[House Hearing, 116 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
INEQUITIES EXPOSED: HOW COVID-19
WIDENED RACIAL INEQUITIES IN
EDUCATION, HEALTH, AND THE WORKFORCE
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
AND LABOR
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD IN WASHINGTON, DC, JUNE 22, 2020
__________
Serial No. 116-59
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Education and Labor
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via the: https://edlabor.house.gov or www.govinfo.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
41-114 PDF WASHINGTON : 2022
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND LABOR
ROBERT C. ``BOBBY'' SCOTT, Virginia, Chairman
Susan A. Davis, California Virginia Foxx, North Carolina,
Raul M. Grijalva, Arizona Ranking Member
Joe Courtney, Connecticut David P. Roe, Tennessee
Marcia L. Fudge, Ohio Glenn Thompson, Pennsylvania
Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan, Tim Walberg, Michigan
Northern Mariana Islands Brett Guthrie, Kentucky
Frederica S. Wilson, Florida Bradley Byrne, Alabama
Suzanne Bonamici, Oregon Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin
Mark Takano, California Elise M. Stefanik, New York
Alma S. Adams, North Carolina Rick W. Allen, Georgia
Mark DeSaulnier, California Lloyd Smucker, Pennsylvania
Donald Norcross, New Jersey Jim Banks, Indiana
Pramila Jayapal, Washington Mark Walker, North Carolina
Joseph D. Morelle, New York James Comer, Kentucky
Susan Wild, Pennsylvania Ben Cline, Virginia
Josh Harder, California Russ Fulcher, Idaho
Lucy McBath, Georgia Steve Watkins, Kansas
Kim Schrier, Washington Ron Wright, Texas
Lauren Underwood, Illinois Daniel Meuser, Pennsylvania
Jahana Hayes, Connecticut Dusty Johnson, South Dakota
Donna E. Shalala, Florida Fred Keller, Pennsylvania
Andy Levin, Michigan* Gregory F. Murphy, North Carolina
Ilhan Omar, Minnesota Jefferson Van Drew, New Jersey
David J. Trone, Maryland
Haley M. Stevens, Michigan
Susie Lee, Nevada
Lori Trahan, Massachusetts
Joaquin Castro, Texas
* Vice-Chair
Veronique Pluviose, Staff Director
Brandon Renz, Minority Staff Director
------
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on June 22, 2020.................................... 1
Statement of Members:
Foxx, Hon. Virginia, Ranking Member, Committee on Education
and Labor.................................................. l9
Prepared statement of.................................... 11
Scott, Hon. Robert C. ``Bobby'', Chairman, Committee on
Education and Labor........................................ 1
Prepared statement of.................................... 7
Statement of Witness:
Jones, Dr. Camara P., M.D., M.P.H., Ph.D., Adjunct Professor,
Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University, Senior
Fellow and Adjunct Associate Professor, Morehouse School of
Medicine, Past President, American Public Health
Association Atlanta GA..................................... 13
Prepared statement of.................................... 16
King, Mr. John B., Jr., President and CEO, The Education
Trust, Washington, DC...................................... 77
Prepared statement of.................................... 80
Rawlston Wilson, Ms. Valerie, Ph.D., Director, Program on
Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy, Economic Policy
Institute, Silver Spring, MD............................... 36
Prepared statement of.................................... 39
Roy, Mr. Avik, Co-Founder and President, The Foundation for
Research on Equal Opportunity, Austin, TX.................. 52
Prepared statement of.................................... 55
Additional Submissions:
Mrs. Foxx:
Article: Failure in the Virtual Classroom................ 187
Chairman Scott:
Report: Black Workers Face Two of the Most Lethal
Preexisting Conditions for Coronavirus, Racism and
Economic Inequality.................................... 156
Memorandum: Information Requested about Racial
Disparities in Private Health Insurance and Mecaid and
COVID-19 Related Issues................................ 191
Memorandum: Responses to Various Elementary and Secondary
Education, Higher Education and Homeless Youth
Questions Related to the Ongoing Coronavirus Pandemic.. 212
Memorandum: Equity Issues in the Labor Market and COVID-
19..................................................... 229
Questions submitted for the record by:
Morelle, Hon. Joseph, a Representative in Congress from
the State of New York.................................. 253
Sablan, Hon. Gregorio Kilili Camacho, a Representative in
Congress from the Northern Marinara Islands............ 253
Stevens, Hon. Haley M., a Representative in Congress from
the State of Michigan.................................. 253
Mr. King responses to questions submitted for the record..... 254
INEQUITIES EXPOSED: HOW COVID-19
WIDENED RACIAL INEQUITIES IN
EDUCATION, HEALTH, AND THE WORKFORCE
----------
Monday, June 22, 2020
House of Representatives,
Committee on Education and Labor,
Washington, DC
----------
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 12:02 p.m., via
Webex, Hon. Robert C. ``Bobby'' Scott (Chairman of the
committee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Scott, Davis, Grijalva, Courtney,
Fudge, Wilson, Bonamici, Takano, Adams, Norcross, Jayapal,
Morelle, Wild, Harder, McBath, Schrier, Underwood, Hayes,
Shalala, Levin, Trone, Stevens, Trahan, Foxx, Thompson,
Walberg, Byrne, Grothman, Stefanik, Allen, Smucker, Banks,
Cline, Watkins, Meuser, Johnson, Keller, and Van Drew.
Staff Present: Tylease, Alli, Chief Clerk; Ilana, Brunner,
General Counsel; Ijeoma, Egekeze, Professional Staff;
Christian, Haines, General Counsel; Sheila, Havenner, Director
of Information Technology; Carrie, Hughes, Director of Health
and Human Services; Eli, Hovland, Staff Assistant; Andre,
Lindsay, Staff Assistant; Jaria, Martin, Clerk/Special
Assistant to the Staff Director; Richard, Miller, Director of
Labor Policy; Katelyn, Mooney, Associate General Counsel; Max,
Moore, Staff Assistant; Mariah, Mowbray, Staff Assistant;
Jacque, Mosely, Director of Education Policy; Veronique,
Pluviose, Staff Director; Lakeisha, Steele, Professional Staff;
West, Rachel, Senior Economic Policy Advisor; Cyrus Artz,
Minority Staff Director; Gabriel Bisson, Minority Staff
Assistant; Courtney Butcher, Minority Director of Member
Services and Coalitions; Rob Green, Minority Director of
Workforce Policy; Jeanne Keuhl, Minority Legislative Assistant;
John Martin, Minority Workforce Policy Counsel; Hannah Matesic,
Minority Director of Operations; Carlton Norwood, Minority
Press Secretary; Brad Thomas, Minority Senior Education Policy
Advisor.
Chairman Scott. The Committee on Education and Labor will
come to order.
And welcome to everyone. I note that a quorum is present.
The committee is meeting today on a hearing to hear testimony
on ``Inequities Exposed: How COVID-19 Widened the Racial
Inequities in Education, Health, and the Workforce.''
This is an entirely remote hearing pursuant to House
Resolution 965 and the regulations thereto. As a general rule,
I will ask that microphones including those of Members and
witnesses be kept muted to avoid unnecessary background noise.
Members are responsible for un-muting themselves when they are
recognized to speak or when they wish to seek recognition.
And somebody is not muted right now. Can you check to see
if you are muted?
Further, Members are required to leave their cameras on the
entire time they are in an official proceeding, even if they
step away from the camera, in which case we should see an empty
chair. As this is an entirely remote hearing, the committee's
hearing room is officially closed.
Members who chose to sit with their individual devices in
the hearing room must wear headphones to avoid feedback,
echoes, and distortion resulting for more than one person on
the platform, sitting in the same room.
We are also expected to adhere to the social distancing
healthcare guidelines, including the use of masks, gloves, and
wiping down the area before and after their presence in the
hearing room. And I will also note that when you ask questions,
if you are in the hearing room, if the witnesses also in the
hearing room, it would help if you mute while the answer is
taking place, because the answer is picked up by your mike and
then that echoes back and there is usually distortion.
While the roll call is not necessary to establish a quorum
in an official proceeding conducted remotely, whenever there is
an official proceeding, with remote participation, the clerk
will call the roll to help make clear who is present at the
start of the proceeding.
And so I will ask the clerk to call the roll.
The Clerk. Chairman Scott.
Chairman Scott. Present.
The Clerk. Mrs. Davis.
Mrs. Davis. Present.
The Clerk. Mr. Grijalva.
Mr. Grijalva. Present.
The Clerk. Mr. Courtney.
Mr. Courtney. Present.
The Clerk. Ms. Fudge.
Ms. Fudge. Present.
The Clerk. Mr. Sablan.
Ms. Wilson.
Ms. Wilson. Present.
The Clerk. Ms. Bonamici.
Ms. Bonamici. Present.
The Clerk. Mr. Takano.
Ms. Adams.
Ms. Adams. Present.
The Clerk. Mr. DeSaulnier.
Mr. Norcross.
Mr. Norcross. Present.
The Clerk. Ms. Jayapal.
Mr. Jayapal. Present.
The Clerk. Mr. Morelle.
Mr. Morelle. Present.
Mr. Hawkins. Ms. Wild.
Mr. Harder.
Mrs. McBath.
Mrs. McBath. Present.
The Clerk. Ms. Schrier.
Ms. Schrier. Present.
The Clerk. Ms. Underwood.
Ms. Underwood. Present.
The Clerk. Mrs. Hayes.
Ms. Shalala.
Mr. Levin.
Mr. Levin. Present.
The Clerk. Ms. Omar.
Mr. Trone.
Ms. Stevens.
Ms. Stevens. Present. Thank you.
The Clerk. Mrs. Lee.
Mrs. Trahan.
Mrs. Trahan. Present.
The Clerk. Mr. Castro.
Ms. Foxx.
Ms. Foxx. Present.
The Clerk. Mr. Roe.
Mr. Thompson.
Mr. Walberg.
Mr. Walberg. Present.
The Clerk. Mr. Guthrie.
Mr. Byrne.
Mr. Byrne. Present.
The Clerk. Mr. Grothman.
Ms. Stefanik.
Mr. Stefanik. Present.
The Clerk. Mr. Allen.
Mr. Allen. Present.
The Clerk. Mr. Smucker.
Mr. Banks.
Mr. Walker.
Mr. Comer.
Mr. Cline.
Mr. Cline. Present.
The Clerk. Mr. Fulcher.
Mr. Watkins.
Mr. Watkins. Present.
The Clerk. Mr. Wright.
Mr. Meuser.
Mr. Meuser. Present.
The Clerk. Mr. Johnson.
Mr. Johnson. Present, ma'am.
The Clerk. Mr. Keller.
Mr. Keller. Present.
The Clerk. Mr. Murphy.
Mr. Van Drew.
Mr. Van Drew. Present.
The Clerk. Chairman Scott, this concludes the roll call.
Ms. Wild. Excuse me. Susan Wild, present.
Chairman Scott. Thank you.
Does anyone else want to note their presence?
Ms. Underwood. Lauren Underwood, present.
Mr. Trone. David Trone, present.
Chairman Scott. David Trone.
Ms. Underwood.
Ms. Foxx. Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Scott. Hello?
Ms. Foxx. Mr. Chairman, it is Congresswoman Foxx.
I just want to note that Congressman Thompson was here and
stepped out for just a moment and also that we have several
members at Mrs. Barr's funeral today, both Kentucky people as
well as other States. So there are several absent because of
that funeral going on right now.
Chairman Scott. That is certainly understandable.
Thank you very much.
Pursuant to Committee Rule 7(c), opening statements are
limited to the Chair and Ranking Member. This allows us to hear
from our witnesses sooner and provides all members with
adequate time to ask questions.
I now recognize myself for the purpose of making an opening
statement.
First, following up on the Ranking Member's comment, I want
to express my deepest condolences to our colleagues who are
mourning the loss of loved ones. Our thoughts and prayers are
with Representative Omar for the loss of her father,
Representative Bonamici for the loss of her mother,
Representative Barr for the loss of his wife, and our friend
not on the committee but our good friend, Jim Sensenbrenner,
for the loss of his wife. We are living in tough times for
everyone but I know that these are particularly difficult times
for those mentioned and we just want to wish them strength and
peace and know that we are with them during this difficult
time.
Today we are discussing how COVID-19 pandemic is
exacerbating racial inequalities in education, labor, and
health and the steps Congress must take to address these
disparities.
A mountain of evidence has made it clear that to
effectively respond to this pandemic, we must address the
widening existing racial inequities in education, the
workforce, and our healthcare system. In the area of education,
racial bias, both intentionally and unconscious, and chronic
underfunding of schools serving students of color produce
persistent achievement gaps.
We know that our Nation's K through 12 public schools
entered this pandemic with a $23 billion racial funding gap.
That is the difference between the funding in school districts
serving predominantly students of color compared to school
districts serving predominantly White students.
As schools abruptly closed, this funding gap has positioned
students of color to fall even further behind their peers.
Black and Latino students who are less likely to attend schools
that have the capacity to rapidly establish high-quality
distance learning programs. They are also less likely to have
the basic technology such as a personal computer, the high-
speed internet, and the support at home needed to access
virtual learning. As a result, Latino students are expected to
lose 9 months of learning and Black students are expected to
lose 10 months of learning due to the pandemic. Our White
students are expected to lose only 6 months.
In addition to the pandemic's impact on the achievement
gap, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities projects that
states will face a $615 billion revenue shortfall over the next
three years due to the pandemic. As the committee discussed
during a hearing last week, the public education is usually one
of the largest expenditures, accounting for an average 40
percent of state budgets. And unless the Federal Government
provides immediate relief to State and local governments, it
won't matter whether funding for education will be cut. It
won't matter whether education funding will be cut but how much
those cuts in education will be.
While wealthier districts can fall back on property tax
revenue, low-income public school districts will have to
continue to rely heavily on state funding. For school districts
that predominantly serve students of color, the severe cuts in
education and supporting social service programs will come at
the time of greatest need. The consequences of these shortfalls
are already evident. Nearly 750,000 public school employees
have already lost their jobs since March. In Colorado, the
State legislature just passed a budget that cuts $1 billion
from its schools next year. In the area of the workforce,
outlook for workers of color is similarly concerning.
Black and Latino workers that faced significantly higher
rates of unemployment and lower wages long before the pandemic
have borne a disproportionate share of the layoffs. Although
the rate of employment for White and Latino workers has
lowered, rates for Black workers has actually increased in
recent weeks.
Among those who remain employed, workers of color are more
likely to be employed in occupations such as meatpacking,
grocery, healthcare, and transportation with the highest risk
of infection. Fewer than 20 percent of Black and Latino workers
can work from home, compared to nearly 30 percent of White
workers. More than 4 in 10 Black workers lack employment-
provided sick days.
Because of these disparities, workers of color have been
disproportionately affected by the Department of Labor's
refusal to off--to issue enforceable workplace safety standards
to protect workers from COVID-19.
In addition to working in sectors with the highest risk of
COVID-19 infections, Black and Latino workers
disproportionately work in low-wage jobs. Regrettably, Congress
has not raised the Federal minimum wage in more than a decade,
the longest period of time in its history. Worse still, legal
labor laws and hostile courts have eroded labor union
membership and workers' collective bargaining rights which have
left the very essential workers vulnerable to poverty, unsafe
workplaces, and a deadly virus.
The most profound consequence of racial inequality in our
society has been the pandemic's devastating impact on the
health of people of color. Nationwide, African Americans have
been dying from COVID-19 infections at about two and half times
the rate of White Americans.
In New York City, the epicenter of COVID-19 infections and
deaths, the death rate for Latinos in the months of April was
about 22 people per 100,000 adjusted for population size and
age. American Indian and Native communities are suffering
disproportionately from the COVID-19 infections.
In late May, the Navajo Nation surpassed New York and New
Jersey with the most infections per capita. This follows a
pattern of past diseases where Native American communities bore
the brunt of disease outbreaks due to the chronic, long-term
underfunding of healthcare across Indian Country.
As with these challenges in education and workforce issues,
the health disparities are rooted in structural inequality.
People of color entered the pandemic with health conditions
often caused by structural problems including healthcare
discrimination, housing instability, food insecurity, and
limited access to transportation. Years of statewide budget
cuts in public health have led to limited funding of rural
health--rural and community hospitals in communities of color,
leaving families with few options to receive quality care.
Unfortunately, instead of increasing access to healthcare
coverage, the Trump administration has been actively working to
take it away in the midst of the public health emergency. The
Texas lawsuit threatens the entirety of the Affordable Care Act
of all of the law's coverage gains and consumer protections.
These cynical efforts disproportionately impact people of
color. If these efforts strike down the law--these efforts to
strike down the law are successful, estimates show that the
uninsured rate among the African American community would
nearly double from 11 percent to 20 percent, and the share of
uninsured Hispanic individuals would grow from 21 percent to 31
percent.
But we are not here to talk about the problem or what they
call ``celebrate'' the problem. We are here to discuss
solutions. The HEROES Act, which the House passed last month,
would take important steps towards addressing racial
inequalities that have been exposed and exacerbated through the
pandemic.
With respect to education, legislation dedicates nearly $1
trillion in relief for States and localities to help avert
painful cuts to public schools. It also goes a step further by
proposing more than $100 billion in additional emergency
education funding to help cover the costs of cleaning supplies
and other expenses required to reopen, purchase educational
technology like laptops and hotspots, sustain special education
for students with disabilities, and help colleges and
universities maintain their institutions.
To support workers, the HEROES Act directs OSHA to rapidly
issue an emergency temporary standard that would require
employees to implement protections for workers who are at
highest risk for contracting COVID-19. It also expands access
to emergency paid leave to nearly 140 million--to 140 million
workers.
And while paid leave provisions in the Families First
Coronavirus Virus Response Act took important steps in the
right direction, far too many workers, including many
healthcare workers, were excluded from those protections.
So this bill--so the HEROES Act puts family and medical
back into family and medical leave by dramatically expanding
the circumstances in which workers can take 12 weeks of
Emergency Family and Medical Leave Act pay and we should not
force workers to choose between a paycheck, their health, and
the health of the people around them.
Improved health outcomes, the HEROES Act, expands
healthcare insurance coverage for COVID-19 testing and
treatment, provides full coverage for the cost of COBRA
premiums for laid off and furloughed workers, and increases the
investment in health nutrition and community support by
including $1 billion for special WIC funding and an additional
$1 billion for Community Services Block Grant initiatives to
help address poverty.
Finally the HEROES Act invests $75 billion in testing and
contact tracing to help contain the virus. This includes $500
million to recruit and train contact workers through the public
work case--through the public workforce system and community-
based organizations. Collectively these provisions represent a
major step taken by Congress to help our Nation get through
this global healthcare crisis.
As we confront this unprecedented challenge, we must accept
our responsibility to build a recovery that uplifts all
communities. But if we fail to act, we will be experiencing a
recovery that offers relief to some but leaves many low-income
communities and people of color to face long-lasting or even
permanent setbacks in education, job opportunities, and access
to healthcare.
This systemic problem has stained our country's legacy for
too long. I look forward to hearing from our witnesses who will
share with us the scope of the challenge and the policy
considerations to get us on the right course.
I am now pleased to recognize the distinguished ranking
member, Dr. Foxx, for the purpose of her open statement.
[The statement of Chairman Scott follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Robert C. ``Bobby'' Scott, Chairman,
Committee on Education and Labor
Today, we are discussing how the COVID-19 pandemic is exacerbating
racial inequalities in education, labor, and health, and the steps
Congress must take to address these disparities.
A mountain of evidence has made it clear that, to effectively
respond to the pandemic, we must address the widened existing racial
inequities in education, the workforce, and our health care system.
In the area of education, racial bias - both intentional and
unconscious - and chronic underfunding of schools serving students of
color have produced persistent achievement gaps.
We know that our nation's K-12 public schools entered this pandemic
with a $23 billion racial funding gap. That's the difference between
the funding in school districts serving predominantly students of color
compared to school districts serving predominantly white students.
As schools abruptly closed, this funding gap has positioned
students of color to fall even further behind their peers.
Black and Latino students were less likely to attend schools that
had the capacity to rapidly establish high-quality distance learning
programs. They are also less likely to have the basic technology, such
as a personal computer and high-speed internet, and the support at home
needed to access virtual learning.
As a result, Latino students are expected to lose 9 months of
learning and Black students are expected to lose 10 of learning due to
the pandemic, while white students are expected to lose only six
months.
In addition to the pandemic's impact on the achievement gap, the
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities projects that states will face a
$615 billion revenue shortfall over the next three years due to the
pandemic.
As the Committee discussed during a hearing last week, public
education is usually one of their largest expenditures, accounting for
- on average - 40 percent of state budgets. And, unless the federal
government provides immediate state and local funding relief, it won't
be a matter of whether education funding will be cut, but how much
those cuts in education will be.
While wealthier districts can fall back on property tax revenue,
low-income public schools district will have to continue to rely
heavily on state funding. For school districts that predominantly serve
students of color, the severe cuts in education and supporting social
service programs will come at a time of greatest need.
The consequences of these shortfalls are already evident. Nearly
750,000 public school employees have lost their jobs since March. In
Colorado, the state legislature just passed a budget that cuts $1
billion from its schools for next year.
In the area of the workforce, the outlook for workers of color is
similarly concerning. Black and Latino workers, who faced significantly
higher rates of unemployment and lower wages long before the pandemic,
have borne a disproportionate share of layoffs. Although the rate of
unemployment for white and Latino workers has lowered, rates for Black
workers have actually increased in recent weeks.
Among those who remained employed, workers of color are more likely
to be employed in occupations - such as meatpacking, grocery, health
care, and transportation - with the highest risk of infection. Fewer
than 20 percent of Black and Latino workers can work from home,
compared to nearly 30 percent of white workers. More than 4 in 10 Black
workers lack employer-provided paid sick days.
Because of these disparities, workers of color have also been
disproportionately affected by the Department of Labor's refusal to
issue enforceable workplace safety standards to protect workers from
COVID-19.
In addition to working in sectors with the highest risk of COVID-19
infections, Black and Latino workers disproportionately work in low-
wage jobs. Regrettably, Congress has not raised the federal minimum
wage in more than a decade, the longest period of time in its history.
Worse still, weak labor laws and hostile courts have eroded labor union
membership and workers' collective bargaining rights, which have left
these very essential workers vulnerable to poverty, unsafe workplaces,
and a deadly virus.
But the most profound consequence of racial inequality in our
society has been the pandemic's devastating impact on the health of
people of color.
Nationwide, African Americans have been dying from COVID-19
infections at about two-and-a-half times the rate of white Americans.
In New York City, the epicenter of COVID-19 infections and deaths, the
death rate for Latinos in the month of April was about 22 people per
100,000, adjusted for population size and age.
American Indian and Alaskan Native communities are suffering
disproportionately from COVID-19 infection rates. In late May, the
Navajo Nation surpassed New York and New Jersey with the most
infections per capita. This follows the pattern of past diseases, where
Native American communities bore the brunt of disease outbreaks due to
the chronic, long-term underfunding of health care across Indian
Country.
As with the challenges in education and workforce issue, the health
disparities are rooted in structural inequality. People of color
entered the pandemic with health conditions often caused by structural
problems, including health care discrimination, housing instability,
food insecurity, and limited access to transportation.
Years of statewide budget cuts in public health has led to limited
funding for rural and community hospitals in communities of color--
leaving families with few options to receive quality care.
Unfortunately, instead of increasing access to health care
coverage, the Trump Administration and Republicans are still actively
working to take it away in the midst of a public health emergency. The
Texas lawsuit threatens the entirety of the Affordable Care Act and all
of the law's coverage gains and consumer protections.
These cynical efforts disproportionately impact people of color. If
these efforts to strike down the law are successful, estimates show
that the uninsured rate among Black people would nearly double from 11
to 20 percent. The share of uninsured Hispanic individuals and families
would grow from 21 to 31 percent.
