John,

I wanted to reach out to you during this extremely difficult public health and economic crisis to let you know what I’m focusing on in Congress, and to request your input.

First, I want to underscore the importance of everyone observing the social distancing rules we’re being asked to follow. Here in California and in a growing number of regions around the country, we’re taking the extreme step of sheltering in place to slow the spread of COVID-19. Why? Because it’s the only way to significantly slow down the spread of the virus — and doing that is the only way to prevent our healthcare system from crashing due to a surge of ICU patients we know is coming. The other reason for taking these extreme measures to slow the spread of the virus is that it buys us time to scale up COVID-19 testing capacity.

Doing these two things effectively — flattening the curve of the virus’ spread and quickly developing our testing capacity — is how we will hopefully protect the most vulnerable and save millions of lives. And even though it will create great hardship for at least the next several weeks, it’s the only way to bring normalcy back to our economy and our daily lives. So please, continue to do your part by following public health guidelines and orders.

In Congress, I'm working hard on three specific priorities:

1. Making sure states, local governments, and healthcare providers have the resources and support they need to respond to the pandemic;
2. Ensuring that families, workers, and small business owners get the support they need to get through difficult months ahead; and
3. Because there will be devastating long-term impacts from the pandemic and the economic contraction it is causing, we must get to work now on a bold and responsible economic stimulus package. We are already developing the next wave of support to keep Americans healthy and secure.