When the new coronavirus started spreading through the nation, Southwest Washington Congresswoman Jaime Herrera Beutler said her immediate reaction was fear for herself and her family, which includes an infant and another child who has had a transplant.
“As a mother, I was thinking through what does that mean? How do I protect my family?” Herrera Beutler told The Daily News Thursday.
But after spending time thinking, praying and speaking with physicians, Herrera Beutler said she recognized that she has a role to play as a representative.
“It’s not just my family but the entire district that’s in need right now,” she said. “I don’t want my response to be fear-based. Yes, there are real things to be cautious about and real problems we have to address. But it’s about shedding the fear response and saying ‘How can I be creative here?’ ”
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Herrera Beutler, a Battle Ground Republican, has been back in Washington State for a few weeks and is coordinating her response to the pandemic while working from home. During a brief phone interview, Herrera Beutler was politely interrupted a couple times by one of her kids, who was practicing reading.
So far, Herrera Beutler has supported three relief packages passed by Congress, including an unprecedented $2 trillion allocated to keep businesses and individuals afloat amid shutdowns.
Next, she wants to get personal protective equipment to places that need it and get testing approved for labs that are ready to go. However, she’s run into roadblocks with state and federal agencies not communicating with each other, she said, and so she said she worked to break the logjam.
The shutdown orders in Washington seem to be working to “flatten the curve” of coronavirus cases, she said. She stopped short of supporting a nationwide shutdown, but said she’d recommend the measures to officials in other states, even those that haven’t yet been hit hard.
“The fact that our local hospitals are not being overrun and not running out of capacity for ICU beds, that’s just a win because that’s what’s happening in New York,” she said. “Yes, (the shutdowns) will have an economic impact and that is very real, but I cannot imagine running out of ventilators and bed space and having sick people come in and not having a place to put them.”
The Trump administration this week indicated it would not open a special health insurance enrollment period for people who had lost their jobs and are without coverage. When asked about it, Herrera Beutler said she’s “not trying to make a decision for the administration.” The State of Washington opened a special enrollment period until May 8 for its state insurance program.
“My number-one concern is, do people in my district have the opportunity if they are not already enrolled to enroll? And they do,” she said.
Democrats have criticized Herrera Beutler for saying she wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. However, she bucked a 2018 GOP attempt to repeal the ACA because she considered a substitute GOP plan inadequate.
When asked if the federal government could have handled the outbreak better early on, Herrera Beutler said, “There’s no question that we will look back and say we could have done this better.”
She added, however, that it would have been difficult to predict some of the effects of the outbreak.
“I have zero interest in picking snipey fights over political preference,” she said. “I don’t think it gets the people in my region further ahead.”
Herrera Beutler is in the middle of a re-election campaign against Democrat Carolyn Long, who gave her a fierce battle in 2018. But Herrera Beutler said the campaign isn’t her primary focus right now.
“What people send me to D.C. for is for times like this,” she said. “They expect me to be spending my time and energy breaking down barriers and getting doors open for them. At some point that will ease up.”