RUSH: I have a story here from the Associated Press. “CDC Considers Loosening Guidelines For Some Exposed To Virus — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is considering changing its guidelines for self-isolation to make it easier for those who have been exposed to someone with the coronavirus to return to work if they are without symptoms.” So meaning if the CDC can prove that you have some kind of immunity, they’re thinking of letting you out.

“The public health agency, in conjunction with the White House coronavirus task force, is considering an announcement as soon as Wednesday, Vice President Mike Pence said. Under the proposed guidance, people who are exposed to someone infected would be allowed back on the job if they have no symptoms, test their temperature twice a day and wear a face mask, said a person familiar with the proposal under consideration. The person was not authorized to publicly discuss the draft because it had not been finalized and described the proposal on the condition of anonymity.

“The new policy is aimed in particular at workers in critical jobs. But it also comes as the Trump administration is eyeing what it calls a ‘stabilization’ in infection rates and looks toward rolling back some of the restrictive social distancing guidelines and restarting the stalled economy.”

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RUSH: Just saw a link on Drudge. I didn’t have a chance to click on it yet. Ivanka Trump is gonna lead the administration’s small business recovery efforts. So they’re thinking about it. They’re working on it. It’s all a good sign.

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RUSH: Grab audio sound bite number 8. ‘Cause I asked the staff here to give me their wild guess on when we reopen the economy, and I didn’t specify fully. I just said, “When does this change?

“When do we start letting some people go back to work?” and the general consensus among the scientists here at EIB is the end of this month, sometime in May. Well, I have for you here a media montage, various leftists and their projections. This is from Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and this morning…

JACKIE SPEIER: Maybe in 18 months. But before then, we have got to be very careful about putting people in large groups together. I think it would be reckless.

THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN: Could be 18 months, maybe at best.

JONATHAN REINER: This pandemic is going to play out, you know, probably over 18 months. The, uh, 1918 pandemic wasn’t just 1918. It went almost to 1921.

MICHAEL OSTERHOLM: We could be in the first inning of a nine-inning game. We’ve got 18 or more months left.

ZEKE EMANUEL: COVID-19 will be here for the next 18 months or more. We cannot return to normal until there’s a vaccine. Conferences, concerts, sporting events, religious services, dinner in a restaurant, none of that will resume.

RUSH: There you have it. That was Ezekiel Emanuel on the tail end of the sound bite. So you see, somebody throws out (like Fauci), “We’re gonna have a vaccine in 18 months,” and every liberal dutifully follows in line. Not a single curiosity among them, not a single divergent thought among them.

They all just fall right in line: 18 months. If this goes on for 18 months, the only thing there’s going to be in this country is a United States government. That’s all there’s gonna be. There isn’t gonna be an economy. There isn’t gonna be careers. There isn’t gonna be anyone going to work.

Everybody’s gonna have to find a way to get paid by or compensated by the government. This can’t go on for 18 months. There’s no way — except that it can. Anything can happen. I know people who think this is gonna go on until December. After the election, after the Democrats beat Trump, we will magically reopen.

If this goes on throughout the summer and then in the fall, I’m gonna really curious to see what the American people’s reaction to it is. Now, the White House is obviously gearing up to get some people back to work. Ivanka Trump is gonna headline the small business task force or whatever it’s being called.

Let me see… It’s the Small Business Recovery Effort. So let’s see. What do we have? (interruption) You have a question for me? What’s…? What is it? (interruption) Well, you see, I’m glad you asked me that. Mr. Snerdley says, “Okay, after everybody gets their (ahem) $1,200 check, what do these people expect people to live on?”

That’s exactly the question. Where is the empathy? The grocery stores are open. Yeah, you’re gonna buy food with what? The pharmacies are open. Yeah, you’re gonna get your prescriptions filled with what? How are you gonna fill up your car to get to these places that are still open? Now, every one of these people talking about 18 months, I guarantee you is gonna get paid for 18 months.

I guarantee you Thomas Friedman… He married somebody rich. He doesn’t need to get paid. Zeke Emanuel’s gonna get paid. Fauci is gonna get paid. Birx is gonna get paid. Every one of these people is gonna get paid. Federal government workers are being paid. It’s not even a concern, and they’re not even acting like it’s a concern.

I guess it’s the central thing that bothers me. I don’t know how these people expect everybody to just survive for — and I’ll guarantee you this. Fauci and these people, they’ve been honest. They’ve told us. I will guarantee you Birx, Fauci, they’re not thinking next month. There is no way, folks.

These people are thinking months and months down the road. They’ve told us. They’ve telegraphed it. Vaccine. They’re not thinking next month. So Mnuchin. Grab sound bite number 9. Sound bite number 9, Stephen Mnuchin, and this was his comment about all this.

MNUCHIN: I know the president is working on a date. I know he wants to reopen the economy as soon as we get the appropriate all-clear and things are looking good, and I know he wants to do that soon.

RUSH: As soon as the president gets the all-clear. From who? Fauci, Birx, CDC, National Institutes of Health, John Hopkins? Who? Who’s gonna give the all-clear? I thought the president gave the all. I thought the governors can give the all-clear in their states. (interruption)

Well, yeah, I know the Democrats have guaranteed that benefits will extend for as long as it takes. Benefits! Is that what it’s gonna be, life is gonna be your benefits now? Everybody’s gonna be… The only thing open, the only thing this country’s gonna be is the United States government and the people who get their benefits? I’ll tell you something.

That is a wet dream of leftists and Democrats. They would love that if that’s what this economy was: The United States government and you get your benefits, and then they’ll nationalize as much as they can — the grocery stores, the airlines, you name it. Governor Cuomo today said, “There is no going back.

