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Biden Travels to Wisconsin to Make Case for $1.9 Trillion Relief Plan; Los Angeles County Schools Cleared to Reopen as COVID Rates Fall; Over 5.5 Million Without Power from Deadly Winter Storm. Aired 11:30a-12p ET

Aired February 16, 2021 - 11:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[11:30:00]

GUSTAVO RIVERA (D), NEW YORK STATE SENATE: Well, yesterday, he had -- again, it seems that this administration does not and him, personally, cannot just say, I'm sorry, cannot say, I made a mistake. Nobody is perfect. I certainly am not. If we were to begin by saying, we made a mistake and not try to just couch it in all sorts of, well, maybe that or this or --

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Would that then be enough, just simply hearing him say, I'm sorry?

RIVERA: That would have been the beginning of it, but then the actual providing of the information, and, again, the data important because we need to make better policies so we can avert unnecessary deaths in the future. That is what really this is about. We need to make sure that we protect New Yorkers and vulnerable New Yorkers, and for that, we need better data.

BOLDUAN: Look, you heard at the end of my colleagues piece that she put together, Democrats, like yourself, are critical of obviously his handling and you clearly don't think he has explained it enough. Republicans saying it needs to even go further than that, even using the word, impeachment. Are you open to that, like an impeachment investigation, at this point?

RIVERA: At this moment, what I'm interested in is making sure that we get all the information necessary so that we can move forward policy to actually resolve these issues. And I would point out that our majority conference just this week moved a series of legislations out of my -- legislative proposals out of my committee, as well as the aging committee.

And we're looking in the next couple of weeks to pass some of these bills, and these will be some of the beginning of what would be a legislative response to making sure that we could protect vulnerable New Yorkers and, ultimately, this is what it's about. We will be policymakers and what we're seeking is cooperation from the administration. And, unfortunately, we just have not gotten it through most of the pandemic.

BOLDUAN: And despite all of this, you still do not think that you have gotten it. I think that is really important to point out. Thank you, State Senator, thank you for coming on.

Coming up for us, Republican Senator Ron Johnson, he is trying to downplay the Capitol insurrection. We're going to go to his home state of Wisconsin and we're going to speak with Milwaukee's mayor, next.

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[11:35:00]

BOLDUAN: In just a few hours, President Biden will be leaving Washington for a first official trip since taking office. He's heading to Wisconsin where he's going to be promoting his $1.9 trillion COVID relief package and he'll be taking part in the first presidential town hall. It airs tonight on CNN beginning at 9:00 Eastern.

His visit comes also at the very same moment in Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson is raising eyebrows for how he is trying to describe and downplay the severity of last month's deadly riot at the Capitol. Johnson told a Milwaukee radio station the attack, quote, didn't seem like an armed insurrection to me, is how he put it.

And joining me right now, the mayor of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Tom Barrett. Mayor, thank you for coming on.

I do want to -- we will get to Joe Biden in just a second. But Ron Johnson saying that what happened on January 6th shouldn't be called an armed insurrection, what do you make of that?

MAYOR TOM BARRETT (D-MILWAUKEE, WI): Well, I think there're hundreds of millions of Americans who saw what happened and they could draw their own conclusion, and I think the hundreds of millions of Americans who saw it, I would say 98 percent would agree with the assessment that it was an armed insurrection. So it is a very, very small minority of people who have now created this alternate reality where they want us to have revisionist history and claim it something it wasn't. Unfortunately, Senator Johnson is subscribing it.

So, again, people would watch that, they could judge from their own eyes what they saw and I certainly saw an armed insurrection and I think hundreds of millions of Americans saw the same thing I did.

BOLDUAN: Yes. If you have eyes and ears, you saw them and you heard what they said, and you know it was an armed insurrection.

BARRETT: Exactly.

BOLDUAN: Thanks for that, Mayor.

So on tonight and President Biden coming to Milwaukee, what do you want President Biden to hear from and take away from visiting Milwaukee today?

BARRETT: I wanted to hear several things. I wanted to hear, first thanks, we're very thankful for the leadership that he's shown already, certainly on the relief package. That's something that's very, very important to local governments and state governments to the vaccination effort. And he's going to hear how much we want to see more vaccines here in Milwaukee, in Wisconsin, how we want to see a very serious attempt to address the racial inequities that are now appearing nationally in terms of distribution of the vaccines.

And I also want to thank for the leadership he's showing on gun control. I think having common sense gun laws is something that's important and I think it is really, really impressive that he's come out of the gate and talked about that as well.

BOLDUAN: One part -- I'll get to vaccines in a second. One part of the COVID relief bill that is certain to come up is the hundreds of billions of dollars in aid that are to go to state and local governments, which this has been at the center of the debate between Democrats and Republicans of what should be in and not be in this COVID relief package. Do you need this money in Milwaukee?

BARRETT: We feed this money in Milwaukee. We need it in cities around this nation, need additional funds. And it is do deal with the economic fallout. It is to deal with the problems we've seen in our governments in terms of the loss of revenue.

