More COVID relief and a national mask mandate? Kansas congressional candidates debate.
Should there be a nationwide mask mandate during the coronavirus pandemic? Can businesses require their employees to get a vaccine for COVID-19?
Kansas congressional candidates Ron Estes and Laura Lombard differ on how the federal government should respond to the pandemic. Estes, a Republican, and Lombard, a Democrat, are running for the Fourth Kansas district in the U.S. House of Representatives and debated Tuesday evening on KWCH Channel 12.
“You would hope that the events of this last week would make the president take the coronavirus much more seriously and actually really enact a national response,” Lombard said of President Donald Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis and the outbreak of cases at the White House.
“That’s what we need, we need a coherent response from our national level. Not just putting it down to the states, but making sure that from the federal level we have enough testing going on, that we have a national mandate for masks. Those are the types of things that we really need to see leadership from the federal government, particularly coming out of the White House.”
Lombard said a national mask mandate should last “until we are through the worst of this crisis,” adding that a mask mandate would no longer be necessary once a vaccine is available to the public.
Estes, who is the incumbent, said he does not want that level of federal involvement.
“I’m not a supporter of a federal one-size-fits-all mandate for masks,” Estes said. “Because what we’ve seen in Kansas is when our governor tried to do a statewide ban is that it just doesn’t apply. The things in Wichita are much different than the things in Kiowa County.”
Pandemic indicators from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment show Sedgwick County has a higher rate of new cases than Kiowa County, but Kiowa County has a higher positive test rate. Kiowa County is in the orange zone of both indicators while Sedgwick County has one in the red zone and the other in the yellow zone.
More than 90 of the 105 counties in Kansas opted out of Gov. Laura Kelly’s statewide mask order this summer. Counties were allowed to reject the order because of a change in the state’s emergency management law.
The moderators also asked whether businesses should be allowed to require employees to get vaccinated, similar to vaccine requirements at schools.
“I’m not an advocate that we should mandate a vaccine,” Estes said. “That’s one of those things that we don’t want to overreach with the federal government’s authority.”
Lombard said that companies should be allowed to decide their policies on vaccinations.
Estes did support other federal responses to the public health crisis.
“The federal government has done an incredible job already this year with the four different bills that we’ve passed, to actually expedite the development of a vaccine, provide more money for testing, provide money to make sure that people could get additional unemployment if they were unemployed, and the Paycheck Protection Program, which was such a successful job to help keep employers connected with their employees,” he said.
Kansas businesses got 26,245 loans totaling almost $4.3 billion from the Paycheck Protection Program this spring.
Asked what the president’s diagnosis means for the federal response, Estes said the virus is not going away.
“The virus is here. I mean, we’re going to continue to have people that are impacted,” Estes said.
He said additional relief packages are needed “to help individuals who are still struggling.”
Trump has stopped negotiations on another coronavirus relief bill until after the election, the president announced Tuesday via Twitter. Debate moderators Michael Schwanke of KWCH and Tom Shine of public radio station KMUW asked the candidates whether it is fair to make Americans wait until after the election for more COVID-19 relief.
“I really wasn’t expecting any agreement to be made before the election, in fact I’ve been telling folks that for the last week or so,” Estes said, putting the blame on Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
Lombard said that the Democrat-controlled House passed the HEROES Act bill, but the Republican-controlled Senate has not discussed it.
“For my opponent to blame the Democrats within the House is ridiculous,” she said. “They (the Senate Republicans) need to come back with their plan. It’s a negotiation. ... Regarding President Trump, I think he is now holding our entire nation hostage. Our people need help today, not four weeks from now.”