WILMINGTON, Del. — Today, U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.) joined Andrea Mitchell Reports on MSNBC to discuss the bicameral effort to expand national service in response to the COVID-19 crisis.

“[W]e’ve got a generation eager to serve our country, just as the 9/11 generation stood up and served in the war against terror. We've got young people who have had their work or their service interrupted and would like to be a part of the solution. Our bill would double the size of AmeriCorps and give an opportunity to earn a college education through service to our communities by participating in locally-driven, locally-connected community-led pandemic response corps,” said Senator Coons.

On contact tracing, Senator Coons explained, “contact tracing is a hard thing to do. You're calling someone to tell them they've been infected and ask them to share with you confidential information about where they live, where they work, where they've traveled, where they've shopped and then information about how to contact the people they've been around. This requires skill and it requires someone who is really connected to those communities that have been most heavily impacted by the pandemic, so that's often communities of color and communities where bilingual skills will be necessary.”

Full audio and video available here. A transcript is below.

Q: Public health experts all agree there is a desperate need for an army of workers across the nation to conduct contact tracing before companies can safely reopen. Senator Chris Coons believes that there are hundreds of thousands of service-minded people who could help do this. He's introduced legislation to expand national service programs like AmeriCorps and tap into that group of people. Joining me now is Democratic Senator from Delaware Chris Coons. Great to see you, Senator. Thank you very much.
Sen. Coons: Great to see you.
Q: First, I want to ask you about what we just learned today that a military aide from the Navy, we believe, one of the Navy stewards who works in the White House and serves meals to the President, has tested positive. These are stewards who are not masked, and we know the President’s resistance to wearing a mask even in public when he went to Arizona. What does this say about a White House which has resisted CDC recommendations, downplayed the CDC throughout this, and has actually rejected the CDC health care recommendations for reopening and seems to be focusing on the economy and not on health care?
Sen. Coons: Well, Andrea, that reflects one of the concerns I had about our coming back here to the Senate this week. We are putting at risk the Capitol Police officers, the folks who work here in food service, who clean and maintain the buildings of the Senate, and I pray for and I hope for a positive outcome for this steward at the White House. The President needs to follow the directions of public health officials in terms of social distancing, and practices like handwashing and cleaning, but also, frankly, as he directs federal responses to this pandemic, he should be listening to public health experts, not trying to race to reopen parts of our economy before we have enough testing and tracing and personal protective equipment in place, so that folks can go back to work safely. 
Q: I know you and Bill Kristol have jointly written an Op-Ed in USA TODAY on the dangers precisely of reopening too quickly. What would you suggest doing? Is there a way to tap into AmeriCorps and these other groups of people who may be not engaged in their volunteerism right now to try to do the contact tracing?
Sen. Coons: Yes, Andrea. Earlier this week, 35 members of the House of Representatives, a bipartisan group, introduced a bill that I also helped lead and write and introduce here in the Senate with two dozen senators, and it essentially says we've got a generation eager to serve our country, just as the 9/11 generation stood up and served in the war against terror. We've got young people who have had their work or their service interrupted and would like to be a part of the solution. Our bill would double the size of AmeriCorps and give an opportunity to earn a college education through service to our communities by participating in locally-driven, locally-connected community-led pandemic response corps. If you wait and think about it for a second, Andrea, contact tracing is a hard thing to do. You're calling someone to tell them they've been infected and ask them to share with you confidential information about where they live, where they work, where they've traveled, where they've shopped and then information about how to contact the people they've been around. This requires skill and it requires someone who is really connected to those communities that have been most heavily impacted by the pandemic, so that's often communities of color and communities where bilingual skills will be necessary. What we know about AmeriCorps is right now there's 75,000 AmeriCorps members, most of whom have had their service programs interrupted. There are 7,000 Peace Corps Volunteers who were made to return to our country halfway through their Peace Corps Service, and every year there's five times as many young people who try to join a national service program like YouthBuild or City Year as there are funded slots. So we would make those slots available and fund them, and, in a flexible and locally-driven response, encourage governors, mayors and the state commissions that oversee AmeriCorps to devise quickly pandemic response plans and use AmeriCorps members as a key part of that response. 
Q: I was going to suggest the Peace Corps as well, but you just did, so it's such a smart idea. Thank you.

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