VIDEO: Rep. Andy Kim Outlines His Vision of Leadership During Coronavirus on Politico Live

This morning, Rep. Andy Kim joined Ben White for a Politico Live interview on what’s next in the response to the coronavirus. Andy detailed the kind of leadership this country needs, and the kind this White House is failing to provide, in order to safely and effectively reopen— one that comes to the American people with a comprehensive vision of what the future has in store.

ON LEADERSHIP DURING CORONAVIRUS

Andy Kim: What it means to lead during a crisis isn’t just about managing day to day recovery, it’s about being able to share with the American people where we’re going, what we’re going to be trying to achieve. And this is something that I’ve seen having worked in national security and counter terrorism over my career to push through a war or to try to explain to the American people why we’re going to war or why we’re pushing forward on a crisis you’ve got to show them what this is for and where we’re trying to get to. We have yet to be able to paint a vivid picture to the American people yet of what the future has in store. And there is a choice here that is ahead of us. There is a one that I believe will be able to lead to a strong economic recovery and one that will get us back on our feet as quickly as we can. There is another one that could potentially have us coming in and out of social distancing on a frequent basis. And we can’t just put all of our chips on a Hail Mary of a rapid vaccine that we get. We need to make sure that we take proper protocols. So that is what’s struggling. That’s what businesses are struggling with. There’s no one’s painting them a picture of how they are going to be all too well, what their future is going to look like. You know, a website page of CDC guidance for restaurants and business is not enough. 

ON THE NEED FOR EQUITABLE SMALL BUSINESS FUNDING

Andy Kim: What we know with SBA loans is that they’ve always struggled to be able to reach different vulnerable communities, especially women owned businesses, minority owned businesses, even veteran owned businesses as this was one of the first hearings that I chaired on the Small Business Committee as a, as a chair of the Subcommittee on Economic Growth and Access to Capital. So they’ve already struggled to be able to get that out there. I certainly know of a lot of mom and pop shops in my district that just don’t have a lot of relationships with banks, that haven’t had to go through these types of steps before, and they’re very intimidated by it. And I wish SBA would do a better job of outreach to those types of businesses, educating them about this, and helping them find the right steps to be able to take to get the support that they need.

ON TESTING AS THE PRECURSOR TO REOPENING

Andy Kim: Well, I thought you really hit the right word there is it were phrased there, which is, you know, are people going to be comfortable? Are people going to be comfortable reopening their small businesses? Are consumers going to be comfortable going out there and shopping or going to restaurants. And when I talk with people in my district, the top question that they ask me is they don’t know if they’re healthy or sick. They don’t know if their family members are healthy or sick or if the people that they’re meeting are. So when we’re talking about widespread testing, we talk about certainly on a health side in terms of knowing who’s healthy or sick, but we also need to be thinking about these public health tools as financial tools. Our ability to understand where this virus is to be able to see it spreading, to be able to give confidence to the American people that we have the infrastructure in place to be able to keep them as safe as we can.That is necessary.

Full Transcript:

Ben White: Good morning everyone. I am Ben White. I’m Chief Economic Correspondent at Politico and author of the Morning Money Newsletter. We’re kicking off the series, “How fast? How soon? Rebuilding America’s economy” where I’m talking to leaders and decision makers in Washington, Wall Street, corporate America and private industry about the policies and ideas that help, well hopefully will help bring the American economy back to life. This morning I’m joined by Cemocratic Congressman Andy Kim of New Jersey who is a member of the House Small Business Committee and is one of seven Democrats appointed to the Select Committee on the Coronavirus. I’ll be taking your questions at the end so you can tweet me @PoliticoLive using the hashtag #AskPolitico. Thank you so much for joining us this morning. Small businesses are trying to survive the pandemic. We are going to talk about how that’s going, how the, response in Congress is going, how the Congress is going to respond to the need to do more, with Andy Kim and he is in the swing district in New Jersey, Moorestown, where he joins us this morning. Congressman great to have you with us. Thanks for joining us.

Andy Kim: Great. Thank you for having me.

Ben White: Yes. Alright, so let’s talk a little bit about where we are in terms of the economy, jobs, economic recovery. Obviously we’ve seen some terrible numbers. We’ve seen some huge unemployment numbers, a huge jump in the unemployment rate. And you all in the House are thinking about and obviously have approved a new rescue package. How bad do you think the damage is to the economy right now? And how critical is it that Congress passed some new legislation to help?

