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formal
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echo
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antisemitic
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Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, like my colleague from Missouri, I also rise to address the Nation's response to the COVID-19 virus. In particular, I want to discuss the next steps we need to take at the Federal level to deal with this health emergency and the severe economic dislocation resulting from it. Before I offer my comments, I want to offer some thanks. I want to thank the Senate staff and all those in the Capitol who are working here under tough circumstances. I notice that the pages are not here, and that is because the Senate has wisely decided that, while we ought to be here doing the people's business, even at some risk to ourselves, the young people who would normally be here should be home with their families. I want to thank healthcare workers all across the United States. They are doing very difficult work right now, and they are doing it under very stressful circumstances. So many people who work at our healthcare facilities are there trying to protect patients. They have kids in schools that have been closed, and they are grappling with where their own children are during the day and whether they can find childcare during what would normally be the school day. I particularly want to thank them. Finally, I want to thank the American public. I will return to this point at the end of my comments. We are not an authoritarian nation. There are steps that other nations are taking with respect to this virus, where they can sort of order or quarantine in ways that we can't here. What we do here depends upon the consent of the governed, and the guidelines about social distancing, for example, require some significant sacrifice. Overwhelmingly, I see Americans taking steps to make that sacrifice, and I want to thank them. I applaud the bipartisan work that Congress has done with the White House in the past 2 weeks to pass two important laws. We passed the supplemental appropriations bill, providing more than $8 billion to invest in our public health response with resources for States, territories, and Tribes, investments in vaccine development and testing, and other key health priorities. Just yesterday, the Senate passed the second piece of legislation to provide emergency relief for workers and their families: paid sick leave, extended unemployment insurance, and other measures. But we still have so much more to do, and I am going to be very candid about this. I offer these thoughts as a former mayor and Governor who has overseen significant emergency response efforts in my city and in my State: hurricanes, floods, mass shootings, the H1N1 epidemic, and the economic collapse of 2008 and 2009. While those give me a perspective on what must be done, I have to acknowledge that the current challenge is a massive one, arguably bigger than any I have seen in my life. Because it is so big, it will require unusual degrees of innovation and cooperation, and the need for that innovation and cooperation is urgent. I got off a phone call this morning--and I am sure all 100 of my colleagues are making calls like this. I got on the phone with my fellow Virginia Senator, Mr. Warner, to talk to Virginia's hospitals. Now, Virginia is a State that, economically, is pretty well off. It generally tends to have top-quarter per-capita income for a significant metropolitan area, but the stories from my hospitals were just, frankly, shocking. They can't get tests to test patients who are presenting with symptoms of COVID-19. If they have tests, they don't have the swabs to administer the test or they don't have some of the chemical components needed so that once a swab is taken, they can run the test to determine whether somebody has the virus or not. They don't have masks. Hospitals were telling me that masks, which they would normally buy for about $1 apiece, are now being charged at $9 apiece with severely limited quantities. Major hospitals in a major metropolitan area like Northern Virginia, on the testing front--one of my hospitals said they got enough tests from their main supplier to test 40 people. That lasted for about 2 days. And when they said ``We need more tests,'' the supplier said ``Well, look, we only have so much that we can distribute. That is all you get.'' When I heard this story, one after the next--and I know I live in a nation with not only the best healthcare providers but the best healthcare institutions in the world--I had to ask myself: Where am I? Is this the United States of America, where a hospital treating people on a global pandemic cannot get a mask, cannot get a swab, cannot get a test? Why are nations like South Korea and Australia and the United Kingdom so much more able to do things this country should be able to do? I don't think we should become normalized or just accept that. I think this is so profound a question about why this Nation, with the best healthcare providers and the best healthcare institutions in the world, is so far behind other nations. So let me offer these recommendations--blunt recommendations--for the road ahead. First, in the words of the Hippocratic Oath, do no harm. The administration lost 6 to 8 weeks in responding to this crisis--critical time that was used productively by other nations--because the President continually downplayed the threat of COVID-19. No American has a louder microphone than he does, and again and again he downplayed the threat, suggested it was contained, suggested everyone would be tested, suggested it was a hoax, and suggested the Democrats or the Chinese or the media were blowing it out of proportion. Whether his comments were due to ignorance or a political desire to hide bad news is irrelevant. I was shocked that the President submitted a budget to Congress on February 10, when the virus's global spread was clear to all, that dramatically cut funding for key public health agencies--the NIH, CDC, HHS--and our investments in global partnerships like the World Health Organization. The White House foolishly eliminated the global health security team at the National Security Council that was set up after the Ebola