[NEWS]

SEAN RAMESWARAM (host): It’s Monday, April 13th, 2020. I’m Sean Rameswaram. It’s kinda rainy, kinda sunny in Washington, D.C. I’m outside looking for a rainbow. I don’t see one yet, but in the meantime here is your coronavirus update from Today, Explained.

It’s official now: the United States has the highest Covid-19 death toll of any country. Of course people suspect China is dramatically underreporting its death toll and the rest of the world’s numbers are probably an undercount, too.

China is reportedly restricting research on the origins of this novel coronavirus. According to CNN, the country now requires all academic papers on how this all got started to be vetted by the central government.

Back here in our government, Dr. Anthony Fauci from the National Institutes of Health was on CNN on Sunday. He said the country could start easing stay at home measures as early as next month. He also said we would have saved many more lives if the country had shut down in February instead of March. The President communicated some displeasure with that line of thinking on Twitter Sunday night. He shared a tweet that said “Time to #FireFauci." Bernie Sanders endorsed Joe Biden today, FYI.  

Meanwhile states on the West Coast of the United States seem to be faring better than their Eastern counterparts. So much so that California, Oregon, and Washignton state are shipping ventilators to New York. If you’re wondering what the West Coast did differently, it certainly took stay-at-home orders more seriously early on in this crisis. As of today 700 or so have died in California compared to about 10,000 in New York.

If you’ve been thinking about vegetarianism this might be a good time to give it a try. Smithfield Foods just shut down one of the largest pork processing facilities in Sioux Falls, South Dakota after nearly 300 employees tested positive for Covid-19. And while we’re on trying new things, the Supreme Court of the United States is experimenting, too. The highest court in the land says it will begin to hear oral arguments by telephone starting in May. Sorry, Zoom.

Today, Explained zooms everyday, but we’re also on Twitter at today underscore explained. I’m at rameswaram. Email us today explained at vox dot com. Or give us a call at 202 688 5944 and tell us what’s on your during this pandemic mind like uh, like Matt just did.  

[MATT VOICEMAIL]

MATT: Hey, it’s Matt from British Columbia and I just wanted to say my favorite Toronto Raptor is Pascal Siakam. Thank you very much.

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[THEME]

SEAN: Senator Elizabeth Warren released a ten-part proposal to protect essential workers today. It’s just one of many plans the senator has released since this pandemic began.

Our colleague Ezra Klein recently spoke to Warren about everything she would do to combat this pandemic. He spoke to her on the Ezra Klein Show and we thought you’d enjoy hearing it so we’re going to present that conversation on our show today.

If you’ve never heard Ezra’s show, just a head’s up: it runs a little longer than ours. We’re, like, sitcom length. He’s more of a movie. But a good movie. So be sure to subscribe to the Ezra Klein Show so you don’t miss gems like this one in the future.

WARREN: Remember Ronald Reagan’s famous line, “What are the worst words in the English language? ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.’ Those are not the worst words. Among the worst words in the English language are, ‘We’re in a crisis and the government doesn’t have a plan to help us get out of it.’”

ERZA: Hello and welcome to The Ezra Klein Show on the Vox Media Podcast Network. My guest today is Senator Elizabeth Warren, who was when she was running the first of the presidential candidates, come out with a plan on coronavirus. Actually she came out with one in January than two more in March. And I will say, having sat down with her for this episode and knowing that there's still no plan, you can actually read from the White House. There's something comforting about talking to a politician right now who actually seems to know what is going on and have a plan for what we should do about it. As always, my e-mail is Ezra Klein show at Vox.com. Here is Senator Elizabeth Warren.

EZRA: Senator Warren, welcome back to the podcast.

WARREN: Thank you. It’s good to be here.

EZRA: Something that has struck me is that there still isn't a single coronavirus response plan from the White House. I can't actually go and look up our strategy as a nation for stopping and recovering from this. You released three plans on coronavirus one in January and then two in March. But the situation has gotten worse since then. So in your view, what should the plan be?

