The Senate must address issues now that will put the nation, months from now, in a better position, but members shouldn't necessarily have to return to Washington, D.C., to be able to cast votes, Sen. Chris Coons said Wednesday.
"Age puts most senators in the highly vulnerable category, and for all the workers that would have to come to work, we should be concerned about the Capitol Police officers, the folks who help make the complex work," said the Delaware Democrat on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "We should be worried about protecting them, and should be focused on the things that have to be down to prepare for six months from now."
Coons said he and Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Ron Wyden, D-Wyoming, are ready to present a bill that will allow senators to produce a safe vote by mail, "so when the virus comes back more aggressively, which is predicted by Dr. (Anthony) Fauci and others, we can vote safely."
The senator also called for increases to the national service network organizations such as AmeriCorps, so that young people who are members can be put to work doing contact tracing work in hopes of stopping the spread of coronavirus.
Coons noted that he launched one of the first national AmeriCorps programs in the nation in the 1990s and saw firsthand how hard those involved work.
"There's a lot more we could and should be doing about job creation, about economic revitalization, about making sure or federal response is as coordinated as our workers and families deserve," Coons said.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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