crisis to practically deal with pandemics like COVID-19. I remain stunned--stunned--that the President's lawyers are still in court all over this country attempting to repeal the Affordable Care Act to take healthcare away from millions of Americans. There is never a good time--never--to take an ax to the public health infrastructure and scheme to take away people's health insurance, but there is surely no worse time to do it--to take an ax to the public health infrastructure and take away people's health insurance--than during a global pandemic. So my recommendations here are pretty simple. Quit lying and downplaying the threat. Let the trusted scientists and public health leaders in your administration take center stage. In recent days, the President seems to have adopted this approach, thank goodness, and it is long overdue. Congress should ignore the President's budget that urged foolish cuts to our public health infrastructure, and theadministration should cease efforts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. One more thing: Quit the inflammatory China-bashing. Did this virus originate in China? Yes. But, Mr. President, that does not excuse your weeks and weeks of tweeting lies and misinformation about the virus, while the leaders of other nations were taking steps to make sure their populations could be safe. The fact that the virus originated in China does not excuse the massive missteps that have led to the United States being so far behind other nations in the world in the ability to provide testing--basic testing--to citizens, including citizens who have serious signs of illness. The President's decision to call this the China virus or Wuhan virus or other epithets that he and members of his team have used are a crass effort to deflect blame away from the acceptance of responsibility that a President should have. The buck stops with you, Mr. President. You cannot blame this on anyone else. You have to own responsibility. You should stop inflammatory China-bashing that is exposing Asian Americans in this country to prejudice. The second thing we need to do is continue to focus, first and foremost, on managing the public health crisis presented by COVID-19. The economic dislocation is significant. We are working on a package with respect to that now. I am going to talk about it in a minute, but no economic intervention will work if the American public continues to lack confidence in our public health response. And a strong public health response that will effectively manage the spread of this virus and coordinate medical care for those affected will be the single best strategy for enabling the economy to get back on track. To accomplish this public health goal, we need to have strong policy at the Federal level to make--continue to make--science-based recommendations on the extent and timing of social distancing guidelines. We need to overcome the shockingly poor start to testing Americans for the virus. Testing helps us flatten the curve of the infection so that our health system is not overwhelmed, and it also helps reduce anxiety by giving people information about their status so they know what to do. Americans are used to being tested. If we feel ill, we go to a doctor. We get a test to see if we have a flu. We get a test to see if we have pneumonia. We get our children tested to see if they have strep throat. We are used to this, and when we see it happening around the globe, and when we hear the President and Vice President say that everybody will get tested, but when people call their healthcare providers and are told that there are no tests or see drive-thru testing sites, such as ones we had in Hampton Roads, shut down after a day and a half because they ran out of tests, it tremendously raises their anxiety. We need to continue the good work that is already being done to accelerate the development of a safe and effective vaccine. We need to make sure that our hospitals and healthcare providers have the resources they need to treat sick people and protect their frontline health workers. Finally, this is looking down the road a bit, but I think it is important that we think about it now. Policymakers should try to develop the science-based criteria that will enable them to confidently tell Americans when it is time to return to normal social and economic activity. I remember President Bush doing that at some point after 9/11. He said: It is now safe. It is time for Americans to go back to normal, everyday activity. A strong signal of that type, when it is warranted by science, will be critical--critical--to our recovery. That day may be weeks or months away, but developing the criteria that we can agree on that should be the signal for a return to relevant normalcy is something we should all be working on right now. Third, we should make full use of State and local governments. Polling shows that Americans are skeptical about what they hear about this virus from President Trump and, indeed, Washington. But the same poll shows that they do have trust in how State and local officials are handling this crisis. Use the network of State and local officials to communicate clear messages. Continuously seek their input on how their schools, hospitals, nursing homes, and local economies are affected. That is what I am doing every day, and I suspect every Member of the Senate is doing the same thing--conference calls with leaders around my State to make sure that we are doing the things that are most helpful. And we should reality test any legislation, especially an economic package, with these leaders to make sure it is responsive to the real needs they are seeing on the ground. Fourth, Congress needs to move promptly to pass this strong economic package, backstopping the American economy from being ravaged by COVID-19. In 2008, structural issues like the accumulation of debt, bad public policy leaving huge swaths of economic transactions unregulated, and predatory mortgage practices helped bring down not only the American but the global financial system. Today, the American economy has been performing relatively well, and it now labors under a severe healthcare shock. There is reason to believe that, once we get the healthcare strategy right, we will be poised for the economy to resume its upward trajectory. But we must provide