WARREN: OK, so let's start with the fact that if you want to get something done, I think you ought to have a plan. And look, I wish we had a time machine. We could go back to January, because when we're dealing with public health issues like a potential pandemic, you want to be ahead of it. You don't want to be chasing it from behind. You know, it's like a fire. A fire is a whole lot easier to put out when it's really small than it is when it's really big and has already done an enormous amount of damage, but also is raging out of control. So back in January, I put out a plan that really focused on the importance of getting ready, of making sure that we had all the masks and the gowns and the respirators and all the things we were gonna need that the doctors and nurses and other health care professionals were ready to go, that we were considering opening up centers to be able to help people. If the health care system got overwhelmed. Second part of it was focused on the testing because the testing is crucial. We needed enough test kits not just to test people who were showing raging symptoms, but enough test kits to be able to test people who appear to be healthy so you can keep detecting it in the population and identify hotspots, respond to those in a very rapid way before this thing rages out of control. OK. Like I said, I don't have a telling machine. Can't go back and do that in January. But the point is, that's what a plan should still look like, even though this thing is huge. The plan should be about how we get health care delivery. And that means we've got to keep our doctors and nurses safe. They need personal protective equipment. It also means testing, testing, testing. We need to have enough test kids so that we're testing not just people who are being admitted to the hospital, not just people who are showing high fevers, but we're testing in the population and doing it on a regular basis so that we can tell what the progress of this disease is as it sweeps across the country, because that's our best chance in dealing with it. But it is it all comes down to you've got to have a plan.

EZRA: The White House has taken the attitude that this is a problem for states and localities to respond to. And to the extent that national help is being invoked, it is because there's a failure somewhere. So let me ask the question this way. What is the specific role for the federal government here? What can they do that others cannot?

WARREN: What the White House is just simply wrong, wrong, wrong on the notion that somehow the states can manage this on their own. We need a national response. So think about what I was just talking about. It is the federal government that can order the tests. It is the federal government that can use the Defense Production Act in order to call it companies, to produce the test kits, to produce the masks, to produce the gowns so that we could actually shift manufacturing in this country away from toasters or whatever else they're manufacturing, away from T-shirts over to the kinds of things that we actually need in a crisis. The states don't have the power to do that. Only the federal government does. And look at what's happening when the states are out there trying, for example, to buy these masks in a market with no rules. What happens is states end up bidding against each other. So New York bids against Massachusetts and they both are bidding against Arizona and California. Look, that's great for whoever is sitting on a couple of million masks, but it sure not good for the states that desperately need these masks and that are paying more and more and more just to get basic supplies. It is the federal government that can say, whoa, hold on here, we're going to allocate these masks, not based on who bids the highest price, but in terms of where there's a real need and where we can see the need coming because we're doing adequate testing. So let's get those masks to people in New York when that's where the hot spot is. But let's move them up to Boston, because we predict that in another week, Boston is going to be hit hard. And let's make sure that we get the masks on around the country when they're needed in other places. Same with test kits, same with every part of this. That is what a federal government that has a plan that's coordinating a response can do. And then let me mention the other half of this, and that is the economic half. It is the federal government and only the federal government that can actually cushion the economic blow here in a meaningful way. You know, the state of Massachusetts, for example, already predicts that we're going to have a three billion dollar shortfall because expenses have gone up dramatically as we're trying to support people out of work, trying to support people who need shelter, trying to support our hospitals. And at the same time, revenue has gone down. As we now know, taxes won't come in until July 1st if then and with a lot of small businesses closing and a lot of people out of work, tax revenues are likely to be lower. It is only the federal government that can actually print money in a time of crisis. It is only the federal government that can deficit spend. Massachusetts, as a matter of our state constitution, cannot engage in deficit spending. So it's the federal response that we need both on the health front and on the economic front.

EZRA: I want to pick up on this idea of the federal government as an allocator of resources, because it does seem that they are allocating resources, but possibly on another principle. Florida is getting everything it has asked for. Kentucky is getting more than it asked for. But among others, Massachusetts, we know, is very much not. And there have been some arguments or concerns that the way the Trump administration is allocating these resources is based on which states they feel have been politically friendly to them and which states they feel are important for them in 2020. Do you think that's true or do you think that's a misperception?