[11:40:02]

But there are so many disparities that have been created by this pandemic that we have to be able to be in a position where we can address them.

And we also need the money, quite honestly, to continue to do the testing, to do the vaccinations, to do the tracing, all of that is extremely important to local governments.

BOLDUAN: I did see an analysis by the Washington Post and the Urban Institute just yesterday that, like whereas, let's say, Alaska saw tax revenue fall by more than 40 percent in 2020, Wisconsin tax revenue dropped by 0 percent, according to this analysis. How do you make the case then that you need this federal help if you still have tax dollars coming in?

BARRETT: Well states though receiving the tax dollars, again we're seeing a squeeze here at the local level, and part of it is due to our fiscal relationship with the state. So we're also seeing that. But we're also seeing the devastating impacts on housing, on education, on employment and we want to make sure that this huge, huge gap between those who are middle class and upper middle class, and those who are struggling does not get worse.

We have got to deal with the housing issues. That is a major, major issue, education issues, kids have been out of school for a long time. So there are going to be long-term impacts of what we're seeing right now and we want to be able to deal with it.

BOLDUAN: Mayor, on the COVID relief bill, does it need to be bipartisan? Is that important to you?

BARRETT: I would love to see it be bipartisan. I think most Americans would love to see us to be a nation where we can agree that fighting a pandemic is not a partisan issue. We know for the last year that has not been the case. But we continue to see thousands, tens of thousands of people get sick, tens of thousands people die ultimately, and we're better off if we're all rowing the boat in the same direction.

BOLDUAN: So is it okay to see less in there if it brings Republicans over?

BARRETT: Oh, I think it is going to depend on the level of support. Again, I applaud the president. I think the president is taking the right approach. He would like it to be bipartisan, but if he's not going to get the cooperation, he's going to continue moving forward. And that is what we need. We need a president who is going to continue to move forward and, clearly, he's demonstrated that is what he wants to do.

BOLDUAN: Mayor, a big night for you, guys. Thanks for coming on. I appreciate the time.

BARRETT: Thank you very much.

BOLDUAN: Still ahead for us, the CDC finally released its guidelines to reopen schools. But our next guest is warning that those very same guidelines could keep millions of children out of school unnecessarily. We'll be right back.

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[11:45:00]

BOLDUAN: New this morning, elementary schools in Los Angeles County are getting the all clear to reopen for in-person learning. County officials there say that the case count has now dropped and reached the state's threshold for reopening.

But that is not the case for the vast majority of schools across America. The new CNN analysis shows more than 65 million children, about 89 percent of kids in the U.S. live in a county considered a red zone under the CDC's new school guidelines, meaning that they are likely nowhere near reopening for in-person any time soon.

And any next guest has a new op-ed out in The Washington Post titled this, the CDC's demands will keep millions of kids out of school unnecessarily.

Joining me now is Professor Joseph Alen, he's Director of the Healthy Buildings Program at Harvard University's T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Thanks for coming in.

Let me read one line of your take on the CDC's new school guidelines. You write this in your op-ed. You said, the CDC guidelines should be a wake-up call to parents everywhere, if they're not back already, your kids are not going back to school full-time this year. Why is that, Professor?

PROF. JOSEPH ALEN, DIRECTOR OF HEALTHY BUILDINGS PROGRAM HARVARD SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH: Yes. So, thanks for having me on. It really comes down to these community spread metrics and what you just mentioned that under CDC's current new guidance, 90 percent of kids in schools are already in the red zone and that means they should be in hybrid classrooms, meaning they're not going to get back to full-time.

And one of the big problems, two problems, really, is that the community spread metrics are not good predictors of what's happening in the school. You can have a school open safely, even if community spread is high if you have good infection control measures in place.

The problem also in the CDC guidance is that it is too strict in a sense that to get to the blue level, which is the safe level, the safest level, it is one case per 100,000 per day. We may not have that ever let alone through any time by the end of this year, all through 2021.

So for those reasons, it is really problematic and that is why we're alerting people that this is, one, not the right approach, and, two, will have the effect of keeping kids from going back in person full- time.

BOLDUAN: And one area that I'm quite interested in and an area that you've researched extensively is ventilation. And I want to read what the CDC guidelines really kind of says about that. It says, ventilation -- improve ventilation to the extent possible, such as by opening windows and doors to increase circulation of outdoor air to increase the delivery of clean air and dilute potential contaminants.

The CDC does link into a deeper dive into ventilation but you say this falls short. Why is this not enough?

ALEN: Yes. So, first, I should congratulation CDC on releasing this report. The last administration didn't even acknowledge that ventilation or airborne transmission was a problem. So this is actually an improvement but that is a low bar to compare against.

So they mentioned -- the new report from CDC mentions ventilation, but it is buried about midway through the report. If you click through the links, and it takes two or three links, you actually get to detailed guidance.

