CheckIn: Rep. William Timmons on the economic response to coronavirus
“The lives lost because of an incredible adverse economic impact will be more than COVID-19.”
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The following is a transcript of the CheckIn interview conducted by GovSight Vice President Miguel Pineda and Editor-in-Chief Gillian Brassil with U.S. Representative William Timmons (R-S.C.) on the coronavirus response in his district and nationally as well as his legislative history. The interview has been edited lightly for clarity.
Miguel Pineda: Can you tell us a little bit about what your district in South Carolina as a whole has done to combat COVID-19?
William Timmons: Well, we’ve been very fortunate. We’ve had relatively few cases and even fewer deaths, but we’ve still taken it very seriously. We took the steps necessary to slow the spread to flatten the curve. And you know, we issued a home-work order. It was unique to South Carolina. It wasn’t just a reflexive, “everyone stay at home.” We eased into it and then we eased out of it, but we did take it seriously. And thus far, our results have been very positive.
MP: Of course. And you know, you touched on this a little bit: South Carolina started opening businesses this past week. Do you think that that was a necessary step towards the next phase of reopening completely?
WT: I do. And you know, everything’s going to be hindsight 2020, but we are in a position right now where the federal government and state government and the local governments have done everything that we can to address COVID-19 in a responsible manner. We passed trillions of dollars of economic relief at the federal level. The state has done extraordinary things to keep people safe and to save lives. But the medical system, the health care system is in a position to respond to this now and the death toll.
And 40 million people being unemployed is going to be just terrible and we need to get back to work. We gotta do it safely. If you’re older than 60 or if you have an underlying health condition, you probably ought to consider staying home longer. But everybody else: take the precautions that you’re being told to take and get back to work because the economy just — we have to get it started again. The lives lost because of an incredible adverse economic impact will be more than COVID-19.
Gillian Brassil: Definitely, going macro a little bit here: Are you happy with the federal government’s response overall to the coronavirus and its economic impact?
WT: Yes. I mean, we did the best we could. I could tell you a ton of things that we should have done differently, but we got trillions of dollars out the door into people’s bank accounts. We got hundreds of billions of dollars into small businesses to maintain maximum employment rates. So, you know, we’re doing everything we can to make sure that we get through this and to maximize the number of people that are going to have the least impact possible.
But we still might’ve been a little bit too broad in certain areas. I think we helped a lot of people that didn’t need to be helped. I think that our goal should be, in this next package that we’re considering, to really just help the people that have been adversely affected by COVID-19 — everything else is not appropriate, to be kind of using this crisis as an opportunity. So I’m just hoping that we can be very surgical and very tailored in our next package.
GB: Certainly. I would love if you could actually expand on that a bit more and tell us: what do you see as the best way to get the country back on track economically?
WT: Well, you know, I’ll talk about challenges we had with the last package. So the Payroll Protection Program: it was designed to keep people employed. And that created an incentive to keep people on the payrolls. But it had a timeline, which is eight weeks, and it had a percentage requirement, which was not in statute. It was regulatory, which was 75% had to go to payroll. So that was also in competition with this whole idea that we’re going to provide $600 more than any person would normally make on unemployment — $600 more per week. And so there’s these competing incentives.
As a small business owner, I have a CrossFit gym and yoga studio, and we shut down two weeks before the state forced us to. And then we had to furlough people because the gym was closed and we didn’t have anything for anybody to do. And I mean, everyone is doing the best they can right now, but we now are looking to reopen. We reopened just a couple of days ago and we have people that are making $926 a week on unemployment, which we couldn’t bring them back, but we don’t know how much revenue we’re going to have long term. We don’t know if we’re going to have 50% revenue, 40% revenue. So it is really placing the interest of the business and the business owner against the team, the employees. And we’re doing everything we can to help the team. We’re allowing people to do whatever’s in their best interest, but the interest of the employee and the employer is currently at odds — and that’s not good, and we need to not do that going forward.
So, you know, we need to be more surgical about it. But not to mention a number of businesses took Payroll Protection Program loans that didn’t need the money. They didn’t have a revenue disruption. So we should have had a component of the Payroll Protection Program to require revenue disruption, meaning if you have no disruption in revenue and you get a loan, you have to give all of the money back. None of it’s forgiven: That’s reasonable. But we were in such a hurry, we didn’t do that.