WARREN: Look, Donald Trump has made clear for years now that he cares about exactly one thing: Donald Trump! and whatever it is that Donald Trump wants or Donald Trump needs. It's all politics all the time. And now he's focused on how Donald Trump is going to get reelected and get reelected. So the biggest crowd ever can show up at his inauguration and that invades every decision that he makes. So just look at the data you cited. How can it be that Kentucky and Florida get 100 percent of what they need or 100 percent plus of what they need while Massachusetts doesn't? I think anyone would look at that and say it's Donald Trump playing politics once again.

EZRA: I want to go back to the plan on, on, on one dimension here, which is you talked about testing. You talked about getting health resources out. So we're able to protect frontline health workers. There is a lot of social distancing happening across the country right now. A lot of places are in various forms of lockdown, which is also an economic lockdown. And we're going to turn to the economic dimensions of it in a minute. But what comes next? I think the most, one of the most damaging parts of their not being a clear plan is people who are sheltered in place, which among others I am, don't have an idea of what they are sheltering in place for, how that time is being used and what is going to come after. So the disease can both be kept in check, but also some semblance of normal life could return. So if you were creating the plan, what would you tell people comes after social distancing? What is phase two of the public health response?

WARREN: So it's, it's a great question. And, and of course, you know me, the first part of this is collect as much data as we can. That's what testing should be all about. So we can keep watching where the hotspots are in and kind of how this plays out over time. Who's most affected? Where we need to intensify our resources in terms of a response. But there's a second part to it to think about. And that is as this happens, over time, we're going to have a growing proportion of the population that is immune because they've had the coronavirus and at least we presume that's the case, that once they've had it, they'll have antibodies. And that means these are going to be people who can go out among us. And other than the risk of touching someone who has, who is contagious and then touching something else, and other than that part of the contagion, these are people who can go out and start engaging in the activities we need, helping restart both our economy and helping support our health care system. But. That only happens if we're collecting those data. So right now, what we need to be working on is not just the testing for who actively has the Corona virus, but also who's immune now discovered 19 and identifying those people and starting to think of them as a resource and both getting us through the worst part of this crisis and also helping us to restart parts of this economy as quickly as possible. But you can't do it if you don't have information.

EZE: On the testing question, we are as a country testing far fewer people per capita than, say, South Korea is. What is your view of the testing failure? Why did it take so long to roll the testing out? And if there still blockages in the system or in the production system, how did they get lifted? What is needed to get this scaled up in a mass way quickly?

WARREN: The reason we didn't have testing early on was plain old politics. Donald Trump didn't want to see those numbers. Remember when he said that he didn't want the people to disembarked from the ship that had an infection? Not because he was worried about whether or not it might spread and whether or not when they got off the ship there would be appropriate protection? He said, ‘No, he didn't want his numbers to go up,’ meaning that the confirmed number of cases at that point, I believe that the reason that the Trump administration wouldn't buy the World Health Organization test kits was they don't want them. They want to see a crisis here in America. And so America went the role of we're going to develop it ourselves. And then that was slow and they didn't put money into it. Yeah, I think this is part of a mindset that a president believes that he can just declare how the world works and somehow the world will conform to him. And boy, that doesn't work in reality and it sure doesn't work in a pandemic.

EZRA: That point about the mindset is interesting. When I look back at your January plan what is striking about it is that it is looking at coronavirus at a time when it is not yet primarily here. It's a, it's a problem there. And the question is, can you contain it, and in this case in China, and it's very much about how to surge global public health, how to make sure we are getting good global testing results, how to make sure that we are in good information flows with other countries. And at the same time, all we're seeing right now as the Trump administration responds politically to coronavirus is a sharp increase in tensions with China and very, very inflammatory rhetoric. There is a very aggressive effort to get American companies to stop exporting to other countries, even if that means in critical ways, those countries will stop giving us things that we need. Can you talk a bit about the difference between approaching a global health crisis like coronavirus from a perspective of ‘We are in transactional competition with all these other nations’ versus a perspective of ‘There is some kind of positive sum interaction or possibility here?’