But we are not here to celebrate problems, we are here to discuss
solutions.
The Heroes Act, which the House passed last month, would take
important steps toward addressing the racial inequities that have been
exposed and exacerbated through this pandemic.
With respect to education, the legislation dedicates nearly $1
trillion in relief for states and localities to help avert painful cuts
to public schools. It also goes a step further by proposing more than
$100 billion in additional emergency educational funding to help cover
the cost of cleaning supplies and other expenses required to reopen;
purchase educational technology, like laptops and hotspots; sustain
special education for students with disabilities; and help colleges and
universities maintain their institutions.
To support workers, the Heroes Act directs OSHA to rapidly issue an
Emergency Temporary Standard that would require employers to implement
protections for workers who are at the highest risk of contracting
COVID-19.
It also expands access to emergency paid sick leave to nearly 140
million workers.
While paid leave provisions in the Families First Coronavirus
Response Act took important steps in the right direction, far too many
workers - including many health care workers - were excluded from these
protections.
The Heroes Act also puts ``family'' and ``medical'' back into
``family and medical leave'' by dramatically expanding the
circumstances in which workers can take the 12 weeks of emergency F-M-
L-A paid leave. We should not force workers to choose between their
paycheck, their health, and the health of the people around them.
To improve health outcomes, the Heroes Act expands health insurance
coverage for COVID-19 testing and treatment; provides full coverage of
the cost of COBRA premiums for laid off and furloughed workers; and,
increases investment in health, nutrition, and community support
programs, including $1 billion for WIC funding and $1 billion in
funding for Community Services Block Grant initiatives to help address
poverty.
Finally, the Heroes Act invest $75 billion in testing and contact
tracing to contain the virus. This includes $500 million to recruit and
train contact tracing workers through public workforce systems and
community-based organizations.
Collectively, these provisions represent the immediate next step
Congress must take to help our nation get through this global health
crisis.
As we confront this unprecedented challenge, we must accept our
responsibility to build a recovery that uplifts all communities. But,
if we fail to act, we will be experiencing a recovery that offers
relief to some but leaves low-income communities and people of color to
face long-lasting or even permanent setbacks in education, job
opportunities, and access to health care. This systemic problem has
stained our country's legacy for too long.
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses who will share with us
the scope of this challenge and the policy considerations to right the
course.
I now recognize the distinguished Ranking Member, Dr. Foxx, for the
purpose of making an opening statement.
______
Ms. Foxx. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Before we begin, I also want to extend my condolences to
our colleagues, Andy Barr, Jim Sensenbrenner, Suzanne Bonamici,
and Ilhan Omar who suffered the loss of loved ones recently. My
prayers go out to them and their families during this difficult
time.
Mr. Chairman, you have heard me express my concerns about
these virtual committee hearings. But it bears repeating. They
fly in the face of 230 years of congressional and legislative
precedent. These virtual events undermine what our Founders
intended when they created our representative Republic.
Americans are stepping up to help combat this virus while
their elected leaders in the House entrusted with the job of
representing their constituents stay home. It is shameful,
shameful.
A number of my--and, Mr. Chairman, just so you know, you
mentioned this was an entirely remote hearing. It is not. A
number of my Republican colleagues and I are participating in
this hearing today from the committee room in Washington, DC,
and I encourage you and all the other Members to return to
congressional precedent and hold our hearings in person.
Now turning to the topic of today's virtual hearing, the
coronavirus and related State-imposed shutdowns have caused
devastating job losses and unemployment rates not seen since
the Great Depression. Additionally, schools were forced to
close their doors abruptly and switch to remote learning
overnight which impacted 97 percent of our country's students.
But let's remember that prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the
U.S. economy and labor market were strong. Real GDP increased
2.3 percent in 2019 and 2.9 percent in 2018. In February, 2020,
the unemployment rate was at a historic low of 3.5 percent.
Black unemployment was 5.4 percent in August, 2019, the lowest
ever recorded.
In September, 2019, the Hispanic unemployment rate was 3.9
percent, also the lowest ever recorded. And in June, 2019,
Asian unemployment was a record low 2.1 percent.
Furthermore, at the beginning of 2020, workers in the
bottom 10 percent of income had higher average wage growth than
those in the top 10 percent. By January, 2020, low income
workers--low income earners saw a 15 percent increase in pay
since the President took office.
However, we know that Americans, including minority
communities, have felt the negative effects of these
unprecedented times. The Centers For Disease Control and
Prevention, CDC, estimates that Blacks and Hispanics account
for nearly 40 percent of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. Minority
communities have also been impacted economically by pandemic-
related shutdowns with the rate of Black-owned businesses
falling 41 percent, Hispanic-owned businesses falling 32
percent, and Asian-owned businesses falling 26 percent.
We know the pro-growth policies enacted by congressional
Republicans and the Trump administration benefited workers,
employers, and families before the onset of the COVID-19
pandemic. Reopening the economy responsibly and ensuring public
health are not mutually exclusive. We can and we must open
America again, while taking into consideration the
recommendations from our public health officials.
Look at the May jobs report for proof. Last month 2.5
million jobs were added to the economy, a significant indicator
that reopening the economy safely is the best way to help all
Americans get back on their feet. Also just last week the Wall
Street Journal reported that, quote, new layoffs are being
offset by employers hiring or recalling workers their States
have allowed more businesses to reopen in recent weeks.
The White House and CDC have issued guidelines for opening
up America again. These detailed guidelines which include three
phases based on professional guidance from public health
officials are intended to help State and local leaders make
timely decisions about reopening the economy and getting people
back to work, while protecting lives.
And, in fact, every State has started implementing phased
reopening plans, allowing nonessential businesses to reopen and
operate safely, allowing employees to return to work, and
allowing Americans to begin resuming daily activities.
As I previously mentioned, the pre-pandemic economy ushered
in under the Republican-led Congress and the Trump
administration benefited workers, employers, and families
alike. Employment was at record lows including minority
unemployment, low-income earners saw a 15 percent increase in
pay, and 7 million jobs were available and ready to be filled.
If we hope to achieve pre-pandemic economic conditions that
enable Americans to flourish and reach their greatest
potential, we must continue forging a forward-looking path to
help minority communities to recover and prosper as they were
prior to the pandemic.
The Nation's economic recovery and path to prosperity for
all Americans is contingent upon reopening our Nation's schools
and businesses safely and responsibly. Mandating further
topdown Federal laws and policies as proposed by House
Democrats will only compound the challenges that all Americans
currently face as we continue to combat COVID-19.
I want to thank the witnesses for participating in this
hearing, but I hope in the future we can have all our witnesses
testify here with us in Washington as we work in person on
behalf of hardworking Americans.
I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
[The statement of Ms. Foxx follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Virginia Foxx, Ranking Member, Committee on
Education and Labor
Mr. Chairman, you've heard me express my concerns about these
virtual Committee hearings, but it bears repeating--they fly in the
face of 230 years of congressional and legislative precedent. These
virtual events undermine what our Founders intended when they created
our representative republic. Americans are stepping up to help combat
this virus, while their elected leaders in the House, entrusted with
the job of representing their constituents, stay home. It's SHAMEFUL. A
number of my Republican colleagues and I are participating in this
hearing today from the Committee hearing room in Washington, DC. I
encourage you to return to congressional precedent and hold our
hearings in person.
Turning to the topic of today's virtual hearing, the coronavirus
and related state- imposed shutdowns have caused devastating job losses
and unemployment rates not seen since the Great Depression.
Additionally, schools were forced to close their doors abruptly and
switch to remote learning overnight, which impacted 97 percent of our
country's students.
But let's remember that prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S.
economy and labor market were strong. Real GDP increased 2.3 percent in
2019 and 2.9 percent in 2018. In February 2020, the unemployment rate
was at a historic low of 3.5 percent. Black unemployment was 5.4
percent in August 2019, the lowest ever recorded. In September 2019,
the Hispanic unemployment rate was 3.9 percent, also the lowest ever
recorded. And in June 2019, Asian unemployment was a record-low 2.1
percent.
Furthermore, at the beginning of 2020, workers in the bottom 10
percent of income had higher average wage growth than those in the top
10 percent. By January 2020, low-income earners saw a 15 percent
increase in pay since the President took office.
However, we know that Americans, including minority communities,
have felt the negative effects of these unprecedented times. The
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that blacks
and Hispanics account for nearly 40 percent of COVID-19 deaths in the
U.S. Minority communities have also been impacted economically by
pandemic-related shutdowns, with the rate of black- owned businesses
falling 41 percent, Hispanic-owned businesses falling 32 percent, and
Asian-owned businesses falling 26 percent.
We know the pro-growth policies enacted by congressional
Republicans and the Trump administration benefited workers, employers,
and families before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Reopening the economy responsibly and ensuring public health are
NOT mutually exclusive. We can, and we must, open America again while
taking into consideration the recommendations from our public health
officials. Look at the May jobs report for proof. Last month, 2.5
million jobs were added to the economy--a significant indicator that
reopening the economy safely is the best way to help all Americans get
back on their feet. Also, just last week the Wall Street Journal
reported that ``new layoffs are being offset by employers hiring or
recalling workers as states have allowed more businesses to reopen in
recent weeks.''
The White House and CDC have issued `Guidelines for Opening Up
America Again.' These detailed guidelines--which include three phases
based on professional guidance from public health officials--are
intended to help state and local leaders make timely decisions about
reopening the economy and getting people back to work while protecting
lives.
And in fact, every state has started implementing phased reopening
plans, allowing non-essential businesses to reopen and operate safely,
allowing employees to return to work, and allowing Americans to begin
resuming daily activities.
As I previously mentioned, the pre-pandemic economy--ushered in
under the Republican-led Congress and the Trump administration--
benefited workers, employers, and families alike. Unemployment was at
record lows, including minority unemployment; low-income earners saw a
15 percent increase in pay; and 7 million jobs were available and ready
to be filled.
If we hope to achieve pre-pandemic economic conditions that enabled
Americans to flourish and reach their greatest potential, we must
continue forging a forward-looking path to help minority communities to
recover and prosper as they were prior to the pandemic.
The nation's economic recovery and path to prosperity for all
Americans is contingent upon reopening our nation's schools and
businesses safely and responsibly. Mandating further top-down federal
laws and policies as proposed by House Democrats will only compound the
challenges that all Americans currently face as we continue to combat
COVID-19.
I want to thank the witnesses for participating in this hearing,
but I hope that in the future we can have all our witnesses testifying
here with us in Washington as we work in person on behalf of
hardworking Americans.
______
Chairman Scott. I thank you, and I look forward to that day
myself.
All other Members who wish to insert written statements
into the record may do so by submitting them to the Committee
Clerk electronically in Microsoft Word format by 5:00 o'clock
Sunday, July 5, 2020. I will now briefly introduce our
witnesses.
Dr. Camara Jones is an adjunct professor of the Rollins
School of Public Health at Emory University, a senior fellow
and adjunct associate professor at Morehouse School of
Medicine, and past president of the American Public Health
Association.
Valerie Wilson is the director of the Program on Race,
Ethnicity, and the Economy at the Economic Policy Institute.
And I am pleased to note she is an alumni of Hampton University
in my district.
Mr. Avik S. A. Roy is president of The Foundation For
Research on Equal Opportunity.
And Mr. John King is the president and CEO of the Education
Trust and former Secretary of the United States Department of
Education.
Instructions to our witnesses. We appreciate the witnesses
for participating today and look forward to your testimony. Let
me remind the witnesses that we have seen your testimony, and
it will appear in full in the hearing record. Pursuant to
committee rule 7(d) and committee practice, each of you is
asked to limit your oral present tying a five-minute summary of
your written statement. Let me remind the witnesses that you
are aware that it is illegal to knowingly and willfully falsify
any statement to Congress. So we will look forward to your
testimony.
During your testimony staff will be keeping track of time
and will use a chime to signal when one minute is left, a brief
chime when one minute is left. And when time is up entirely, a
more obnoxious chime will occur at that time. Please be
attentive to time and when your time is over, please wrap up
your testimony and remute your microphone.
If anyone is experiencing technical difficulties during
your testimony or later in the hearing, you should stay
connected on the platform and make sure you are muted with your
mute button highlighted in red and use your phone to
immediately contact the committee's IT director whose number
has been provided.
We will let all witnesses make their presentations before
we move to member questions. When answering questions, please
remember to unmute your microphone and then remute when you are
finished.
We will first recognize Dr. Jones for five minutes.
STATEMENT OF CAMARA P. JONES, MD, MPH, Ph.D., ADJUNCT
PROFESSOR, ROLLINS SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH AT EMORY UNIVERSITY,
SENIOR FELLOW AND ADJUNCT ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, MOREHOUSE SCHOOL
OF MEDICINE, PAST PRESIDENT, AMERICAN PUBLIC HEALTH ASSOCIATION
ATLANTA, GA
Dr. Jones. Thank you, Chairman Scott and Ranking Member
Foxx, for inviting my testimony this morning, this afternoon.
And as you outlined, COVID-19 has had a tremendously
disproportionate impact on the health and well-being of
communities of color. For example, even right now if you
compare the death rates from COVID-19 by racial ethnic groups,
Black folks are dying at 62 per 100,000, American Indians and
Alaska Natives 36 per 100,000, Latinx people 28 per 100,000,
Asian folks from 26 per 100,000, and White folks 26 per
100,000. And these racial, especially for Black Americans, the
proportion, the 2.3 times that Black Americans are dying
compared to White and Asian Americans has never dipped below 2
for the entire course of the pandemic.
And why is this? It is because communities of color are
more likely to be infected with the virus. And then once
infected, they are more likely to die. They are more likely to
be infected because they are more exposed and less protected,
and then once infected more likely to die because they are more
burdened by chronic diseases with less access to healthcare.
So this doesn't just so happen. You know, we are startled
by what we are seeing with COVID-19. But if opportunity were
equally distributed across this country and if exposure to risk
to equally distributed, there would be no way we could slice
and dice our population and see any differences in terms of
exposure rates, in terms of, you know, infection, in terms of
death.
So what this indicates is that opportunity is not equally
distributed by race ethnicity in this country nor is exposure
to risk and, in fact, they are differentially distributed by
race ethnicity and the name of the system that causes this
differential distribution is racism.
Racism is a system for structuring opportunity and
assigning value based on so-called race, based on the social
interpretations of how one looks, which has three impacts. It
unfairly disadvantages some individuals in communities,
unfairly advantages other individuals in communities, and saps
the strength of the whole society through the waste of human
resources.
I know that there are some people who would assert that
racism doesn't exist or might assert that, if it did exist, it
is systemic. Not, that you know, that it is not systemic, that
it is an individual character flaw. I actually use lots of
allegories to explain to everybody how racism exists. So if
there is one member who wants to ask me in 3 minutes to share
an allegory about that, I don't have time in my opening
statement. But if somebody was wondering about the dual-reality
allegory, I would love that question.
But getting back to what we need to do, first of all, we
need to act. Saying that racism is the basis of these
differences is not an excuse. It is a call to action because
structural racism most often manifests as inaction in the face
of need.
So I am providing you all--I have my own ideas for action
but you guys are in such a great job. I am providing you with
three tools to help guide your future action, to help analyze
how you should go, because we need to ask the why--that is
racism--in order to get to the what. If you don't have the
right answer to why, then the what will never result in
improvements that are all the way.
So, the first tool is the question: How is racism operating
here? Looking at elements of decision-making in our structures,
policies, practices, norms, and values, which are actually,
yeah, elements of decision-making structures are the who, what,
when, and where of decision-making, especially who is at the
table, who is not.
What is on the agenda, what is not. Policies are written
hows of decision-making, practices and norms of the unwritten
hows of decision-making, values are the why. And after I
outline the other two, I am going go back and say how that
helps us with COVID-19.
The second of the three tools are the three principles for
achieving health equity, recognizing that health equity is
assurance of the conditions for optimal health for all people.
It is a governmental function assurance. Three principles for
achieving health equity include valuing all individuals and
populations equally, recognizing and rectifying historical
injustices, and providing resources not equally but according
to need. An application of those principles can guide our
further actions.
The third tool is something that many of you may not even
have heard of, although you are the most erudite and, you know
wow, connected folks in the country. That is the International
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial
Discrimination, which is an international antiracism treaty
that was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1965, signed by
the United States in 1966, ratified by the U.S. Senate in
1994--
So, it took 28 years--but under which we have present-day
obligations. One of our obligations is to submit a report about
every 6 years to a UN committee, which we do. The last report
was submitted in 2013. The committee reviews that report, all
of the kinds of reports, and then sends back its concluding
observations. And the most recent concluding observations--I
hope that was the short one. I never heard the short one.
Chairman Scott. You have one minute remaining.
Dr. Jones. Okay. I didn't know that was the short one or
the long one. That was pretty obnoxious. Anyway--
So, I will just point out that we have--that the concluding
observations provided to us in 2014 highlighted concerns and
recommendations around racial profiling, around the
disproportionate incarceration of people of color, around
health disparities, the achievement gap in education,
residential segregation, all of these things.
So, how is racism operating here with regard to COVID-19?
In terms of the who, what, when, and where, the structural
stuff, the residential segregation leading to educational
opportunity segregation, leading to occupational segregation,
to we're more on-the-front-line jobs and less--and in terms of
the policies, we are less protected in terms of PPE, in terms
of paid sick leave, in terms of family and medical leave, all
of the things that you are addressing.
In terms of practices, the locations of testing sites and
the early policies requiring doctor's orders and the like. In
terms of norms, racism denial in this country which then puts
the onus of these disproportionate impacts on people's
behaviors or whatever, not recognizing that living in
chronically disinvested communities, poisoned, no access to
fresh fruits and vegetables is related and then, finally,
values as reflected in the price and standards of care.
Thank you very much for your attention.
[The statement of Dr. Jones follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Scott. Thank you very much, Ms. Jones.
Dr. Wilson.
STATEMENT OF VALERIE RAWLSTON WILSON, Ph.D., DIRECTOR, PROGRAM
ON RACE, ETHNICITY, AND THE ECONOMY, ECONOMIC POLICY INSTITUTE,
SILVER SPRING, MD
Ms. Wilson. Thank you, Chairman Scott, Ranking Member Foxx,
and distinguished Members of this committee for the opportunity
to testify.
I am going to discuss evidence to date of the racially
disparate economic impact of COVID-19, the large and persistent
inequities that were predictive of the needlessly heavy burden
borne by communities of color, and solutions that will avoid
prolonged effects of the pandemic, while helping to narrow
persistent racial disparities in the economy.
There are three main groups of workers in the COVID-19
recession: One, those who have lost their jobs and face
economic insecurity; two, those who are essential workers and
face health insecurity; and, three, those who are able to
continue working from the safety of their home.
Black, Latinx, Native American, and low-income workers are
least likely to be in that last group to have few good options
to protect both their help and economic well-being. The first
group of workers in the COVID-19 recession includes the tens of
millions who have lost jobs during the pandemic. The national
unemployment rate declined to 13.3 percent in May, but this
masks huge disparities by race.
As of May, the Hispanic unemployment rate was highest at
17.6 percent, followed by the Black unemployment rate at 16.8
percent, the Asian unemployment rate at 15 percent, and the
White unemployment rate at 12.4 percent.
Black and Asian workers were the only racial or ethnic
group whose unemployment rates did not improve over the last
month. Still, the unemployment rate of all groups remains
higher than the previous overall high of 10 percent in 2009.
The second group of workers in the COVID-19 recession are
essential frontline workers. While in the near term these
workers have been protected from job loss, they face greater
likelihood of contracting COVID-19 while performing their jobs.
Black workers are overrepresented among this group, making up
about 1 in 9 workers overall but about 1 in 6 frontline
industry workers. They are also more likely to be uninsured and
less likely to have paid sick leave.
Prior economic insecurity magnifies the current economic
damage to workers and their families but in the United States a
long history of government-sanctioned racial exclusion,
discrimination, oppression, and exploitation have inextricably
linked economic inequality and race.
For example, the Black unemployment rate is typically
double the White unemployment rate. This difference cannot be
explained away by differences in educational attainment. Even
for workers with college or advanced degrees, Black
unemployment rate is significantly higher than the White
unemployment rate, including at the record low rates of
unemployment reached prior to the pandemic.
Among the employed, Black workers face significant pay
challenges at all pay levels and at every level of education.
Research has shown that these pay gaps have grown over the last
several decades and have grown most among college-educated
workers.
Significant racial gaps in employment opportunities and
wage levels translate into lower income, less savings, and
higher poverty rates among Black and other people of color
relative to White households. These disparities have changed
little over the last 50 years, making job losses during the
pandemic especially devastating.
Such longstanding racially stratified social and economic
structures require that we center the needs of those who face
the greatest economic insecurity, thus improving the overall
incepitus of any policy response, while narrowing the
disparities by race, ethnicity, gender, and class.
Many of the policies needed to address the immediate needs
raised by the pandemic are included in the HEROES Act and other
legislation that has been introduced since. I will mention a
few as I conclude.
First, a robust economic recovery is directly tied to our
ability to secure the health and safety of communities and
workplaces across the country. OSHA must exercise its authority
to protect workers by issuing an enforceable emergency
temporary standard that addresses the specific workplace health
and safety risks associated with COVID-19. And workers who
voice their concerns must be free of employer retaliation.
Second, we must develop a national system of testing and
contact tracing with targeted efforts in underserved
communities to provide employment, adequate access to testing,
and other services necessary for healthy communities.
Third, since the loss of employment also means loss of
health insurance, federally funded comprehensive health
insurance with full coverage for COVID-19 testing and
treatment, as well as paid sick leave and paid family leave,
are essential to the economic and health securities.
Fourth, continuing crucial unemployment insurance
provisions will help avoid far more serious and persistent
damage to the economy. The expiration of expanded UI and other
critical support provisions should be tied to automatic
triggers that are measurable and reliable indicators of labor
market recovery across all communities as opposed to arbitrary
expiration dates.
This and more will be needed to rebuild a better-than-
normal economy with more widely shared prosperity.
Thank you for your attention, and I will be happy to answer
any questions.
[The statement of Ms. Wilson follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Scott. Thank you very much.
Mr. Roy.
STATEMENT OF AVIK ROY, CO-FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT, THE FOUNDATION
FOR RESEARCH ON EQUAL OPPORTUNITY, AUSTIN, TX
Mr. Roy. Chairman Scott, Ranking Member Foxx, Members of
the committee, thanks for inviting me here today.
The Foundation For Research on Equal Opportunity, or FREOPP
for short, is a nonpartisan think tank that focuses exclusively
on ideas that can improve the lives of Americans on the bottom
half of the economic ladder.
I welcome the opportunity to discuss our work on how COVID-
19 economic lockdowns have widened racial inequities in
education, health, and the workforce.
My written statement contains a more detailed discussion of
our findings. In my oral remarks, I will focus on three topics.
First, I will discuss how economic lockdowns imposed by States
and localities, have disproportionately harmed minority
employment and minority-owned businesses.
Second, I will touch on how school closures
disproportionately harm minority students and their parents.
Third, I will discuss COVID-19 mortality by race and
ethnicity and how States' failure to protect nursing homes has
harmed vulnerable seniors of all races.
In late 2019, Black unemployment reached its lowest rate in
history, 5.4 percent. Today the Black unemployment rate is 16.8
percent. Hispanic unemployment rate reached 3.9 percent in late
2019. Today it is 17.6 percent.
In my written testimony I detail how disparities between
White and non-White unemployment rates also reached their
lowest levels in history prior to the pandemic, but the
economic lockdowns have brought those disparities back to
levels seen a decade ago.
Compared to Whites and Asians, Blacks and Latinos are less
likely to work in white-collar occupations where working from
home is feasible. Instead they are seeing their jobs and hours
slashed. Hourly wage work is down 50 percent on average and
even more in places with the most stringent lockdowns.
