Mississippi Gov Vows to ‘Certainly Fight’ Any Biden Lockdowns
Tate Reeves responds to Democrat nominee's health chief calling for 6 weeks lockdown
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Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves (R) has vowed to "fight" any national lockdowns that are enforced by Democrat nominee Joe Biden, should he win the presidency.
On Thursday, Reeves declared that his state would not comply with a mandatory six-week national quarantine if Biden wins the presidential election.
“We’re not going to participate in a nationwide lockdown,” Reeves stated during a coronavirus update.
He was responding to a statement from the former vice president's health chief that a Biden administration would enforce a mandatory national lockdown for "4-6 weeks" to combat the coronavirus.
Biden's COVID-19 advisor, Dr. Michael Osterholm, argues that the federal government should "borrow" money and force the public to stay at home while shuttering businesses.
According to the health chief, the country's economy will not suffer as a result because the U.S. government can just borrow money to pay everybody's wages during the shutdowns.
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Reeves lampooned the idea of a lockdown as “totally and completely beyond reasonableness” and warned it would cause economic damage.
“That’s not the way the economy works,” the Republican governor said.
The Republican governor asserted he would fight any national lockdown mandate issued by a "President Biden" during a Facebook live session.
He made the remarks while updating Mississippians on the state’s coronavirus numbers, according to Mississippi’s Clarion Ledger.
“I’ve been asked that if the legal challenges that are currently being contemplated play out and the former vice president ultimately becomes the next president, then what is going to change?” Reeves said.
"What I will tell you is, even based upon some of the things that I have heard and said from his campaign, I will tell you I don’t think much of anything’s gonna change with respect to the virus.
“The fact is that we’re gonna try to work with whomever the president is, but we’re not gonna participate in a nation-wide lockdown.
"This notion that one of his advisers has said that all we really need is about a six-week national lockdown and we can slow down the spread of this virus is totally and completely beyond reasonableness,” the governor continued.
“The people of Mississippi can’t just go home, shut down their small businesses, shut down their restaurants, shut down their gyms, shut down other small businesses for six weeks and just think that you can come back six weeks from now, flip a switch, and everything’s gonna be fine.
"That’s not the way the economy works,” Reeves said.
“We believe that while they may make recommendations, that in this country under the Stafford Act when you have emergencies – and this is clearly one of the longest-lasting emergencies in American history – that those emergencies have to be state-managed, locally executed, and federally supported.
"And so I don’t believe that there’s any constitutional or statutory authority for any president to shut down Mississippi’s economy. We will certainly fight that if it becomes necessary.”
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Dr. Michael Osterholm, who Biden has named to his coronavirus task force, claimed on Wednesday during an interview with Yahoo News that the United States could “drive the numbers down,” referring to coronavirus numbers if the country were to lock down for up to six weeks.
WATCH:
One of Biden's new coronavirus task force doctors floating the idea of a 4-6 week lockdown:
— Zack Guzman (@zGuz) November 11, 2020
“We could pay for a package right now to cover all of the lost wages for individual workers ... if we did that, then we could lockdown for 4 to 6 weeks."pic.twitter.com/zNmuQvPpIJ
“We could pay for a package right now to cover all of the wages, lost wages for individual workers, for losses to small companies, to medium-sized companies, for city, states, county governments,” Osterholm said.
"We could do all that.
"If we did that, then we could lockdown for four to six weeks, and if we did that, we could drive the numbers down."