WARREN: It is a great question. And what you're asking is the question we face all the time around climate change, that we may be in competition with other countries economically and politically. But when it comes to saving the planet, we have to find a way to work together because there's no such thing as saving the United States of America and letting the rest of the planet burn up. That won't happen. And the same is true about a pandemic. We live in a world where if this disease spreads in one country and one region, then it's going to reach all around the globe. It's going to do it fast. That is part of the reason that we for decades supported the World Health Organization. And part of the failure of this administration when it takes the mindset of “Build a wall,” rather than let's work cooperatively with other countries to address the risks that we all face and work cooperatively with them in making sure whoever is hit the hardest. Whoever gets hit first actually has the resources they need to be able to contain this, because had we helped contain this earlier, the spread might have been slower, might have been arrested entirely. But that's how we have to do this. Now look. China's not blameless in this in terms of they have their own internal problems on information that was distributed on their own response to this crisis. But even so, we should be supporting internationally getting the test and getting the information, documenting, sharing information. And I just want to mention a second one to this, and it's to think about who we are as a country. I believe that a big part of foreign relations is about the values statement about who we are. So, yes, we have terrible problems with Iran and Iran's plan to develop a nuclear weapon. Iran's support for terrorism. But. Iran is is in the throes of a true crisis of enormous proportions. This is a moment when we could offer a generous hand to the Iranian people and demonstrate both to them and to the rest of the world that human beings, to human beings, we want to do our best to build a world where everyone is treated with some dignity and some respect. The idea that the Trump administration wants to use this moment of crisis as a way to sharpen our pressure on other nations and throw elbows economically, I just think is fundamentally the wrong approach. I don't think that's who we want to be as a nation. And frankly, I don't think it makes us safer over the long arc. I think we build more security for the United States when we try to work with other nations and treat other human beings with respect.  

EZRA: I want to hold on this point for a minute, because it reminds, what you're saying, of something your colleague, Senator Chris Murphy, said to me, which is, if you look at the federal budget, we've spent hundreds of billions of dollars every year buying insurance against the pot, buying insurance against the possibility of a Russian attack. And we've spent almost no money buying insurance against the possibility of a global pandemic. And someone else who is very thoughtful on these issues made a similar point, which is that his experience is that we take adversarial risk very seriously. If there is a risk that we can locate is coming from another country where a terrorist group. We will look at that and prepare for it. We have a whole defense budget and way of thinking about it. You're on the Armed Services Committee. You've seen all this. But that when there is a risk that would affect the whole world, when there's a risk that can not be seen as adversarial in that very distinct way, climate change, pandemics, other kinds of environmental risks that we tend to ignore them, downplay them, that there is something in the way our politics works, that we only respond when we can clearly name an enemy and that it has left us woefully underprepared for a lot of the truer risks that we face as not just a country, but as a planet. I'm curious if you think there's truth to that.

WARREN: I very much agree with what you've just described, but I think there's another dimension to understanding it, and that is think about the two kinds of threat that you've just talked about. One is the kind that we've understood since the time that human beings lived in caves, and that is punching each other, you know, competing for resources, human being to human being and using ever sharper weapons to make that happen. But the second is better understanding the world around us. The world of threats to our health and ultimately threats to the planet we live on. What troubles me so deeply about the past three years in the Trump administration has been the hostility to science and not just the science of climate change, although that has been, the hostility there has been breathtaking, but all kinds of science driving the scientists out of the Department of Agriculture are making facts, a political take it or leave it. You know that that is a mindset that goes back to a problem that I think Trump has evidenced from the beginning of this crisis. If he declared that the crisis was over and enough people believed it, then it would all work that way. But that's not how reality works. That's not, that's not how, how the lived experience of all of us works. You know, this, this virus doesn't care what Donald Trump says. It has no no political volition here. This is a virus that is just gonna keep spreading. No matter what Donald Trump says and the failure to regard what our scientists tell us about the world around us puts this country and this world in grave danger.