And we also should have said, you can get up to the amount of money that you were making prior to being on unemployment. If you go on unemployment, not two, three, four, five times more than you were making. And I mean, I want to help everybody to the best of our ability, but we have limited resources. So to give people a thousand dollars a week to not work when they were making $400 before a week, that’s not good policy. And I mean, I want to help everybody, but giving people a windfall — no one can get a windfall. Anybody that’s looking for a windfall, this is not the right time to do that. It’s not appropriate, it’s not ethical. And we need to make sure that we help people that need help and nobody gets a windfall.
GB: I’d like to follow up on something that you said there. Is there a way that we can incentivize owners and corporate leaders to help their employees more to prevent some of that? Is there some sort of governmental-corporate partnership that needs to start here?
WT: So the discussion — and we’re going to vote on this tomorrow, the next day — is relaxing the rules of the federal Protection Program loans. And I don’t really think that’s the best path forward. Maybe relaxing a little bit and creating a revenue relationship to the percentage that you have to use for payroll. Restaurants are going to be hit hardest by this. Hotels will be hit hardest by this. Gyms will be hit hardest by this. Nobody’s going to go out. Just because you’re allowed to go back out and go to dinner doesn’t mean people are going to, so we need to take it into account — and this eight week arbitrary limit for these. These numbers, these requirements to get your loan forgiven are not really appropriate. Maybe it should be 16, 18, 20.
But the biggest component is revenue disruption. If you don’t have a revenue disruption, you’re going to give the money back. And I’ve talked to a lot of business owners and, you know, they’re in a spot where they’re like, “well, I don’t really need this. I’m not gonna have any revenue disruption, but I’m eligible and my competitors are doing it, so I’m going to be at a disadvantage if my competitors take it.” We created perverse market incentives and we need to remove those, and we need to think about getting everyone back to work as quickly as possible in a safe manner. And I know those are — that’s the issue. Like this is not an “open up, open up.” It’s not “shut down, shut down.” It is, “we have to open up safely and save as many lives as possible.” But also think about the fact that 40 million people unemployed — the poverty, the death rates, it’s going to create problems for years to come.
And you know, I always think about the number of PhD dissertations that are going to be written about this. You know, who made the right decision, who made the wrong decision; what data was best, what data was worst. We’re doing our best to get through this together, but ultimately I do think there’s been a lot of missteps at all levels. But again, incomplete information. All you can do is your best.
MP: Certainly. Now Representative Timmons, you recently helped coordinate the delivery of 1.5 million surgical masks from China, which were distributed throughout your state, but then co-sponsored a bill imposing sanctions on China. In your opinion, should we be relying on China for supply chains, and if so, what’s the right balance of trade we should have with China?
WT: Sure. So first the story about the masks coming from China is incredible. I’m gonna give that to you real quick. So I was a lawyer at a law practice and one of my clients, Neil Ferrier, his business is Discommon. He texted me and he said, “I’m hearing about all these mask shortages. I’ve got all these foreign contacts in China and India and just really all over the world.” He has a very unique business. I won’t get into that, but I knew that he could deliver. I mean, I represented him for a number of years, and so I connected them with our biggest hospital in the district, Prisma. And five weeks later, we’re at our airport and a Boeing Dreamlifter is dropping off 1.5 million masks. I think they ended up buying 9 million overall. And you know, that was huge. We’ve had mask shortages for weeks, obviously. I think we’re fine now. Everything’s mostly caught up, but it was a great story.
And when I was out there talking about how it all came to happen — and by the way, I did literally nothing. All I did was text people, so I’m not taking any credit for it. But when I was talking about it, I said, we can’t be this excited about millions of masks arriving from China when we’ve needed them for the last three weeks. Like we have to bring back our domestic production capacity for P.P.E., for pharmaceuticals. I think that we also need to diversify our supply chain. In the 70s and 80s, we had a lot of policies, whether it was labor or environmental focused, we drove the textile manufacturing out of this country; and a lot of them went to China, Pakistan, Colombia. We need to maintain this domestic production capacity because we have seen firsthand what happens when you are reliant on really what is becoming an adversary. I mean, I don’t want China to be an adversary. I want them to modernize. I want them to have transparency. I want them to respect the rule of law and human rights. But until they do that, we need to be in a position to protect ourselves and to protect our way of life and to protect our economy. And when we are reliant on China, and when China is increasingly becoming a bad actor — and they’ve already been a bad actor, we just wanted them to not be a bad actor.
