Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) Credits ‘Contact Tracing’ For South Carolina’s Smooth Reopening

South Carolina Senator Tim Scott spoke with Fox News Radio’s Guy Benson about the reopening of the state and economy of South Carolina. Saying, “I think the state has done a really good job.” Senator Scott praised South Carolina Governor, Henry McMaster’s ability to grow the states ‘Contact Tracing’ efforts. Saying, “we had a seven fold increase and then another 13 fold increase in the number of contact tracers we had, By the end of the month will add another fourteen hundred contact tracers on the payrolls so as to make sure that we are prepared for hot spots.” Scott also added,

“When I think about the president’s task force and his two goals of making sure that a static cases are static, B hospital capacity is sufficient, and C the ability to isolate hotspots in order to mitigate the spread of the virus in South Carolina has really been able to take those three parameters and move forward very, very responsibly.”

Listen To The Full Interview Below:

Full Transcript:

Guy Benson: It is Wednesday, May 20th, 2020. Happy birthday, dad. It’s the Guy Benson Show. I’m Guy Benson. Thank you for listening live on the program wherever you are, around the country and around the world. We appreciate you being here. You might be saying, well, didn’t they just say happy birthday to guy’s mom? Yeah, mom and dad were born one year and eight days apart. So today is dad’s birthday and he listens almost every day. So we’ll be zooming with the other siblings in the rest of the family later on this evening after the program. We’ve got a big one for you. You can listen live and find out all the ways to listen live at Guy Benson’s show dot.com podcast. Also available on Spotify and i-Tunes in addition to Guy Benson’s show dot com. On today’s show, we have a U.S. senator coming up in just a moment. Later on, Chris Steigerwald and Charlie Hurt our Fox News buddies and colleagues. Also, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Dr. Ben Carson, will be here in our final hour. Fox News Alert, as we get going, as we do customarily, here are the stats confirmed cases of Corona virus in the United States, 1 million five hundred and thirty 1485 deaths up to 90 2066 confirmed in the United States from at 19. The Dow is up today, 358 points at this hour to twenty four thousand five hundred and sixty six. Now that we have you equipped with those numbers, let’s dove in and begin the program with Senator Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina. His latest book is Opportunity Knocks How Hard Work, Community and Business Can Improve Lives and End Poverty. Senator, great to have you back on the show.

Sen. Tim Scott: Well, thank you, Guy. Always good to be on the air with you. Happy birthday to your father. It sounds like your mother as well.

Guy Benson: Yes we can combine their birthdays. Maybe I should just send them like one gift collectively and then be really cheap of me, though.

Sen. Tim Scott: iI don’t think they’ll appreciate that. perhaps for their anniversary, not for their birthdays.

Guy Benson: I think I think that’s totally fair. In fact, my dad’s father, so my grandfather, who passed away a number of years ago, his birthday was Christmas Day. So he always got shafted on the double gift where everyone was celebrating something other than his birthday. It’s like, well, here’s a gift for both things. So I learned from his experience to try to avoid that. I think that’s only fair. Well, you’re a good man. I want to start with a question about your home state of South Carolina. There is this checkerboard of re openings and decisions and reactions given coronavirus and the lockdown that we’ve all been living under and various guidelines. Talk about the approach in South Carolina, what you’re seeing, what you’re hearing from business owners, for example, state level leaders like the governor. And do you feel like the people of South Carolina are responding appropriately, responsibly to some of the other guidance involving public health?

Sen. Tim Scott: I think the state has done a really good job. I talked about this recently with some friends on how impressed I am with how South Carolina has been returning back to business, a progressive and responsible manner. When I think about the president’s task force and his two goals of making sure that a static cases are static, b hospital capacity is sufficient, and c the ability to isolate hotspots in order to mitigate the spread of the virus in South Carolina has really been able to take those three parameters and move forward very, very responsibly. A case load is static as it relates to a percentage of the overall cases. B, there’s no doubt that we actually have more hospital capacity today than we did when we started the pre corona virus and see our ability to isolate the hotspots in order to mitigate the spread. It’s real, it’s happening and it’s quite effective, frankly. Rather, it’s South Carolina or throughout the southeast. I’m seeing it across the country. The citizens, they will not abide by what they would consider a moral or immoral laws. And so you see a lot of protest in state capitals. And frankly, I’m glad that we were able to embrace those three three principles and move towards reopening. We’ve seen no real spike in cases, which is good news. Second, even the numbers that we are forecasting included a reduction in the stay at home orders. So while some states are seeing cases go up. The fact is that we anticipated that. And that’s why the numbers are expected to be what they are. One life lost is one too many. But the goal was first to make sure that the hospital capacities were not overrun. Right. And not to stop the spread of the virus because it’s impossible to stop the spread of the virus. The question was, can you make sure that the hospital capacity was good enough as we flatten the curve? And the answer is yes, we can. Yes, we did. And yes, we will.