Andy Kim: Well, the damage right now is devastating and I hear that from business owners, small business owners in my district every single day. Even just yesterday talking with a number of others that are struggling, as well as the workers on the millions of workers, tens of millions of workers on unemployment. So we should never sugar coat anything. You know, we are in a desperate and dire situation, which requires as much help as humanly possible here. But the tricky thing here is that, you know, this is not just a health crisis and then a financial crisis. It’s one large crisis that is feeding into each other. And what makes it so difficult to find the right solutions on the economic side is that I don’t think we’re actually going to be able to turn the corner and have some of the economic relief and recovery we need until we are able to get and turn the corner on the health crisis as well. So this is still a moving target and still developing rapidly and we don’t know how bad it’s going to get.

Ben White: Okay. So we’re going to talk about oversight a little bit and your being on the panel that is charged with overseeing all of the rescue packages that have been passed so far and we’ll talk about what more needs to be done. But I’m interested in the extent to which you think that we are reopening this economy too fast or in a way that people are not going to be comfortable with going back both to the workplace and consumers coming back to all the things that they used to do before the coronavirus hit us going to restaurants and bars and stadiums and all the rest of it. Are we moving too quickly?

Andy Kim: Well, I thought you really hit the right word there is it were phrased there, which is, you know, are people going to be comfortable? Are people going to be comfortable reopening their small businesses? Are consumers going to be comfortable going out there and shopping or going to restaurants. And when I talk with people in my district, the top question that they ask me is they don’t know if they’re healthy or sick. They don’t know if their family members are healthy or sick or if the people that they’re meeting are. So when we’re talking about widespread testing, we talk about certainly on a health side in terms of knowing who’s healthy or sick, but we also need to be thinking about these public health tools as financial tools. Our ability to understand where this virus is to be able to see it spreading, to be able to give confidence to the American people that we have the infrastructure in place to be able to keep them as safe as we can.That is necessary. And that is something that I think we still are struggling with as a country and we still need to improve. We put in $25 billion for a national testing program, uh, in a previous bill in the Heroes App. We just put $75 billion towards testing and contact tracing. We need these steps in place to be able to give the American people confidence. I want to get people back to work as soon as possible. I share that sentiment with a lot of folks, but a lot of the business owners that I talked to and workers that I talked to still don’t know and have the guidance that they need on how to be able to do that safely and how they can assure their employees or their consumers that they have things under control.

Ben White: Yeah. I mean, your district is suburban Philadelphia in New Jersey, in Moorestown, which is where my wife grew up actually and knows district well. What are small business owners telling you and businesses in terms of obviously they have strong desire to reopen and to get their revenue streams returned to where they were. But do they feel that they have adequate health testing and you know, structures in place to allow them to do that safely?

Andy Kim: No, they don’t think that there’s enough testing or contact tracing or other steps of that nature. So, you know, that way I think people are frustrated and I hear them and I see exactly where they’re coming from. And it’s not just on the business sides. Across the entirety of our community. I mean, New Jersey just hit over 10,000 deaths. If New Jersey were a country we would be number seven in the world right now for Coronavirus deaths. This has been devastating to our community, to the long term care facilities and others. So people are shaken right now. What we need to do is instill that confidence of what happens next and help support businesses, talk through them about what are their plans to reopen. We need more transparency about what the plan is going forward not just for our state, but for the country. I think people would have a lot better sense if there is that type of roadmap and a better understanding of how we’re going to be able to do this. And in absence of that, no matter how much relief that they may or may not be getting through the Paycheck Protection Program or EIDL or others, they don’t know if that’s going to be enough to get them through this. So they’re asking me and others to give more flexibility into the paycheck protection program and we’re trying to deliver that. But what that asks for help actually means is they don’t know how long this is going to go on for. They don’t know what the actual roadmap is to reopen. So therefore they just need as much time and flexibility as possible in the meantime. And we owe them more. We owe them a real strategy to get through this, an understanding where they fall in the reopen timeline and be able to help build that out.

Ben White: Yeah. We’re going to take some audience questions in a minute. I’m sure there are lots of good ones on the extent to which businesses feel comfortable reopening. But let’s talk about the Paycheck Protection Program and the extent to which you think there needs to be more flexibility. And specifically, what do you think needs to be changed in it if we change it? And is it a matter of giving businesses just more flexibility about what to do with the money? Not 75% to go to payroll? What, what needs to change there if we do change anything?

