Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., criticized President Donald Trump’s plan to increase coronavirus testing saying it lacked details on how states should implement it.
“You know the report they issued yesterday? It was pathetic. It didn't have any details. And then at the end, it said let the states do it,” Schumer said in an interview Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
Schumer said he is calling for oversight hearings when the Senate reconvenes. During the hearings, committees could call members of the White House coronavirus task force and Trump administration as witnesses.
“No one in the administration has given an answer specifically as to how the states should do it and that's one of the reasons I think we need to get the hearings,” Schumer said. “We haven’t heard one good reason why the federal government shouldn’t be in charge."
Trump announced a new federal blueprint plan on Monday that would help governors increase testing in their states. He said the federal government and private sector would assist local governments in executing the plan.
“There will be no way to ramp up and get the number of tests, and the auxiliary things like the swabs that we need unless the federal government takes over,” Schumer said.
Schumer also called the president out for not using the Defense Production Act to appoint a “czar” in charge of distributing supplies like test kits.
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