SEAN: Just a quick reminder that you’re listening to the Ezra Klein Show on Today, Explained. If you love what you’re hearing, you know where to find it. The Ezra Klein Show. Go take a look. More with Ezra and Elizabeth after a break.

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EZRA: I want to move our conversation to the economy. We saw more than 6 million new unemployment claims this week. And for those not used to looking at this data, that is apocalyptic. It makes a great recession disappear on a chart. And I want to begin this part here. There's been an argument going around that we are facing a choice between our economy and our lives. We've heard this, including from President Trump, that we cannot let the cure of social distancing be worse than the disease given the economic damage that social distancing could and, in fact is causing. This is very real suffering. Do you think that choice, your, our, our economy or life is the choice we're facing? Is that the right way to frame it?

WARREN: No. That is not the right way to frame it. These two work together. Saving lives strengthens our economy, and strengthening our economy can help us if we use our resources properly, save lives. The idea that there is a choice between those two and somehow they are in competition with each other is just flatly wrong. So let me do this at two levels. First, what does it mean to be a nation if we're not here to take care of our own people? It is the first job that the president of the United States of America. To help keep Americans safe. And what that means is in a time of a pandemic, then making sure that we have adequate health care, that we have a plan to deal with this crisis. It is also the case that it's just false on the economics. You know, there's a great new white paper out at the Safra Center at Harvard that talks about three possible responses to the pandemic, one that is really hard core sheltering for a truly extended period of time. One is about sheltering to try to flatten the curve and moving back into some economic activity over time. And the third is just give up and say, ‘No, you know, it's the economy and nothing more.’ And they go through as, as public health officials do and talk about the cost of each one of those. And the costliest is to what they call ‘surrender.’ And what that really means is to say it is only about the economy and you just let people go about their business. And the reason that is the costliest is that it causes the maximum number of deaths. And deaths are in fact, costly. We lose the benefit of those lives. And so they, they followed just kind of what is the standard dollar value we put on a life? It showed that it will be far more expensive if we just let this pandemic race through our country without trying to take these measures to protect the lives of people. So I see this as both morally and economically, these two things are not in tension. If we want to strengthen our economy, then we need to solve this medical problem. That's what counts first.

EZRA: Let's assume we do get the medical problem relatively under control. You were deeply involved not only in the policy response to the financial crisis, but also in making sense of it for people understanding it. And that was a financial panic that froze much of the real economy. Is something different. We have frozen much of the economy by choice. We are going to have all kinds of mobilization issues, business failures. What is different in how people need to think about what the economic needs and policies will be than was true in the financial crisis? If you're coming into this with 2008 as the operative metaphor in your mind, how do you need to change the way you're looking at it?

