Member of GOP Senate leadership backs rapid testing for lawmakers in order to protect the public
Republican Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri, a member of GOP leadership, said Wednesday he supports rapid coronavirus testing for members of the House and Senate in order to curb the disease from spreading from lawmakers to people in airports and back in their home states.
His position is at odds with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who last week joined House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in “respectfully” turning down a White House offer to provide quick tests for lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Pelosi and McConnell cited concerns about taking the tests away from front-line health care providers and other workers who they said needed the tests more than lawmakers. Unsaid in a rare joint statement from the two rivals was the understanding that the optics of lawmakers going to the head of the line to get tests that are in short supply could be a political disaster.
But Blunt said the testing really is less about helping privileged politicians than it is about protecting the public.
“I’m in agreement of the view that we should find a way to test members and staff, and that it is not taking resources away from other people,” said Blunt who chairs the Senate Rules Committee, which has oversight of Capitol operations. “But instead it’s dealing with a group of people that uniquely come together and spread out all over the country, in a way that it tries to be respectful to other people’s health care needs.”
He explained the dilemma using his travel to and from his homestate as an example.
“If I fly all the way home in Springfield, Missouri, I’m on two flights going and two flights coming back, that’s two different groups of people that I’m with,” Blunt said. “I’m at three different airports in that travel. And if I had any reason to think that I was a carrier, that I had Covid-19 at the time I left here, I should understand I shouldn’t go.”
Blunt’s comments came in response to a question about a proposal from Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. Alexander has pitched McConnell and his GOP colleagues in recent days on the need for rapid testing on the Hill.
“Bringing 100 or 535 members from across the country to Washington, DC — a coronavirus hotspot — and then sending them home each weekend creates a highly efficient virus spreading machine,” Alexander said Tuesday. “You would have to hire an army of public health workers to track and test all of those people that members of Congress might infect, not to mention their staffs and other Capitol workers.”
Blunt said he’s been in contact with the attending physician of the Capitol about some of the different rapid tests that are available and even discussed the logistics of where and how to set up testing in unused office space. The testing could involve thousands of lawmakers, staff members and other workers on Capitol Hill, he said.