But Black-owned businesses have also been hit far harder
than White-owned businesses. As Ms. Foxx noted it is estimated
that Black-owned businesses have experienced losses of 41
percent between February and April versus 32 percent for
Hispanic-owned businesses and 17 percent for White-owned
companies. Put simply, racial and ethnic disparities are worse
when the economy is worse and especially during the government-
mandated shutdowns of the economy that we are experiencing
today.
As you noted, Mr. Chairman, this brings school closures
disproportionately harmed children from lower-income families.
That is because wealthy families are far better equipped than
low-income ones to provide their kids with opportunities to
learn outside of school. Poor children are also less likely to
be able to take advantage of virtual learning because they
often lack high-speed internet access.
Nearly 30 million low-income children receive free or
reduced-price lunch through the National School Lunch Program.
School closures also affect parents, especially single parents,
who are unable to work if work means leaving their children at
home, unattended.
The good news is that it is possible to safely reopen
schools as a forthcoming paper from FREOPP will show. Other
countries have done it while protecting public health because
children are at extremely low risk of death or severe illness
from COVID-19.
One rising concern is how COVID-19 is affecting different
racial and ethnic populations overall. The latest data from CDC
indicates that Blacks represent a greater share of COVID deaths
then they do of the general population, even when adjusted for
the fact COVID-19 is more prevalent in cities where minorities
live disproportionately.
Mortality rates are also higher in Native American
communities especially in Arizona and new New Mexico. What may
be surprising is that Whites are also dying of COVID at higher-
than-predict rates. On the other hand, Hispanics and Asians
represent a lower share of COVID deaths than would be implied
by their geographically adjusted share of the U.S. population.
The likely reason for these differences is that morbidity
and mortality from COVID-19 is most common among the elderly.
Eighty-one percent of all COVID deaths in the U.S. have
occurred in people aged 65 or older, and Whites are the oldest
racial group in the U.S. with a median age of 44. Asians have a
median age of 37, Blacks, 34, Hispanics, 30. Hence, we should
expect to see higher fatality rates in Whites relative Asians
and Hispanics due to their age, and indeed we do. On the other
hand, African Americans are relatively young but we are still
seeing higher mortality among Blacks.
Some of you are familiar with our research on the tragedy
taking place in our nursing homes and assisted living
facilities. Zero point six percent of Americans live in long-
term care facilities, and yet within this 0.6 percent of the
population lies 43 percent of all U.S. deaths from the novel
coronavirus, 43 percent.
Communal nursing homes or residential facilities for
medically vulnerable seniors who have challenges with
activities of daily living such as taking a shower or getting
dressed. Nursing home residents are disproportionately poor,
non-White, and enrolled in Medicaid. The nursing home tragedy
has a bronze lining, we could say, because it means that the
risk of death for COVID-19 for the rest of the population is
considerably lower than we may have thought.
We can use that information to reopen the economy safely
and reduce the harm that we are imposing on hundreds of
millions of Americans of all colors.
Thank you.
[The statement of Mr. Roy follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Scott. Thank you very much, Mr. Roy.
Secretary King.
STATEMENT OF JOHN B. KING, JR., PRESIDENT AND CEO, THE
EDUCATION TRUST, WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. King. Thank you so much.
Chairman Scott, Ranking Member Foxx, and Members of the
committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify.
This hearing takes place in the shadow of massive global
protests against police violence, seeking to ensure that
#BlackLivesMatter is more than just a hash tag. The murders of
George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmad Aubrey, and Rayshard Brooks
remind us yet again that systemic racism, antiblackness and the
legacy of slavery still infect our institutions, public
discourse, and daily interactions.
Our education system is fraught with racial inequities that
existed before COVID-19. Far too few Black and Latino children
have access to affordable, high-quality preschool. Black
children, especially Black boys, are disproportionately
suspended and expelled from early learning.
The pandemic has pushed our early childhood education
sector toward collapse which could have dire consequences for
families of color and early child and workforce
disproportionately made up of women of color.
Over 65 years after Brown versus Board of Education,
district lines and school assignment policies still segregate
K-12 students by race and class. Districts with the most Black,
Latino, and Native Americans students spend almost $2,000 less
per student per year than districts with mostly White students.
Students of color are less likely to be assigned to the
strongest teachers, less likely to have access to school
counselors, less likely to be enrolled in advanced course work,
and more likely to be subjected to exclusionary discipline.
These opportunity gaps, in turn, generate gaps in learning,
high school graduation, and college matriculation.
The higher ed sector still doesn't reflect America's
diversity. Not one State's public colleges enroll or graduate a
representative share of Black and Latino students relative to
the State population. Meanwhile the burden of student debt
falls disproportionately on Black students who are more likely
than their White peers to have to borrow and are also more
likely to default.
COVID-19 has exacerbated these educational disparities.
During the necessary school closures, Black, Latino, and Native
American students disproportionately had less access to devices
and home internet services, teachers with less support to
execute online learning, parents unable to telework and assist
with schoolwork, and more socio-emotional stressors.
In response, we urge Congress to take the following
actions. First, Congress must act boldly to support and
strengthen P-12 education. To address devastating budget
shortfalls, over 70 stakeholders have called on Congress to
allocate at least $500 billion for State and local governments,
including at least $175 billion for K-12 education and 50
billion for higher ed.
This Federal stabilization funding must include a strong
maintenance of effort provision and add a maintenance of equity
provision so States and districts can ensure that the most
vulnerable students retain critical support.
Congress must allocate dedicated funding for broadband
expansion to support distance learning, for extended learning
time to tackle significant learning loss from the pandemic, and
resources to address students' and educators' nutritional,
social, emotional, and mental health needs.
Congress should refrain from permitting blanket waivers to
key civil rights laws like ESSA and IDEA and protect the
historic interpretation of the Title 1 equitable services
provision. Additionally, the Federal Government must promote
diverse schools, require data to be desegregated by race, and
uphold student civil rights.
Second, Congress must enact equitable reforms to higher
education. Congress should extend the student loan relief
provisions included in the CARES Act into next year and offer
equitable, targeted debt forgiveness in recognition that the
recession will make repaying student debt impossible for
millions of borrowers.
To counter widespread losses of financial assistance and
employment, Congress should double the Pell Grant and simplify
the FAFSA process. Implementing those policies would increase
enrollment and limit debt for students of color.
But there is more Congress could do including expanding
Pell access to incarcerated students and undocumented students,
increasing investments in HBCUs and MSIs, supporting diversity
in educator preparation programs, investing in evidence-based
strategies to improve outcomes for low-income students and
students of color, reigning in predatory for-profit
institutions, and collecting better data to monitor progress.
Finally, the Federal government should never waver in its
commitment to protect the civil rights and safety of all
students. The racial inequities we face in education are
significant, but not insurmountable. The Education Trust stands
ready to assist you in the work ahead.
Thank you again, for the opportunity to speak with you
today, and I look forward to taking your questions.
[The statement of Mr. King follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Scott. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.
And I thank all of our witnesses for their testimony. Under
Committee Rule 8(a) we will now question the witnesses under
the five-minute rule, and I will be recognizing committee
Members in seniority order. Again, in order to ensure that the
members' five-minute rule is adhered to, the staff will be
keeping time, keeping track of time and use the chime to signal
when one minute is left and when time is up entirely.
Again, they will sound a short chime when there is one
minute left and a longer, more obnoxious chime when time is up.
Please be attentive to the time and wrap up your time when your
time is over and please remute your phone.
Again, if any member experiences technical difficulties
during the hearing, you should stay connected on the platform,
make sure you are muted with your mute button highlighted in
red, and use your phone to immediately contact the committee's
IT director whose name and number has been provided.
As chair, I will reserve my questions to the end and begin
by recognizing the gentlewoman from California, Mrs. Davis, for
five minutes.
Mrs. Davis.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And, Secretary King, it is very good to see you, sir. I
certainly appreciate your public service.
One issue that goes underappreciated in higher education
conversation today is that of campus climate. Today's colleges,
as we all know, were built for the so-called traditional
student population, largely made up of recent high school
graduates from affluent families.
But we know that today's students are more diverse than
ever. They are often older. They are the first in their family
to go to college or from communities that have been poorly
served by our Nation's colleges and universities, not to
mention our early education and K-12 systems.
The protests for racial justice that have emerged across
the country further underscore the need for our educational
system to address systemic racism and ensure that students of
color are well-served and supported.
Recently the President of Johns Hopkins University revealed
that in 2014 they discontinued the practice of offering
students preference in admissions for having family members who
also attended the university, often called legacy admissions.
And in the article he recognizes this was not an easy step to
take. But this shift has allowed space for more Pell Grant-
eligible students to enroll.
Secretary King, can you further explain some of the
inequities associated with the practice of legacy admissions in
higher education?
Mr. King. Yes. The legacy admission policy has the impact
of disproportionately advantaging students, White students--
Mrs. Davis. Mr. Secretary, I think we are having sound
problems.
Chairman Scott. Ben, can you intervene?
Voice. Mr. King, can you turn your volume on your mikes
down? Leave your speaker. You are bouncing off your microphone
and causing a bit of echo.
Mr. King. All right. Is that better?
Voice. It is not, sir. It may be--let's see. The
communication was good at the beginning of your testimony, sir.
Let's see. Can you mute your microphone and then unmute it
again just to try and see if that improves the quality?
Mr. King. Sure.
Voice. Mr. King, in the interest of time, I will jump
offline with him and try to fix this. I think this may be
something that we need to reset.
Chairman Scott. Ben, can you have him call in with audio
over the phone?
Voice. Yes.
Chairman Scott. Okay. Ben. Mr. King, let's see, if you
could please use a phone and call your audio in.
Mr. King. Okay.
Chairman Scott. Just mute your phone and call into--
Voice. I will call--give you the number when you're ready,
sir.
Mr. King. Okay. Go ahead.
Voice. It would be 415-527-5035, sir.
Mr. King. 5025.
Voice. 5035, sir.
Mr. King. 35.
Voice. Yes, sir. Let me know if you need the access code,
Mr. King.
Mr. King, the access code is 996979932 and please follow
any prompts in the affirmative. I think I can confirm you, Mr.
King. Can you speak again, please?
I am sorry. I think you are on mute. And go ahead, Mr.
King.
Mr. King. All right. Can you hear me now?
Voice. I can. So it will--now you will use your phone's
mute capacity in order to mute your audio, sir, but this sounds
very good. Thank you for your time and consideration, Mr. King.
Mr. King. All right. Sorry about that. So in response to
the question, good to see you, Congresswoman.
On the issue of legacy admissions, what we know is that the
legacy advantage can translate into as much as a 45 percent
increase in the likelihood of a student being admitted compared
to a similarly situated who doesn't have the benefit of the
legacy preference.
The consequence for our selective admission universities is
that low-income students and students of color are at an
enduring disadvantage and are dramatically underrepresented on
those campuses and in those institutions.
So it makes sense, if universities are true to their
commitments to a diverse student body, to eliminate legacy
preferences. But to really ensure that students of color are
fully represented in selective admission universities, more is
needed.
Race needs to be taken into consideration in admissions
policies. Financial aid needs to be provided to so that low-
income students can have access to those institutions. More
work needs to be done to recruit diverse fact to create a
positive climate for students, and specific efforts need to be
made to recruit students from high schools that serve large
numbers of students of color.
But certainly eliminating the legacy admissions would be an
important, strong step to improving diversity on our Nation's
campuses.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. I appreciate that,
because I think we all have to ask the question about the
Federal role in that as well and it may be that encouraging and
we also know that early admission plays a bit of a role as
well.
Would you agree with that?
Mr. King. Yeah. For many institutions the early admissions
practice, again, advantages those students who have the most
resources. If you think about access to school counselors, for
example, we have some States where there are 500, 600 students
per counsellor. And so counselors aren't able to support
students. Students aren't able to take advantage of some of
those early admission processes.
Mrs. Davis. Uh-huh, yeah.
Well, thank you again.
How can our institutions of higher education lead the way
in dismantling systemic racism and addressing the harm done to
communities of color, even in a COVID world where students are
going to be off-campus? What new approaches do we have to think
about? I believe I have one minute left.
Mr. King. Sure. Well, one immediate step is that campuses
need to make sure that students can access higher education
through distance learning. We know that low-income students and
disproportionate students of color were at risk of not having
the devices and Internet access they needed.
There is a congressional effort that Congresswoman Eschoo
put forward to try to dedicate resources for higher ed to
provide them that access. I think that is critical so we make
sure that students can take advantage of higher ed this fall
which will certainly be distant on some campuses, hybrid on
others.
Mrs. Davis. Uh-huh, right. Thank you very much, sir. Good
to have you with us.
Chairman Scott. Thank you.
Dr. Foxx, do you wish to be recognized at this point?
Ms. Foxx. Yes, sir, I do.
Chairman Scott. Dr. Foxx, you are recognized for five
minutes.
Ms. Foxx. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Roy, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, our country had
record low unemployment across the board including for Black,
Hispanic and Asian workers. What significant policies and
economic conditions resulted in the historically low rates
which existed before the pandemic?
And as Congress considers additional policy prescriptions
for addressing the pandemic, how are the negative economic
effects of the pandemic different from previous economic
downturns such as the 2008 financial crisis?
Mr. Roy. Well, I will start, ma'am, with the second
question, and then go back to the first. On the second
question, we can hope that, if and when States and localities
reopen their economies, there will be a relatively rapid
rebound of businesses that did not run out of cash during the
pandemic. The average small business has about 30 to 28 days of
cash on hand if business shuts down. So, for those businesses,
who knows how many of them will rebound.
But the ones that rebound, we should see unemployment
recover relatively rapidly. And we saw that with SARS-CoV-1 in
Asia. So that is my hope on that front, that, compared to the
recession in 2008, where there was--there were underlying
problems with the economy, particularly the inflation in
housing prices, here we see something that hopefully can be
relatively quickly solved if reopening can take place.
In terms of your first question--I am sorry. Now I have
lost my--remind me what the first question, just briefly, was.
Ms. Foxx. Yeah. What are the--
Mr. Roy. Oh. The drivers of the low employment. Right.
Ms. Foxx. Fox right.
Mr. Roy. Right. So there were several things that, from a
policy standpoint, led to record low unemployment prior to the
pandemic. So that was something that was going on since the
great recession from 2008, but the biggest drivers in the last
several years have clearly been the Tax Cut and Jobs Act of
2017 and regulatory changes which have allowed manufacturing
jobs and other industries to hire and expand in ways that have
allowed employment to rise.
And, again, when employment rises, who benefits?
Particularly, it is lower income workers, hourly wage workers
that are disproportionately non-White.
Ms. Foxx. Right. I don't think there were any of those
proposals in the HEROES Act.
Mr. Roy, as you have stated in your written testimony and
in your research, a long-term shutdown is untenable, we have no
choice but to reopen responsibly, even though a vaccine for
COVID-19 has not been developed and research on treatment
continues. Would you elaborate on the impact of the State and
local shutdowns, whether it is possible to combat the pandemic
and safely reopen at the same time and what effects this
approach will have on communities around the country?
Mr. Roy. The most important thing to understand about
COVID-19 is the disproportionate impact it has not so much on
race--so that is important, too--but on age. The fact is that
81 percent of all deaths due to COVID-19 are happening in
people over the age of 65. And, as I mentioned in my testimony,
43 percent of all deaths are happening in the 0.6 percent of
the population that lives in nursing homes.
On the flip side, COVID-19 from a mortality and severe
illness standpoint is not really affecting younger people. Yes,
there are isolated cases, but, in general, the probability of
dying of influenza is much greater in young children than it is
of COVID-19.
So that gives us an opportunity to reopen schools.
Obviously, we have to take care to make sure that vulnerable
teachers and other school staff are protected and that children
who live with vulnerable grandparents, say, or other at-risk
members of their household, that they are protected and they
have the resources to learn outside of school, but we can
reopen schools. Other countries are doing it, and that is an
important thing for this committee to consider.
Ms. Foxx. Thank you.
You have already mentioned this. So I want to build on that
point that you just made. Could you explain further the impact
the actions of these Governors who forced nursing homes to
accept COVID-19 patients who have been discharged from the
hospital? Could you talk a little bit about the death rates and
which States have experienced the highest rates of nursing home
deaths?
And, Mr. Chairman, for your information, Mr. Thompson is
back in the room.
Mr. Roy. So, in my written testimony, I have detailed
State-based data on both the share of overall COVID-19 deaths
that are taking place in nursing home by State and also the
percentage of nursing home and long-term care facility
residents in that State that have died of COVID-19.
The worst State by far on that second metric is New Jersey.
New Jersey is one of the States--11 percent of all residents of
long-term care facilities in New Jersey have died of COVID-19--
11 percent. And that is, in part, because New Jersey is one of
the States, like New York, like Michigan, and several others,
that forced nursing homes to accept people with active COVID-19
infections who were being discharged from hospitals, and that
contributed significantly to the spread of COVID-19 in our
long-term care facilities.
Ms. Foxx. And that is the same State where the State health
director, I believe, took her own mother out of the long-term
care facility before she enforced the rule to allow those
people to come back in. That is one of the most shameful things
that has happened in this country in my opinion.
Thank you, Dr. Roy.
Chairman Scott. Does the ranking member yield back?
Ms. Foxx. I yield back.
Chairman Scott. Thank you. The gentleman from Arizona, Mr.
Grijalva.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the
hearing, and I appreciate the witnesses for being here.
Secretary King, good to see you again. We often talk about
achievement gaps in education, often, and there has been a
recent move to reframe those gaps as a result of--and, as a
result, people are talking about opportunity gaps to highlight
the systematic inequities in educational funding. These
opportunity gaps are actually educational debt.
That debt has become even more apparent as a result of the
COVID-19 pandemic and the debts that have long--that we have
collectively failed to pay for a long, long time.
Mr. King, what will happen if Congress doesn't act with a
level of urgency to pay back some of those debts for
communities of color in the education arena, and as pressure to
reopen schools--K-12, in particular--intensifies, the
consequences of that cost that will be attendant to local
communities as well as they prepare to respond to orders from
States to open up those schools immediately?
Mr. King. I am sorry. Good to see you, Congressman.
Mr. Grijalva. Good to see you.
Mr. King. So, at this moment, what we know is that school
districts are getting 90 percent or more of their funding from
State and local dollars, and so those State and local budgets
have taken a huge hit from the COVID-19 economic crisis, and
that is going to translate into significant cuts to school
district funding.
Some school districts are preparing around the country for
20, 25 percent cut in State aid. That will have a devastating
impact. The NEA and others have estimated that could mean
approaching 2 million jobs lost in the education sector,
layoffs of teachers. It will also mean the elimination of
programs, particularly programs that serve the most vulnerable
students.
We also know that, if those cuts happen, districts will be
much less able to do the kinds of practices that public health
requires to have a safe reopen of schools. So we need Congress
to step in with State stabilization dollars to prevent those
cuts, and additional resources to address the consequences of
COVID-19.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you.
Mr. Roy, if I may, a question out of curiosity: In your
verbal testimony, you mentioned the impact of small businesses,
particularly the disproportionate negative impact on businesses
owned by people of color and how that is so important to the
recovery. You mentioned the unemployment in response to Dr.
Foxx's question.
As we, as a Congress, struggle to make sure that the money
that we are providing to local communities and to the
administration for the implementation and the supplemental
support of these small businesses that are disproportionately
being affected now, do you think it is appropriate and
necessary for, let's say, Secretary Mnuchin to release how the
$650 billion that were provided for PPP and for other direct
assistance to small businesses and businesses in general--that
would give us a framework to see if--what impact that money is
having. Do you think that all those figures should be released
publicly?
Mr. Roy. I do, yes.
Mr. Grijalva. And, in doing so, I think it helps us guide
how we need to structure making sure that the money goes to the
greatest need. Is that correct?
Mr. Roy. One of my concerns about the way the PPP was
designed by Congress is that it basically favored medium to
large businesses over small businesses on a relative basis.
Mr. Grijalva. I agree.
Mr. Roy. Because, if you are a one- or two-person shop, you
don't have the resources to be organized enough to draw that
money down from PPP. The money ran out before [inaudible]
people became more aware of what was going on. So the smallest
businesses did not benefit from PPP nearly as much as they
needed to.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you.
I yield back, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for the hearing.
Chairman Scott. Thank you. Gentleman from Tennessee, Dr.
Roe. Dr. Roe?
Mr. Thompson? Mr. Thompson?
Ms. Foxx. He is having trouble. Dr. Roe is one of our
members at the funeral.
Chairman Scott. Okay.
Ms. Foxx. Mr. Thompson, I believe, is ready.
Chairman Scott. Mr. Thompson, recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. Foxx. Well, sorry, Mr. Chairman. He is having a
problem. Would you go to Mr. Walberg, and then come back to Mr.
Thompson?
Chairman Scott. No problem.
The gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Walberg.
Mr. Walberg. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Can you hear me?
Chairman Scott. I can hear you.
Mr. Walberg. That is great. I appreciate this.
And I notice that Representative Bonamici is in the room as
it were right now, so certainly express our condolences to her
at the loss of her mother.
Going back to a little of the statements that began about
the HEROES Act, I think we need to understand that the HEROES
Act is really just a messaging piece with no expectation that
it would ever pass, and I--you know, I think it is cynical to
even keep bringing it up as legitimate.
Also, there is a reason that major cities with terrible
health and education outcomes are in long-held Democrat-
controlled governments. That is a fact. Even in my boyhood home
growing up in Chicago, challenges are there, but it has been
the efforts of the long-held Democrat leadership that always
complains about not having the outcomes we want, and, yet, the
policies are still the same. And I think it is time to stop
blaming the Republicans, who have been, especially in these
last 3 years, very evidently been pushing real change that
works and brought about economic growth in this country only
impacted by COVID-19.
I think, also, until we stop opposing educational choice
for minorities, like the D.C. Promise, the complaints ring
hollow, and so I just want to point that out as well.
Mr. Roy, we know that COVID-19 is much more lethal for
those over 65 years of age, like myself, with certain chronic
conditions. Sadly, we now have a very sobering figure out there
that shows nursing homes and assisted-living facilities have
been some of the hardest hit victims of COVID-19. In my home
State of Michigan, as of last Monday, almost 2,000 deaths have
taken place among individuals who lived in nursing home
facilities, which represents approximately one-third of the
deaths Statewide.
Mr. Roy, your testimony mentions that over 40,000 seniors
have tragically died under this care. What percentage of the
U.S. population lives in long-term care facilities, and how
does that compare with the share of COVID-19 deaths?
Mr. Roy. So, sir, as I mentioned in my oral and written
testimony, 0.6 percent of Americans or U.S. residents live in
nursing homes or assisted-living facilities, and, yet, they
represent 43 percent Nationwide of all deaths from COVID-19.
Mr. Walberg. Unbelievable. Unfortunately, Michigan was one
of the handful of States, about five States, where the Governor
issued an executive order forcing nursing homes to admit COVID-
19-positive patients back into their facilities. Even more
sadly, it is being reported that the State implemented this
policy, contrary to recommendations it received from the
State's leading nursing home association.
And so, Mr. Roy, how did this policy create such a
dangerous situation for our Nation's seniors, and what should
be done to address the challenges nursing homes face while
caring for COVID-19 patients?
Mr. Roy. There is no doubt that Governor Whitmer's order to
force nursing homes to accept patients with active COVID-19
infections worsened the state of nursing homes when it comes to
COVID-19 fatalities. And we mentioned that one-third--you know,
what the State is reporting as one-third of all deaths from
COVID-19 in Michigan are coming from COVID-19 in nursing homes,
first of all, the integrity of Michigan's data is not clear
because Michigan has been one of the last States to actually
report the data. They were the third to last State to report
the data based on our work, and they also have had a big
outbreak overall.