WARREN: Well, the first thing that changes, obviously, is there's such a powerful health overlay to everything we're looking at. So you can't just say, I know, let's have an infrastructure package and send everybody to work on this piece of infrastructure. Nope. We still have to worry about contagion. So that changes everything we think about in terms of getting people back to work. So that's part of it. Second part of it is how it touches the economy in a very different way. You know, in the 2008 crash, everyone could still go to work. The problem was whether or not the money system would freeze up so that businesses couldn't keep their line of credit so they couldn't make payroll. If they can't make payroll, people can't pay their bills and so on through the economy. This time it's different. Small businesses. I hate to say this. They're leading the shutdowns. You know, there are these little businesses across the country. Not because they can't get access to money. But because they can't and shouldn't have workers there and can't access their customers. So it means you have to think about this differently. Let me let me just give you one example. It means, for example, that the tool of simply getting money into the hands of tens of millions of people across this country is critically important. Why? Because we want them to buy food. Because if they buy food, we keep that part of the economy functioning. We need that supply chain to keep working so that the grocery stores are still stocked. And that only happens if customers are coming in, right? And then the grocery stores buy from the wholesalers. And the wholesalers are buying from the farmers and from the canners and other producers. And the truckers are still up and running. We want to keep that supply chain functional, both for the health of the American people and for the health of the economy. And that only happens if people have money to buy food. The question about people being able to stay in shelter is a little different. Do we give people money so they can make their mortgage payment and rent payment, or do we just say we're going to freeze in place debt collection so that nobody gets evicted? Nobody gets foreclosed against. Nobody gets a bad credit rating during this. But we're gonna have to hit the pause button here on people making their payments for shelter and for those owners of those properties making their payments on their ones. How much of this can we manage through the financial system that way and how much do we just have to make cash payments to people? So you have to kind of think about this structurally in a little different way. And yet the core parts, they're still saying it's a crisis and we need to address the crisis directly. In 2008, people being moved out of their homes, financial instruments failing the specter of the entire financial system freezing up. And remember, that wasn't just the US. It was a worldwide problem. Remember, all over Europe, Asia was having problems. Iceland nearly shut down. And in that sense, we have a crisis. We have to deal with this health care crisis. And we need a strong response and we need it fast. One of the lessons from 2008 was that, frankly, the Republicans just wouldn't go for a big enough stimulus package. And that meant the recovery was slower and more anemic than it would have been had we put more money into stimulus. But they were determined not to let Barack Obama have that kind of power in the recovery. And we paid a price for it as a nation. Indeed. We paid a price. We're still paying a price for it. Now, it's the same kind of thing. We've got to have a strong enough response to support our families, to support our small businesses, to keep the parts of this economy functioning that are absolutely essential for our physical health and ultimately for our economic security.  

EZRA: This is a bit of a tricky point, but when we think about this in phases: Phase 1 and Phase 2 at the public health level, it seems to me there's an analogy on the economic side, which is this, that as you were just saying, what we initially need to do is ask people to stay home, is put the economy on life support, give people the money to be able to continue buying groceries and paying rent or being at home, potentially give businesses the money through forgivable loans or just normal loans to stay open. But after we do that for some number of months, some parts of that economy are going to come back and some won't. Unlike the financial crisis, I don't think we're just trying to get back to the economy we were in. There's going to be too much damage. And so what is the vision for the economy? On the other side of this, if we're able to manage the life support period of it, it seems to me we're going to need to rebuild things that are just gone. We're going to have lost a lot of small businesses. We're gonna have lost a lot of economic knowledge. Do we build something new in its place? Do we try to just bring back what we had, what comes after?

WARREN: So it's an interesting question, but I'm going to push back on you about small businesses. I think that we risk losing a lot of small businesses. I understand that. But I also think small businesses are where you see the first signs of life in an economy that's starting to heal—that entrepreneurs are, they're creative. They work hard. You know, they come up with ideas and they're the constant laboratory of ‘Let's try this. Let's try this. The shop next door tries something else. Someone down the street tries something else.’ And while they may not all succeed. That is one of the best ways to grow the economy. We know that small businesses in that push from small businesses is what employs a huge fraction of our population. So I see this as thinking about ‘How do you best support small businesses that want to get a foothold when they think the, you know, the skies are starting to clear and now is the time?’ And here's where you start to think structurally about this. Do we want to just say it's now open season for venture capital? You know, the way that Wall Street came in and bought up so many of the, the homes, particularly in areas that were really hard hit, particularly in communities of color that have been targeted for some of the worst of the worst mortgages. And look at the consequences of that. It has meant that homeownership has not recovered. And that's a lot of, you know, hardworking, middle class families that are not buying the single best asset that can help them build a financial future. So I think of, with these small businesses, if this is just going to be, you know, Wall Street money, because they got lots of money and they come in and buy up these little businesses or take controlling shares in all these businesses, you'll actually see a shift toward more consolidation over time and businesses. Or are we going to stay aggressive on the government front and in the same way that we just put out this first small business package that I think is a really strong package. Do we make more money available to small businesses as they're trying to, you know, get their feet under them and get their doors open and try the next version of what this economy looks for? Now, you can guess from the way I've described this, which one I support. I want to see us with stronger government support for our small businesses going forward, because I don't want to see that kind of consolidation. I also think, you know, markets are going to change. People are getting used to ordering online, even, you know, the barriers are broken down on that. And so I think we're going to see more ordering, less face to face contact in some kinds of businesses. But at the same time, you know, there are a lot of people who, who now hunger for that human interaction. And so I, I think this one may be you may see two humps on the curve here. A lot of services that get delivered to your house, but a lot of things where people just want to go and be with other people, that that is a part of the experience. I want to buy my stuff where I get to look at another human being and shake hands and know that person's name and have a little conversation over time. So, you know, that's what small businesses will test out for us.