“There is no going back to normal. What there is, is a new normal.” No, don’t misunderstand, folks. I intellectually understand what he means. My problem is, where is the desire? Where is the expression of desire? Where is the inspiration? Where is the leadership? Where is the can-do spirit that we can go back?

Why can’t we go back to a $22 trillion economy? Why can’t we go back to a roaring economy? I don’t want to listen to people who tell us that will never happen. I don’t want to listen to people who say we can’t do that, ’cause I know who those people are. They’re people that don’t want that to happen.

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RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, I want to return to something I said mere moments ago. I said, if this doesn’t end, then this country is gonna be one thing. The federal government. That’s all it’s gonna be. Well, there’s a caveat to this. The federal government can print money, as we so widely know. But you know what? The states cannot. The states cannot go print dollars. They cannot start their own currencies. They can’t do anything.

How do the states survive? The states need to collect taxes. And who pays taxes? People who are working. If nobody’s working and nobody’s creating any revenue, then there’s nothing to tax them on, and the states, the states are sitting on a powder keg right now. If they’re not collecting taxes, they are in a state of deep doo-doo. And they’re not collecting very many taxes right now. They’re not collecting business taxes, they’re not collecting taxes from the vast majority of people who pay them, i.e., the middle class getting up and going to work every day.

The federal government and Fauci and Birx can sit here all day long and talk about their vaunted social distancing and so forth. We got 50 states out there who cannot survive 18 months of this. They can’t print money. They can’t start passing out benefits. The federal government can, but the states can’t. And many states have balanced budget amendments. It’s a constitutional thing. There’s all kinds of things at work here.

So Mnuchin’s out there saying, “Well, Trump is waiting for the all-clear.” The all-clear from who? I’ll tell you who needs to be waiting for the all-clear is the governors. The governors need to be waiting for the all-clear, and the all-clear needs to come from Trump. Trump is out there talking about federalism anyway. The press is trying to trip him up, “Why aren’t you passing out ventilators?”

“Well, the states are in charge of that. We’re passing this responsibility on to states, federalism here.” Trump’s trying to explain it to ’em. All right. Fine. You like federalism, then go and tell the states, open up. You put the onus on the governors if you want to, but you’re not gonna have to because somebody somewhere — it isn’t gonna take long, some governor is gonna say, “You know what? We need to put people back to work. We’re running out of money. We don’t have any money.” The only way the state government gets money is taxes. And I don’t think that Bill Gates and Buffett are gonna run around making donations to the states. So we will see.

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RUSH: By the way, I need to make a clarification on the states. With all of this unemployment money being passed out, the states are gonna be able to tax. You know, you pay taxes on your unemployment check. The states are gonna get tax revenue for your unemployment checks. So they’re not gonna be high and dry, but there are not gonna be a lot of high income taxes being paid. But a full year of unemployment compensation, most people are gonna get 52 grand a year to not work, the way things are currently set up. Which has a lot of people worried for a number of reasons.

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RUSH: Here’s Susan, Longview, Washington. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. I’m very honored to be on your show. You know, I have best wishes for your recovery —

RUSH: Thank you very much. Thank you so much.

CALLER: We’re praying for you. First of all, I’m not trying to be insensitive or unkind because I do care about people’s lives and I have people that are impacted by this as well, but I’m worried about the economy and the destruction that’s happening. So my recommendation to the president — and I know he listens to you — is why are we making blanket coverage for everyone when we could simplify this by taking the smaller population of people that are affected, we could supplement them, isolate the ones that need to be and those that are healthy and had the virus —

RUSH: Are you asking why we’re not means testing aid to people like some people want to do with Social Security and other federal benefits? Is that what you’re asking?

CALLER: No. No. I’m just making a point that I don’t understand why we are paying everyone to stay home. Why can’t we pay the people that are affected by the virus rather than as a whole, because —

RUSH: Well, because it isn’t very many. There aren’t any votes if you’re only paying people affected by the virus.

CALLER: Hmm. Yeah.

RUSH: No, I mean, I hate to say it that way.

CALLER: No. I get what you’re saying.

RUSH: If you’re forcing everybody to stay home, you have to be fair and pay everybody, if you’re forcing pain on everybody. If you only want to pay the sick, well —

CALLER: Okay. Okay.

RUSH: — then you can’t shut down the government it you’re only gonna pay the sick. You can’t shut down the country. And of course the sick — aren’t that many of them, I mean, given the universe of —

CALLER: I know. But that would help our government, you know, and at least help people to get back to work so we can keep our economy going.

RUSH: I understand what you’re saying. Well, what she’s basically saying here is that if we’re gonna start passing out — if we’re gonna start writing federal checks with Steve Mnuchin’s name on ’em, we better only send ’em to people who can’t work, people who are sick, people who have COVID virus.

Well, the problem with that is another thing. We don’t have a test that is widespread yet to know who exactly has it and who doesn’t. And that’s gonna be a big hurdle when we do get the test, when they are mass produced and able to administered on a very scaled up basis, it’s gonna make a difference to identify the very people you think need to be identified. Once you can identify ’em, then you can command ’em to stay home or you can put ’em in the institution or do whatever. But you can identify them, and you require them to sequester, so forth, let everybody else loose.

And I know they keep talking about that aspect of this. And then, you’re right. You could competent those who get the virus. But there wouldn’t be any need to shut down the country at that point, so there wouldn’t be any need to pay anybody unless you wanted to — if we start paying people that get diseases, let me tell you, the cancer crowd’s gonna — you’re gonna hear from them. You’re gonna hear from every disease out there, if you start paying COVID-19 patients. Not me, don’t misunderstand, I mean, you start doing that, that becomes a new federal benefit, get sick, get paid, ha. You haven’t seen anything if that starts happening.