“Members of Congress have overhauled their offices to answer increasingly desperate calls from constituents in search of a lifeline and unsure of who can help.”
As the Coronavirus continues to threaten and take lives across the country, House Democrats are fervently working to ensure their constituents receive the resources and information they need to stay healthy and safe.
The New York Times, dispatching from districts across the country, cited Reps. Andy Kim, Antonio Delgado, Jahana Hayes, and Kim Schrier as members of Congress who “have overhauled their offices to answer increasingly desperate calls from constituents in search of a lifeline and unsure of who can help.”
At a time when the American people need relief and amid a health and economic crisis, the Trump Administration continues to block uninsured COVID-19 patients from getting the coverage they need, leaving nearly 28 million Americans in 38 states uninsured and Washington Republicans still REFUSE to join House Democrats in standing up to the President.
Conversely, House Democrats are rising to the challenge to ensure their constituents receive the support they need during these trying times. With the Times reporting, “back home in their districts, they have become the de facto case workers.”
Statement from DCCC Spokesperson, Fabiola Rodriguez:
“House Democrats have stepped up where their Republican colleagues and the Trump Administration will not. While they stop at nothing to fight for economic relief and the health and safety of their communities, House Republicans continue trying to strip health care from American families – even amid a global pandemic.”
New York Times: The Paramedics Couldn’t Find Lysol. They Turned to Their Congressman.
KEY POINTS:
- The messages clog their offices’ phone lines and inboxes by the thousands, each a snapshot of someone’s lived nightmare — the wife whose husband is on a ventilator and getting worse by the day, the small-business owner who desperately needs a loan, the paramedic who wants disinfectant to clean his ambulance between shuttling the ill to the hospital.
- Assisting constituents in need has always been a critical part of the job of a member of Congress, but it has perhaps never been as important, or in demand, as it is now. As the coronavirus pandemic rips across the country, lawmakers have been inundated by messages from panicked and suffering Americans searching for a lifeline.
- “The last couple of weeks have fundamentally redefined what my job is, what it means to be a representative,” said Representative Andy Kim, Democrat of New Jersey, whose district, stretching across the eastern suburbs of Philadelphia to the Jersey Shore, has been hit hard by the virus.
- “You can tell they’re calling because they don’t know who else to come to,” he said. “When someone is calling our office about being scared to go outside because they don’t have a mask and they don’t know how to get one, they’re calling because they’re really worried.”
- Paul Daley, the director of emergency management in Toms River, N.J., said he contacted Mr. Kim’s office “more out of frustration than anything” when he reached out to say that his paramedics were out of the Lysol spray they urgently needed to sanitize their ambulances after transporting patients to the hospital. He was not expecting anything, but could the congressman help?
- Two days later, Mr. Kim’s office called back. They had located 78 cans of Lysol in a Walmart an hour and a half away in Pennsylvania — and had arranged for a team to hand-deliver the supplies to the fleet, based in Ocean County.
- When one man who identified himself as Harvey called into a telephone town-hall-style event hosted by Representative Antonio Delgado, Democrat of New York, the congressman offered his assistance, but there was little advice Mr. Delgado could give to address the fact that the state’s unemployment website was crashing.
- About 70 percent of the inquiries her office receives are “not even in our jurisdiction,” Representative Jahana Hayes, Democrat of Connecticut, estimated in an interview. But she said her constituents’ stories have kept her up at night.
- “It is extremely difficult for me to not have answers for constituents,” Ms. Hayes said. “We have had an endless stream of phone calls, emails and I don’t want to just respond to people with generic answers.”
- […] Representative Kim Schrier, Democrat of Washington, a medical doctor whose district covers Seattle’s suburbs to the eastern side of the Cascade Mountains, said in an interview that her office had fielded over 13,000 emails and letters since the pandemic reached the United States, 8,000 of which her office has responded to in writing. Hundreds of others have required personal follow-up calls from Dr. Schrier and her staff.
- “My constituents are getting their news from a variety of sources — from some less scientifically based than others,” she said. “I really try to be a voice in the middle that can balance both the needs of the economy and public health, and how it shouldn’t be an either-or proposition.”
###