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I would like to give my constituents some words of assurance because I know there are a lot of folks out there who are fearful and feel helpless about the coronavirus pandemic. However, I would like to remind everyone in the nine counties of the 36th Congressional District I represent that we are not hopeless. Just look at our history- America’s history. We are a resilient and resourceful people and a country that was built on the firm foundation of our Judeo-Christian faiths. We have endured trials and hardships for 243 years and always prevailed. We have the able leadership of our Commander-in-Chief to right this ship of state in the face of this emergency. And with faith in God we will rise to the occasion whatever the threat may be.

President Trump made many promises when campaigning in 2016. Promises that elicited mocking and doubt by his opponents who said it could never be done and a media so steeped in their own prejudices that they have not accurately reported events and circumstances we have seen with our own eyes, heard with our own ears and felt in our own pocketbooks.

The last three and a half years have shown our President to be a man of strength and decisiveness, not the typical politician whose deeds don’t match his words. Donald Trump is the only President in my lifetime who has delivered on so many promises in the face of such tremendous political opposition. I trust that in this time of crisis in our nation, President Trump along with his task force under VP Pence, is trying very hard to balance what is best for us as individuals as well as what is best for our nation.

As you know, last week the President and both political parties had negotiated a workable deal to cushion the blow to the U.S. economy from the coronavirus which the Senate was to have passed on Sunday. As we waited for results of that vote, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi flew back into Washington from San Francisco to halt Senate negotiations and announce she would push her own coronavirus package bill in the House. I have some real problems with that. #1 It is a scary thought to think Nancy Pelosi has that kind of power. #2 This causes an unexpected delay in providing Americans with relief funding. #3 Nancy Pelosi is from San Francisco…. do we really want advice from someone who represents an area with some of the worst problems of any major city in this country?

Those are not the only red flags regarding how very careful we must be in considering Nancy Pelosi’s own new 1,400+ page $2.5 trillion proposal. Because the truth is, Pelosi pressured Senate Democrats into blocking their own bill on Sunday not because she was concerned it favored corporations over individuals or because she wanted more direct aid to families and small businesses. Nancy Pelosi and her toady followers want to use this crisis as a pretext for passing a bunch of Democratic policies that have absolutely nothing to do with Covid-19.

Senator Tom Cotton has warned us of this after learning what Democrats want to add to the bill. Pelosi’s demands are:

*Corporate pay statistics by race and race statistics for all corporate boards at companies receiving assistance

*Open-ended bailouts for student loans

*For companies accepting assistance, 1/3 of board members must be chosen by workers

*Provisions on official time for union collective bargaining

*Full offset of airline emissions by 2025

*Greenhouse gas statistics for individual flights

*$15/hour minimum wage at companies receiving assistance

*Permanent paid leave at companies receiving assistance

And that is just to name some of the demands. The list goes on to include sections mandating “risk-limiting audits” of election results, early voting, same-day voter registration, mandatory reporting for federal agencies on their use of minority-owned banks, new rules for the retirement plans of community newspapers and even a section requiring airlines to provide passengers information about greenhouse gas emissions from flights they took. What the hell does any of this have to do with the Chinese virus?

I have heard it reported that Majority Whip James Clyburn even said, “This is a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision.” It is clear, the Democrats see an opportunity in this crisis to hold any emergency relief bill hostage until they get their wish list. Is anyone surprised? This is the way the Democrats operate in Congress. Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer used the same tactics to pass the Obama $ 830 billion stimulus bill in 2009. Nancy Pelosi was Speaker of the House then also, and she helped transform that stimulus into a massive welfare bill. She also infamously said of Obamacare in 2010, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”

I will never vote for a bill unless I know what is in it. And I am urging my fellow Republicans to resist falling into the trap of the Democrats and their echo chamber of a hostile media portraying us as cold hearted and uncooperative if we do not pass Pelosi’s bill. Fool us once, shame on them. Fool us twice, shame on us. Fool us over and over and over again, I am going to have to agree with Senator Kennedy of Louisiana who said, “Americans are thinking this country was founded by geniuses but being run by idiots.”

On Sunday night, President Trump warned in a tweet "We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself." Even so, I know that he must work within reason with Democratic leadership because they control the House of Representatives and we Republicans hold only a slim majority in the Senate. However, throughout his administration we have seen nothing but resistance and a lack of cooperation from the Democrats in Congress who have opposed rolling back taxes, regulations, rebuilding our depleted military, renegotiating terrible trade deals of the past, reestablishing the rule of law, protecting our 1st and 2nd Amendment rights and protecting the unborn. In spite of this opposition, President Trump has helped engineer the restoration of our economy and a return to ‘American interests first’ in our trade policies, achievements referred to by his predecessor as something that could only be accomplished with a magic wand.

At the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, sustaining much criticism from those who now condemn him for racism and lack of decisive action, President Trump halted all air traffic to and from China and then from several other nations to which it had spread. He sealed our border, established a team of medical experts and created a public private partnership to develop a vaccine and effective medications to combat the illness, several in which are now seeing great promise, all the while, the political opposition and most of the mainstream media continue to blame him for everything that goes wrong. He could come up with the perfect vaccine for COVID-19 tomorrow and still be criticized and condemned.

COVID-19 has made us fear for our lives, and our livelihoods. We have never faced such a threat from both at the same time and in so short a time span. However, the United States of America has never shrunk back from a challenge. The President has asked us to put our lives on hold for 4 weeks for the sake of the greater good, and he has also said at the end of those weeks "we will make a decision as to which way we want to go."

The American people must be patient for those weeks and put fear aside. The mainstream media must put Trump animosity and hatred aside. The Democratic Party must put divisiveness and their attempt to gain a political advantage at the expense of the health and prosperity of the American people aside. Unity of cause is the foundation of the American spirit and skill, capital and invention are the bricks of America’s economy. Trust is the cement that holds us together. We must maintain that trust in each other and in our President, especially now.

Donald Trump does not have a magic wand. But what I know, and what I want to assure you of, is that he has the mind of a brilliant businessman who has and will again restore the economy. And he has the heart of a patriot who loves the American people and will do what is best for us. We must unite and trust in his leadership.

And more than anything, we must never lose hope, faith or trust in our God. As a nation, we are more than prepared to face a threat we cannot see. We do it as Christians every day knowing Satan walks stealthily among us.

As it says in Psalms 46:7-11-

“The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. Come and see the works of the Lord, the desolations he has brought on the earth. He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth; he breaks the bow and shatters the spear, he burns the shields with fire. “Be still and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.” The God of Jacob is our fortress.”

Do not give in to fear.