protection and support in the meantime. I believe that the focus of an economic package should be workers and small businesses. They are the most vulnerable to the current challenge and most in need of intervention. This is the message that I am hearing again and again as I talk to Virginia residents and business leaders. I had a wonderful conversation with the president of my statewide chamber of commerce the other day, and he said candidly: Look, more of our members are actually medium and large businesses, but the most important thing you can do is focus on the needs of small businesses and their employees. I appreciated that he was advocating even for a business sector that isn't the core of his membership, but this is what he was hearing and what I think most of us are hearing. I support direct cash payments to low- and middle-income Americans and their dependents to help them through this crisis, and it is nice to hear there may be some agreement on that. I support strategies to provide grants and loans to small businesses, particularly if they use those resources to keep employees on the payroll. I hope direct support to individuals and small businesses will be the heart of the economic package that the Senate, the White House, and the House put together. Now, for the larger businesses and industry sectors who need Federal help, we have to stand ready to assist, but if we are to invest in these businesses yet again, a few years after providing them with massive and--in my view--unnecessary tax breaks, we must not simply rescue them but demand that they reform, and our investments must be designed to keep workers on payrolls to the maximum extent possible. The Business Roundtable, an influential voice for the business community, said last year that businesses need to expand their priorities beyond shareholder concerns and invest in employees by compensating them fairly, providing important benefits, and supporting communities they work in. I couldn't agree more. These businesses employ many Americans and deliver us important goods and services, but if American taxpayers are stepping in to cover their losses, I think it is fair to expect and, indeed, require that these businesses channel the benefits toward people who are on their payroll, who work for wages and salaries, not those who live off investment income. I will do all I can in the coming days to help shape our economic package to make it responsive to these goals. Fifth--and in this I echo some of the comments made by my colleague from Missouri--the crisis does raise long-term questions that must be addressed going forward. We have to have real discussions about the virtues and disadvantages of global interconnectedness. Better travel leads to economic growth and a better understanding of the world, and it also facilitates the spread of viruses. Instantaneous global communication networks are an economic plus but increase vulnerability to cyber attack. How do we increase American resilience to these threats without inhibiting our economic prospects? Thereare elements of our supply chains--pharmaceuticals and medical products and supplies in particular--that must be viewed through a national security lens and progressively brought back to this country to enhance safety and an adequate supply of supplies in times like this. A second long-term question that has been raised for years by my Virginia colleague Senator Warner deals with the new reality of how Americans work. Many of the people most affected by this shock would be part-time and gig workers. The safety-net mechanisms that our policies provide for full-time workers who get a W-2 every year are not as available to the increasing percentage of the American workforce who are in multiple part-time jobs without benefits or who work as independent contractors or are otherwise self-employed. In addition to making sure that the economic relief package provides assistance to this large group of Americans, we have to examine our workforce policies so that these workers also have a social safety net to fall back on during times of crisis. Finally, every American needs to do their part to confront this crisis. The best way to slow the spread of COVID-19 and minimize its impact to individuals, to our healthcare system, and to our economy is to adhere to science-based social distancing and personal hygiene recommendations in our everyday lives. Because America is not an authoritarian nation, there are some options used by other nations that will not likely be used here. Our public health measures will depend upon the cooperation and adherence of every single person. Sacrifice is hard, but a modest sacrifice in the near term can help save the lives of people we love. So I implore every Virginian and every American to follow the recommendations we get from our public health officials and find ways to safely reach out and connect with friends and family during this challenging time. To my colleagues: We must rise to meet this challenge. This is one of the moments for which we were destined to be in the Senate. The people we serve are relying on us to calmly and promptly address a grave health crisis with the tools needed to keep families safe and protect the American economy. It is a serious responsibility. May we all live up to it. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. KAINE
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-03-19-pt1-PgS1825
| null | 500
|
formal
|
based
| null |
white supremacist
|
Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, first of all, I would like to thank you for sparing me not having to be in the seat indefinitely, and I promise I will keep this short. What a day we have come through. Senator Cramer and I have been here a little bit over a year, and I can't imagine in a little over a year being more filled with making this responsibility as a U.S. Senator worth every effort it took to get here. It finds us in an interesting place. I am from Main Street America. I spent 37 years building my own company, a company that three of my four kids--along with a great, young executive team--run now, and here we are. We are confronted with coronavirus. Now, in a sequence of H1N1, SARS, MERS, even a threat from Ebola, this looks like it is the one that we have heard about for a long time that could really test the mettle of our country while we are going through it. We have listened to the experts, and I think that idea of hitting this as hard as we can makes sense. You hear about flattening the curve. Yes, we need to do that. In the process, everything we are doing has now been thrown in front of probably the strongest economy that you could ever imagine. Look how frail it can be when something comes along that you don't understand and that you fear. Over the next 2 to 3 days, we are going to be wrestling with something that probably is going to be as tough as anything we have confronted as a country. I thought, at first, well, we would get through this, especially if it wasn't going to be a real tough thing to get rid of. That is not the case. This is going to take everything we have. What we are doing this weekend ought to be based upon the commonality that all of us believe we should take care of the hard-working individuals who have been displaced by this and small businesses. We have that nucleus to start from. Of course, it begs the question: What do you do about other parts of the economy? Well, my feeling is what we do tomorrow is not going to be the last thing we do to make sure we take this on with a full head of steam. I am getting input from middle America, from my home State, from people whom I really trust their judgment. They are saying, yes, we want to make sure we do everything and throw the kitchen sink at it. We want to make sure that we protect the most vulnerable--the people who have a preexisting condition, mostly elderly--impacted in the State of Washington and other places. I am increasingly asked the question: Do we want to keep plowing forward, regardless of what the results are? If the economy is starting to show what it is showing, which has so much fear and anxiety built into it, how long can we put up with it? What we are going to do this weekend is the first major effort at restoring confidence in the economy. I am sure we will come back again soon because, like I said earlier, it is not the end of it. At some point, we need to carefully measure the progress we are making against the cause of it in the first place and make sure that that is working the way we intended it to work, which is to make sure that we take care of the most vulnerable and protect them from the ravages of the coronavirus. So 10 days, 2 weeks down the road, I think we are going to be at a pivotal point. We are going to see if the early effort has worked. We all pray that it does. We are going to see what our efforts are going to yield and generate here this weekend, and then I want to make sure that, at that pivot point, when we need to look at this again, do we keep doing what we are doing, or do we do what seems to make sense, maybe make some adjustments, maybe focus on a different approach that does not systematically take the patient down: a healthy economy. I think we all want to accomplish the same thing. We are going to start this weekend. Please, both sides of the aisle, don't quibble and don't bicker about some of the details because this is urgent. The American public expects us to do something. Then, here in another 10 days to 2 weeks, we need to look at it again and make sure we make the right decisions that really are in the long-term interest of tamping down the coronavirus and not killing a very healthy patient--our economy--that now looks like it is hurting. Thank you. I yield the floor.
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2020-01-06
|
Mr. BRAUN
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-03-19-pt1-PgS1860-3
| null | 501
|
formal
|
terrorist
| null |
Islamophobic
|
Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, on September 11, America was attacked by evil. Thousands of our countrymen were murdered by terrorists. In an instant, the Nation was gripped with fear and anxiety. And as our buildings burned, we mourned the loss of our fellow Americans, but as we mourned, we also became very united as a country. We came together and stood as one against a common enemy. That unity laid a foundation for our victory, and it helped our military men and women deliver justice to those who sought to destroy us. Now, we confront a similar challenge. Unlike the 9/11 attacks, our enemy today is faceless. We can't see or hear that enemy. We can't send our Armed Forces to hunt it down and protect us, but much like our response to the terrorist attacks nearly 20 years ago, we must unite as a country. The threat we face is perhaps the greatest since World War II. So much like our response to the terrorist attacks 20 years ago, we will be united. Never before have we shuttered so much of our country: businesses closing, restaurants particularly, all kinds of--just stay at home, in other words. Never before has our society changed so much, seemingly overnight. The coronavirus issue could prove as deadly as any war in recent history, and that is why it is everyone's responsibility to do their part. In Congress, we have already passed legislation to provide emergency relief, and our job isn't done yet. Further, unprecedented economic and public health support is on the way, but what we do in Washington and State capitols across our country is only one part of that solution. It is the civic duty of every community, every family, and every individual to enlist in this fight. Make no mistake, our Nation is at war--a war on our own soil. This war and this enemy aren't like anything that we fought before. Our strategy and tactics will be different, but the stakes are just as high. This war will not be waged on foreign lands with tanks or guns or troops. It will be waged right here in hospitals and public places and in homes and with personal responsibility, personalsacrifice, and patience on the part of our people. It is on every American to exercise these values: Do not gather in large groups. Don't hoard crucial goods. Keep your distance from those you must be near. Protect yourself and others by washing your hands, covering your cough and sneeze, and cleaning commonly used surfaces. Work from home if you can. Check on your neighbors. Call your relatives. Offer to help each other, especially the most vulnerable. We are all in this together. Much as we did before, we must shed party labels and put aside partisan politics. We must band together and hold on to our national identity, our families, and, most importantly, our faith. Throughout history, Americans have risen to the occasion when confronted with crises. I am confident this time will be no different. It is up to each and every American to fight the spread of this deadly virus. Countless lives depend on it. The days and months ahead will be tough for everyone. But just like post-World War II, a safer, a healthier, and a more prosperous United States of America is just around the corner I yield the floor.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. GRASSLEY