Andy Kim: Well, first of all, we just need to change the process that’s already been under place, which is just piecemeal release of guidance, still not be able to give businesses clear guidance on what’s forgivable and they are having trouble with the planning, so that needs to be fixed. I also have been trying to fix some of the obstacles that the administration put up like this 75, 25 rule that requires small businesses to spend 75% for payroll, 25% for other costs. In New Jersey rent and other costs are significantly higher than in other states. So we have to stop with this one size fits all approach to small business- this idea that somehow all small businesses are going to fit into one particular mold across the entirety of our country. What I know and I hear from people in my district is that small businesses come in all shapes and sizes and do all sorts of different types of work. Andy Kim: What we see is that this crisis has effected different sectors and different industries differently. There’s an asymmetry in terms of the impacts of this crisis and we need to develop this PPP and additional relief in a targeted, precise manner. The CARES Act was was more of the, you know, the baseball bat, the cannon ball, the blunt object that was trying to support and get as much resource out there as soon as possible. We now are in a place where we need that precision. We need that scalpel. We need that ability to really target into the places of our community that are going to be struggling, sectors that are hardest hit like restaurants like tourism and hospitality and others, and figure out how we’re going to support them going forward.

Ben White: Yeah, sure. I mean, maybe you could help us understand. It’s a little difficult for me as I watched this play out in Washington. You did the CARES act, obviously a large amount of money has gone into relief from the coronavirus in that package and the Federal Reserve is pumping a lot of cash in too. Now you all have passed your next version of this, you konw the $3 trillion. The Senate has no interest at all in it. Senate Republicans and the White House have no interest in passing what you have passed and Speaker Pelosi has put forward. So where do we go from here? Is there a timeline in which there is more relief coming from Washington and specific changes to the PPP as you talk about it or are we just going to say or are we going to sit here and talk about it for a while? What is the path forward?

Andy Kim: Yeah. […] We have been behind the ball on this virus since the very beginning. We really need to be thinking strategically about what happens next, not just tomorrow, but what are things going to look like in June, July, August and try to get ahead of this and not just look at it just one day at a time. And if we look at it a couple months out, if we see some of the projections forward about reopening about the potential for a second way later this year that Dr, Fauci and others are saying is inevitable. What we recognize is that there are some real catastrophic disaster risks out there that we need to prepare for. I worry that given where we’re at now, we could see a potential cliff later this summer into the fall if unemployment insurance is not extended, if the PPP is not extended, where we see large swaths of our economy not able to fully reopen. For instance, restaurant owners in my district did tell me there’s no possible way that they can open off of 40% capacity. You know, they were struggling often at 90%,100% capacity. So there’s going to be a lot of problems to come. And I worry that we don’t get ahead of this and take those steps, especially when it comes to state funding for instance. And if New Jersey and other states are going to have to do huge budget cuts or potential laying off public sector workers, these are the types of scenarios that lead to catastrophic disaster here. We should be trying to think through that and then figure out how it is that we’re going to avoid those types of problems. And that’s what we tried to do with the Heroes act and some of the other steps that we’re working on right now and make sure we get ahead of it. So what we need to recognize is that we don’t control this timeline right now. The virus continues to control this timeline. The economic trends are determining our timeline right now. And if Congress and Washington doesn’t get their act together and deal with this with the urgency that they need, we will get overwhelmed by these other factors.

Ben White: Right? Yeah. I mean, I sort of feel like we’re overwhelmed already. And you know, I should just tell everyone who’s watching. I think they probably know if they follow me that I live in New Jersey as well, right outside of Manhattan. And Congressman Kim is coming to us from near Philadelphia in the Jersey suburbs. Let’s talk about PPP and disclosure for a second and your role on the Oversight Committee. When are we going to find out exactly who is getting these loans and the amount that they’re getting. I know, I mean, I’ve talked to every person I’ve interviewed about this and the SBA releasing that information. Not to shame anybody who’s getting it, it’s good that the money is going out. We want as many small businesses possible to survive from this. But I think it would be helpful for the American public to be able to know exactly who’s getting the money. What’s the story with that?

