WHYY, 05/28/2020 - How is your congressional representative responding to COVID-19?
By Katie Meyer
The men and women who represent Southeastern Pennsylvania in Washington, like the rest of Congress, were focused squarely on election season when the coronavirus pandemic first hit the U.S. That focus shifted quickly to a strikingly bipartisan slew of stimulus measures, and then to navigating the quickly solidifying politics of the pandemic.
The southeast delegation includes some of Pennsylvania’s most liberal and most moderate members — and those moderates have had to walk a particularly tricky line balancing their priorities in the pandemic response: urging constituents to follow medical advice and stave off outbreaks, supporting businesses that are hemorrhaging funds as stay-at-home orders drag on, and positioning themselves in relation to their party leaders, who are only growing more opposed.
For Republicans, the party line is largely dictated by President Donald Trump, who has criticized Gov. Tom Wolf’s stay-at-home orders and urged parts of Pennsylvania to reopen. Trump also has pinned blame for the coronavirus outbreak on China, accusing the country of covering up its own pandemic.
For Democrats, the leading voice has been House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi. The $3 trillion aid bill the House passed in mid-May includes more direct cash payments for Americans, extended unemployment benefits, and new testing and contact tracing efforts. But Republicans have derided it — and declared it dead on arrival in the Senate — for giving states too much flexibility in spending stimulus money and suspending a cap on state and local tax deductions that passed with the Republicans’ 2017 tax cuts.
Some moderate members have bucked the party line. Susan Wild, a Democrat who represents the Lehigh Valley, voted against the House stimulus bill, saying that it is “the time to bring our nation together around solutions that will improve the lives of Americans who are hurting, not engage in partisan gamesmanship.”
Others, meanwhile, have hewn closer. Brian Fitzpatrick from Bucks County, easily the state’s most moderate Republican, has taken a page out of the president’s playbook in his primary race against a Trump-branded opponent. One of his latest campaign ads blames China for the pandemic, declaring that country is “trying to steal our future” but that Fitzpatrick is “fighting to make China pay.”
Here’s more on how Pennsylvania’s southeast delegation is handling the pandemic.
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6th Congressional District
Democrat Chrissy Houlahan, who is among the more moderate members of Pennsylvania’s congressional delegation, voted in favor of the House’s sweeping stimulus plan — but with reservations. She said she felt it was a good “starting point” for negotiations with the Senate, which she said has “shown no sense of urgency.” But, she added, she’s concerned another round of stimulus payments will be as “rocky and frustrating” as the first, that the bill includes too many unnecessary components, and that it’s expensive.
Among other things, Houlahan — an AmeriCorps member — has also been involved in a push for a National Public Health Corps, which would help with nationwide testing.