EZRA: Between the question of letting financial markets absorb the small business side and giving businesses more support to come back on their own, you've also heard arguments for different kinds of mobilisations. So one is a public health mobilization, among other things. You could see mass jobs coming from testing, at least for some period of time. And that could be some kind of transition program. Similar things can happen in delivery. But also there are different mobilization ideas that have been lurking for some time now around Green New Deal, around infrastructure. Are we going to need in the way you often do during a war or some degree, even after one, a more publicly planned economy to rebuild and to create a kind of bridge back to a fully functioning economy?

WARREN: You know, can I add to your list of mobilization we should be doing right now?

EZRA: Please.

WARREN: Housing. I mean, think about that was my point about not just people who were homeless, but people who are doubled up and tripled up in housing, we've had a real problem in this country and that is that that we had built enough housing. And it's housing all the way through for middle class families, for working class families, for the working poor, for the poor poor, for people with disabilities, for seniors that want to age in place, for people who are returning from prison, for people who are homeless, for people who need that housing. And that federal government policy has basically been not to help expand that housing. So we've watched over the last probably five decades a real shift in and where housing comes from, from kind of, the middle class and people who have less money than that. I grew up in a two bedroom, one bath house. You know, the garage was converted to hold my three brothers. And that house was built by a private builder, private builders not building those houses anymore. They build McMansions. And I'm not mad at them. It's just that's where the profits are. So the housing that was kind of entry-level housing or modest housing families, it didn't have a lot that housing is not being built privately. And the federal government's public housing, there's a federal law in place now that says for every new unit of public housing brought on, federal government has to take one old unit off. Well, our population expands. We need more housing. So when you ask the question about, ‘Where should we be thinking about mobilization?’ I think that in this time of crisis, we see the importance of safe, secure, affordable housing for everyone. And I really would put a big push starting immediately because we've got to get people off the streets. But I mean, over the next few years, we need to expand our housing availability for folks. And this is true, by the way, in cities. It's true in small towns. It's true in rural America. This is not a problem that is confined to one kind of area, nor it's a problem that's only in the north or only in the south. Only in the east. Only in the west. It is a widespread problem and it's a place where we could make a federal investment that in the short run gets people off the street and puts people to work in construction. And then in the long run, creates a stronger, more stable housing supply and takes a lot of economic pressure off families.

EZRA: That makes a lot of sense to me. But so to just take that one step further, so you do think it will be necessary, whatever the chosen mobilization is, or maybe it's some combination of them housing and renewable energy and so on, that as we move out of the economic life support period of this, that Congress and the administration do end up thinking about how to build big public works, right? Use the government to actually put people back to work and align some national priorities with the construction of demand and employment.

WARREN: Yes, I do. I think it's going to be absolutely necessary. I was picking the specific example of housing. But look, when we're talking, for example, about energy, this is a chance to upgrade our energy grid and a chance to harden our infrastructure over time against coming climate change, a chance to make a real investment in public transportation. And those have double economic advantages. They put a lot of people to work and there are a lot of ancillary jobs that go with that. But they also reassure markets and investors that we're going to build our way out of this recession or depression, wherever is the lowest point we hit. I think it, it will help give confidence that when you have a plan and people can see it, they can start making their plans to supplement that, whether it's small businesses or it's big Wall Street investors saying, ‘OK, I see the United States is making a commitment. We know that we're good at this. Yeah. We're gonna print money for a while to make it happen. But that's going to get money down into this economy. That's going to build up demand.’ That's how you build a boom. You don't do it with stock buybacks. You do it by actually investing in people and in the things that people need.