Andy Kim: Well we need the transparency because this is the American people’s money and this is the largest rescue relief package in the history of our country. That’s why transparency and oversight and accountability is necessary. We certainly learned those lessons full force coming out from the 2008 financial crisis that you’ve got to have that type of transparency in order to show with confidence to the American people what is actually happening. We should have had this transparency since day one of the Paycheck Protection Program and we should have been able to move forward in those types of ways. We are trying to make sure that that is all out in the open, that we have that sunlight into this process and that’s a big part of what the Select Committee on the Coronavirus Crisis is trying to do is have that transparency.

Ben White: So just what I mean, what is the problem with doing it? If you talk to the SBA or the administration or your colleagues on the Republican side, I know Senator Rubio has said in the past that he’s interested in having disclosure on this. But why can’t they just do it now?

Andy Kim: Yeah. I keep hearing a litany of excuses, mostly just people saying it’s coming, it’s coming, it’s coming. And that doesn’t give me great faith. I do know for a fact that yes, you know, SBA has been having huge budget cuts for years now. We’ve seen nearly over a 20% budget cut just in the last few years. It’s clear that they are not scaled to the size of this disaster and this problem. I get it. And I know that a lot of people there are career public servants. I was a career public servant before in the government. I know it’s tough, but that being said, when we’re asking for this type of transparency, what we don’t want to have is just more and more excuses. This should be easily able to be delivered to Congress, made public, and I continue to urge the administrator to do so.

Ben White: Yeah, it’s frustrating to not be able to kind of have insight into exactly where the money is going, how it’s being distributed. I want to ask you, you know, we had this sense that the PPP was going to run out of money again all of a sudden after the next installment that was passed. It doesn’t seem to have happened. Do you think it needs more money or maybe it doesn’t? […] But my question for you before we lost you was the extent to which there was actually more money needed and how much more?

Andy Kim: Yeah, I think this is something that we need to work out going forward. As I said, this is a moving target and because we don’t know what’s going to happen with the health crisis and how much longer that’s going to go, we don’t have a good sense of just how much relief is out there. The relief that is out there is really about trying to be able to cover down until we’re able to get businesses back up and open and the economy all back up and open. So we know that we’re going to need significantly more resources to be able to support our businesses, but that’s still something that we need the data, we need the insights to be able to deliver.

Ben White: Yeah, I don’t know. It just sort of seems surprising to me that we were always at this point of PPP is about to run out of money. But then it didn’t and it hasn’t. So is that a matter of, you know, there’s less demand for it or it’s just not flowing out to the places it needs to go? What changed is my question.

Andy Kim: Yeah. Well, when I talked to some small businesses in my district they’re talking about how the first time round they had a lot of loss in confidence in that system. So I think a lot of folks were just uncertain what was going to happen. Also because of the lack of guidance on forgiveability, a lot of businesses were unsure whether or not they wanted to go with that or should they go in for the economic injury disaster loan, the EIDL, or other types of options that are out there. The last thing I’ll say is that what we know with SBA loans is that they’ve always struggled to be able to reach different vulnerable communities, especially women owned businesses, minority owned businesses, even veteran owned businesses as this was one of the first hearings that I chaired on the Small Business Committee as a, as a chair of the Subcommittee on Economic Growth and Access to Capital. So they’ve already struggled to be able to get that out there. I certainly know of a lot of mom and pop shops in my district that just don’t have a lot of relationships with banks, that haven’t had to go through these types of steps before, and they’re very intimidated by it. And I wish SBA would do a better job of outreach to those types of businesses, educating them about this, and helping them find the right steps to be able to take to get the support that they need.

Ben White: Yeah. I’m going to take some of these audience questions in a minute, but I want to pull back the lens a little bit when we talk about the economic situation and recovery and how we get back on our feet. There’s obviously a fundamental divide between how the White House is approaching this, how Republicans are approaching this and how House Democrats are approaching it. And it seems to me the White House approach is essentially, let’s just reopen as fast as we can, give guidance to the states, let them open all their businesses and get things running as quickly as possible. Not necessarily how you are talking about it or thinking about it. What are the risks involved in the way that the White House and Republicans are approaching this right now? I mean, you talked about this at the jump, but you know, are we going to simply have further breakouts in this virus and another massive hit to the economy in the fall?