So, if you actually look at nursing homes with nursing home
residents overall, 3 percent of all people who live in long-
term facilities in Michigan have died from COVID-19, which is
one of the highest rates in the country.
And so it is a real problem, and I think, in particular,
what concerns me about Michigan is the fact that Michigan
refused for many, many weeks to disclose their nursing home
fatality data until basically CMS forced nursing homes to
directly report their data to CMS and go around the State
governments that were being cagey with their data.
Mr. Walberg. Yeah, it was only about the last week or week
and a half ago that Michigan began giving those--that data, but
it was underreported as well. What can be done to address these
data shortcomings moving forward to ensure we have the best
information and make crucial policy decisions.
Mr. Roy. Well, what is good is that now CMS is requiring
nursing homes to directly report their fatality data to the
Federal Government. Now, the problem is that only starts on May
5th, that requirement. That only applies to nursing homes, not
to assisted-living facilities, which are another form of long-
term care facility less vulnerable seniors. So we are not going
to get complete data from CMS, but at least that will help with
the process.
The most important thing we have to do, obviously, is we
have to protect the lives of the people who are living in these
nursing homes. The way we have to do that is we have to have
strict policies about patient visitation from relatives, but we
also have to have strict policies about testing staff and
making sure staff can't go from place to place, and much better
oversight about infection control. A lot of these nursing homes
were not designed to protect infections. That has been a huge
problem, not just for this pandemic but in previous pandemics.
Mr. Walberg. I yield back.
Chairman Scott. Thank you.
The gentleman from Connecticut, Mr. Courtney?
Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Chairman Scott, and thank you to
all the witnesses for being here today.
I just want to begin by saying I am surprised to hear my
good friend, Mr. Walberg, disparaging or dismissing the value
of the HEROES Act provision for State and local assistance.
Perhaps he missed it, but, just a couple of days ago, the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce came out in favor of Congress acting to
provide assistance to State and local government. They, again,
are joining Jerome Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve
Board, who has been, again, highlighting that in terms of
fiscal stimulus that is still required, despite the best
efforts by the Federal Reserve. And of course the National
Governors Association, which is a bipartisan group, has
strongly endorsed the provisions of the HEROES Act to bolster
State and local support.
And, again, that is not because these individuals or groups
have been hijacked in a partisan way. This is about math and
the complete sort of erosion and collapse of State revenue that
is happening across the country in red States and blue States.
Again, it is just going to require that Congress take this
measure up. And we actually are starting to see some signals
out of the Senate that they are going to be moving towards
bringing up some version of fiscal stimulus, which, again, is--
basically listens to what the economic stewards of this
country, particularly over at the Federal Reserve, have been
calling for.
I would also like to bring up another measure of the HEROES
Act, which, again, was alluded to in Ms. Williams' testimony,
which, again, addresses another part of the fallout from this
coronavirus recession, which is, again, the erosion of health
insurance.
Ms. Wilson, in your testimony, again, you noted the fact
that, at 13 percent unemployment, we are still about 30 percent
higher than the peak of the 2009 recession and the impact that
is having on employer-based coverage. I was wondering if you
could sort of talk about that in a little more detail in terms
of what that means to hourly workers, which, again,
predominantly is or disproportionately consists more of workers
and employees of color?
Ms. Wilson. Sure. So a couple of my colleagues at the
Economic Policy Institute have estimated that, as of May 9th,
about 16.2 million workers likely lost their employer- provided
health insurance. What this means in terms of the racial
disparities, we know that, going into the crisis, workers of
color were less likely to have employer-provided health
insurance to begin with.
The work--the hourly workers that you mentioned also are
less likely to be insured through their employers so that
providing coverage to these workers is important to their
health, but it is also important in protecting communities and
workplaces so that we can get everyone back to work safely.
Mr. Courtney. So--and the HEROES Act does two things.
Number one, again, it requires that the States basically reopen
their exchanges for special enrollment period. And, number two,
it extends a 100 percent subsidy for COBRA so that, again,
people who are losing their benefits along with their layoffs
are--in fact, have some continuity of coverage. Is that right?
Ms. Wilson. Yes. That is my understanding, yes.
Mr. Courtney. So, now, Mr. Roy, in your testimony on page
10, you alluded to the fact that, you know, one of the impacts
of the lockdown on public health is, in fact, the disruption of
health insurance coverage. So do you support the COBRA subsidy
provision, which, again, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the
American Benefits Council has also come out and endorsed?
Mr. Roy. Well, I don't think that the COBRA subsidy program
is the best way to improve--
Mr. Courtney.--yeah, we don't have a lot of time here--
Mr. Roy. If you would like, I would be happy to answer.
Mr. Courtney. Sure.
Mr. Roy. So the best way to do it is through improving the
individual insurance market. So make the exchanges, the
nongroup exchanges, better by funding reinsurance that allows
the premiums to be lower in the ACA exchanges and, thereby,
more accessible to people to people who need insurance between
jobs.
At the end of the day, we need to move away from employer-
based coverage, which is what the Chamber of Commerce wants;
they want everyone to be tied to their job for health coverage.
We should be moving to a system where individuals own their own
health insurance.
Mr. Courtney. So, I mean, I agree with you about
reinsurance, but I also think that, you know, in real time, we
are watching people's healthcare coverage evaporate. And I will
give you an example in Connecticut.
The Native American casino, Foxwoods, had 6,000 workers
employed at the beginning of March. They have reopened. In
fact, they went more aggressive than the Governor wanted. So it
wasn't because, you know, they shut down because of a Governor-
driven lockdown. But, anyway, they did reopen, but they only
required 1,500 workers. So there is still 4,500 people who,
again, starting on June 1st, lost their health coverage, and
having that COBRA subsidy could at least extend that coverage
and not disrupt their access to their doctors, their network of
care.
Again, you know, fixing the exchange in terms of the long
game, I couldn't agree with you more, but the fact of the
matter is we are really trying to protect people in an
emergency situation, and that is where, again, I think the
COBRA subsidy, which is temporary--it is not a permanent
fixture in the law--actually addresses a real need that is
happening, and, again, which is disproportionately hitting
hourly workers, which, in the case of Foxwoods, has, again, a
high minority workforce.
Thank you. I yield back.
Chairman Scott. Thank you.
Is Mr. Thompson ready? The gentleman from Pennsylvania?
Mr. Thompson. Chairman, I am ready.
Chairman Scott. I am sorry. Who is that?
Mr. Thompson. This is G.T.
Chairman Scott. Okay. The gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr.
Thompson, is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Thompson. Thank you. I am kind of making do here.
Mr. Roy, I want to thank you for making time today to join
us here at the hearing. Obviously, due to COVID-19 and
resulting State-mandated shutdowns, there has been a dramatic
negative impact on the economy, workers, and families.
Employment in the United States fell by more than 70,000 jobs
in March and 20.5 million in April.
In my home State, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, employment
fell by more than 1 million nonfarm jobs in April, including
declines in all 11 industry supersectors. However, due to the
reopening of States, employment rose by 2.5 million. That is
the largest number of jobs gained on record, and Pennsylvania
total nonfarm jobs were up 198,300 over the month.
Mr. Roy, are you seeing signs that the economy is
recovering and that jobs will continue to return? And what
could prevent the--what is out there that may prevent the
economy from rebounding quickly?
Mr. Roy. Well, Mr. Thompson, as I am sure you know, we are
seeing some gradual improvement from the depths of the recent
lockdowns on the recession. Particularly, as some States start
to open, there is a clear correlation between the States that
have reopened who never really locked down severely, like, for
example, Florida and the economic performance of that State
relative to others.
So that evidence at least gives us some hope that a rebound
can happen relatively quickly as the economy is reopened, and I
hope that we can get to that point as soon as possible. In
fact, we should have gotten to that point for good sections of
the workforce much earlier than we have up to this point.
Mr. Thompson. Well, thank you, and I--
Chairman Scott. Mr. Thompson, are you able to get your
camera back on?
Mr. Thompson. Yes. Hold on a second.
Now it should be on, Chairman.
Chairman Scott. Okay. Well--
Mr. Haines. Mr. Thompson is present on the video feed
currently.
Mr. Thompson. It is a little confusing because I need the
phone to speak, and just showing how handsome I am on the
laptop. So kind of a dual role here.
Chairman Scott. Okay. Keep going.
Mr. Thompson. All right. Thanks, Chairman.
Chairman Scott. And if you would give him about 30 extra
seconds for me interrupting him, I would appreciate it, Bernie.
Mr. Thompson. All right. Thanks, Chairman. I guess the
message I would like to reinforce for all on this committee is,
before we panic and look at creating all kinds of--that we
ought to stay the course with what we have been doing prior to
COVID-19 in terms of ladders of opportunity.
One of the things we have been able to work on in a
bipartisan way has been career and technical education
training, and I think--I know that there are issues now with
people whose jobs have been lost because of the dictates of a
Governor or impact of risk of coronavirus, but that--as a
result, those jobs will be there, and I think the overarching
need that we have is to focus on, again, getting people access
to the types of job training, career and technical education
training for those jobs.
Mr. Roy, to get America back to work, the White House and
the CDC has issued guidelines for opening up America again,
which include the three phases based on advice from public
health officials. The guidelines are intended to help State and
local officials make decisions about reopening the economy and
getting people back to work while continuing to protect lives.
Mr. Roy, I know you have looked closely at the needs to
reopen the economy safely. What additional points would you
like to highlight for the committee on safely and responsibly
reopening businesses and society?
Mr. Roy. Yeah. Our view at the Foundation for Research on
Equal Opportunity and, as you may know from my written
testimony, we have written extensively on how to reopen both
the workplace and schools. Our view--
Mr. Thompson. Mr. Roy, I think you may be on mute.
Mr. Roy. Oh, I don't think I am on mute.
Mr. Thompson. Okay. I am not.
Mr. Roy. Okay. I will start again. I apologize.
As you may know from the white paper we put out at the
Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity on reopening
workplaces and schools, our view is that the President's plan
is actually too cautious, particularly when it comes to
reopening schools, which can be done earlier, and reopening
workplaces, particularly for younger members of the workforce
who are at low risk for serious illness or death from COVID-19.
And, in that context--
Mr. Thompson. I can't hear him. That is all right.
Mr. Roy. Yeah. I am sorry about that.
Well, to finish the answer for the record, maybe, I will
just say that the most important things we need to do, one
thing that a number of States have considered and more States
should consider is starting the fall school year early to make
up for some of the lost time from the spring.
And the other thing, you know, we would talk about is
using--maximizing testing in particular targeted and at-risk
populations that are asymptomatic, like, again, people with
children who live with grandparents or other at-risk
individuals and nursing home facilities because the more we can
isolate and trace nursing home interactions, the more we can
reduce the spread overall.
Mr. Thompson. Thank you, Chairman. I yield back.
Chairman Scott. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Mr.
Thompson.
The gentlelady from Ohio, Ms. Fudge?
Ms. Fudge. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman, once again, my colleagues on the other side
of the aisle live in an alternative universe with alternative
facts. It ought to be interesting to me that Dr. Foxx and Mr.
Walberg--I wonder if they are watching all the people marching
in the streets today. These people are marching not because
they just feel like marching. They are marching because of
injustice.
You know, it would be nice if sometimes they would listen
to what Black people actually think and not know what is best
for us all of the time. That is if they know any Black people
well enough to have that conversation with them.
Dr.--Secretary King, from your experience, what can we do
at the Federal level to prevent students of color from falling
further behind?
Mr. King. Well, there is a long list, but I would start
with a few priorities. One is we have got to save the childcare
sector. Already, Black and Latino students are underrepresented
in quality childcare, and, without $50 billion to stabilize the
childcare sector, we are going to lose many of those providers.
In K-12, we know that schools are already highly segregated
by race and class. You have the bill, the Strength and
Diversity Act, which would help to address that and help us
move towards more integrating schooling.
We also desperately need resources, resources to stabilize
district budgets, but also resources to address learning loss.
Students, particularly students of color, are less likely to
have all of the things in place necessary to benefit from
distance learning over the last few months. Many students will
return to school many months--9, 10 months behind in learning,
will need additional support, afterschool time, extended school
year, intensive tutoring to address those needs.
And they will also need socio-emotional and mental health
support as well from many students who have been isolated from
their relationship to school that matters so much for them.
Ms. Fudge. Thank you.
Dr. Jones, how can we build trust between underserved
communities and the local institutions, including hospitals and
healthcare providers?
Dr. Jones. First of all, there has to be communication. So,
I think that the hospitals need to be asking folks in the
community, ``What do you need?'' There have to be perhaps
community advisory boards and the like. There has to be an
attention--is there something differential going on here by
race in terms of our practice, in terms of sending people away
from the emergency department?
So, the hospitals have to be unafraid to collect data by
race and actually investigate possible differences in their
practice by race, and there has to be investment in the
community, in community health workers; in community, you know,
health centers, even if they are not directly associated with
the hospitals. There has to be some linkage.
It gets to the question of who is at the table and who is
not? What is on the agenda is and what is not? As you said, so
many people think that they can figure out what is good for
those other people. We need to have the people who are impacted
by decisions at the decision-making tables.
Ms. Fudge. Thank you. And, to go further with you, Dr.
Jones, can you talk just a bit, very quickly, about the impact
of poverty on health outcomes for people of color?
Dr. Jones. Well, first of all, it doesn't just so happen
that people of color in this country are overrepresented in
poverty while White people in this country are overrepresented
in wealth.
So, first of all, I mean, I have been writing so many
notes, you know, talking about, well, you know, people, you
know, frontline workers tend to be more people of color. That
doesn't just so happen. So, we shouldn't take that as a
baseline when we are trying to move people from there.
So, the first thing is it is because of historical
injustices that are being perpetuated by present-day
contemporary structural factors that we even see an association
between social class and race so that even--and that goes--
structural factors are part and parcel of structural or
institutionalized racism.
So, even if we had the most successful antipoverty
strategies in the world, if we do not also have the antiracism
strategy, we would not take care of that, but the mechanisms
are in housing. They are in our schools. They are in the
investment in communities and in businesses. It is in green
space. It is in sacrifice zones, the placement of communities
of color around known polluting industries and the like.
So, poverty and race are correlated because of structural
racism. We need to understand that, and we need to have both
antipoverty and antiracism strategies.
Ms. Fudge. Thank you so very much.
And, as I close, Mr. Chairman, I just want to note--I want
you to know that I learned a long time ago: If you are not at
the table, you are on the menu. Black people are sick of being
on the menu.
I yield back.
Chairman Scott. Thank you. I thank the gentlelady from
Ohio.
The gentleman from Kentucky, Mr. Guthrie?
The gentleman from Alabama, Mr. Byrne?
Mr. Byrne. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I am very concerned about this topic. About a third of the
people in my district are African American, but we know from
the data about 50 percent of the people that have died from
COVID-19 in my district are also African American. There is
something going on there, and it bothers me greatly.
I have learned a lot from listening today. I have been
doing a lot of research before today, but I think, as a Nation,
we need to get to the bottom of this. Something is very wrong
here, and we need to address it.
It is also true that a disproportionate number of people in
my district who are African American have been affected
economically. The worst thing we can do for them back in the
spring of this year was to shut down the American economy, shut
down our society, and shut down our schools.
There is no question that African Americans in my district
were disproportionately affected when their jobs were wiped
out. Small business people, African American small business
people, lost their businesses as a result of it. And all
children went home when they closed the schools, but some
children had parents in households that could support them
while they were trying to learn from home, and far too many
African American children didn't.
So the best thing we can do here in Washington, besides
trying to get to the bottom of what has happened here on the
public health issue, is to get the American economy going
again, because, without it, I am afraid we are only going to
make inequality worse in this country.
You know, a lot of people, including a lot of people in my
district, just can't do the jobs that they were trained to do
on a Zoom meeting from their home. They just can't do that.
When we take their jobs away from them, we take their
opportunity away from them.
So, Mr. Roy, I would like you to discuss the pre-COVID-19
Trump economy's effect on disparities between White and
minority unemployment rates in this country.
Mr. Roy. Thank you for the question.
So, as I mentioned in my oral and written testimony, before
the pandemic, the disparities between the White and Black
unemployment rates and the disparity between White and Hispanic
unemployment rates had reached record lows, along with, as you
know, the overall unemployment rate reaching record lows. And
so that was something that I think we all could have taken the
opportunity to celebrate at the time. Whether we did or not, I
don't know. But those disparities have come back in tremendous
force since the lockdowns have occurred, and you have all seen
the charts from BLS that show this data very clearly.
And so that is--and what is interesting, too, by the way,
is, if you look at Asian Americans, Asian Americans, for most
of the 21st century, have had lower unemployment rates than
Whites, but, as a result of the economic lockdowns, that
completely changed. Now Asian unemployment is much, much higher
than the White unemployment rates.
So that is a really useful, in a sense, illustrator of how
the racial disparities that have been created by the pandemic
as opposed to the structural racism legacy in slavery and
segregation type issues that we have been discussing as well.
Mr. Byrne. One of the things I have also noticed, Mr. Roy,
is there has been an uptick in mental health issues as a result
of lockdown. Do you have any information about how that uptick
in mental health issues has affected minority communities?
Mr. Roy. Well, it is a huge problem in so many different
dimensions, right? You have people who are already fragile from
a mental health standpoint who are being pushed over the edge,
and then you have ordinary people who are--who had what we
might call median or normal mental health prior to the pandemic
who are struggling now, and there is all sorts of ways this can
happen, right?
You have the people who are in isolation, in their homes,
not merely in terms of--in terms of their employment. You have
people who may be in very crowded living facilities. This is
particularly true, for example, in New York City, where people
who live in intergenerational households with maybe three
generations or more living in the same space are at greater
risk of transmitting COVID-19, let alone having potentially
mental health challenges.
So--and that is disproportionately a minority, particularly
disproportionately immigrant phenomenon both in the United
States and elsewhere.
So there are lots of things to be concerned about.
Mr. Byrne. Last question is this: What is the effect of
shutting down schools? What is the effect on minority kids?
Mr. Roy. Yeah. I mean, that is one of the most--the most
difficult things to understand from a science standpoint, why
we have been so aggressive at shutting down schools.
Shutting down schools can work with influenza because
influenza does kill young people, but COVID-19 is not
influenza. It is a very different disease that seems to largely
spare younger children. And so, if you look at countries that
have reopened their schools, in Europe and Western Europe in
particular, they have done pretty well with school reopenings,
and we should learn from their example.
Mr. Byrne. That is great. Thank you very much.
And thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Chairman Scott. Thank you.
The gentleman from the Northern Mariana Islands, Mr.
Sablan?
Ms. Wilson? The gentlelady from Florida, Ms. Wilson?
The gentlelady from Oregon, Ms. Bonamici?
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member
Foxx and colleagues, thank you for the kind words of sympathy.
Thank you to our witnesses for being here for this
important conversation.
I want to note I am a bit concerned about the suggestion
that this is somehow a nursing home issue. Just a couple days
ago, there was an article in Politico looking at a Harvard
analysis of National Center for Health Statistics data,
particularly focusing on the disparity in the Latinx community,
and this is what it said: The danger is elevated, especially
among younger minorities. Latinos age 35 to 44 have a
coronavirus mortality rate nearly eight times higher than White
people in that age group. And Black people in the same age
range have a mortality rate nine times higher than White
people. The inequity persists with Latinos age 25 to 34 and
those 45 to 54, who have a coronavirus mortality rate at least
five times higher than Caucasians.
So I am concerned that this is somehow an issue talking
about what is happening in nursing homes, which of course is a
concern.
I want to follow up on Secretary King's comments about
childcare and early childhood education. We know the childcare
sector already faced serious challenges, not just here in
Oregon but across the country. There was a vast unmet need,
high cost for families, and also insufficient compensation and
benefits for early childhood educators.
Fixing the childcare system is important to children. It is
important to families, and it is important to the economy, but
it is also an issue of racial justice. As Secretary King
recognized, the childcare workforce is overwhelmingly women and
predominantly women of color. There are many barriers,
especially with the children of color least likely to be put in
supported childcare settings.
So we have some work to do. We need to make sure that
resources are equitably distributed, and we need a dual focus.
We need to stabilize the system, but we also need to vastly
improve it. I recently released a report, Childcare in Crisis:
Solutions to Support Working Families, Children, and Educators,
in which I call for the passage of both the Childcare is
Essential Act and the Childcare for Working Families Act, which
together represent a critical Federal investment in the
childcare sector that also advances equity.
Secretary King, how would you or how would providing
equitable access to high-quality childcare and early childhood
education benefit children and society as a whole, and what are
the repercussions, particularly for low-income children and
children of color if we continue the status quo?
Mr. King. Thanks so much for that question. You know, the
Nobel Prize-winning economist James Heckman has written about
the return on investment on early childhood education that you
can get a seven-to-one, eight-to-one return on investment
because students who get high-quality early childhood education
are more likely to rise from kindergarten prepared
academically; they are more likely to graduate from high
school; they are more likely to go on to college; and they are
more likely to have long-term economic success; and, James
Heckman has shown, long-term health benefits from having
participated in quality early childhood education.
So the potential returns to an investment like the
Childcare for Working Families Act is quite powerful and ought
to be a rationale for bold action at this moment.
If we fail to invest in early childhood, what we know is
you see the achievement gap already present in kindergarten--
kids who are holding the book upside down because they are so
unfamiliar with letters. We know there are a lot of folks who
won't be able to go back to work if the childcare sector
collapses, and that will disproportionately harm low-income
communities and communities of color.
Ms. Bonamici. I appreciate that.
And, Secretary King, I actually quote Professor Heckman in
my report that I just released for that very reason, that this
is a good investment that actually pays for itself over time,
but also really gets our children, who are our future, off to a
great start.
Dr. Wilson, Secretary King gave a compelling testimony
about how harmful gaps in access to high-quality education
affects long-term outcomes for children of color, and yet, as
you note, educational attainment is not enough on its own to
bridge the divide. So educational attainment is enormously
important, but why is it insufficient in itself to close labor
market gaps for workers of color?
Ms. Wilson. So educational attainment is important because
it provides mobility. There is no question that a worker with a
higher level of education is more likely to be employed and
have higher wages than one with less education.
The problem that we see in the labor market is that, at the
same level of education, we see disparities in employment as
well as wages. And, in fact, over the last 40 years or so, the
wage gaps--racial wage gaps have actually grown the most among
the most educated workers in our economy.
So that raises another question of what is going on here,
and I think it raise the issue of what we are here to discuss
today, the role of racial discrimination and racism in creating
unequal outcomes in our economy.
Ms. Bonamici. So the Federal role in education is about
[inaudible] as chair of the Civil Rights and Human Services
Subcommittee, I intend to continue addressing it, and I yield
back the balance of my time.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Scott. Thank you.
The gentleman from Wisconsin, Mr. Grothman.
Mr. Grothman. Thanks for having me.
It is a little bit difficult to be on here because it kind
of appears in this committee we are supposed to always kind of
look at people racially and just not look at people as people.
So I have got to kind of switch my mind set for this committee.
First thing for Mr. Roy. Today--I don't know if you had a
chance to look at it, but, yesterday, we had a total of 267
lives lost due to the COVID, which is, while not good news, is
the lowest we have had since March 23rd. And I feel good about
it because a lot of the so-called experts in the public health
field were predicting disasters as States opened up their
economy. But, instead, we have 267 lives. We have, I believe,
now 10 days in a row of under a thousand lives lost. So it
seems as though the so-called experts have rarely been so
wrong.
Do you want to comment, Mr. Roy, on the fact that we only
had 267 lives lost?
I am relying on the Worldometer website, which is what a
lot of people tell me to look at because it has been cited
nationwide. Do you want to comment on the relatively small
number of deaths now that we have had so many States open up
their economies compared to where we were a month ago?