So we need to bring back our supply chain. Wherever possible, particularly focused on national security issues. Originally it was just, you know, war fighting. Berry Amendment. And that required us to maintain the domestic capacity for the military. But now we see there’s another area, we need to have a new Berry Amendment that needs to be for medical equipment. And, you know, I think we’re going to get through this. It’s going to be okay, but we need to bring back our domestic production capacity so this never happens again.
MP: Yeah, for sure, sir. Do you think that we’re under a higher national security threat as a result of COVID-19?
WT: Absolutely. We keep spending money we don’t have. And all that this has done is its shown how delicate our economy truly is. Obviously this is a global pandemic and everyone is in the same boat. That said, we just spent $5 trillion, we’re going to spend probably another two or three or four. So we’re going to be at $30, $34 trillion in debt. The largest amount of debt we’ve had since World War II. We have to have serious conversations about our financial solvency and our direction. We need to find a way to right our balance sheet.
And you know, until we do that — let’s just think about this way. If we had $45 or $50 trillion of debt in January, could we have done this? Could we have cut a check for trillions of dollars? I don’t know. My saving grace is that there’s no replacement for the dollar. But you know, if we have $60 or $70 trillion worth of debt and we start spending $4, $5, $6 trillion deficits annually, I can promise you the global economy will find an alternative. And that will be the worst day in this country’s history if that happens.
GB: Wow. And when you’re thinking about legislation to help combat this, and you’re in Congress talking about this, do you see heightened political polarization and is it getting worse?
WT: Yeah, this has just been so much finger pointing, so much name calling. I bring up debt because it’s something we have to talk about. We have to get through this. So I’m going to vote to spend whatever we need to spend to get through this crisis. And then I promise you I will not vote for another thing that is not, at the very least, financially responsible.
This is financially responsible because the alternative is far worse. And we have millions of Americans that did nothing wrong, that are a destitute, that need our help. They deserve our help, so we’re going to help them. But when this has passed, it’s time to get serious. And I think that that is — there’s nothing off limits in that conversation and we need to come at it like adults. We need to be methodical and we need to get our balance sheet right because we’re running out of time.
And if we wake up and we have $50, $60 trillion with debt, which I know that seems crazy, but right now we’re gonna have $1.5 trillion dollar deficit spending annually plus interest. I mean, we’re going to trip and fall and hit $40 trillion before 2028. So, you know, 2040, we could easily hit $50 trillion. And you know, if I proposed any kind of a budget that was deficit neutral or started chipping away at the debt, a lot of people would be very, very vocally against it — the budget just has to get smaller. I’m not on the budget committee anymore, but I miss my budget committee days.
GB: Thank you for that insight into the budget. I actually would like to pivot now and touch on people who are actually very highly impacted by this crisis. And to go into that, I would like to talk about the Violence Against Women Act. The U.N. has recently warned about a rise in domestic violence. I know that you had previously opposed that act. So could you tell me a little bit about what was wrong with that iteration of the bill and what do you think needs to be changed to implement protections?
WT: Sure. So I prosecuted domestic violence for four years; I am very passionate about rooting it out and fighting it and doing everything we can to lessen it. The challenge was it wasn’t a good faith effort. It was a political messaging bill. It had a lot of — and I am very supportive of the LGBTQIA community, but I don’t want to force states to do things that they don’t want to do. I don’t want to reform religious institutions to do things that they don’t want to do. I want to respect everyone’s beliefs and give everyone the ability to thrive in our society. So, I mean, it was a political messaging bill. It was partisan.
The Violence Against Women Act should not be partisan. Coronavirus relief packages should not be partisan. We need to have good faith efforts. I’m not going to say this is the Democrats because I have a feeling that if all of the things were reversed, if the Republicans were in the majority of the house, we were in the minority in the Senate and we had a Democratic president, I would bet we would do the same thing. I mean, so I’m not, I’m not blaming them. I am telling you that in two, four, six years, if I’m still in Congress and the tables are turned, we will not be doing things this way.