EZRA: One important moral dimension of what we're going through right now as a country is that we're seeing a lot of solidarity and sacrifice being demanded of working class people, of young people, many of whom I think feel correctly that America hasn't shown a lot of solidarity and sacrifice when confronted with their needs in the years before this: housing being a great example, health care being another example, paid leave being an example. And now that we're in a moment where people see how much we rely on each other. What else? What else needs to be built or done with that moment? So the people from whom we've asked the most feel like this is an ethic that extends to them, not just one that is activated to take from them when needed.

WARREN: I want to see us cancel student loan debt, and partly that's because it would have an economic impact right now. So people are not worried about paying their student loan bills. Now, as you know, right now, there's a six month hiatus. So we've got a little breathing room on that. But I actually want to see us cancel a big chunk of this debt or all of this debt. And the reason for that is partly economic. We can now track that student loan debt has been having a negative effect on our economy, that it depresses small business startup. There are a lot of folks with student loan debts who say, I'd love to pitch in with my friends here and I'll live on ramen noodles and we'll all live in one apartment, you know, until we get this business launched. But I can't do that if I've got an $800 a month student loan payment. There's no way I can make that happen. Young people are not buying homes. A lot of them are, are not able to move out of their folks’ houses. So there's an economic stimulative effect. That's not just in the very short term, but also would be over the next few years for doing this. But I also think there's a generational way that young people have just been left behind. They've been cheated. I graduated from a college that cost fifty dollars a semester. I didn't have a big student loan debt burden because I could go to a school and get an education for a price that you could pay for on a part time waitressing job. That alternative is just not out there for young people today. It was there for me because taxpayers had invested in the school I went to — University of Houston. Taxpayers in Texas and federal taxpayers had invested in that school today. That's not happening, not in the same numbers. And the consequence is young people who try to get an education, who try to invest in their future, have been left out pretty much on their own. The federal government's response has said, yep, you really, really ought to go out there and get some post-high school education, whether it's technical training, two-year college, four-year college. And here's how we're gonna help. We’ll lend you the money, add interest and then be your biggest creditor for years and years to come. I think that's an intergenerational crime to do that to young people. It's wrong. It's fundamentally wrong. And so I think forgiving this debt, just canceling it out. I think that would not only give a boost to forty five million people who are dealing with student loan debt, but it would also be an acknowledgment that a lot of young folks in this country caught the short end of the stick here and that this economic recession or depression. Yeah, it's gonna be tough on all of us, but it's going to be especially tough on people who are graduating into it, on people who are in their first jobs, and I think that canceling out of our federal government as their biggest creditor would be a way of acknowledging that and saying it's your future that we want to invest in.

EZRA: When you look back on the primary, given what's happening now, does it feel like the debate was focused on the wrong things?

WARREN: No, I don't think so. At least the parts that I was talking about and and and kept wanting to push out there. And I think people did talk some about it. I think we did talk a lot about the role of government and a government that either is working just for the rich and the powerful or a government that's working for everyone else. And kind of what the, the building block pieces of that are, as I see it now in this crisis, that truly is the issue. Remember Ronald Reagan's famous line? ‘What are the worst words in the English language? I'm from the government and I'm here to help you.’ Those are not the worst words in the English language. In fact, we've seen during this crisis that among the worst words in the English language are ‘We're in a crisis and the government doesn't. Have a plan to help us get out of it. Doesn't have a plan to protect our families and the people we love. Doesn't have a plan to rebuild our economy.’ The idea is somehow that we're all going to be better off with a government that doesn't invest in science and in long term planning. I think has, has surely been show not only to be wrong, but to be dangerous. So. I think that what the election in 2020 is going to be about, in part is about people who want a government that is competent. And that is on their side in planning for an uncertain future.

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EZRA: Senator Elizabeth Warren, thank you very much.

WARREN: Thank you.

EZRA: Thank you to Senator Warren for being here. Thank you to Roget Karma for researching, to Jeffrey Geld for editing and producing. The Ezra Klein show is VOX Media Podcast production.