Three Illinois lawmakers have been selected to sit on President Donald Trump’s Economic Recovery Committee. Democratic Senators Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin and 13th District Republican Congressman Rodney Davis have been selected by the president to advise the president and his cabinet on how to reopen the nation’s economy. Trump has called the group the Opening Up America Again task force.
The task force was established on Wednesday last week in the wake of Senate Republicans seeking more money for the Payroll Protection Program for small businesses while House Democrats are pushing for more state and local government funding to aid in tax revenue decline.
Davis says the first conference call was a good place to find common ground for both parties. “It was a great opportunity to hear from some of my colleagues, both Republican and Democrat, that I haven’t spoken with face to face in a month. It was good to hear some of the reaction of some of my Democratic colleagues thanking the president and the vice president for working with their governors, working to help get equipment like PPE and ventilators to their states to really help them get to that apex of the coronavirus hospitalizations, deaths, and infections in their states to really begin to see a light at the end of the tunnel. That shows me that this committee that the president asked me to serve on is going to truly to be focused on what does our country look like when we can get open again. I think that discussion needs to happen sooner rather than later. We all have got to have safety in mind. Absolutely. At the same time, we need that optimism as Americans to understand that our country is going to get back to some semblance of normalcy soon.”
The announcement of the task force comes on the heels of several regional pacts between governors in the Northeast, West Coast, and the Midwest. The governors are all looking at regional options of phasing in portions of their economy and getting people back to work.