Governors respond to President Trump’s assertion that it’s up to him to decide when to loosen coronavirus restrictions

At a press conference on Monday, six governors announced a council of states to coordinate the loosening of stay-at-home orders and other restrictions due to the coronavirus pandemic. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo responded to questions about President Trump’s assertion that it is up to him to decide when those orders are to be rolled back.

Video Transcript

- We were wondering that-- with the president saying that it's his responsibility to reopen the state and reopen the economies, we were wondering if the governors disagree with that, that this is inherently a responsibility of the governor?

TOM WOLF: Well, seeing as that we had the responsibility for closing the state down, I think we probably have the primary responsibility for opening it up. And that-- and that, sort of, I think, gets to the question that I think Governor Murphy had. And that is between the business and health.

And I think that's a false choice. I think this regional compact is premised on the idea that you're not going to have a healthy economy if you have an unhealthy population. So we've got to do both. We've got to get people healthy. The sequence is, you've got to get people healthy first. And then you can reopen the economy-- not until, or the economy's not going to-- not going to work.

So I think what we're trying to do is, we have tried-- all of us governors working together have tried to have the hard stop that we need to make sure that we remain safe as we possibly can with this pandemic. And we're now ready to go into the next step, which is to start moving back to some sense of normal-- the new normal. And do it, as we have, working together here in the-- in the region.

So I don't-- I don't think, you know, we're trying to say anything negative about anybody. We're simply saying, it was our responsibility to steer our way through these uncharted waters. And it's our responsibility to figure out a way back.

- Is it frustrating to have the president claim such kind of overarching powers when you and other governors seem to be dealing with kind of the nuts and bolts of this?

ANDREW CUOMO: No-- and frustrating-- nothing's frustrating. Everything's frustrating. And it's not about an emotion. I just want clarity. Governor Wolf's point is right. The states closed. It is an interesting construct that it wasn't the federal responsibility to close the economy. But it is the federal responsibilities-- the federal government's responsibility to open the economy. If it's your authority to open, why wasn't your-- it your authority to close, right? That's an obvious question.

And when you say "open," what does that mean? Does that mean you're going to proclaim all businesses open? Isolation over? Come out of your homes. Businesses are open. What does it mean?

Governors need clarity. That's what they need. You're the president. There's a constitution. There may be legal questions-- what's the federal responsibility, what's the state responsibility? But the government-- the president has lot of lawyers. So if it is a legal construct, you're president of the United States. You want to put forth a disaster emergency plan? As president, that's your right. And by the way, this is a federally declared disaster.

You know, I was in the federal government. And the rules of government matter. There is an operating manual. States can declare disasters. And then the state is in charge over the local governments. Federal government declares an emergency, the federal government is now in charge.

And they have done a federal emergency declaration here. Well, why won't-- then why didn't the federal government make decisions on closing? I don't know.

Could they now say we're going to make decisions on opening? Yes. I don't believe they could have a policy that says, everybody opens five days from now. How do you differentiate different parts of the country with different infection rates-- different places on the curve? Some are at the apex. Some are at the plateau. Some are on their way up the mountain.

How do you do that differentiation? Are you going to do a formula that says any place with an infection rate of less than 2% can open? You know, how do you do it? I don't know. But he could put forth a model do that.