Rep. James Clyburn said Wednesday the COVID-19 crisis is “much, much worse” than the 2008 Great Recession because the U.S. is without a national strategy to contain the coronavirus. “Our entire economy is at stake,” Clyburn told The Associated Press in a Newsmakers interview. The third-ranking House Democrat said he’s hopeful that negotiators on Capitol Hill can reach an agreement soon on a new virus aid package. But he said it’s a direr situation than the financial crisis more than a decade ago. “We’ve got a health care crisis wrapped into an economic crisis, and they are so interwoven,” Clyburn said. “You can’t solve the economic crisis without solving the health care crisis, and the problem we’ve got is that we do not have a national plan to deal with this virus.” Clyburn said, “That’s not the way you run a national government.” As the virus crisis scrambles the summer political conventions, Clyburn said he won’t be attending the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee, which officials said Wednesday will be almost entirely virtual. But he said it’s not appropriate for President Donald Trump to use the White House as the backdrop to accept the Republican Party’s nomination, as Trump has suggested.