governor of florida just shutting down the state late last night, just late last night, while we are considered to be in florida, in miami especially, to be the next hot spot, to have overrun hospitals and deaths, staggering numbers through the roof. the quest

♪ >> announcer: tonight, on "late night with seth meyers" -- senator kamala harris. ♪ featuring the 8gmanaged to be a hotel caretaker, wrote a book. i'm sure it wasn't a good book, but still, a lot of pages. anyway, let's get to the news. oh, and real quick, martha stewart said she didn't like this lamp we're working on a new lamp. trying to get in touch with my lamp guy so, stay tuned for more lamp according to a new poll, 85% of florida voters approve of infectious disease expert dr. anthony fauci's handling of the coronavirus pandemic, especially when the alternative is that it gets handled by another florida voter. president trump on friday fired the intelligen

it's just like -- whaaat [ light laughter ] >> yeah. >> seth: well, i'm going to go grab another drink anyone need anything?| >> mr. harrishe head >> seth: no. [ light laughter ] >> that's cool hey, that reminds me, i'm gonna hit the head wanna come with? [ light laughter ] >> seth: just said no. >> oh, i thought you said you don't know i said no. [ light laughter ] >> oh. so you wanna come with >> seth: no. [ laughter ] >> great bye. have a great song, hugh laurie [ laughter ] [ applause ] kind of feel like this sketch was just getting some momentum, but i'll see you around anyways. right on so wasted. [ light laughter ] >> you know, every time we go out after work, graham gets so drunk. >> he's not that drunk [ light laughter ] >> so wasted need to hit the head [ light laughter ] >> hey, guys >> hey, susan's here >> susan, you're here. i'ma hit the head, come with [ laughter ] >> no, i just got here >> i know. i'm so hammered. this place is crazy. you should come with [ light laughter ] >> graham, get off her hey, susan >> hi. >> i hear that this place is off the chain. i'm so plastered right now [ light laughter ] hey,

. ♪ >> seth: we've got a lot coming up this week, including all new "closer looks" and guests senator kamala harrise right back. ♪ by the end of my world tour i'll turn you all into rock zombies. rock and roll! [ screaming ] if we're gonna save the world we need to unite all the trolls. like country. the country trolls look friendly. get em'. [ screaming ] hip hop. ♪ tiny diamond is my name peace and love tiny and daddy out. and techno. -get ready for the drop. wait for it. come on man! ♪ one more time ♪ >> seth: tonight, i'd like to close with a segment called "who i miss," in which i will tell you about crew members who, with each passing day, i realize i cannot do without. ♪ i miss donna richards. donna is in charge of my wardrobe at "late night. every show night, i go to my dressing room to find my suit hanging and ready to go. and at no point have i ever had to yell, "donna? where did i leave my suit? after i put on my suit, donna gives me a once-over donna is more quick and skillful with a lint roller than zorro is with his blade before you even know what happened, you realize the lint is gon