Andy Kim: Yeah, I think for me what frustrates me is I share that sentiment of wanting to reopen and get American back work as soon as possible. And I wish that that energy that the administration is pushing towards that is the same energy that they would bring towards testing and widespread contact tracing and other tools that experts that are far more knowledgeable about pandemics than I am or you are or others are that they are taking those steps too. So it confuses me that we are not able to take this in a comprehensive manner. If the administration is pushing hard with the same level of rigor and energy towards the public health side of things, I would be much more comfortable with these discussions about how to safely reopen. If we have a transparency in data, if the CDC and the federal government were actually centralized the data coming in from all states so we can see what is happening with this virus, we know what is going on and we are using data driven process to reopen, I’d feel a lot more comfortable with this. So I share that same goal, but I differ in terms of the prioritization on public health that I think needs to play a bigger role than where the administration believes.

Ben White: Yeah. I mean there’s so many directions we could go with this conversation and just talk about specifically how we’re reopening the economy and trying to get the unemployment rate down. As you kind of go about your district. I mean, you can’t go about it too much, I mean you have to be safe. I mean, first tell us quickly, just a little bit about specifically, you know, where your district is, tell folks a little bit about that.

Andy Kim: Yeah my district is east of Philadelphia, stretches from the Delaware River to the Jersey shore, South Jersey and the shore area. So it’s a district that’s got the Philly suburbs in it and it’s got the Joint Military Base in the middle.

Ben White: It’s got Eagles fans right?

Andy Kim: It’s got a lot of Eagles fans, but we also got some Giants fans out in Ocean County area. We got Jersey Shore, Jersey Shore businesses that you know are gearing up for Memorial Day with a level of uncertainty that they haven’ had in decades here. And we also have a thousand farms in our district. You know, we still hold up the moniker of the Garden State here in this district. So there’s a lot of different industries, different sectors, further from the blueberry farmers to the Jersey shore boardwalk businesses on at seaside. so I see lots of different angles in which this crisis has manifested that type of problems.

Ben White: Let’s talk about Memorial Day there for a second because I’m among those who thinks about, maybe it’s okay to go down to the shore. My wife has a family house in Brigantine outside of Atlantic City. I’m sure you’re familiar with it. And nobody in the family is particularly comfortable with the idea, doesn’t want to kind of gather together in the house after we’ve all been separated for all of the spirit of time and it doesn’t love the idea of going to the beach with a mask on. What do you expect to see happen over the Memorial day Weekend? And you know, is it just too soon to be doing this kind of stuff?

Andy Kim: Yeah, I think people are worried about that and I certainly feel it too in this community about the next steps when it comes to Memorial Day and what happens next. I think that a lot of the concerns is people don’t know how others are going to act. The people I talk to, they’re like, “Oh, well, look, I believe in social distancing. I could go to the beach. But you know, when I see images of crowded beaches, when I see things of that nature…” I think that that’s where a lot of the struggle comes in is that we’re just not sure what is going to be the norm of behavior. And this is part of that new normal that we as a society need to try and fix.

Ben White: You don’t know what it is.

Andy Kim: We have no idea, no idea what it is.

Ben White: I mean, I personally don’t, I, you know, I feel very uncomfortable with the idea of everybody just going back to normal and their normal lives because of general fatigue with what we’ve been doing. And I sympathize with it. I have it. I want to go back to regular life like anybody else. But I fear that if we do that, we’re going to have the kind of second wave we talked about and we only have a couple more minutes, so I want to get to audience questions, but I do want to ask you about that very thing. Like, will we simply say enough is enough? We’re just going to go back to doing what we did before and leading our lives the way we led them before and then doing that, getting us into a serious health problem.

Andy Kim: So this question of yours hits at the heart of what I was saying a little bit ago about getting away from the nearsightedness of politics. What it means to lead during a crisis isn’t just about managing day to day recovery, it’s about being able to share with the American people where we’re going, what we’re going to be trying to achieve. And this is something that I’ve seen having worked in national security and counter terrorism over my career to push through a war or to try to explain to the American people why we’re going to war or why we’re pushing forward on a crisis you’ve got to show them what this is for and where we’re trying to get to. We have yet to be able to paint a vivid picture to the American people yet of what the future has in store. And there is a choice here that is ahead of us. There is a one that I believe will be able to lead to a strong economic recovery and one that will get us back on our feet as quickly as we can. There is another one that could potentially have us coming in and out of social distancing on a frequent basis. And we can’t just put all of our chips on a Hail Mary of a rapid vaccine that we get. We need to make sure that we take proper protocols. So that is what’s struggling. That’s what businesses are struggling with. There’s no one’s painting them a picture of how they are going to be all too well, what their future is going to look like. You know, a website page of CDC guidance for restaurants and business is not enough.

