Survey Questions and Candidate Responses

Cassandra Martineau | Participating Election

Single Payer is a must. We also need elected officials to come together around facts. It's appalling that Coronavirus, one of the biggest immediate direct threats to our well being, has been politicized. We need a government people can trust, and officials who prioritize the 99% over the profits of the 1%. Society has been restructured, over 30 years of ever increasingly fanatical Republicans and Corporate Democrats, to favor the wealthiest over the rest of us. Time to reverse these horrid neoliberal policies.

Bruce Walczak | Participating Election

Each Federal Agency must have a division to plan and address future pandemics. We need to engage The World Health Organization and other International organizations to prepare and coordinate our response.

Joe Courtney | Participating Election

First, we need to provide relief funding that even Repubican advisers know will ensure that the pandemic recession does not linger longer than necessary. Trump’s own economic advisers have made it clear that without this additional financial relief to our local governments, education, and small businesses, the American people will suffer needlessly for longer. Additionally, we need to let the science and evidence lead us as we learn more about the long-term impact of COVID-19. As we learn new ways to treat and control the virus, relying on unbiased scientific evidence as a guide for public policy is crucial.

Justin Paglino | Participating Election

Science tells us that deadly pandemics such as this are infrequent, but inevitable. Ignoring this science allowed us to let our guard down, and thus we were caught unprepared for SARS-CoV-2. We have been underfunding pandemic preparedness, and underfunding Public Health in general. The Affordable Care Act established a Public Health and Prevention Fund, a fund which soon found itself being raided by both major parties to pay for 'other priorities.' In a world where we are all interdependent, we also need universal healthcare: Medicare for All single payer comprehensive free health insurance for all. More specifically regarding managing the current pandemic, we need to ensure that we do several things. 1. Ensure that hospitals have adequate supplies of PPE and ventilators. 2. Ensure that we have the capacity to perform optimal testing, contact tracing, and isolating, which includes in some cases providing isolation quarters for patients who need to isolate away from those they live with, as has been provided by many other governments. 3. Communicate the science of mask effectiveness to the public clearly and broadly as possible. 4. Offer science-based guidance to states and municipalities, as well as funding they may need. 5. Ensure the rapid but safety-tested development of an effective vaccine. 6. After protecting the American public, work to help the rest of the world - this is a global problem that affects us indirectly as well. 7. Ensure that the economic repercussions are fully addressed with direct aid to individuals - it is now past time for another $1,000 per person check for every American, and more direct aid to struggling businesses, states, municipalities, and tribes.

John Larson | Participating Election

The health of our nation and the economy are inextricably linked until this pandemic ends. We can’t fix one without fixing the other, but we can work to address both at the same time. First and foremost, we need a nationally-coordinated response to set federal standards to address this pandemic. States shouldn’t have to fight over supplies. We need to utilize the Defense Production Act and the Defense Logistics Agency to produce and distribute PPE, supplies, and tests across the country. At the same time, Congress needs to offer more relief to help industries that are the most impacted and small businesses. I have voted for the Heroes Act, which offers more of this needed relief and makes significant investments to increase testing.

Stephen Dincher | Participating Election

By freeing the market. Market actors are far better at adapting to changes and can work quickly to provide resources where they are needed most. Individual planning, not central planning, is required.

Brian Merlen | Participating Election

I believe Americans need to embrace the idea that we will all be using more online and remote means for work and education for the foreseeable future. By learning to work remotely, and utilizing technology we can move forward in safer and more efficient ways. I believe the technologies we develop to get around the Coronavirus disruption will prove useful in other ways as far as increasing productivity, and that we will rethink modern offices, and educational facilities. In a long enough timeframe we will end the Coronavirus through social distancing and use of masks.

Rosa DeLauro | Participating Election

The pandemic has brought light to many issues that I have been advocating for the need to address. Food deserts, access to affordable healthcare and child care, as well as using our tax system to benefit working families. We need to increase the minimum benefit for SNAP and implement a fully refundable and expanded Child Tax Credit. That is why I introduced the American Family Act which would cut the child poverty rate by 42%. Most importantly, we need to make strong investments in the CDC and NIH to ensure that our nation can not only combat this current pandemic but will also be prepared for any future such event.

Justin Anderson | Participating Election

Historically, severe pandemics, plagues and similar concerns are self-correcting. There is an enormous team of scientists that are driving the decision making. It is dishonest to believe the president himself is making the CDC force policy on America. If anything, it is the other way around and the science is based on new conditions and a new threat, which is not fully understood. Therefore, as we learn more, science can have changing protocols. This is normal with every new medical threat. The idea that there is a perfect unchanging science on the current “new” pandemic is simply not true. We will keep learning and keep perfecting the information that allow us to live life as safely as possible. Science and history have shown that viruses mutate to survive. Killing the host is counter-productive, therefore it is reasonable that the COVID-19 may become far less deadly and far easier to spread. Ultimately, that is the equivalent of the flu, which kills about 60,000 per year, on average. Vehicle incidents kill about 3,500 per day, yet no one has lowered the speed limit to 30 miles per hour, with a governor on the throttle. At some point we trade safety for freedom. That can be an arbitrary trade off, which allows for the politicization of these types of events. Medical threats are real, but we need to deal with the medical threat and not the repercussions of partisan political ideology.