[11:50:]

The problem is that there is an emphasis on things, like on cleaning surfaces, which we know is not driving transmission. There's even a comment (ph) there on cleaning surfaces and playground structures. And so ventilation is buried, it's like the seventh or eighth bullet under this cleaning headline. My concern is that many schools will miss this guidance.

So, CDC acknowledges airborne transmission is happening, it acknowledges the importance of ventilation, it's just totally buried in this document. We have been arguing for a long time, for a year now, that we need higher ventilation rates, better filtration, and the use of portable air cleaners with HEPA filters as stop-gap measures to keep classrooms and, in fact, offices and other environments safe. BOLDUAN: And that's what I want to ask you about. Talk to me about what would be more helpful. What would you have liked to have seen that is more concrete? What is useful for people to know, because we know that ventilation, for me, I think, it's like 90 percent of the ball game here?

ALEN: Yes. If you look at all the high-profile outbreaks, same underlying factors, time indoors, no mask, no ventilation. It doesn't matter if it's spin class, ice hockey, classrooms, camps, choir practice or restaurants, it's the same underlying factors.

What we recommend, and this is several faculty at Harvard have released the report, we moved away from community spread metrics because even CDC's own report shows that in places with high community spread, they followed 17 different schools and they found that the incidence in school was 30 percent lower than the community. So the community spread metric, we feel, is the wrong way to go.

What we advocate for, and CDC is on this path too, is better infection control measures, the same ones that work in hospitals, the most highest risk setting, the basics, good masking, good hand hygiene and hospitals also take care of their ventilation and filtration systems.

BOLDUAN: And real quick, you sum it up -- you summed it up in this debate a tweet pretty well. We can put it up. You said, I'm not on team open schools, I'm not on team close schools, I'm on team get your stuff together put in the controls we've been outlining since June. Why do you think this is so hard? It seems pretty clear cut the way you put it.

ALEN: Yes, it's really clear cut. Our guidance came out in June. In fact, many schools, and, in fact, an entire state has used our guidance and implemented these controls. It doesn't have to be hard. It doesn't cost millions of dollars, can be done quickly.

Clearly, the issue around schools is beyond the science and infection control. There are other barriers that are happening, but other barriers to adoption. But the key takeaway message is this, from our work and others, that this can be done, and, in fact, many schools have done this successfully, and it's just paying attention to the basics.

We have guidance on what to do about ventilation, what targets you should hit. We built tools for schools to help them figure these things out, pick the right portable air cleaners. So all of the guidance is out there and it's been available since June. And that was where my tweet came from.

Look, I'm not on any team here. I just want people to put in the controls to keep adults and kids safe in schools.

BOLDUAN: A lot for all of us to learn, quite honestly. Professor, thanks for coming on.

ALEN: Yes, thanks for having me.

BOLDUAN: Coming up for us, bitter cold paralyzes the center of the country. Millions without power or heat, and it's not over yet.

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[11:55:00]

BOLDUAN: A deadly winter storm is pummeling a huge swath of the country right now. In fact, nearly three quarters of the continental U.S. is covered in snow. That's a record. And more than 5.5 million households are without power this morning, freezing and in the dark as temperatures dip to single digits in nearly every corner of the U.S.

In Texas alone, over 4 million customers are without power. And one county official is warning the worst may be yet to come.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JUDGE LENA HIDALGO, HARRIS COUNTY, TEXAS: As much as we wish it weren't so, things will likely get worse before they get better. There's a high chance the power will be out for these folks until the weather gets better, which will not be for a couple of days.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Joining me right now from Dallas is CNN's Ed Lavendera.

Ed, the power has been out for more than 24 hours now in some places. It's getting dire. What's happening there?

ED LAVANDERA, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, it is a serious situation. It has been a brutal night across the state of Texas, and deadly. Houston police are reporting that they found four people sleeping in a car in an attached garage to a home, and they discovered that people inside it suffered the effects of carbon monoxide poisoning. A woman and child were found dead in that car.

So this is a deadly situation that we're seeing across the city. As you mentioned, nearly 4.5 million people in the state of Texas alone are still without power. And, honestly, I just don't know how we can report exactly when this power is going to be back on. We're not getting any clear signals as to when that is going to happen.

This is a frustrating and unmitigated disaster that is unfolding across the state. A great deal of finger pointing going on, as well, as state officials trying to answer the criticism of why the state was not better prepared for this epic winter storm. So this is something that will go on for weeks and weeks here in terms of the political fallout of all of this here in Texas.

But the immediate concern is the nearly 4.5 million people without electrical power. Temperatures have been well below freezing. It was around 3 degrees this morning here in Dallas. These are temperatures that we haven't seen in decades here in this part of Texas.

And the concern is that another round of winter storm coming tomorrow. The temperatures are expected to be a little higher but still below freezing, and, again, this is a dangerous situation that is continuing.

[12:00:05]

Kate?

BOLDUAN: Absolutely. Ed, thank you for the update, not even near over yet for folks.