Here & Now

Pocan on Election, COVID Relief

Frederica Freyberg:

Turning to the other side of the aisle, among the Wisconsin Congressional delegation, with Democratic U.S. Representative Mark Pocan from the 2nd Congressional District. He joins us from Madison and thanks very much for being here.

Mark Pocan:

Thank you, Frederica. Glad to be here.

Frederica Freyberg:

So lots to touch on. First, your reaction to the lawsuits filed by the Trump campaign and his allies in Wisconsin challenging the results here.

Mark Pocan:

Yeah. If he wants to donate $3 million to the state of Wisconsin, we’ll go through a few hoops for him. But they’re not going to go anywhere. Even Scott Walker said the way we run our elections in Wisconsin, you’re not going to find a way to overturn that many votes but if this is what Donald Trump needs to uphold his frail ego in the final weeks that he’s in office, we’ll take the money.

Frederica Freyberg:

Now our state Legislature will hold investigative hearings as we’ve seen in other states. In your mind, does this help to air doubters’ concerns?

Mark Pocan:

Again, you’re dealing with someone who doesn’t want to give up after they’ve lost the election and somehow Republicans are still part of this cult until he officially steps down and they have to do whatever he requires. I wish that they would take this time and do hearings about COVID, about what small businesses need right now and people who are unemployed, what we need to do with contact tracers, what we need to do about testing in senior living situations in places like Wisconsin. But they haven’t met for over six months to deal with any of that and now they’re going to do a hearing on something that is just to make the president feel better. Not exactly the Legislature I remember.

Frederica Freyberg:

From your perspective, has this delay and the allegations of fraud deflated Democrats’ excitement over the results?

Mark Pocan:

No. This is really all done largely for an audience of one, Donald Trump. You’re finding every day more and more major Republicans come out and say Joe Biden won the election, in fact by a quite sizable margin by presidential elections. Up to this point though, all of these actions are to make the president feel better. Honestly, COVID is killing thousands of people a day across the country. Wisconsin has a COVID epidemic. We should be focusing on COVID and COVID primarily and instead we’re following these little rabbit holes that the president can feel better. It’s just a sign of the times of how tough the political environment is right now, Frederica.

Frederica Freyberg:

There is some work going on towards COVID relief out of Washington, including – describe how urgent this is for your constituents.

Mark Pocan:

The highest. There’s no question. Anyone who’s an elected official who’s not spending almost all of their time and effort on COVID isn’t doing their job. That’s what I’ve been trying to do. So whether it be pushing the Legislature to meet and support the governor’s important mask order or temporary occupancy orders that are so important, trying to get the state to hire more contact tracers. We’re significantly down. An important part of testing, tracing and isolation. Missing those is a crucial part of what we have to do. And making sure we’re testing in our senior centers much better. By senior centers, I mean nursing homes and assisted living centers. We’re seeing quite large increases in deaths in those facilities. My job should be to get that federal bill done, which I think we’re going to do next week, to get assistance to small business owners and people who are unemployed and our front line workers and state and local governments doing the work. But if you’re not obsessed by COVID as an elected official, you shouldn’t be an elected official right now.

Frederica Freyberg:

What level of aid, what kind of spending do you support in any federal package?

Mark Pocan:

Well, it looks like we’re going to have a trimmed-down package, but having President Biden taking office on January 20, that will give us another chance to do more work. But if you talk to small business owners right now, they’re hurting badly, restaurants, bars, meetings, tourism, other industries and anyone who works with those industries. That’s causing layoffs and people unemployed at no fault of their own. We’re watching front line workers literally exhausted from trying to deal with the COVID cases and yet we still have a president telling people you don’t have to wear a mask, which is ridiculous. We need to do everything we can right now to curtail those cases to relieve the pressure on our hospitals, to relieve the pressure on the front line workers. We need more resources than this bill will have, but at least this will get us through some temporary fixes right now.

Frederica Freyberg:

Governor Evers wants priority on vaccines given that he says that statewide mitigation efforts have been blocked in Wisconsin as you’ve been referencing. Do you think DHS Secretary Alex Azar will go for giving Wisconsin priority on vaccines?

Mark Pocan:

I think they’re going to do it by demographics and populations, as they should. I mean, obviously, front line workers should be the very first to get any vaccines. Those who are older or are in risk categories need to get it next. But there are things right now we can do in Wisconsin short of this that we’re not doing, including getting more contact tracers, including having more aggressive testing in assisted living centers and in verifying what’s happening in the nursing homes. So I hope we can do all of this at the same time, right? I think the Legislature can meet and pass some of the important provisions the governor has put out of there. But the state also has to step up and do some things they can do right now without legislative work or federal assistance. If we do that and get our bill out next week that’s going to provide some importance and then have a good plan to get the vaccines out to the people who need it the most, I think we’ll at least be doing the job that we have to do to keep people as safe as possible.

Frederica Freyberg:

We leave it there. Representative Mark Pocan, thank you very much.

Mark Pocan:

Sure. Thank you, Frederica.