Mr. Roy. Yes, Mr. Grothman. All of your points, I agree
with. Both, there has been a precipitous decline in the daily
death rate, and the predictions of what the death rate would
look like today after States reopen their economies by certain
experts were completely wrong--completely wrong.
And, by the way, we should emphasize that the impact of
those experts' advice on low-income Americans, including
minority Americans, has been disproportionately harmful.
Mr. Grothman. Okay. You think we should be in the future a
little more jaded about the public health establishment?
Mr. Roy. Well, here is the thing. You know, it is like CBO
estimates. You can have a lot of expertise on the subject
genuinely and still get predictions wrong. Predictions are not
facts, and I think what happened here is you had a lot of
people making educated guesses to the best of their ability, we
might say, but they were just guesses, and yet we were expected
to treat those guesses like they were certainty.
Mr. Grothman. Thanks. My own personal weighing in, my
little world that an individual Congressman gets, is there is a
growing body of information that the way to avoid COVID is to
have more vitamin D in your body, or at least there is a strong
correlation between vitamin D and not getting the COVID. Are
you familiar with that sort of thing, and would it be--perhaps
be better off when we--rather than analyzing the chance of
getting COVID by race, analyzing the chance of getting COVID by
the amount of vitamin D in your body?
Mr. Roy. Well, as you know, correlation is not causation.
The reason I mention that in this particular context is we
don't know if the better response of people with high vitamin D
is due to the presence of vitamin D or the fact that they are
outdoors more. And what I mean by that is, if you are outdoors
and you are exposed to sunlight and you are not in closed,
confined areas with people who are COVID infected, that seems
to be a major vector of transmission. Outdoor infection or
transmission seems to be very, very low. But if you are in an
enclosed space like a subway in New York City, for example, or
a small apartment with the three generations of your family,
that tends to be where the transmission occurs, or a nursing
home, for example.
Mr. Grothman. Okay. So you would say that a lot of this
advice--at least in the State of Wisconsin, we were getting
advice to stay indoors, lock yourself away. That was exactly
the opposite of the advice that we should have been giving
people?
Mr. Roy. In fact, it is quite possible that the lockdowns
worsened transmission of COVID-19 by forcing people indoors and
preventing them from being outdoors more and therefore being
around other transmitters of the disease less.
Mr. Grothman. I don't like to talk about race, like I said,
but vitamin D, is there any difference by race that you are
aware of?
Mr. Roy. Yeah, I don't know the data well enough to
comment. So I will leave that one for now.
Mr. Grothman. Some of my colleagues talked about difficulty
getting into college racially and such. I know here, in the
State of Wisconsin, very, very--maybe a smaller people of--
percentage of color than normal, I am under the impression
talking to people at our university systems, they already go
out of the way through affirmative action to try to push more
people of color into the universities. Is that typical around
the country--
Mr. Roy. Well, you know--
Mr. Grothman.--or is that just a Wisconsin thing?
Mr. Roy. It is difficult, but, you know, I will mention, as
this came up earlier in this hearing, I am coming to you from
Austin, Texas, and the University of Texas actually has a very
interesting model in which they take the top--I think it is the
top 10 percent of students from every high school in the State
and guarantee them admission at the University of Texas.
And what that does is that allows you to find the high-
achieving students in every high school, even if that high
school is in a disadvantaged area. I feel like that model could
be used more widely as an alternative to a form of race-based
affirmative action.
Mr. Grothman. Thank you for having this, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Scott. Thank you.
Next, gentleman from California, Mr. Takano.
Mr. Takano. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank you for this
very important hearing on how COVID-19 has increased racial
inequities in the country.
The shift to distance learning has exposed the educational
inequities many students of color have been facing for decades
as States start to open back up and grapple with the depleted
budgets. It is the role of the Federal Government historically
to ensure equity in every sector. And, recently, many
competitive colleges, like the University of California's
system, private schools such as Harvard University, have
suspended the use of ACT and SAT scores in their admissions
process to help level the playing field.
Mr. King, from your experience, how much of the college
admissions process is reliant on these test scores?
Mr. King. Yeah, well, there is no question that reliance on
SAT and the ACT creates a disadvantage for students who have
had less access to quality K through 12 preparation. There is
also some evidence to suggest that those assessments, the more
they are relied upon, the fewer Black and Latino students will
be admitted.
But one worry I have, as folks move to test optional, is
that just changing the use of test scores is unlikely to
produce the kind of increase in Black and Latino representation
that we ought to see, and so it is important that universities
also take other steps. Financial aid is critical, making sure
that resources are available to support students as they come
to campus. It is critical that colleges and universities
consider race as they are making admissions decisions. It is
critical that they reach out to high schools that are in high-
needs communities so students know about the opportunities. So
the test optional piece can be a part of a package of efforts
that would produce more diverse classes.
Mr. Takano. Well, Mr. King, do you believe that, you know,
we have an opportunity here with SATs and ACTs now being very
difficult to obtain because, of course, it is inadvisable to
test large numbers of students in congregate settings--and I
don't think it is--they found a way to do testing remotely for
security purposes and integrity of the test. Is there an
opportunity to reexamine college admissions generally?
Mr. King. Yes. I mean, what I hope colleges and
universities will do is look at their entire admissions process
and ask what more could they do to make sure that they have a
representative class--more low-income students, more students
of color, more first-generation students. And they ought to
consider not only the role of tests; they ought to also
consider the role of extracurricular activity. They ought to
credit the student who worked in their family's bodega each
night the same way they credit playing on the lacrosse team,
for example.
Mr. Takano. You know, unfortunately, you know, many of
our--well, they--many schools will have IB programs, AP
programs. Of course, these programs also rely on some form of
testing. But I am worried about those schools that don't have,
you know, a history of strong curriculum and that universities
may be looking and favoring students who come from schools with
a history of, you know, teachers who can teach these
curriculum, which often aren't offered to low-income and
minority students.
Mr. King. That is exactly right. Black and Latino students
are significantly underrepresented in access to AP and IB, and
it is a problem both across schools and within schools. So
students of color are less likely to be in schools that offer
those courses, but, even when they are in schools that offer
those courses, they are underrepresented relative to their
percentage of the population.
We know that issues like implicit bias affect who gets
referred to those courses. There are some States that are
moving to an automatic default enrollment of students who
qualify to try and reduce the role of implicit bias and perhaps
teacher recommendations in the enrollment in those courses.
Mr. Takano. Of course, you know, I have long thought about
how do we have an alternative to access to higher ed where the
gateways are kind of characterized by testing, different kinds
of admissions testing. I have long been interested in
concurrent enrollment strategies, such as early college high
schools. You know, what do you think about, you know,
alternatives such as that?
Mr. King. Yes. Dual enrollment, we know from large- scale
studies can increase the likelihood that students graduate from
high school and go on to college. So we ought to invest in dual
enrollment. The challenge is the districts that need those dual
enrollment programs the most are the ones with the least
resources, and so we really need that infusion of additional
dollars for K-12 and the higher-ed institutions that serve
high-needs communities.
Mr. Takano. It does take resources to make sure that they
have the teachers who are qualified to teach those courses, who
know about the pedagogy. These school systems will need support
in implementing the strategies of dual enrollment in early
college high schools.
Mr. King. That is exactly right. And we know that low-
income students and students of color are disproportionately
enrolled in the districts that are getting the least resources,
and that is likely to get worse as States have to make huge
cuts as a result of the COVID-19 economic crisis.
Mr. Takano. Well, you talk about maintenance of equity
requirement. What do you mean by that? Well, we won't have
time. I guess I will yield back, but wonderful to talk to you,
Mr. King. Thank you so much.
Mr. King. Good to see you.
Chairman Scott. Thank you.
Next, gentlelady from New York, Ms. Stefanik?
The gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Allen?
Ms. Foxx. Mr. Chairman, I just want to say Ms. Stefanik had
to step out to another [inaudible] so thank you.
Chairman Scott. Thank you. I have been advised that she had
to leave, but I wanted to call her name just in case she had
gotten back in.
Mr. Allen. All right, sir. Can you hear me?
Chairman Scott. Mr. Allen from Georgia?
Mr. Allen. Yes, sir. Can you hear me?
Chairman Scott. I can hear you.
Mr. Allen. Great. Super.
Thank you for holding this hearing today, and one of the
things that I brought up in the last hearing and I wanted to
make sure that we, you know, had some feedback on this, is
that, you know, in 2018, our Federal spending was about $4
trillion; discretionary, which is about 30 percent, is $1.2
trillion; mandatory was $3.8 trillion.
And then, in 2020, that has gone up substantially. We are
at about $3 trillion in mandatory; $1.485 trillion in
discretionary. And so it has gone up about $500 billion. And,
you know, my question is simply this, and this is to Mr. Roy:
We have spent about almost $4 trillion since COVID-19, and of
course you have heard mention the HEROES Act here today, which
is an additional $3 trillion, which would just about triple or
more than triple discretionary spending. Mr. Roy, have you
looked at the situation as far as discretionary--as far as this
spending goes and its impact on the people of this country that
are taking on--I have never liked debt. Obviously, I don't mind
doing, you know, debt when you have collateral and that sort of
thing, but it looks like, to me, that we are on a downward
spiral that is not going to be good for anybody in this
country.
Can you comment on that, Mr. Roy?
Mr. Roy. Well, Mr. Allen, it is interesting because,
tomorrow, I am actually testifying before the House Budget
Committee on this very topic, how the combination of
congressional spending and, of course, declining revenue from
the lockdowns is going to lead to a massive explosion of the
deficit this year.
And, by the way, all that does is move closer to us the
ultimate fiscal reckoning, which will happen, when we have to
crash Federal spending in order to deal with the fiscal crisis
when nobody wants to buy Treasury bonds when the U.S. is
insolvent.
And who will that harm? That will most harm the people who
most depend on public assistance, public spending: Medicare,
Medicaid, Social Security.
So, the more we destabilize our fiscal situation, the more
we are putting at risk economically vulnerable populations.
Mr. Allen. You know we have had to deal with COVID-19
crisis and the next it looks like, if we don't do something
about it, do you believe that fiscal crisis is coming upon us
and coming upon us rapidly?
Mr. Roy. Yeah, I mean in both directions, right? Who knows?
We can never predict when the fiscal crisis will come from the
debt that we are piling on year after year, but we know it will
come because of the laws of math, the laws of economics. We
don't get an exception from those laws in the United States.
Mr. Allen. Exactly. And really the only way to overcome
where we are is a strong economy. You know, as far as the
workers that were affected or the workers that benefited from
our strong economy which just three months ago was $22
trillion, going on $23 trillion, who benefitted the most from
that strong economy?
Mr. Roy. Low-income Americans, minorities. As I mentioned
in my written testimony, the disparity between the White and
Black unemployment rates, the disparity between the White and
Hispanic unemployment rates were at record lows prior to the
pandemic and those disparities have now widened. The lockdown
is driving those disparities.
Mr. Allen. As far as the biggest issue--and we have just
got one minute to answer this question. The biggest issue I
hear in my district is people who are on unemployment,
including the $600 bonus, don't want to return to work. And
there is a lot of animosity between the employers and the
employees about returning to work. Have you looked at how this
is affecting folks going back to work and rebuilding this
economy?
Mr. Roy. There is no doubt that the $600 bonus is retarding
the recovery, even in those States that have reopened, because
people have a powerful economic incentive, and you can't blame
them for it, a powerful economic incentive to stay on the
sidelines.
So I would love for Congress to revisit that piece of
legislation and reform the bonus so it is more targeted to the
people who truly need the help.
Mr. Allen. Good. And, of course, the liability question is
the other issue that we have got out there as far as employers
worried about liability and bringing their employees back to
work as far as lawsuits.
Mr. Roy. Yes.
Mr. Allen. What is your take on that?
Mr. Roy. It is absolutely a very important problem and if
Congress sees fit to pass some sort of safe harbor to enable
people to go back to work and for employers to reopen their
doors, I think that would be very, incredibly important.
Mr. Allen. Right. Thank you, Mr. Roy.
And I yield back.
Chairman Scott. Thank you.
The gentlelady from North Carolina, Dr. Adams.
Ms. Adams. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Ranking
Member, for convening this hearing today.
And to the witnesses, thank you for your testimony.
The HEROES Act requires OSHA to issue a temporary--
emergency temporary standard that requires employers to develop
and implement an infectious disease plan to protect workers
from exposure to the coronavirus. This provision also makes it
a violation of the OSHA Act to retaliate against workers for
raising concerns to the employer or to the government about
inadequate infectious disease protections.
Dr. Wilson, in your expert opinion is an enforceable safety
standard a necessary step to economic recovery or would it, as
opponents contend, impede economic recovery?
Ms. Wilson. I think it is a necessary step to economic
recovery. As I mentioned, ensuring the health and safety of
American workers and communities across the country are a
critical step in building a solid recovery. We know from
surveys that about 60 percent of those who work outside of
their home express that they have concerns about contracting
coronavirus. Among workers of color, Black and Latino workers
in particular, that is closer to, like, 70 percent of those
workers expressing concerns, in addition to the fact that they
express greater concerns about retaliation as a result of
speaking up against that.
So it is very important that the workers, as workers go
back to work, have frontline workers who are already out there,
that workers are empowered to advocate for touching on their
own personal health and safety, as well as the health and
safety of American workers.
Ms. Adams. Thank you very much.
According to research from the Brookings Institution, we
can expect nearly 40 percent of borrowers to default on their
loans by 2023. Now that doesn't even begin to recount for the
impact of the COVID crisis, and to me this indicates a student
loan default crisis.
And so as we know, certain students are at greater risk of
default. The study finds that the rate of default for students
at all-for-profit schools is almost four times that of students
who attend community colleges.
Meanwhile, Black borrowers who completed a bachelor's
degree default at five times the rate of White borrowers who
complete their degrees and are even more likely to default than
White borrowers who leave college without a degree. I am
concerned that the student loan default crisis will worsen in
the wake of COVID-19.
Secretary King, what can you tell us about those who
struggle most to pay back their loans? And what do you see
COVID-19, how do you see it impacting these struggling
borrowers?
Mr. King. Thank you, Congresswoman.
Certainly the racial wealth gap is driving the degree to
which Black students are disproportionately likely to default
on their loans at every income level. Even at the highest
income level, Black students are some seven times as likely to
default as White students.
The key is to provide targeted debt relief to try to
address this and to ensure that college is more affordable. You
look at the amount of the cost of attending a public college
that was covered by Pell Grants in 1980. It was some 80
percent. Today that is down to 28 percent. We need to make sure
that college is affordable for all students, and that
investment in higher education will have long-term benefits for
our economy.
Ms. Adams. Okay. Great. That was going to be my last
follow-up question. What can Congress do? I believe you have
answered that.
Again, thank you very much for your work. Thanks to each of
our individuals who came and testified.
Mr. Chairman, I am going the yield back.
Chairman Scott. I thank you.
The gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Smucker.
Mr. Smucker. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I appreciate this hearing on this important topic. I would
like to thank, Mr. Roy, you for being here today. I really
value your insight on these matters for not only the extensive
research work that you have done, evaluating economic policies,
but also your ability to speak to the healthcare impact, given
your medical background.
So I want to go back to the discussion around the
disproportionate deaths in nursing homes. My district is home
to a high number of senior housing facilities, nursing homes,
assisted living facilities, and other seniors, elderly
residential communities. My State, Governor Wolf in
Pennsylvania, was one of five governors who made the
devastating decision to force nursing home to take COVID-
positive patients.
Now think about this, and you mentioned this earlier. Many
nursing homes were not in a good position to handle infection,
to prevent the growth of infection. They were also at capacity.
So I talked to nursing home workers and administrators who are
extremely frustrated when they were at 98 percent capacity in
one case, very difficult to isolate patients and so on. And we
were moving patients. The governor was moving patients to the
nursing homes when the hospitals were virtually empty and were
best equipped to handle this.
The impact in Pennsylvania has been devastating. Nearly 70
percent of the deaths in Pennsylvania have occurred in nursing
homes. To date, 6,400 deaths, 6,426 deaths in Pennsylvania,
4,389 of those were in nursing homes. To make that decision
worse, at the same time the governor was not adequately
prioritizing nursing homes for PPE. They were receiving PPE
only after hospitals had what they needed. So, it was
devastating.
Mr. Avery--or Mr. Roy, I should say. I am sorry. 4,389
deaths in nursing homes in Pennsylvania, how many of those can
be attributed to that disastrous policy?
Mr. Roy. Well, Mr. Smucker, good to see you.
I don't know the answer to that because we have to look
facility by facility and really do a retrospective analysis. I
hope that those analyses are done by researchers as time goes
on, we have more time to look at this particular problem. But
as you say, it is a catastrophe.
Sixty-eight percent of all deaths in Pennsylvania are in
nursing homes and yet--and by the way, the one thing that is
really important to mention here is this was not some, oh, boy,
you know, look at what happened here, you know, we shouldn't
have done that.
At the time that Governor Wolf put this order into effect,
at the time that Cuomo and Murphy and Whitmer and the other
governors put these orders into effect, the nursing home
community was up in arms, fighting these orders, arguing that
they would devastate the facilities.
Mr. Smucker. You are exactly right. I talked to them. I was
talking to them at the time. They were desperate for help, and
it was in Pennsylvania and not New Jersey where the Secretary
of Health quietly removed her own mother from a nursing home in
the midst of this crisis. Think about that. Took her mother
from a nursing home, despite moving patients to nursing homes
and really simultaneously telling millions of Pennsylvanians
that it was safe to keep your loved ones there. It is
incredibly frustrating, and it makes me angry to understand
what has happened here in Pennsylvania.
One of the things I haven't heard, and I am wondering if
have you any information on this. Can you shed any light on
disproportionate impact of nursing home residents who are
minorities? Are there more minorities who have died in nursing
homes as well as in the general population?
Mr. Roy. As I mentioned in my written testimony, we have
tried to do that work. So we have done some basic correlations,
a regression analyses of racial demographics at the State level
and nursing home fatalities. At the State level we don't see a
correlation. What we are hoping is that with the new CDC--
excuse me--CMS data that is nursing home by nursing home and
county by county, we can see if there are more correlations at
the county level and at the facility level. But we don't know
yet.
Mr. Smucker. One of the other--and I am running out of time
quickly but we have continued to be in a lockdown and a
shutdown in Pennsylvania for an extraordinarily long period of
time. How do you think that would have changed, had we given
adequate consideration to how many of the deaths were being--we
were seeing them in nursing homes?
Mr. Roy. I mean, this is the two--the two points that I
really want to drive home in this hearing. The first is that we
didn't do enough to protect people in nursing homes who are
disproportionately non-White.
The second thing is in a State like Pennsylvania where 70
percent or 68 percent of the deaths are happening in nursing
homes, that means that the risk for the average Pennsylvanian
who is not in a nursing home, the 99.4 percent of
Pennsylvanians who don't live in nursing homes, their risk is
cut by two-thirds which means you can do more to reopen the
economy where you are opening schools safely for those
individuals and we have unnecessarily harmed those vulnerable
populations with lockdowns.
Mr. Smucker. Thank you.
Chairman Scott. Thank you.
The gentlemen from California, Mr. DeSaulnier.
The gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Norcross.
John, you are muted.
Mr. Norcross. How is that?
Chairman Scott. You are good.
Mr. Norcross. Thank you.
First of all, Chairman, thank you for holding this. Ranking
Member Foxx, good to have you on board.
I do want to follow up on a couple of items that we have
talked about. I keep hearing about the fiscal health of our
country. Obviously very important and for those who are
discussing the debt, apparently that wasn't an issue when they
gave away $1.3 trillion to top 1 percent which now shows it is
not paying anywhere close and the unfunded war.
And that is what I was bringing up. If we were in a war,
would we talk about the debt? No, we would do what we have to
do as a country. And we are in a war except it is the virus.
Nursing homes, I keep hearing, are forced to accept people.
So do hospitals. The difference is nursing homes were not
prepared. Nursing homes, who take into consideration medical
conditions, they didn't have the PPE. They didn't have the
respiratory items in their atrium and HVAC systems. And the
idea of saying they--the workers can only work in one nursing
home. Pay them a living wage, and then they wouldn't have to go
nursing home to nursing home.
So with that being said, I just want to talk about schools.
When we look at what is going on--and I know my colleague just
talked about the OSHA standards. Right now they are only
guidelines.
Dr. Wilson, can you talk about the difference that schools,
particularly in the areas with challenges to the budget, urban
areas, that they are not getting direction now. If you have a
standard, which we have talked about quite a bit here, we would
know how to prepare for it.
We are in June, July, August, the construction period for
schools. Yet we are not seeing schools follow any standards.
Come the end of August, beginning of September, kids are coming
back.
What is going to happen if they don't have their facilities
set up for this COVID? Dr. Wilson?
Ms. Wilson. So I think that is a question that most of us
don't look forward to seeing the answer to, for schools and
facilities that are unprepared to welcome back students in
large numbers, as well as teachers and faculty and staff.
So having the standards in place so that students are safe,
so that teachers and staff are safe, is essential to reopening.
That is a part of our recovery. Part of the recovery is about
people having confidence that they can safely return to work,
safely return to school, safely return to their way of living
without putting their health at risk.
Mr. Norcross. Because right now, as I understand, most
schools, they are 6 feet but they are not giving any
guidelines. Many States have something call public OSHA which
is determined by the State. Yet even those States aren't
accepting these standards.
Do you see, come September, when the children go back, what
confidence will parents have that the school is ready for it?
Ms. Wilson. Yeah I don't know that parents will feel very
confident in sending their students back to school if we don't
have consistent, enforceable standards that are in place,
again, to protect the students, to protect the teachers, and
protect other staff at the schools.
Mr. Norcross. So what we see is we heard about Safe Harbor
and that discussion can happen. But, without any standards,
everybody is doing their own thing. The lawyers are going to
have a field day.
For those who are focused more on the economy than the
people you represent, I just want to say one thing. There is an
old saying. Those with the most toys or money when they die
win. It doesn't matter how much money you have if you die.
I yield back.
Chairman Scott. Thank you.
The gentleman from Indiana, Mr. Banks. The gentleman from
Indiana, Mr. Banks.
The gentleman from North Carolina are, Mr. Walker. The
gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Walker.
The gentleman from Kentucky, Mr. Comer.
The gentleman from Idaho, Mr. Fulcher.
The gentleman from Kansas, Mr. Watkins. The gentleman from
Kansas.
The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Wright.
The gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Meuser.
Mr. Mueser. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to all the
witnesses for being here with us.
Mr. Roy, data suggests we had the strongest economy in 50
years prior to the COVID epidemic, pandemic. Does the data also
support that this economy was very beneficial for low-income
and minority Americans?
Mr. Roy. Yes, sir. The unemployment rate for African
Americans, the unemployment rate for Hispanics, the
unemployment rate for minorities overall was at record lows
prior to the pandemic.
Mr. Mueser. Would you say during the course of the
improvement in our economy that was the most significant
improvement economically for Americans including low-income and
minority workers?
Mr. Roy. Well, having the economic--having the unemployment
rate at record lows is obviously an important achievement. It
is not the only thing we have to do to ensure that all
Americans prosper. Of course, we have to bring their incomes
up, their wealth up, and things like that but certainly we were
headed in the right direction.
Mr. Mueser. Right. Does the data projections suggest a safe
opening will have dramatic improvements for low-income
Americans and minorities?
Mr. Roy. Certainly I think the dispersion of policy
responses we are seeing now, so, again, if you would compare
Florida which never locked down very severely and then reopened
early on relative to other States, the economic performance of
all people and certainly of economically vulnerable populations
is much greater there than elsewhere.
Mr. Mueser. Okay. So safe opening of schools, safe opening
of small businesses very important for our overall economy but
very important as well for low-income and minorities.
Mr. Roy. Especially so. And by the way, this is not just a
2020 thing. If you look historically at anytime in which we
have had a severe recession, whether it was the early--
recession of the early 1980s or the recession of 2008,
minorities and low-income Americans were always the ones who
were most harmed. Economic growth helps economically vulnerable
people more than it helps the people who are already
prosperous.