Ben White: It’s not enough. It’s not enough. It’s not good enough. It’s not going to let anybody figure out exactly what they should do. Let me ask you about 2020 and the presidential election. You are in a critical swing district there that you managed to win narrowly, take away from Republicans helping to Hake the house back. As you see it right now, you know Former Vice President Biden is obviously going to be the Democratic nominee. He is going to have a tough fight with President Trump in the election. How do Democrats talk about the economy, recovery, fighting the virus as the way to win in November?

Andy Kim: Yeah. My district is a district that Trump won by six points. So I see the divisions and the differences across this country. I see that right here in my own community. What people here want is they want leaders that will rise above the partisanship. They want people that will treat this crisis as a national security crisis that it is. A line that I learned when I was at the White House is the last place that parts politics belongs is in the Situation Room in these national crisis situations. So I really think that that’s what they’re going to be looking for is they want a steady hand at the wheel. They will want someone that they know is going to be looking out for them and someone who’s fighting for them. And that really is the heart of it- is why is this person trying to become president? Why is this person trying to run for this office or that office? There’s a lot of skepticism and a lot of suspicion in this district and across this country. I feel it too. And they really want to know that motivation, they’ve got to know that this person is going to be fighting for them. Is Joe Biden fighting for me? And that’s the question that they’ll be thinking about when they go into the ballot box or send back their vote by mail.

Ben White: Yeah. When you saw yesterday or heard yesterday that the president talked about taking personally hydroxychloroquine, was kind of a pretty surprising headline to may given the information we have about the effectiveness of that as a treatment for COVID-19. What was your reaction to that?

Andy Kim: I feel like when I hear those types of lines coming out of the president’s mouth I just try to go back to thinking about what it is that I can do. I mean, look, I’m not his doctor. I don’t know what situation they have at the White House in terms of security from this. So I’m not going to waste a single moment of my time thinking about him and thinking about what pill he’s taking. I’m thinking about the people in my district and the businesses we’re trying to save The people that I call, I got a call yesterday from a woman who didn’t have even enough food to eat for dinner last night. That is way higher on my radar of things I care about them than what prescription drugs the president has.

Ben White: Yeah. I mean, I just wonder in districts like that, which I see it too, when I’m there. It’s very closely contested and there are plenty of Trump supporters and Republicans who, you know, want to stick with the president and believe in his response and we’re going to let you go in a second. But when folks see stuff like that, that he’s saying that and, and, and says he’s taking this drug, when all the experts have told us that that’s a terrible idea and don’t do it, it seems like a wide area that Democrats could exploit in terms of presenting the case of all of it, that we need a shift.

Andy Kim: Well, look, if the question again goes back to this question of, is this person a steady hand at the wheel? Is this person fighting for me? You know, I hope that that voters are taking into account all the different things that we’ve seen over the course of the Trump presidency. They’ve also had eight years of seeing how, Vice President Biden works in the White House and his career before that. And they’re going to have to take into the totality of that to make that decision. I am not in the business of trying to tell people that there’s a right or wrong answer for every single question that’s out there. I think there’s too much hubris in politics. We need a lot more humility in that. But I hope that they are informed about the choice. I hope they research that and take that into account and not just go off the slogans but dig down into the substance.

Ben White: Yeah. It’s going to be really interesting to see. Before we let you go, tell folks a little bit about what you did in the White House before your current role as a representative.

Andy Kim: Yeah. So before, before I came to Congress, I never thought I would run for Congress, I was a national security official. I was a career person at State Department, worked at Iraq and Afghanistan issues for my entire career. I served out in Afghanistan as a strategic advisor to general Petraeus and General Allen. I was two years at the White House as a counter ISIS coordinator at the National Security Council. I worked under both the Bush administration and the Obama administration. So that’s where my head’s at. I’m trying to bring that same national security approach to the Select Committee and to the work we’re trying to do when, you know, really just at the end comes down to trying to save lives. And that’s what this is about.