i am joined now by democratic senator tammy baldwin of wisconsin. senator, thank you for joining us. let me ask you, first, about that economic news. the president, there, saying he thinks by next year, this economy's going to be -- by the end of this year, the economy's going to be firing again. we stipulate -- all the experts seem to agree the unemployment rate is going to be high here for a long time. i guess the question i have for you is, when do you think this th economy will start to have some positive momentum again? does it just depend on a vaccine, a treatment, for this? >> certainly, it depends on all sorts of factors and part of it is leadership on -- from the president. you know, the president wants to reopen the economy. we all want to reopen the economy. the president calls himself -- we need a real leader right now. the senate returned to begin work on those things. but the president seems to be avoiding standing up to the occasion and getting those really hard things done. so whether that's a national testing strategy, that can be f

senator, tammy baldwin from wisconsin. was at the hearing today, pressing on questions about testing capacity and other aspects of reopening the country. thank you for joining us. real quick before we get to the meat of it, i'm just curious. at the basic level, like everyone who has had a zoom birthday call these days or anything else, how was it trying to do this remotely at your job today? >> well, it was absolutely remarkable to have all four witnesses join us remotely, and all of the members teleworking from their offices or capitol hill apartments or their home, both the chair and ranking member were remote in their home states. and, you know, we were called back to washington, d.c. to do oversight and to work on issues. i just have to throw in my criticism of the fact that we have done nothing related to the pandemic on the senate floor since we were called back into session. >> what do you think that you learned? we highlighted a few aspects of today's hearing. what did you learn and what is important for your const

you look at wisconsin where 2018, democrats select, they defeat scott walker, reelect tammy baldwin, a left a democrat to every statewide office and when 200,000 more votes for the state assembly but republicans hold 6336 edge and you can't change that at the ballot box. it doesn't work that way. it is going to be really hard to beat in some of these places but the only way to do it in some states is to keep going, keep trying. what else have we got here? any questions you are excited by? >> okay. do you worry about minority representation that will always exist in the senate? 40 million in california get the same representation, my question, wyoming. k, 40 million get the same center representation is 580,000 in wyoming, seems the senate will always find red. any idea what can be done or other thoughts? you have an idea? i will be brief. >> let's go first. >> there's federalism. you have a giant federal government that spend a lot of money on armaments. there is this whole military-industrial complex blowing money, benefits a lot of these red states, proportional representation agai

. >>> we want to bring in now democratic senator tammy baldwin it wisconsin.rned the governor's stay-at-home order. so, senator, first of all how are things going in your state? >> well, we now have a patchwork of regulations and rules in cities and counties across the state, and that caused a little bit of chaos. it has also prevented us from reopening in an orderly way and following the best practices, the gating criteria that's out there of two weeks of declining rates in new cases and having sufficient ppe for people to restart businesses but also protect their workers and their customers. this was so disappointing to see this pandemic politicized. this was a lawsuit that went before our supreme court, brought by the republican leadership of the state legislature to question a public health ruling that was keeping wisconsinites safe. it was so disappointing to see our state supreme court play politics rather than focus on the public health. >> so explain the patchwork now that you are working with. where are the biggest inconsistencies and sources of confu

lth of our workers, and have joined 30 of my colleagues n introducing legislation led by senator tammy baldwin of wisconsin to require the labor department to do just that. why is this so important? helpful to is be workers? >> the guidelines aren't enforceable, because iny are guidelines, early on this crisis, the cdc told people not to wear masks. that might have been a mistake, that if we had all wore masks early on, we might the process, and we might not have had to shut down country as rapidly and as drastically as we did. so if, in fact, there were pecific guidelines that were enforceable, that we could enforce allniformly across the way, i think it would go a long way in order to our problem. we heard earlier about a packing ouse, quite honestly, that had not done some of the things they should have done early, and there were large outbreaks there. now, there is a specific reason for that because of the science packing house. air a high volume conditioned unit that is humid and the virus stays airborne longer. now, again, like the professor necessarily tell whether or not the person con

health of our workers and i've joined 30 of my colleagues in introducing legislation led by senator tammy baldwin of wisconsin who required the labor department to do just that. why is this so important? how would this be helpful to your workers? >> well, it would be helpful in the following fashion. if presently right now osha has indicated they are recommending that they follow cdc guidelines and cdc guidelines aren't necessarily enforceable because they're guidelines, early on in this crisis the cdc initially told people not to wear masks. we now know that might have been a mistake, that if we all wore masks early on we might have slowed the process and might not have had to shut down the country as rapidly and as drastically as we did. so if, in fact, there were specific guidelines that were enforceable that we could ultimately uniformly enforce all across the way, i think that it would go a long way to resolve our problem. we heard about a packing house that had not done some of the things they had done early and there were large outbreaks. there's a specific reason because of the science in