Mr. Mueser. Right.
So small businesses and particularly schools are very
concerned about liability, once opening. Passing liability
reform to hold harmless schools and businesses, I am told by
schools, is critical. So a liability reform bill would be very
important for low-income and minority students as well as
workers.
Mr. Roy. It is essential. It is arguably the most important
thing Congress can do. Obviously a lot of reopening policy is
done at the State level but Congress is in a position to Act on
this liability issue and it is arguably the single-most
important policy we need to get the reopening, safe reopening
to work.
Mr. Mueser. Right. You would also, I think, agree that a
transportation infrastructure bill would be very important for
all Americans including minority and low-income?
Mr. Roy. I think it depends on the details but, yes, you
know, it would be useful particularly when it comes to, when
you think about public transportation and the sanitary concerns
of public transportation, that is something we need to address.
Mr. Mueser. You are a data-driven individual. I just want
to ask about the nursing homes, your thoughts there. I am in
Pennsylvania and, yes, we have--it is actually more than 70
percent. It is about 71, maybe 72 percent of our fatalities
were in nursing homes. You stated 68 percent, but that might
change on a daily basis.
When there was the Washington State and other areas in
early March, we saw fatalities occurring, the corona just
running through some of those nursing homes and seeing the
fatalities, I mean, how can you--how can it be explained that
two weeks after that on March 18th that some States, again,
including Pennsylvania, ordered patients from the hospital with
corona back to a nursing home and, as Congressman Smucker said
earlier, meanwhile the nursing homes were at capacity, very
limited space, and the hospitals were at 20 percent capacity
maybe.
How can you explain that? How could somebody see the data
and make that decision?
Mr. Roy. Well, it was clearly a reckless and catastrophic
decision. I mean, what they would say, you know, in hindsight,
I suppose, what Andrew Cuomo, for example, would say or
Governor Wolf might say is, ``Well, we were worried that the
hospitals would get overwhelmed with COVID patients. That is
why we wanted to force the nursing homes to accept the least
severely ill of those actively infected COVID patients.''
But that was a terrible--that was a completely wrong way to
think about it because, if you were worsen the disease in
nursing homes, you are going have more people come to the ICUs
and more people come to the hospitals because the people who
are most at risk of dying and being severely ill is the nursing
home population. So they had their thinking backwards, but I
think that was part of the thought process.
Mr. Mueser. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, I yield.
Chairman Scott. I thank you.
The gentlelady from Washington, Ms. Jayapal.
Ms. Jayapal. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I have very surprised to hear some of the comments here
around lockdown somehow harming our efforts and COVID, given
that Washington State was the first State to have a case and we
have managed it remarkably well through aggressive lockdown
policies. I think the data has really shown that this was
exactly the right approach.
Mr. Chairman, I wanted to focus my time today on people of
color and healthcare. We know that people of color are
disproportionately on the front lines as healthcare workers,
janitors, postal service employees, and farm workers and that
people of color are overrepresented among COVID-19 cases with
Black Americans nearly four times more likely to die from
COVID-19 than White Americans, and Latinx people comprising a
greater share of COVID-19 cases than their share of the
population in 42 States. They have allowed us, frankly, to stay
safe while they have been risking their own lives and yet we
continue to fail communities of color by not ensuring equitable
healthcare for all.
We know that people of color disproportionately lack access
to healthcare, representing over half of America's uninsured
population.
Dr. Wilson, why do people of color disproportionately lack
access to healthcare?
Ms. Wilson. I mean, a lot of the disproportionate lack of
access to healthcare is related to the fact that, for so many
of us, health insurance is connected to employment and we know
that there are persistent disparities in the labor market, both
in terms of employment outcomes but also in terms of the kinds
of jobs and positions that people hold and the disparities that
exist across those different kinds of occupations, whether you
are a full-time employee or a part-time employee, et cetera.
So between those disparities in employment, on top of the
occupational segregation that tends to put workers of color in
occupation where they are less likely to have employer-provided
health insurance, all of that contributes to these overall
disparities in health insurance.
Ms. Jayapal. Thank you.
And, you know, I think that the crisis has made it clear
that we have to address these inequities through untethering of
healthcare from unemployment. What other steps, Dr. Wilson,
should we be taking right now in the midst of this pandemic to
address inequities and access to healthcare?
Ms. Wilson. I think it is important that we consider how in
the current situation that we can make universal coverage
available to everyone. That would include people not having to
pay additional monies to be tested or to get treatment for
COVID-19.
This is a unique situation that we find ourselves in. And
it is important that people have the confidence to go and get
the care, treatment, and testing that is so essential, not only
for fighting the virus but also for building a solid recovery.
Ms. Jayapal. Thank you, Dr. Wilson.
I think that, you know, this pandemic has made it clear
that when some members of our communities are excluded from
equitable access to necessary resources and services, it hurts
us all and I think the pandemic, obviously, you know, free
testing, treatment, and any eventual vaccine for COVID-19 is
critical.
But as more and more people lose their employment, lose
their source of income, 44, almost 44 million Americans
without--that have filed unemployment claims and 27 million
minimum that have lost their healthcare, the reality is that
they also have other healthcare needs that are going to need to
be covered.
And that is why I have introduced the Medicare Crisis
Program Act which would expand Medicaid eligibility to those
who are uninsured and extend Medicare to recently unemployed
individuals and their households during the COVID-19 crisis.
Dr. Wilson, should access to healthcare be tied to
employment? How does this--who does this benefit and who does
that leave out?
Ms. Wilson. Again, when we are talking about what needs to
be done to make sure that we are living in a more equitable
society, the fact that there are clear and persistent racial
disparities and gender disparities in labor market outcomes
suggest that necessarily tying health insurance to employment
is not the best way of achieving a more equitable solution to
the lack of health insurance unless we are also addressing
those underlying disparities in the labor market.
Ms. Jayapal. Thank you so much for your testimony and for
your work. I don't think anyone can make the case that the
current healthcare system is working for us. I think COVID-19
has provided the clear case that when healthcare is provided by
an employer and somehow tethered to your work, access to that
healthcare is just as volatile as your employment status.
And so we are, you know, working very hard to rectify that
and we must boldly call out the systemic inequities in our
healthcare system and achieve health justice as a meaningful
and necessary step towards racial injustice and in my view the
best way to do that is to provide universal healthcare coverage
for everybody from the Government, as so many other countries
do.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I yield back.
Chairman Scott. Thank you.
I notice the gentleman from Kansas has returned.
Mr. Watkins. Yes, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
Chairman Scott. Mr. Watkins, you are recognized for 5
minutes.
Mr. Watkins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate it. And
thanks to the panel for your insight, and it is so extremely
important right now.
Mr. Roy, the CBO estimates that we may never return to the
record low unemployment rates of recent years. I believe we can
safely get people back to work faster than economic estimates.
But what is your sense of how quickly jobs can return?
Mr. Roy. I think many jobs can return quickly. What I am
more concerned with is not so much jobs returning quickly. I
think a lot of jobs can return quickly as the economy reopens.
I mean, I think there are certain sectors that are going to be
more challenging, right? Hospitality is going to be more
challenging. Bars are going to be more challenging. Airlines
are going to be more challenging. But the bulk of the economy I
do think can come back.
The one thing I worry about a lot is consolidation. We have
had small businesses get absolutely crushed because they don't
have the cash reserves and the leverage to stay afloat if we
are going to lock down the economy for this long.
And I fear what we are going to see is a lot of big box,
large, multinational corporations fill up the space that small
businesses and entrepreneurs are not able to fill because they
are more economically unstable.
Mr. Watkins. Yeah. Thank you.
And Mr. Roy, we are beginning to understand the dramatic
impact of COVID-19 and all the impact that these State-imposed
lockdowns have had on the American work.
How damaging were State-imposed lockdowns, and can you
comment on what the impacts were on small businesses versus
large businesses?
Mr. Roy. So in the paper that I have mentioned that is in
our--included in our written testimony on how to reopen the
economy, we document a lot of the research that is out there on
the fact that small businesses on average have about 28 days of
cash in reserve if they don't have any revenue. And for certain
types of businesses like restaurants, like retail shops, like
repair shops, it is more like two weeks. So those businesses
basically have gone belly-up. Over 100,000 small businesses
have closed permanently as a result of the crisis. And the
number, the true number, may be much, much higher.
So it is a serious problem and, you know, again, in terms
of how we can get the economy back on track, the reopenings,
the States that have reopened have shown a rebound, a pretty
rapid rebound for the most part with the exception of some of
the sectors I mentioned.
Mr. Watkins. Okay. Thank you.
And obviously you mentioned that limiting companies'
liability is such a critical component. Is there a precedence
that I can look back to, to serve as maybe a baseline to
understand effective policies?
Mr. Roy. You know, I am sure there is, Mr. Watkins. I would
have to go back and look myself to see the one that really
makes sense here. So I don't have a good answer for you on that
right now.
Mr. Watkins. Sure.
And, Mr. Roy, you mentioned earlier in response to Dr. Foxx
that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the deregulation, they were few
of the main reason for such a strong economic--such a strong
economy and that low unemployment before COVID-19. Can you
expound upon that and touch on how we can continue to grow
these policies and how could these policies help our economy
bounce back in response to this downturn?
Mr. Roy. Well there is so many things to say about this. Of
course, we don't have time to go through them all.
The regulatory initiative has played a big role. The Tax
Cuts and Jobs Act, particularly reducing the corporate tax
rates to a level that is more competitive with other countries
meant that a lot of multinational countries that were moving
jobs out of the United States to other countries like Ireland
and Canada, are moving those jobs back to the United States.
Mr. Watkins. Understood.
Thank you.
And, Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time.
Chairman Scott. I thank you.
And I notice the--
Ms. Foxx. Mr. Chairman, I know you have favored the
gentleman from Virginia before but today you are disfavoring
him. You keep skipping over him and I have to speak up for him
because he has been with us from the beginning and you have
gone over him about four times.
So the next time you recognize a Republican, I would ask
that you come back to Mr. Cline.
Chairman Scott. Thank you. I appreciate that. I apologize
to my distinguished colleague from Virginia.
The--I notice the gentlelady from Florida has returned, Ms.
Wilson.
Ms. Wilson, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. Wilson of Florida. Thank you so much, Chairman Scott,
for your extraordinary leadership and Ranking Member Foxx for
holding this hearing to investigate how the COVID-19 pandemic
has widening racial inequities in education, health, and the
workforce.
I want to thank all of the witnesses for their testimony
today and this hearing, like others, challenges us to make more
critically--to think more critically about the impact of
systemic racism in our Nation. This is necessary if we are to
move this country closer to the more perfect union spoken about
in the preamble to our Constitution.
We must acknowledge the role that race plays in the
distribution of wealth and benefits in this country if we are
to ever address it. Part of that acknowledgment comes in the
form of pointing out the disparity impact that catastrophic
events have on Black and minority communities.
Many of us have heard the old saying that when America gets
a cold, Black America gets pneumonia. Well, that happens to
Black America when America has a pandemic and
disproportionately negative health outcomes, disproportionately
negative education outcomes, disproportionately negative
employment outcomes.
So, I have a question. And my question is for Dr. Wilson.
In the aftermath of the Great Recession, you and your fellow
economists sounded alarm about elevated levels of long-term
unemployment which disproportionately affected African American
workers.
What is long-term unemployment, and do we need to be afraid
that long-term unemployment will surge again among workers of
color in this crisis?
Ms. Wilson. Thank you for that question.
Long-term unemployment is defined by people being
unemployed for 26 weeks or longer. We saw extended--higher
rates of long-term unemployment and extended durations of
unemployment during the Great Recession because of the length
of time it took for the economy to fully recover, thus reaching
communities of color later in that recovery as opposed to
sooner.
I think when we look at our current situation, it is
reasonable to have concerns about whether we are going see that
same kind of pattern. Looking at just one month out of data
that we saw in May where the Black unemployment rate ticked up
slightly where the overall unemployment rate actually declined
suggests that recovery may not be as even as the initial impact
that the pandemic had on the economy.
The long-term employment and the evenness of recovery are
both issues that are important to keep our eyes on.
Ms. Wilson of Florida. What policy solutions can prevent
long-term unemployment, particularly for workers of color,
Black workers, Hispanic workers?
Ms. Wilson. So in order to prevent long-term unemployment,
it is essential to get the economy reopened and people back to
work as safely and quickly as possible. Prioritizing full
employment, both in terms of monetary policy decisions as well
as fiscal policy decisions, are things that can help with that.
Targeting efforts to create jobs in underserved communities
where rates of unemployment are chronically and consistently
much higher are ways to address both the public health issues,
as well as the job issues.
Ms. Wilson of Florida. As you have pointed out, Black and
Hispanic workers often continue to experience recession-level
conditions long after the overall unemployment rate drops below
4 or 5 percent.
After the Great Recession, Black and Hispanic questions
suffered for years after the economy appeared to be fully
recovered for White workers. Thinking ahead to this economic
recovery, I am curious whether you believe the Federal Reserve
and policymakers need to shift how we define full employment.
What effect could shifting this measure have on racial equity
for workers?
Ms. Wilson. I think in order to more accurately evaluate
slow employment, we have to consider the disparate rates of
unemployment that exists across different communities. It goes
beyond looking at one number, NAIRU, for example, that has
consistently overestimated where unemployment should be in
order to have a full and equally shared recovery.
So it requires that we pay attention to what is going on in
different communities, and full employment cannot be declared
until we see recovery happening in all communities, regardless
of race, ethnicity.
Ms. Wilson of Florida. I yield back.
Chairman Scott. Thank you.
And now the distinguished gentleman, my distinguished
colleague from Virginia, Mr. Cline.
And I apologize for skipping over you.
Mr. Cline. Mr. Chairman, it is fine. I have been enjoying
the conversation.
I just have a couple of questions for Mr. Roy.
You know, here in Virginia, our governor has placed quite a
few restrictions on places of work and, you know, settings from
state to state, workplace settings vary greatly with respect to
how much risk of COVID-19 spread exists for workers and for
customers.
Have these differences, the restrictions the different
States, have they contributed to the impact of COVID-19 on
minority communities and have the restrictions recognized these
differences and should States continue to refine these
restrictions based on the actual risk that is present?
Mr. Roy. Well, you know, one great example of this, Mr.
Cline, is the towns that are on the border between Virginia and
Tennessee. As you know, because Tennessee has pursued a policy
of opening, they have also done a far better job of controlling
the spread of COVID-19 in nursing homes but they have also had
a much more open economy.
And So in Tennessee we are seeing much better performance
for economically vulnerable population and also for medically
vulnerable population, a much better performance than Virginia,
all the way around. And yet Virginia is continuing to lock
down, and I would say one of the most aggressive States in the
country in terms of economic restrictions relative to their
actual public health utility.
Mr. Cline. Thank you. We are hoping that we can see some
loosening of those restrictions and some improvements in
economically vulnerable areas of the State. And I think that
goes to your point.
Another question relating to higher education. Some
students are really yearning to participate in the normal on-
campus college experience. What should these students be aware
of as they head to school in a couple of months, and what can
they do to minimize the risk of contracting the coronavirus?
And as a follow-up, how can students diminish the likelihood of
passing the virus on to older family members that they have at
home?
Mr. Roy. Another great question. This is something that is
going to be part of the forthcoming report we are putting out
at FREOPP on reopening schools and including postsecondary
educational facilities.
So one thing that is important here is you want to
obviously adjust campuses to have a little bit more physical
distancing and that means maybe some students, particularly for
most colleges, you don't have to have everyone in the
dormitories. Most colleges, in fact, don't have enough housing
space to house most of their students.
So allowing students and enabling students to come to
classes from home is going to be very important, particularly
those who are in more vulnerable populations.
On the flip side, maybe have you a student who needs to
live in the dormitory because that is a way of avoiding or
being around their grandparents or other at-risk individuals.
So it is important for the housing policies of universities
and colleges and other postsecondary facilities to take that
into account, to take the individual risks of students into
account.
Obviously you want to be careful and you want to be safe,
particularly around older faculty members, older members of the
staff but in general people in the age bracket of colleges are
at very, very low risk of severe illness and mortality from
COVID.
And I would recommend to this committee, if members haven't
already reviewed it, the testimony to the Senate Health
Committee from Purdue President Mitch Daniels which was very
compelling on all these points.
Mr. Cline. I appreciate that. We have--not only does the
Sixth District have more colleges and universities than any
other congressional district, save one district up in Boston--I
am not sure if it is Congresswoman Trahan's or a different one
but we also have James Madison University in Harrisonburg which
is a coronavirus hotspot.
It is going to be a scenario when they return to campus
where there is going to have to be a lot of education and
really a lot of work on the part of the whole community to
ensure that the community stays safe and our efforts to bring
the numbers down continues aggressively.
So thank you for your answers to those questions.
Whatever time I have remaining, I am happy to yield to the
ranking member.
Ms. Foxx. I want to thank you.
Mr. Roy, as you mentioned in your written testimony, low-
income students and students of color have experienced
disproportionately negative impacts through closures. Given the
body of research showing improved educational outcomes for
participants of Choice Programs and their overwhelming
bipartisan support among the public, do you think Congress
should examine ways of examining school choice as we consider
the possibility of future aid packages?
Mr. Roy. Yes. I mean, there is a lot of things to consider
here. One is that school choice can be useful in allowing
students to have in-person instruction in less hotspot areas.
So if you live in an area where the pandemic has had an
outbreak but you need get an education, school choice might
allow you to get that education somewhere else.
Also one thing that is very important as a component of
choice is not just choice of your school but choice in a
particular class. For example, maybe there is a student who is
really, really good at math but his own high school doesn't
have the capacity to teach him, say, AP Calculus but he can
through a virtual modular educational choice have the ability
to get that instruction from a different school or a different
teacher.
So there are a lot of different elements of disaggregating
school choice into a broader concept of educational choice and
our scholar at FREOPP, Dan Lips, has been one of the pioneers
in that area.
Ms. Foxx. I would like to note that Tom Sowell has a
wonderful editorial in the Wall Street Journal about the
importance of school choice for minority and low-income
students.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Mr. Cline.
Chairman Scott. Thank you.
The gentlemen from New York, Mr. Morelle.
Mr. Morelle. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman, I want to not only thank you for today but
your leadership throughout the pandemic and for providing this
committee with yet another opportunity to continue the critical
work through these virtual hearings and briefings. So I very
much appreciate all the work that you and your staff have done
and just wanted to acknowledge that.
Since March, our Nation has faced insurmountable challenges
and heart-wrenching losses. You know, the virus doesn't play by
clear rules. So for months we have really largely relied on
reacting to this unprecedented crisis to support our
communities and our constituents.
But now, as we are regaining footing in many places, we
have a very real opportunity, it seems to me, and a
responsibility to take sort of intentional and preemptive
action to safeguard the Nation, especially communities hardest
hit by the pandemic against further fallout.
So, and there is no doubt, I mean, obviously we have talked
about it at some length today, the racial and ethnic inequities
that have existed for generations but the virus is now bringing
that into stark relief and demonstrating how much our Nation--
to our Nation how deep these inequities go.
I want to point out just a the bit of data from a group
called Common Ground Health which is a not-for-profit in
Rochester and the Monroe County Public Health Department. Here
in Rochester we have four times the rate of infection, over
five times the hospitalization rate, and two and a half times
the mortality rate among our Black citizens and people of color
in our communities. The statistics are unacceptable and they
represent the deeply entrenched inequalities, inequities, and
barriers to communities of color.
So as we have discussed in the hearing today and the
hearing last week, the depths go deep. Last week we talked
about education and the inequities in our educational system
which are staggering, the digital divide, how difficult it is,
how unprepared and underresourced many of our institutions
serving low-income students are.
So with that in mind, you know, as we begin to rebuild our
community, it is critical we look at recovery through the lens
of addressing these underlying social determinants of health,
education, and economic stability.
I had a couple of questions. Before I do that, I do want to
acknowledge my good friend, Mr. King. He was, before Secretary
of Education, was the Commissioner of Schools, the Commission
of Education in the State of New York and he and I worked on
many projects together. I wanted to acknowledge him and thank
him for being here, as well as the other panelists. I do have a
question for former Secretary King.
But before I do that, Dr. Jones, you had mentioned during
your testimony that you essentially invited a questioner to ask
about an allegory which helps talk about structural racism. I
don't think anyone has done that. So if you don't mind, I would
like to hear that, if you have a moment here to go through
that.
Dr. Jones. Yes, I will do it very quickly, because I know
you also wanted to ask a question of the Secretary.
So, this is an allegory, like most of them, that is based
on something in my own real life that happened. The moral is
that racism exists. Some--when I was a medical student, I was
studying long and hard one Saturday with some friends. We got
hungry. I had no food in the apartment. We decided to go into
town and find something to eat. We find a restaurant. We walk
in. We sit down. Menus are presented. Order - we place our
order. Food is served. Not a remarkable story yet.
But as I sat there with my friends, eating, I looked across
the room and I noticed a sign at the time. It was a startling
revelation to me about racism. So, now I have intrigued you.
What did the sign say? The sign said ``Open.'' And if I hadn't
thought anything more about it, I would have assumed that other
hungry people could walk in, sit down, order their food, and
eat.
But because I knew something about the two-sided nature of
those signs, I recognized that now indeed because of the hour,
the restaurant was closed, that other hungry people just a few
feet away from me but on the other side of the sign would not
be able to come in, sit down, order their food, and eat.
And that is when I understood how racism structures open/
close signs in our society. It structures a dual reality. And
for those who are sitting inside the restaurant at the table of
opportunity, eating, and they look up and they see a sign that
says ``Open,'' they don't even recognize that there is a two-
sided sign going on because it is difficult for any of us to
recognize the system of inequity that privileges us.
It is difficult for men to recognize sexism, et cetera, et
cetera. Yet those on the other side are very well aware there
is a two-sided sign going on because it proclaims close to them
they can look through the window and see people inside, eating.
So, for those inside the restaurant who asks, ``Is there
really a two-sided sign, does racism really exist,'' I say I
know it is hard for you to know when you only see `open'. In
fact, that is part of your privilege not to have to know. But
once you do know, you can choose to act. So, it is not a scary
thing to name racism. It is an empowering thing.
It doesn't even compel you to act but does equip you to act
so that if you care about nose on the other side of the sign,
which is an ``if,'' you can talk to the restaurant owner who is
inside with you, say, ``There are hungry people outside. Open
the door. Let them come in. You will make more money or the
conversations we can have.''
Maybe you will push food through the window or maybe you
will try to tear down that sign and break through the door but
at least you won't be sitting back, ``Huh, wonder why don't
those people just come on in and sit down and eat,'' because
you will understand something about that two-sided sign. I
won't go any more deeply into it. Thank you for asking.
Mr. Morelle. Yeah. Thank you. I know my time has expired.
So I will have to wait and get Mr. King and Dr. Wilson and I
have other question for you, Dr. Jones, but I will yield the
balance of my time. I appreciate very much all the panelists
and the work they are doing.
Chairman Scott. Thank you.
The gentleman from South Dakota, Mr. Johnson.
Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate it.
Mr. Roy, I was intrigued by the conversation that you and
Mr. Cline were having about reopening in the fall and best
practices. I think your answer focused--and Mr. Cline's line of
questioning focused largely on the collegiate system. Let's
talk a little bit the K-12 environment. If you were giving
advice to school board members or administrators who wanted to
make sure they reopened in an appropriate and safe way in the
fall, what guidance would you provide to them?
Chairman Scott. Mr. Roy, you are muted.
Mr. Roy. Excuse me for that. I am sorry.
As I mentioned in my testimony, we have a paper forthcoming
on this topic, which I am happy to share with you once it is
out. It should be out in a few days.