Guy Benson: So I agree with much of what you said and I agree. Also in particular that I’ve mentioned this on Fox News Channel earlier today. It does seem like there’s been some shifting of expectations and goalposts about why we had stay at home in the first place, which was really primarily the messaging was aimed at making sure the health care system didn’t get overrun, which makes sense. I think Americans heard that said, oh, yeah. Now we don’t want people getting turned away from hospitals or, you know, dying in on mattresses in the hallway or something like that. That would be terrible. And we’ve largely been able to succeed at that. We didn’t have the problems that they ran into in certain places like Lombardy and Italy. They’re having a very difficult time now in Brazil. We’ve staved off that problem and it seems like the messaging. Then sort of change in a lot of people didn’t react terribly well to that. And I get that. I guess the question, Senator, is that so far so good in a lot of these places. The doom and gloom, the dire predictions and projections about what would happen with some re-opening haven’t come true yet. Part of it, though, is also being nimble and being vigilant and making sure that if you do see some troubling data points, then the approach can be adjusted. What’s the contingency plan there in your mind if, God forbid, things start to get concerning again?

Sen. Tim Scott: Well, one of the things perhaps the most important part of three stages are the three principles will. The third one is simply can a state or an area reopen? And if something gets hot, can you isolate those hot spots in order to reduce the spread of the virus? And if that answer is yes and that perhaps speaks to con contact tracing in South Carolina, we had a seven fold increase and then another 13 fold increase in the number of contact tracers we had by the end of the month will add another fourteen hundred contact tracers on the payrolls so as to make sure that we are prepared for hot spots. And because we had the manpower and the resources and frankly, our governor had the vision to do so. This is what you need everywhere that you’re working towards responsible reopening. Some would argue that contact tracing is really important at the beginning and that we’re no longer at the beginning. Therefore, it’s not as important. I would argue that while that is a true premise and accurate premise, the truth is that the more information we know about this pandemic, the better off we are. And I liked I liked the fact that we’re able to move forward responsibly, but keep the basic tenets and principles intact, which is let’s save as many lives as we possibly can. But if we look at this, I’m a glass half full and not half empty. What we realized at the beginning, guy, is that our expectations is that ninety nine point nine five percent of Americans will leave with their lives intact. So everything that we’ve been trying to do was around hospital capacity and then to flatten that number and drive it down as far as possible. That’s not what happened in New York City. The governor did the best he could at the beginning, but he started with was he didn’t start with nursing homes. He didn’t start with the elderly population. So what actually occurred was that the deaths were disproportionately elderly citizens that really didn’t hit the radar until week 5, 6 and 7. So we know in the second half, let’s say the summer is helpful and then we get a bit of a return in the fall. Well, we know that the number one place to start saving lives is in nursing home nursing homes.

Guy Benson: Absolutely. So we’re gonna we’re gonna talk about that at great length later in the program. Really using Florida as a jumping off point. I know Governor DeSantis took a lot of the glades and arrows, but he’s done of a very good job based on the results. And we’ll delve into those stats and some of those details later on. Senator Scott, let me ask you about legislation. So I’m thinking back to late March where it was round two of the covered response. I believe I’ve been around three. They all sort of blend together. Yeah. And it seemed like the Karis Act was on the goal line, basically. And you and two of your colleagues, Senator Sasse from Nebraska and your fellow South Carolinian, Lindsey Graham, said, well, hang on, there’s a problem with one of these provisions in this bill, which would cause a huge disincentive to work. It’s a problem when it comes to unemployment benefits, in some cases outstripping what people would make if they stayed on the job. That could be an issue. It seems like those concerns, at least back then, were largely pooh-poohed in the press. What have we learned since then? And are you guys going to try once again to re-up this concern and get it addressed before another round of money goes out?