MP: For sure. Now sir, you mentioned you were on the budget committee for a little bit of time, but you’re currently on the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress. Could you tell us a little bit about what that committee does and some of your responsibilities and some of what you guys oversee?
WT: Absolutely. So the Select Committee for the Modernization of Congress is a committee that is a two year, it was originally one year, but they extended it to a two year window. And our goal is to, strangely enough, modernize Congress. It’s right there in the title.
But, you know, there’s a lot of technology that needs to be integrated. You wouldn’t believe it: They gave me a pager when I got elected. A pager. I mean, you’re younger than I am. Do you even know what a pager is? They gave me a pager and I thought someone was playing a joke on me. We have all these conference calls on Zoom and on WebEx and it is hilarious because nobody understands how to use the mute button. I mean, y’all saw the news where the Supreme Court justice, I still don’t know who it was, flushed the toilet during the hearing. This is not hard stuff. We need to be efficient with our time. We need to find a way to get the government to use taxpayer dollars efficiently. I think that is the purpose and I’m excited to work on it. It’s been a lot of fun. Technology has the potential to make all of us so much more efficient.
And COVID-19 has been horrible for so many reasons, but one benefit of it is that it has allowed us to really embrace teleworking. Telehealth. It’s teleported telehealth decades forward. You know, most people wouldn’t even try it, but 10 weeks at home, everybody, most people have tried to do a telehealth visit. And I do think that will be one benefit of this.
MP: I was going to say, I couldn’t believe pagers were still around. Well Representative Timmons, we just have one last question we want to ask you. And this is something we like to ask everybody who comes on. What first got you interested in politics and government, and do you have any advice for people who are looking to get more involved and more interested in those subjects?
WT: Sure. I went to undergrad at George Washington and I worked on the Hill for a year for then Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist from Tennessee. I got a master’s degree and a law degree. And my first job out, I was a prosecutor. I was a small business owner. I own a CrossFit gym and a yoga studio. And there was a point really — I guess I was probably 28, 29 the — government made me just furious. Whether it was as a prosecutor — we were so inefficient, the criminal justice system: We weren’t helping victims. We were not helping; I mean, you know, there’s a lot of people that we’re charging crimes that need to get their life back on track. And it was hard for them to do that because of the inefficiencies in the criminal justice system. There’s also a lot of people that need to be put in prison for the rest of their life, but that’s a different conversation. So as a prosecutor, I was very frustrated with government.
As a business owner, I was even more frustrated. I had a five-acre, 30,000-square-foot building development. I’ve got a CrossFit gym, a yoga studio. We have a restaurant too, we have a restaurant as a tenant. We will also have a law practice. And I’m at a cowork space and I was fighting the government for, I don’t know, 20–30% of my time just dealing with bureaucracy and overly complex and burdensome taxation and regulatory ridiculousness.
So I always joke that if you’re going to complain about something, as much as I was complaining about the government, you got to be doing something to try — you have to be willing to do something to try to change it. So I ran for the State Senate and I was successful: Ran gets a 37-year incumbent. Most people don’t have good stories about running against a 37-year incumbent. But I was successful and then I served in the State Senate for two years. I really enjoyed it. If you kind of have an objective-based approach of, “I want to make this better.” And then you have your idea of how to make it better. But you’ve got to work with people, you’ve got to build relationships, you’ve got to find a way to build the consensus necessary to achieve the objective of improving the system. And I found that I was good at that. And I had a lot of success there. And then Congressman Trey Gowdy decided he wasn’t gonna run again. And I threw my name in the hat. And here I am.
So my only advice is this: If you don’t like doing whatever you’re doing, don’t do it. Do something else, because if you don’t like it, you’re not going to be passionate about it and you’re not going to want to be waking up in the morning and be kind of excited about seizing the day. So, you know, find whatever that is. At this point in my life, it is to help the people — the Fourth Congressional District — and to really build efficiencies both within our office and within Congress to improve the services that the government can provide.
Troubleshooting the executive branch is probably one of my favorite things I’ve ever done because as an individual, as a business owner, I know how hard it is to get the government to respond in a manner that is at least an answer to your question. I am able to get answers from the executive branch. I’m not saying you’re going to like them if you ask my office for it, but we will get you an answer. And that’s something I’m really come to enjoy and it’s become a passion.
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