The one thing I--let me start with one thing which is we
are going to have to make some accommodations for people who
can't physically attend school. So if you are a child who lives
with your grandparents or you have other at-risk individuals in
your household, those are individuals that we are going to need
to have stay at home.
There may be teachers who are elderly or otherwise at risk
who similarly will need paid leave or other accommodations.
But leaving those two things aside, okay, so then what do
you do for those particular individuals? One thing that we have
been working on with some my co-authors with certain States is
at those State-level, centralizing the virtual curriculum so
that you don't leave the burden on an individual school
district to create the virtual curriculum that runs in parallel
to the in-person curriculum. Have that done at the State level
so that if are you a student who does need to stay at home,
there is--that process is scaled up more and leverages the
resources of the State rather than at the district level.
And then for the people who do live--who are able to go to
school, there is a lot--I think we can be more confident that
the risk of transmission is low.
One thing I should mention by the way that I haven't
mentioned yet is that we have a lot of research from outside
the United States, in particular, that shows that transmission
of COVID-19 in children is very, very low.
For example, in Iceland they did a study of the entire
population of Iceland and found that there was not a single
incident of a child transmitting COVID to his or her parents
which is pretty remarkable if you think about it, given that
live together and are around each other all the time.
So that gives us a lot of confidence that children are not
vectors of transmission and that means a lot of precautions
that schools are making regarding, well, we are going to only
have classes of six people, say, or all the desks have to be,
you know, 6 feet apart, we don't necessarily know if that is
true. And I think there should be some flexibility in school
districts to take that into account.
Mr. Johnson. Thank you very much, Mr. Roy.
And I would, Mr. Chairman, I would like to yield the rest
of my time to the ranking member.
Ms. Foxx. Thank you, Mr. Johnson.
Mr. Roy, let's follow up on Mr. Johnson's questions. I
think it was a good one.
As these restrictions are being raised, they are very blunt
instruments. Everything shuts down. They are being lifted now.
How should States and cities approach their decisions to lift
restrictions and allow businesses and schools to reopen while
keeping people safe? It is a very instructive example you gave
us from Iceland.
Mr. Roy. Yeah. So we know that, for example, or at least
there is a lot of evidence now that is accumulating that
children are not vectors of transmission which should give us
more confidence when it comes to reopening childcare centers
and K through 12 schools and even, the you know, potentially
postsecondary college instruction.
We have to do obviously do more research to confirm this,
but we have very good reason to believe that would work.
And as I also mentioned, a lot of European countries--
Germany, Switzerland, Austria--I could go on--have reopened
schools without an impact on their caseload, their hospital
load, et cetera, from COVID-19.
So all that seems to indicate that your vulnerability to
COVID-19 is related to your--the nature--to the degree to which
are you a vector of transmission. And so, again, for all those
reasons, I think we have a reason to be hopeful and optimistic
that younger populations can go back to work and also younger
workers can go back to work.
So when it comes to reopening workplaces, I think one thing
that States can do is think about industry, sectors, businesses
in which the workplace is disproportionately younger because
those are things you can bring back more quickly for States
that are in the more hesitant cap.
Ms. Foxx. Thank, Mr. Johnson.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I yield back.
Chairman Scott. I thank you.
The gentlelady from Pennsylvania, Ms. Wild.
Gentleman from California, mister--
Ms. Wild. I am here.
Chairman Scott. The gentlelady from Pennsylvania, Ms. Wild.
Ms. Wild. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It took me a minute to
unmute.
This questions is for Dr. Jones. Dr. Jones, only eight of
the 60 retail drive-through COVID-19 sites that have opened as
a part of the presidential administration's public-private
partnership are located in Black communities. A company in my
congressional district has received grant money for the
development of rapid self-COVID tests and at-home tests.
How important is it that the Federal Government permit
these tests to be purchased over the counter and without a
prescription, and subsidize the cost of these tests and/or
somehow make them free, and also require that insurance covers
these tests with no cost sharing and that we protect and fund
the U.S. Postal Service so that people can receive these rapid
at-home tests without traveling to the store? That is a
multipart question but kind of all part of the same piece.
Dr. Jones. Right. Well, it is very that important we
increase testing in communities that have been the hardest hit.
So, that is the first thing. I actually haven't researched the
new at-home tests that you are talking about.
I would say that other additional ways to support testing
and communities is to work with community organizations, to
work with the why, to work with others who are placed in the
community for even coming and because I don't know. So, I don't
know about that particular test but I think there is
something--
Ms. Wild. And just to clarify, the test is not yet
available. The company is in the North Shore in my district and
they are working on it and developing it but it is anticipated
that it will be available later this year.
Dr. Jones. But I don't that think it should be, oh, if the
test--center is not in your neighborhood, you are going to have
to default to a home test. I think we need to make sure we have
the same level of testing availability in all of our
communities and perhaps more in the hardest hit communities.
So, nothing good or bad about that test. That doesn't
answer the question of why do we not have more testing in our
most heavily hit communities. And so, we need to have different
partners, different strategies. We need to invest in, you know,
minority-owned businesses in those communities to do the
testing.
Because it could be that if you do your home tests, that--
something about the connection about when the communication,
when should you go based on what result, how should you pursue
extra care might be lost. So, yes, good for that but not as a
substitute.
Ms. Wild. Thank you very much. That is very helpful.
I would like to direct the next question to Dr. King and,
Dr. King, if you could, I want to make this quick but we know
that even before COVID struck, far too many students were
leaving college before earning their certificate or degree and
that this has been disproportionately likely to occur between
low-income students and students of color.
I am deeply concerned that with the health pandemic that
the small progress that we may have made on increasing the rate
of college completion is going to be--is going to vanish.
Could you discuss the inequities in college graduation
rates among different types of students and whether we have
actually made progress in closing that completion gap among
low-income students and students of color?
That is to Dr. King.
Chairman Scott. Dr. King, are you still on mute?
Ms. Wild. Did we lose Dr. King?
Mr. King. Not on mute. Can you hear me?
Ms. Wild. Now we can.
Chairman Scott. Dr. King, are you still on mute?
Ms. Wild. Did we lose Dr. King?
Mr. King. Not on mute. Can you hear me?
Ms. Wild. Now we can. Yes, thank you.
Mr. King. Okay. That is good.
So we absolutely have significant disparities for low-
income students and students of color in completion, and we
know that some of that is driven by financial gaps. So those
students are more likely to be negatively impacted by loss of
employment, change in their family's financial situation. They
are particularly vulnerable if their universities are
struggling financially, which is the case for many of our
public institutions, particularly as States look to make cuts
as a result of the COVID-19 crisis.
So we need resources, but we also know that targeted
investments like the CUNY ASAP program, which has doubled
completion rates in community colleges through a mix of
financial support and better advisement, those can make a huge
difference and actually lower the per-graduate costs in the
long run if we make those kinds of investments.
Ms. Wild. Thank you very much.
With that, I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Scott. Thank you.
The gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Keller?
Mr. Keller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the
ranking member and our panelists today.
Mr. Roy, I just wanted to cover a couple things. I know a
lot has been discussed about the nursing homes and what
happened in my State of Pennsylvania as far as how it affected,
while our population in nursing homes is relatively smaller,
assisted livings, and the deaths are relatively high.
I take a look at them, and we have discussed on that side
of it, but how did the other 45 Governors in the States that
handled it better--were they looking at different information,
or what do you think might have led them to make decisions that
protected that population versus the Governors in like
Pennsylvania and New Jersey, California, that had the problem
with the deaths in these facilities?
Mr. Roy. Well, you know, I mean, I wouldn't want
necessarily at this point in time rank Pennsylvania's Governor,
you know, 45th or 47th or 40th. You know, I don't know that we
can do that at this point, but I would say that, in terms of
the States--let's put it this way. The States that have done
the best--and I will use Florida as an example. What Florida
did early on--their health secretary, Mary Mayhew, was very
aggressive in resisting hospitals that were lobbying actively
to have the permission to discharge COVID-infected patients--to
offload them into nursing homes, and Mary Mayhew fought them on
that very hard.
It was not an easy decision to fight the hospitals, which
are very powerful lobbies in every State, and say, ``No, you
are not going to take those patients and get them out of your
hospital and stick them in a nursing home as seeds because then
you are only going to get more patients in your hospital with
COVID later.''
So she was aggressive about that, and she was also
aggressive about limiting and restricting visitation rights,
which of course is heartbreaking, right? If you had a loved one
in a nursing home, you would want to go see them. You want to
make sure they are okay. And that was a very difficult and
painful decision that Florida did take early on that protected
that population far better than other States did.
Mr. Keller. Okay. Thank you. But one other thing I want to
talk about--and it goes to my experience of having worked in a
factory and later ran that larger manufacturing facility, and
employers care about their employees, and they can actually
keep them safe. We look through this whole pandemic and the
shutdowns of larger operations, retailers, so on, being able to
stay open, yet smaller businesses, which we know, in our small
businesses, were more adversely impacted, which--whether it is
minority businesses, but you know they were. So, you know, is
there any reason to believe that the small businesses can't
practice the same guidelines given the rules by CDC and so on
that the larger retailers were able to do during the time that
the economy was shut?
Mr. Roy. Well, you know, when it comes to--if you are
referring to the fact that, in certain States, large retailers
were allowed to open, but small retailers were not, absolutely
that was an asymmetry and a terrible policy because those small
businesses are the ones that make--help communities thrive,
that help provide competition, that help provide lower cost to
the consumer, for all different reasons, let alone the
employment piece. It is really important to have those small
businesses competing with the larger businesses.
So absolutely they have the capacity to, and we are seeing
that in restaurants. For example, in Austin, again, where I
live, Texas has allowed restaurants to open up to a certain
point, and every restaurant cares about not just its workers
but also its customers, to make sure that they have the
confidence to patronize that restaurant knowing that it is
going to be safe, that they are doing what they can from a
cleanliness point of view. So businesses have the--have a
powerful incentive to not only ensure that their employees are
safe but that their customers are safe, and that is far more
powerful than any government mandate.
Mr. Keller. I agree with you on that, and I think that is
part of the reason why we should look at some kind of liability
protection for these businesses. That way, people can make the
decision whether or not they feel safe patronizing a certain
business, whether it be a restaurant or a retail operation.
The other thing I guess I would look at because we always
talk about--you know, I have heard it talked about any kind of
resurgence of cases when we start to open our economy, and we
always talk about the positive cases and everybody is talking
about how many more cases there are. But we are doing a lot
more testing.
Is there another metric that we can look at to make sure
that we are understanding the spread of this disease, maybe
like the percentage of cases that are positive, you know, so
that we sort of understand and make decisions based on good
rational information?
Mr. Roy. Well, Mr. Keller, I am so glad you brought this
up. This is such an important point.
We are seeing a rise in cases, and that is, in part, driven
by the rise in testing, right? If 5 percent of people test
positive and you double the number of tests, you might have
double the cases, but we are not seeing a corresponding spike
in deaths, and that is because a lot of the people who are
testing positive at this point in the pandemic are less
medically vulnerable. Either they are relatively younger
people, or they just don't have as many preexisting conditions,
like heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, et cetera.
So we don't yet know exactly because we don't have that
granular level of detail, but we do know that the death rate
from the cases we are seeing now appears to be significantly
lower, and that is not surprising because, in pandemics of all
kinds, what you see is that the most vulnerable people die
first, and then the virus starts to affect less vulnerable
people who don't die at the same level of frequency.
Mr. Keller. Thank you, and I yield back.
Chairman Scott. Thank you.
The gentleman from California, Mr. Harder?
The gentlelady from Georgia, Ms. McBath?
Mrs. McBath. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you so much
to our guests who are joining us here today. Thank you for
joining us to talk about these very pressing issues.
And I just wanted to be completely clear. COVID-19 did not
create these inequities that we are talking about today, but it
simply has revealed, you know, long-borne suffering of the
minority communities in America. Disparities in health,
education, and the workforce are symptoms of years of racism,
restrictive access to services, and high rates of poverty, and
these symptoms are manifested in poor outcomes and are present
in every part of American life.
As we learned from last week's hearing on the K through 12
funding, budget cuts due to COVID-19 will disproportionately
impact students in lower income school districts where Black
and Brown students make up a larger share of the student body.
Students of every background absolutely, unequivocally deserve
better.
A recent study showed that Black populations are at least
3.5 times more likely to die by COVID-19 than their White
neighbors, and the Hispanic population is at least 2.5 times as
likely to die.
It is incumbent on every member of our body, every member
of this body, every citizen of the Nation to take seriously
what we are witnessing before our very eyes, whether Democrat
or Republican, whether you are Black, White, or Brown. It is
time for all of us to take seriously the challenges that we are
facing.
Dr. Wilson, my question is for you. There is a section that
you entitled in your report that states--and I quote--the
fallacy of race-neutral policy is further exposed by COVID-19.
And why, in your observation, have race-neutral policies failed
to offer genuine solutions to all the inequities, and what is
an example of this failure in the COVID-19 area?
Ms. Wilson. So I think that the issue of race-neutral
policymaking ignores many of the disparities that I highlighted
in my testimony today that you just cited and ignores the fact
that, even if a policy on its face is race neutral, meaning
that it doesn't reference race in any way, it will not have
race-neutral effects because the structures and systems in this
society are not race neutral.
So any policy--every policy that is debated and passes day
after day is going to have an effect on the way that
[inaudible] income, wealth, and opportunity will flow. That is
no different from our current crisis.
We have talked a lot about the efforts to slow the spread
of the virus immediately by shutting down and the disparate
effects that has had on workers of color who already faced
higher rates of unemployment, who already had lower incomes,
lower levels of wealth, and other kinds of financial resources
that are critical for people to be able to weather this
economic downturn.
So even when we implement a policy that is good for the
Nation as a whole in terms of the public health and safety
issues, because of these underlying disparities in health as
well as wealth and other economic outcomes, we get these very
different results in terms of how it impacts communities
[inaudible].
Mrs. McBath. Thank you. Even within my own community--I
represent Georgia's Sixth Congressional District--there is a
North DeKalb portion of my district that--I see it as plain as
day, the inequities within that portion of my district, the
disparities of the largest cases of people that we have that
have contracted COVID-19, and the largest numbers of
individuals within my district that have been seriously
affected and have even died have been in the part of my
district that has the most number of diverse individuals and
diverse people within the community. So thank you for that.
Thank you for your answer. These problems are enormous, and
they continue to really raise the disparities that we see every
single day, but no problem is greater than the American spirit,
and I know that Americans have never shied away from a fight. I
know that we will continue to work as hard as we possibly can,
and we face no greater challenge at this point than creating a
more equitable and free society.
And so this is my challenge to every one of my colleagues
and all of my neighbors, to think very seriously about the type
of society that you want to live in, the type of society that
you want your constituents to live in. It is one where those
with the least suffer the greatest in times of tragedy. Is that
what we want? I don't think so.
So where whole parts of this great Nation are neglected and
feel that they have no value, they deserve better, and so are
we going to continue perfecting this union looking always
toward the future and fight for a society that strives towards
justice and equality. I would ask that of all my colleagues
today.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back the balance of my
time.
Chairman Scott. Thank you.
Dr.--gentleman from North Carolina, Dr. Murphy?
The gentleman from New Jersey, Dr. Van Drew?
The gentlelady from Washington, Dr. Schrier?
Ms. Schrier. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to our
witnesses.
I first wanted to make a quick comment, mostly to Mr. Roy
about schools, simply because the vast majority of people
commenting about schools say that we really don't know the role
of children and transmission. We know they get it less often.
We know they don't really have symptoms, but it is still kind
of a big black box that we really won't know until schools
open.
I also wanted to say that there is a general understanding
that kids are better off in school. I don't think there is any
question about that. They are barely affected, at least
acutely. We don't know about long-term outcomes, but there is
no question there.
The problem is that United States is not Iceland. The
United States is fatter, less healthy. We have more type II
diabetes. We have more kidney disease. We have more heart
disease, all of the conditions that put you at much higher risk
for this disease. Not just that, but kids who need most to be
in school come from the families who we are talking about today
that are at most risk of getting this disease and dying from
it, and so I just wanted to clarify that point as a
pediatrician.
I wanted to direct my question today to Dr. Wilson, because
I--my district has a large Latino population, and we have seen
them disproportionately hit by this disease, first because of
working conditions that we have talked about, which are more
crowded, fruit packing, agricultural jobs. But then, because 80
percent of transmission happens in the home and homes are more
crowded, we have seen a greater amount of community spread.
Now, not just that. Since housing is part of how COVID is
spread, we have always known that housing is tied to health
outcomes, and in recent weeks, we have been talking about how
housing is really fundamental to building wealth, building that
nest egg, and achieving security. And I was wondering, Dr.
Wilson, can you talk about housing, the changes we could make,
perhaps even the difference between policies that help with
rent versus the policies that help with ownership and the long-
term outcomes of a change in policy there?
Ms. Wilson. Thank you for those questions.
Again, the structures and patterns that we observe in terms
of housing access and housing affordability are directly
related to a long history of policies that excluded certain
populations--in particular, people of color--from building
wealth through home ownership but also concentrated people and
isolated people, economically and socially, in communities
where the quality of housing was lower, the stock of housing
was less available, was lower, thus driving up the cost of
housing in many of these communities.
So I think that policies that address issues of
affordability as well as housing quality are an important step
in addressing the inequities that we see in terms of housing.
They also spill over into unequal outcomes in health, as you
indicated, as well as in employment and schooling.
Ms. Schrier. Thank you. I had another question about paid
leave, sick leave, family leave, that we are finding that these
same communities are really affected by not having the same
access to leave, and then, also, if they are then in close
proximity to people who are infected, they might need several
series of quarantine time off, and I wonder if you could speak
to we passed Families First to get 2 weeks of sick leave and to
have up to 3 months of paid family leave, but what happens in
these particular at-risk communities when you have to take time
off, perhaps multiple times, when multiple close colleagues at
work get this disease and you need to quarantine?
Ms. Wilson. So the connection between lack of paid leave
and these other outcomes really puts workers in an impossible
situation to make very difficult choices, in choosing between
their health or their economic well-being. Without paid sick
leave, workers forego earnings that are essential and critical
to the economic well-being of their households because they are
making decisions that are better for their health.
So by having paid sick leave more equitably and more
broadly available to more workers, we really empower workers to
make the kinds of decision that are best for optimizing both
their health security as well as their [inaudible].
Ms. Schrier. Thank you very much, and I yield back.
Chairman Scott. Thank you.
The gentlelady from Illinois, Ms. Underwood?
Ms. Underwood. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The coronavirus pandemic has left no corner of our
communities unscathed. Lives and livelihoods have been lost in
my district in northern Illinois and in communities across the
country, which is why I am also concerned with Mr. Roy's
comments about the role of children as carriers for COVID-19.
There is a lot that we don't know, and the current guidance
from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does point
out that children are, in fact, at risk of infecting--I mean,
at risk of contracting the disease, and could possibly be
carriers. And so I think that, when we are addressing the
United States Congress, we should continue to have fact-based
findings to present to the committee, and then also make sure
that we are encouraging the American people to consult with the
national experts on this issue, which is the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention.
The damage from this crisis has not been inflicted evenly
across our communities. The pandemic inside this pandemic is
the disproportionate health and economic consequences of COVID-
19 for communities of color, particularly Black Americans.
A recent Brookings analysis found that Black Americans
between the ages of 65 and 74 are dying at five times the rate
of their White counterparts, and the disparities are even
larger for young adults. These racial graphs are glaring, but
they are not surprising. They reflect a deeply entrenched
racial inequity throughout our healthcare system, and one of
the key drivers of these disparities is unequal access to care.
The uninsured rate for African Americans is more than 1.6
times higher than the rate for White Americans. To reduce
disparities in health outcomes for both COVID-19 and other
conditions, we must expand access to affordable healthcare,
which is why I introduced the Healthcare Affordability Act,
which would provide advance premium tax credits to more
Americans and increase the size of those credits.
Dr. Jones, enhanced premium tax credits will bring
affordable health insurance within reach for millions more
Americans. How will expanded access to affordable healthcare
reduce racial disparities in COVID-19 hospitalization and death
rates?
Dr. Jones. So, it is very important. It is very important
that we have access. And that is one of the ways that you value
all of your people equally. So, if we really do care about
those people, then we need to take away any kind of economic
barriers.
I would also say that the healthcare system is the last-
ditch salvation, so we need to make sure that last bit is
there, that ambulance at the bottom of the cliff is there, but
I would also say that does not absolve us from addressing--
health is not created within the health sector, so we need to
do that.
We need actually to strengthen--in all the ways that you
said, to strengthen the ACA, to actually get to universal
access, the high-quality healthcare, perhaps lower right now--
Ms. Underwood. Thank you.
Dr. Jones.--to make the age of Medicare eligibility and all
of that.
Ms. Underwood. Thank you. Thank you. As the cofounder of
the Black Maternal Health Caucus, I have been committed to
reducing the alarming disparities in maternal health outcomes.
In addition to introducing the Black Maternal Health Momnibus
Act of 2020 with Congresswoman Alma Adams of this committee, I
have also supported bipartisan efforts to extend Medicaid
coverage from 60 days to 1 year postpartum.
Dr. Jones, recognizing that Medicaid covers more than 65
percent of African American births, can you describe the full
importance of extending Medicaid coverage for a full year
postpartum to close racial gaps in maternal health outcomes?
Dr. Jones. Well, because the maternal mortality rate
difference between Black folks and White folks ranges from
three to eight times, depending on what part of the country--
Ms. Underwood. That is right.
Dr. Jones. --the numbers of our mothers who are dying
within the first year of childbirth is alarming. So, we do need
to support them in all the ways that we can.
Ms. Underwood. Yes. It is about saving lives.
Dr. Jones, beyond extending postpartum Medicaid coverage,
why do we need maternal health policies like the ones we
included in the Momnibus, to improve data collection,
[inaudible] social determinants of health, and provide targeted
investments to improve Black maternal health outcomes?
Dr. Jones. We need to know what the problems are. So, we
need to have our maternal mortality review committees with all
of the data that they can have. We need to be able to list
social determinants of health as risk factors--
Ms. Underwood. Yes.
Dr. Jones. --so, we can address them.
Ms. Underwood. Thank you. As we speak, scientists are
working tirelessly to develop a safe and effective vaccine for
COVID-19, yet the development of a vaccine is only the first
step. We are going to need to rapidly deploy to every community
across the country, and it needs to be done in an equitable
way, and we know that African Americans currently have lower
immunization rates than their White counterparts.
I am going to submit some questions for the record on that
issue. I would like to thank the chairman for having this
hearing and this opportunity to discuss these issues of
critical importance.
As the committee knows, I am a public health nurse. We need
to end these racial disparities in healthcare, whether it is
COVID related or in our larger healthcare system, and make sure
that, as we are communicating with the American people during
this pandemic, we are lifting up fact-based, evidence-based
information to inform the American people.
And I yield back. Thank you.
Chairman Scott. Thank you.
Gentlelady from Connecticut, Ms. Hayes?
Mrs. Hayes. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all the
witnesses who are here.
Today, like I felt in so many other committees, I have just
been listening and really just been overwhelmed, because I
recognize that, once again, so many of my colleagues just don't
get it. I, too, like the gentleman from Wisconsin, look forward
to a time when people don't look at me racially and we don't
have to deal with these issues in this way.
Last week, in this very same committee, we had a hearing
about shutting down schools and what the budget cuts would look
like after learning loss, but my response to that is so much
bigger than just how our economy looks and how we are going to
deal with these things economically. I can assure you, everyone
on this committee, when my husband was diagnosed with COVID-19
and I stood over him waiting for his chest to rise to ensure
that he was breathing, never once did I think about his job.
Never once did I think about the economy reopening. I thought
about my husband getting healthy, and I thought about us being
safe.
