Reeves responds to the Legislature: ‘The only difference now is the size of the check’

In his live Facebook address on Friday, Gov. Tate Reeves responded to the state’s largest number of new COVID-19 cases reported in any single day as well as the Legislature’s move to strip him of the authority to spend federal aid funds.

“This thing is not over,” he said. “We’re not out of the woods, yet. Things can change quickly. We have to stay flexible.”

Reeves said he was prepared to announce more business re-openings Friday, but the spike in new cases caused him to take a step back. He will take the weekend, at least, to reconsider further openings.

“It eats me alive every day,” he said of keeping businesses closed and not allowing Mississippians to return to work.

Reeves also made some pointed remarks about the state Legislature’s move to strip him of his authority to spend the $1.25 billion in federal funds under the CARES Act.

“We were getting ready to get those funds out to the people who need them as soon as next week,” he said. “They want to debate it for weeks and months before we get any money out to the people that need it the most. That’s simply not an option.”

The governor said he had both the legal authority under the Mississippi Constitution and the duty to manage the funds during an emergency. He also accused the legislature of caring more about power than people.

“You cannot manage an emergency by committee,” he said. “Someone has to be accountable.”

“I don’t think they’re bad people,” he added. “I just don’t think they realize the damage this would do.”

In a Facebook post later in the day, Reeves reiterated some of his remarks about the legislature and added a few more.

“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. If you’re unhappy with our response to COVID-19, the buck stops with me. Honestly, I’d love to pass the buck on to 174 legislators like they want me to. That would be the easy thing to do politically. But this is the job I applied for. This is what the people elected me to do. I didn’t know this would be where we’d end up. But here we are.

“… I can’t do my job without the funds that the Trump administration secured for and expect governors to use. That affects you.

“I hate that we’re being pulled into this. You shouldn’t have to care about this. It’s inside baseball and petty politics. No one cares—until it affects you. It might soon.

“I hope it gets settled quickly. In the meantime, we’re going to go ahead with the emergency management system we’ve had in place for decades. In Mississippi, we know how to do this. We’ve done it forever. The only difference now is the size of the check. We’re not going to tear up the playbook in the middle of a half-dozen ongoing emergencies and treat one of them differently.

“Please pray for all of this to resolve very quickly. This isn’t a hypothetical in a political science class. It could seriously harm the people of our state.”