Sen. Tim Scott: Well, here’s what we learned. Our fears were real. The fact is that our unemployment numbers are higher than they need to be because we’re paying people more money to stay at home than they were making when they’re working. And that creates really a liability issue, so to speak, between the employer and the employee. The employer wants to bring the employer back the poises. Wait a minute. You’re taking money out of my pocket and food off my table. And that’s the kind of relationship we were trying to avoid. We were trying to avoid the obvious, having been at an employer for 15 plus years. There’s no question that people want to work, but if you tell them, I’ll pay you more not to work, whether they’re going to stay home. And so the six hundred dollar a week benefit on top of the state unemployment has created a perverse incentive. And the numbers are still. Wrong. The employers in South Carolina who continue to call me say that this is an issue and it is a strong issue. And I will not support nor did Lindsey or Ben Sasse we did not support, including the ability to make more money at home than you do at work. The next iteration, we should finally pulled that out. If there is another iteration. But I would caution this guy not to move very fast towards another cares package when in fact we don’t know what three trillion dollars of direct assistance plus the setting up of commercial facilities, $450 billion. That could become three trillion in loans lot low interest long term loans. That’s nearly six trillion dollars. So I think is premature for for Nancy Pelosi and her wish list friends to be on the bandwagon of providing another three trillion dollars. But what should not be included? What cannot be included is eroding the relationship between an employer and an employee by creating the person perverse incentive to stay home.

Guy Benson: I would point out that there was an amendment that would have done exactly that in almost every single Republican voted for it. Almost every single Republican Democrat rather voted against it. So it was denied in the Senate. And therefore we have the problem that we have now. We’ll keep an eye on that. Senator, it sounds like based on part of your last answer about Speaker Pelosi and the wish list, you’re not in favor of the bill that they passed after the House. Probably safe assumption there.

Sen. Tim Scott: Yeah. Would a nightmare to think about the Rahm Emanuel statement never waste a crisis? But Democrats have embraced that concept full heartedly and rather, it’s changing voting rights, nationalizing voting rights, whether it’s student loans, direct assistance. The closest thing you have to a universal basic income all a part of this package. Nearly a trillion dollars for the states bailing out states, frankly, who have made bad decisions and their nation and their states, capitals leading to a worst decision in the nation’s capital. It is it is a wonderland that I hope only remains in an ultimate universe, not called earth.

Guy Benson: Last question. It’s on a very separate topic. I’ve heard you speak eloquently about this. We’ve talked about it a bit on this show, the shooting in the state of Georgia of an unarmed black man, a mod. I’ve seen some videos come out purporting to show him getting arrested, I guess, years ago for shoplifting. I don’t see how that’s relevant at all to what happened to him in the streets of Georgia. You talked about the need for justice. Just briefly, when you say that, what do you mean?

Sen. Tim Scott: I think we should have a full investigation. I’m very thankful for Georgia’s attorney general. Attorney General Carr, who has taken a strong position. As soon as the state received the case, within 36 hours, there were two arrests. There are about four different episodes that the attorney general wants to take a strong look at. If the video or videos are as accurate as they have been, it seems like murder to me in the middle of the street at 1 p.m. in the afternoon. Yeah, I agree. Justice is found and that every single Trey Gowdy would say it. Every scintilla of evidence is brought to the surface so that we can make justice a system that works for everyone. And frankly, if there’s contrary evidence, I want to see that, too. So we should not rush to judgment, but we should not deny the clarity that is put before the American people.

Guy Benson: Well, I I agree. And that’s well said. You mentioned Trey Gowdy. He was on this program earlier in the week. Now, we just to get Nikki Haley in here and Lindsey Graham, we just have a whole full blown party of South Carolinians on the Guy Benson Show, U.S. Senator Tim Scott, Republican of the Palmetto State, my guest on the program to get things going today. Senator Scott, always a pleasure. We look forward to having you back.

Sen. Tim Scott: Thank you very much. A South Carolina loves Guy Benson.

Guy Benson: I got to get back down there. It’s a beautiful place when I can finally when I can finally get on a plane again. Senator Scott on the guy, Benson Shell. We’ll be right back.