So I--in that same vein, I am thinking, as we look forward
to September and our schools open up, I was on a call last week
with FEMA, and they indicated that they have no intention of
supplying PPE for our schools. I live in a State that is
already disproportionately impacted and has some very large
equity gaps. In Fairfield County, 84 percent of our students
graduate high school, and less than 5 miles down the road, in
Bridgeport, about 74 percent of our students are high school
graduates, and a parent was sentenced to 12 years in jail for
what they called stealing education for sending her child to a
school outside of their district. But that is how desperate
people are to provide a good education for their children in
this State.
Dr. King, it is so good to see you, and you opened up your
comments with something that, as you know from prior
conversations, is so near and dear to me, and that is the Brown
v. Board of Education decision. And, like it, don't like it,
whether it is uncomfortable or not, we have racial and equity
disparities in our schools, in our public education system, and
we as a committee have the ability to change those things.
As we look forward to September, Dr. King, can you talk a
little bit about--I mean, we have heard about maximizing
testing and opening earlier to make up for academic loss, but I
am thinking about the trauma and what our teachers are going to
be, and all the other things that are going to happen when
children return to campuses.
Can you talk a little bit about what those inequities will
look like after the COVID-19 pandemic and the State financial
crisis if we do nothing to intervene?
Mr. King. Sure. It is good to see you, Congresswoman.
Look, the impact of COVID-19 for kids, when I think about
that, I think about the kid who relies on school, as many of
your students did, for their positive relationships with adults
and peers, and they have been without that. Some kids who are
in homes where there is addiction, where there is abuse, where
there is domestic violence, kids are in homes where there has
been economic trauma, and so they have been without all of
those supports.
And so when they come back to school in September, they are
going to need more support, which means we need counselors, we
need mental health services, we need an investment in the
socio-emotional supports that students need, and that won't be
there if school districts are forced to make huge cuts as a
result of the lost State revenue.
Mrs. Hayes. Thank you. And I am happy that you used that
word ``investment'' because thinking forward--and I will ask
you, and I guess, Ms. Jones, I will ask you the same thing.
Thinking forward, if we were to look at what types of
investments we could make--I am sorry--to make public education
more equitable, to address some of these underlying issues, I
guess in the same way that we invested in small businesses and
we invested in our larger economy, what would investments in
our education system, in our children, look like moving
forward?
Mr. King. Well, we ought to close that $23 billion gap that
the chairman talked about between students of color and White
students in school spending. That is what a good investment
would look like. A good investment would mean addressing the
learning loss and the socio-emotional needs of students with
supplemental dollars. Investment would mean doubling Pell
grants and making it possible for low-income students to
successfully pursue higher education.
Mrs. Hayes. Thank you. And I will switch over to Ms. Jones,
and you hit on something because I know most of our education
funding comes from municipal taxes, which already puts our kids
at a disadvantage.
Ms. Jones?
Dr. Jones. Yes. So, we need to change that--local property
taxes is the basis of funding schools--because if you have a
poor neighborhood, poorly funded schools, another generation
lost. We also need to invest very vigorously in early childhood
education. We need to invest in teacher education. We need to
have a model like Finland where you have a--you know, a
mentorship position for teachers for 2 years after they
graduate.
Thank you.
Mrs. Hayes. Thank you. I am not sure which bell that is,
but, either way, I am done.
Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.
Chairman Scott. Thank you. Thank you.
Mrs. Hayes. Both are obnoxious.
Chairman Scott. Especially the second one.
The gentlelady from Florida, Dr. Shalala?
The gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Levin?
Mr. Levin. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman, and happy Pride
Month, everybody.
You know, President Trump and Secretary DeVos, just last
week, claimed school choice is the civil rights cause of our
time, and that is just honestly comical, but it is unsurprising
because, in Michigan, we know that school choice causes
segregation in our time.
We are seeing the impacts of these policies right now in
Michigan's Ninth District. Mount Clemens School District in
Macomb County has seen massive numbers of White students
partaking in schools of choice to go to a nearby whiter school
district. Michigan's school financing moves with the student,
meaning that, when a student leaves to go to another school
district, that funding goes with them.
As a result, Mount Clemens School District, with a majority
Black student body, has faced major budget deficits for the
past two decades and struggles to rebuild school infrastructure
that hasn't been updated in more than 50 years. That is before
the COVID crisis. These students are being intentionally left
behind. There is no coincidence here.
Horrifically, Betsy DeVos is now trying to foist these
harmful policies on the entire Nation as secretary of
education. Just last week, the Department of Education
finalized a rule that would funnel critical emergency money
away from the school districts and students most impacted by
COVID-19, as Congress intended--bipartisan, bicameral--and send
it instead to private schools, even those serving the very
wealthiest students.
Mr. King, I would like to ask you about this: Would you
agree that school choice policies can, in place with funding
models like Michigan has, disproportionately harm students of
color by funneling money and, you know, other resources away
from their schools?
Mr. King. Yeah. There is no question that the vision of
school choice that Secretary DeVos favors is one that is
harmful to students, and the evidence is clear in Michigan, and
it is both the problem of the funding structure; it is also the
unregulated charter market, which has allowed for-profit
charter operators who are not serving students well to
proliferate without meaningful accountability. So this narrow
vision of schools is part of the problem we have to solve.
Mr. Levin. Well, and I would just add that, here in
Michigan, which Ms. DeVos--Secretary DeVos has had an impact on
for many years, you--charters have almost no regulations, and
it has been a very harmful thing.
What happens, then, to educational equity if we don't save
our public schools? If we shift to the GOP idealized free
market education system, which students will be hurt the most?
Mr. King. There is no question it will hurt students of
color and lower income students the most. Public education is
the foundation of our economy.
In point of fact, the majority of kids of the Nation's
public schools today are kids of color. We have no future as a
society if we don't invest in their education. And, in the
short run, one of the things we have to do is make sure that we
correct the misinterpretation of the CARES Act that is
literally taking dollars that were intended for public schools
and sending them to private school.
Mr. Levin. Thank you.
And, you know, I feel like public education is really what
built the middle class in this country, along with workers
having the freedom to form unions.
Dr. Jones, how will policies like Secretary DeVos' proposed
rule that we have been discussing further [inaudible] inequity
and systemic racism in our education system? And you have got
almost a minute to answer.
Dr. Jones. Almost a minute.
So, actually, these blinders that don't want to vigorously
invest in the full excellent public education of all of our
kids because people think there is no genius in the barrios or
the ghettos or the reservations, we can get along very well,
thank you, without them, those blinders are not just hurting
those children; they are sapping the strength of the whole
society because there is genius in all of our communities, and
we could be doing so much better as a Nation or even as a world
if we were to vigorously invest in public education.
So, what you are seeing is that there are whole communities
that are being devalued for their genius, and, yes, vigorously
investing in the full, excellent public education is what is
going to save our Nation. That is one of the core--
Mr. Levin. All right. Thank you very much.
And, Mr. Chairman, before that horrible second bell, I
yield back.
Chairman Scott. Tell me about it. Okay. Thank you.
The gentlelady from Minnesota, Ms. Omar?
The gentleman from Maryland, Mr. Trone?
Mr. Trone. I am ready, Mr. Chairman, if it is--if I am up.
Chairman Scott. You are up, recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Trone. Okay. Great. Thank you.
Dr. Wilson, your testimony highlights that Black-owned
businesses have been hit hard by this crisis, in part, because
they are disproportionately owned in industries that are
vulnerable to shutdowns. You also note that Black families face
vast wealth gaps compared to White families.
What effect do you believe this crisis will have on the
wealth gap, but most importantly is, what should we be looking
here in the Federal Government to try and address this wealth
gap which is so profound and starts with homeowners--ownership,
40-some percent to 70-some percent? Then it goes over to owning
businesses. How do we change this?
Ms. Wilson. So the wealth gap is one of the reasons that we
are seeing such a disparate impact of COVID-19 in communities
of color, at least in terms of the economic outcomes. As I
mentioned before, having wealth, having savings puts you in a
position to be able to weather the shutdowns and the things we
have had to do in the interest of public safety. Without
adequate savings, without adequate wealth, you have no cushion,
or you are going to rapidly deteriorate any savings that you
did have.
So I say that, if he we don't address the immediate crisis
as well as think about addressing the wealth gap, we stand to
see that wealth gap widening significantly, and that being both
in terms of the impacts that we have seen on small business, as
well as broader disparities in home ownership and other kinds
of wealth-building techniques.
Mr. Trone. Any ideas about how we can help minorities get
into businesses? I mean, that is the big disparity. They are
not starting the businesses; therefore, they aren't building up
the equity. And then, of course, home ownership is the other
piece where equity is, and, again, that lags too. So we need
some ideas that we can drive that and stimulate it, prime the
pump.
Ms. Wilson. Well, in terms of small business, it is
important to recognize that Black business owners are less than
10 percent of all businesses owned in the United States. And,
beyond that, if we think about the larger businesses that
employ people, African American-owned businesses are only about
4 percent of those.
So the issues with Black-owned business as a wealth-
building tool, it is not so much starting the business, but in
having opportunities to expand and grow those businesses so
that they are able to build substantial wealth that is
important in the communities in terms of making jobs available
to folks, as well as building personal and community wealth.
So the things that need to be done to address that, we have
to address, again, the racial disparities that exist throughout
our system. Part of the reason why Black businesses don't have
as many opportunities to expand and grow is because of the
disparate predatory or lending practices that exclude Black
business owners from getting the kind of capital that they need
to expand their businesses, and normally we see these kinds of
patterns with getting access to mortgage loans in order to
purchase homes on top of the large income gaps and wage gaps
that put people at lower levels of income with less to draw
upon to make these kinds of investments.
Mr. Trone. Let's jump over quickly to the racial inequities
in the criminal justice system, Ms. Wilson. You know, if
African Americans or Hispanics are incarcerated the same rate
as Whites, we would have 40 percent less people in jail--40
percent. So that is the reality to this community--our
communities of color disproportionately affected in an unjust
justice system.
So what things do we need to do to help drive those
unemployment numbers down for justice-impacted individuals so,
when they come out, they can stay out and not have a circular
system of recidivism?
Ms. Wilson. So there are a number of things that are being
attempted in communities in cities across the country;
specifically, ban the box provisions that prohibit an employer
from asking people about their criminal background prior to--
Mr. Trone. How big a difference do you think that ban the
box makes? We have a bill that we just put in last week that I
think does exactly that for the whole country. Talk about what
a difference that makes.
Ms. Wilson. Well, I think that is an important first step,
but there are other kinds of things that need to be put in
place to support ban the box. That only gets your foot in the
door. That just keeps you from being eliminated in that first
round. So there are other kinds of policies and support that
are important to help people reintegrate into society and into
the workforce.
Mr. Trone. Okay. Well, thank you very much, ma'am. I yield
back before that bell rings.
Chairman Scott. Thank you. Thank you.
The gentlelady from Michigan, Ms. Stevens?
The gentleman from Nevada, Ms. Lee?
The gentlelady from Massachusetts, Ms. Trahan?
Mrs. Trahan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you so much
for the panel today. This was such a terrific hearing.
Communities of color have always experienced racial
discrimination in healthcare settings. You know, dating back
hundreds of years, race has been used as a weapon to undermine
and dehumanize Black patients. As my colleague from Georgia
mentioned, COVID-19 didn't create these disparities, but they
have certainly--but it certainly has exacerbated them.
As Black and Brown patients struggle to access COVID-19
testing and treatment, Dr. Jones, according to the American
Medical Association, only 5 percent of U.S. physicians are
Black, 5.8 percent are Latinx, and only 0.4 percent are Native
American. Black women account for only 2 percent of physicians
in our country. How has the COVID-19 pandemic underscored the
importance of increasing diversity in the field of medicine?
Dr. Jones. So, it has always been an important issue
because more--if we train more physicians of color, then they
tend to serve communities of color with a more respectful kind
of way, and so, some of what we have seen with patients
presenting at emergency departments and being sent back
untested and the like and dying at home, that would be less
likely to happen.
So, it is a chronic problem, and we need to address it. We
need to address it not just in terms of medical school
admissions, practices, but all the way back to early childhood
education, that pipeline that starts very, very early on.
Mrs. Trahan. Great. And so, if you could just elaborate a
bit on how increasing diversity in medicine and public health
prevent discrimination and bias from affecting patient care.
Dr. Jones. So, we know that implicit bias exists among
medical care providers. We have been knowing this for about 10,
15 years, even before we had the implicit association test, and
so, physicians might look at a patient and think, oh, that
patient couldn't afford, wouldn't comply, wouldn't understand,
and not even give patients the full range of treatment options.
So, there are so many ways that these subtle biases against
different groups, the assumptions that people draw, actually
impair care, much less what happens when you have systems that
also don't accept patients with Medicaid or don't whatever. So,
it is a provider thing, and it is a system thing, and they go
hand in hand because the more providers you have of color, then
they are at the decision-making tables that can then change
some of the system things that are going on.
Mrs. Trahan. I appreciate that.
What recommendations would you like to offer this committee
as we think about how to address this issue? Are there
incentives or programs that we could strengthen to address the
lack of representation and diversity--
Dr. Jones. Yeah.
Mrs. Trahan. --across our healthcare continuum?
Dr. Jones. Something that has been in place for a decade is
the National Health Service Corps, which got a little bit of a
bump in the Affordable Care Act, but that enables students from
low-income communities to actually go to medical school in the
first place, and then they have a payback commitment in needed
communities, medically underserved communities, where they are
then more likely to stay. So, that is just one very specific
thing. If that could become huge, then that would go a long
way.
Mrs. Trahan. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. Thank you, sir.
Chairman Scott. Thank you. Has anyone--Mr. Castro of Texas.
Has anybody online or on air not been recognized?
If not, I recognize myself for a couple of questions,
starting with Ms. Wilson.
Ms. Wilson, we have--Dr. Wilson, we have responded trying
to stimulate the economy by using primarily unemployment
compensation, food assistance, and other things. There have
been other suggestions, like a payroll tax and capital gains
tax holiday.
Which initiatives tend to stimulate the economy the most?
Which give you the best bang for the buck?
Ms. Wilson. So, according to the recent analysis by
economist Mark Zandi, we find that food assistance programs,
SNAP program in particular, has the largest bang per buck. One
dollar spend in food assistance will generate $1.67 in GDP a
year from now. Unemployment insurance benefits are second with
the bang for buck of $1.46.
Chairman Scott. And what about the payroll tax and the
capital gain tax holiday? How do they score?
Ms. Wilson. So I don't recall off the top of my head the
exact numbers there, but I will say that those typically have a
bang for buck of under $1. So, whereas these direct payment
assistance programs, such as unemployment insurance, SNAP,
having a bang for buck well over a dollar, payroll tax and
other kinds of tax incentives [inaudible] come in at under $1.
Chairman Scott. Thank you.
Dr. King, can you tell me a little bit about the importance
after we--people have been out of school for so long, the
importance of potential summer programs?
Mr. King. Yeah. The summer creates an opportunity to try to
make up for the ground lost. We ought to put in place summer
programs in person where possible, given public health criteria
and, if not possible, then through distance learning. But we
know students are going to come back to school having lost as
much as 70 percent of the ground of the school year in math, 30
percent or more in reading.
And the way that we address that is to provide additional
instructional support, particularly critical for students with
disabilities and English learners, who have been without
services, in many cases, since March.
Chairman Scott. Thank you. And can you say something about
how the funding public schools with the property tax affects
equity?
Mr. King. Yes. Well, the result of the property tax is huge
disparities between districts. We know that districts with
large numbers of students of color spend about $1,800 less per
student than districts with large numbers of White students.
One of the things we can do to address this is to require,
as a condition for new stimulus dollars, that States have to
protect their highest-needs districts from cuts and that
districts have to protect their highest-needs schools from
cuts.
Chairman Scott. And so if you have property taxes, does
that inherently create inequity?
Mr. King. It does, and, in an environment where there is a
financial crisis, what it means is that wealthy districts will
be able to go back to their property tax owners, increase the
property taxes a small amount, and generate significant revenue
to absorb the cuts, whereas high-poverty districts don't have
that wealth base, and the cuts will fall hardest on them.
Chairman Scott. And, Dr. Jones, can you say a word? We have
talked about the COBRA subsidies. It is my understanding, if
you lose your job, you lose your insurance, but, if you can get
COBRA subsidy, you can continue your insurance. If you have to
switch into the marketplace, you end up having to get a new
insurance policy, get new providers, and even start your
deductible all over. But then, when you get your job right
back, you have got to go back, tell those providers, ``It has
been nice knowing you for a couple of months,'' and then
start--get back your own providers, and then start your
deductible all over.
Doesn't it make a lot of sense to try to do everything we
can to maintain the continuity of your insurance?
Dr. Jones. It does. So, I think that extending COBRA,
subsidizing COBRA coverage is a good idea.
Chairman Scott. Good. Thank you.
And, finally, Mr. Roy, I think we can all agree that it is
a good idea to open schools as soon as possible if it can be
done safely. If tests are not available, how do you reopen the
schools safely?
Mr. Roy. Well, testing is one part of the equation. It is
not the only one. So, for example, in Texas, where summer
schools are able to reopen, a lot of schools are applying a
hybrid approach where they are using temperature checks, which
are not, of course--they are not nearly as definitive, but
temperature checks plus symptomatic tests are questions to look
at, whether children might have COVID infections.
But, again, it is more about risk management on the other
side, like, before you get to the testing stage, really making
sure that the kids are not transmitting the disease and that
people who are at risk who work at those facilities, whether it
is elderly teachers, staff, et cetera, and people who live in
households where there are elderly grandparents, that they are
removed from that setting. So it is more about, I think,
preventing the risk of infection from happening in the first
place than about testing, but testing can be part of the
solution if we can scale it up, but you don't need testing to
reopen the schools.
Chairman Scott. And, of course, if you don't know whether
people are transmitting or not, if you wait until they are
symptomatic because there is many will be transmitting before
they are symptomatic, and one of the things that the HEROES Act
includes is money for school construction. A lot of schools do
not have proper ventilation, and that is one of the key safety
requirements, to make sure you have good ventilation. So we are
going to do everything we can, and everybody wants to open up
as soon as possible. But, if you can't do it safely, I think we
may have a problem.
So I want to thank all of our witnesses for their
testimony.
Is there any other business? Anyone else have comments?
So I want to remind my colleagues that, pursuant to
committee practice, materials for submission in the hearing
record must be submitted to the Committee Clerk within 14 days
following the last day of the hearing, so by 5 p.m. on July
5th, preferably in Microsoft Word format. Materials submitted
must address the subject matter of the hearing.
Only a Member of the committee or invited witness may
submit materials for inclusion. Documents are limited to 50
pages each. Documents longer than that can be incorporated by
way of an internet link that may not be available in the
future, so you want to be careful about that. And items for the
record should be submitted electronically by emailing
submissions to [email protected].
Without objection, I would like to enter the following into
the record--following report: ``Black Workers Face Two of the
Most Lethal Preexisting Conditions for Coronavirus--Racism and
Economic Inequality,'' by Elise Gould and Valerie Wilson,
published by the Economic Policy Institute.
[The information follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Scott. I want to, again, thank our witnesses for
their participation today.
Members of the committee may have additional questions that
they will submit. It would be hoped that you would answer them
as soon as possible. The hearing record will be open 14 days in
order to receive the responses.
And I would remind our colleagues that, pursuant to the
committee practice, witnesses--witness questions for the
hearing must be submitted by the Majority Committee Staff or
Committee Clerk within 7 days. Questions submitted must address
the subject matter of the hearing.
I now recognize the Ranking Member for her closing
statement.
Ms. Foxx. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to thank our witnesses for participating in this
hearing today but, again, say we should return congressional
precedent and hold our hearings in person. Running the country
through virtual proceedings and proxy votes is unacceptable.
As we consider how to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on
families and communities, we must highlight the benefits that
come to children and families in two-parent households. The
likelihood of poverty in a two-parent family drops to 9 percent
from as high as 39 percent in single-parent families.
This is crucial to remember as the percentage of two-parent
households have dropped from 88 percent to 69 percent since
1960. While America's single parents make tremendous efforts on
their families' behalf and may not have other options, we can
encourage and remove barriers to raising children in two-parent
homes.
Before COVID-19, unemployment was at record lows, including
minority unemployment, and the flourishing economy ushered in
under the Republican-led Congress and the Trump administration
benefited workers, employers, and families alike.
The coronavirus and related State-imposed shutdowns have
caused devastating job losses. The positive news: there is a
path forward. We have seen from the May jobs report last month,
with 2.5 million jobs added to the economy, that reopening our
economy safely is helping Americans get back on their feet.
Mr. Chairman, I also would like to ask unanimous consent
that the June 21 editorial from The Wall Street Journal,
``Failure in the Virtual Classroom,'' be included in today's
hearing record.
[The information follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Ms. Foxx. And I want to give some quotes from it to explain
some of the problems that we are having right now that nobody
has discussed.
The title Failure in the Virtual Classroom, the remote
learning experiment isn't going well. This month, the
University of Washington Center on Reinventing Public Education
published a report looking at how 477 school districts
nationwide have responded to the COVID-19 crisis. Its findings
reveal widespread neglect of students. This should concern all
of us, Mr. Chairman.
The report found only 27 percent of districts required
teachers to record whether students participate in remote
classes while remote attendance has been abysmal. During the
first 2 weeks of the shutdown, some 15,000 Los Angeles students
failed to show up for any classes or do any schoolwork.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that, 10 weeks in, the
Philadelphia school district registered just 61 percent of
students attending schools on an average day.
The same week, the Boston Globe reported that only half of
students are logging into online classes or submitting
assignments online.
Students have an incentive to ditch digital classes since
their work counts for little or nothing. Only 57.9 percent of
school districts do any progress monitoring. The rest haven't
even set the minimal expectations that teachers review or keep
track of the work their students turn in.
We are failing our students, and it is because primarily,
as this article points out, of teacher unions, and they go on
to quote the people in the teacher unions.
It really--we need to get the schools open and do anything
we possibly can.
I also want to point out that, to tie it back into the
economic situation, yesterday, The Wall Street Journal
editorial board pointed out that, quote, States that are
reopening faster are recovering faster and easing more economic
suffering. Specifically, the editorial board writes: Nine of
the 10 States with the highest jobless rate are run by
Democrats, who have tended to demand that the economy should
stay locked down and, in some cases, are still resisting
opening. One exception is Colorado, where our former colleague,
Democratic Governor Jared Polis, was one of the first to
reopen. His decision is paying off as Colorado's jobless rate
in May fell to 10.2 percent from 12.2 percent in April. To lead
our country back to a thriving economy, we can and we must
reopen America.
There is also one other thing that I noticed in one set of
comments that were made near the end of this hearing, and that
was the comment that it is better to basically give welfare
than it is to help people get a job, and, Mr. Chairman, that
goes against everything we have ever known in this country,
which is you get a better bang for your buck from welfare than
by people going to work, and I just don't think that is true.
I think everything that we can do to help people go to
work, it diminishes poverty. It gives people options. And I
hope that we will take some more focus on that in the future
and talk about those statistics, too.
With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Chairman Scott. Thank you. I thank you for your comments on
the impact--economic impact of certain initiatives. That is
actually arithmetic. Some investments in the economy do better
than others, and that is just a fact. The [inaudible] tax and
capital gains tax holiday do virtually nothing to stimulate the
economy whereas some of the other supports do much better.
But there is a lot that we can do to help our Nation get
through this pandemic. In end the--and also reduce the racial
disparities as we do it. We want to thank our witnesses for
their guidance and pointing out that the HEROES Act is a major
step in the right direction to get us through this pandemic.
If there is nothing more to come before the committee, the
committee now stands adjourned, and I thank our witnesses
again.
Thank you.
[Additional submissions by Chairman Scott follow:]
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[Whereupon, at 4:00 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
[all]