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-03-20-pt1-PgS1861-7
| null | 502
|
formal
|
terrorists
| null |
Islamophobic
|
Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, on September 11, America was attacked by evil. Thousands of our countrymen were murdered by terrorists. In an instant, the Nation was gripped with fear and anxiety. And as our buildings burned, we mourned the loss of our fellow Americans, but as we mourned, we also became very united as a country. We came together and stood as one against a common enemy. That unity laid a foundation for our victory, and it helped our military men and women deliver justice to those who sought to destroy us. Now, we confront a similar challenge. Unlike the 9/11 attacks, our enemy today is faceless. We can't see or hear that enemy. We can't send our Armed Forces to hunt it down and protect us, but much like our response to the terrorist attacks nearly 20 years ago, we must unite as a country. The threat we face is perhaps the greatest since World War II. So much like our response to the terrorist attacks 20 years ago, we will be united. Never before have we shuttered so much of our country: businesses closing, restaurants particularly, all kinds of--just stay at home, in other words. Never before has our society changed so much, seemingly overnight. The coronavirus issue could prove as deadly as any war in recent history, and that is why it is everyone's responsibility to do their part. In Congress, we have already passed legislation to provide emergency relief, and our job isn't done yet. Further, unprecedented economic and public health support is on the way, but what we do in Washington and State capitols across our country is only one part of that solution. It is the civic duty of every community, every family, and every individual to enlist in this fight. Make no mistake, our Nation is at war--a war on our own soil. This war and this enemy aren't like anything that we fought before. Our strategy and tactics will be different, but the stakes are just as high. This war will not be waged on foreign lands with tanks or guns or troops. It will be waged right here in hospitals and public places and in homes and with personal responsibility, personalsacrifice, and patience on the part of our people. It is on every American to exercise these values: Do not gather in large groups. Don't hoard crucial goods. Keep your distance from those you must be near. Protect yourself and others by washing your hands, covering your cough and sneeze, and cleaning commonly used surfaces. Work from home if you can. Check on your neighbors. Call your relatives. Offer to help each other, especially the most vulnerable. We are all in this together. Much as we did before, we must shed party labels and put aside partisan politics. We must band together and hold on to our national identity, our families, and, most importantly, our faith. Throughout history, Americans have risen to the occasion when confronted with crises. I am confident this time will be no different. It is up to each and every American to fight the spread of this deadly virus. Countless lives depend on it. The days and months ahead will be tough for everyone. But just like post-World War II, a safer, a healthier, and a more prosperous United States of America is just around the corner I yield the floor.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. GRASSLEY
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-03-20-pt1-PgS1861-7
| null | 503
|
formal
|
personal responsibility
| null |
racist
|
Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, on September 11, America was attacked by evil. Thousands of our countrymen were murdered by terrorists. In an instant, the Nation was gripped with fear and anxiety. And as our buildings burned, we mourned the loss of our fellow Americans, but as we mourned, we also became very united as a country. We came together and stood as one against a common enemy. That unity laid a foundation for our victory, and it helped our military men and women deliver justice to those who sought to destroy us. Now, we confront a similar challenge. Unlike the 9/11 attacks, our enemy today is faceless. We can't see or hear that enemy. We can't send our Armed Forces to hunt it down and protect us, but much like our response to the terrorist attacks nearly 20 years ago, we must unite as a country. The threat we face is perhaps the greatest since World War II. So much like our response to the terrorist attacks 20 years ago, we will be united. Never before have we shuttered so much of our country: businesses closing, restaurants particularly, all kinds of--just stay at home, in other words. Never before has our society changed so much, seemingly overnight. The coronavirus issue could prove as deadly as any war in recent history, and that is why it is everyone's responsibility to do their part. In Congress, we have already passed legislation to provide emergency relief, and our job isn't done yet. Further, unprecedented economic and public health support is on the way, but what we do in Washington and State capitols across our country is only one part of that solution. It is the civic duty of every community, every family, and every individual to enlist in this fight. Make no mistake, our Nation is at war--a war on our own soil. This war and this enemy aren't like anything that we fought before. Our strategy and tactics will be different, but the stakes are just as high. This war will not be waged on foreign lands with tanks or guns or troops. It will be waged right here in hospitals and public places and in homes and with personal responsibility, personalsacrifice, and patience on the part of our people. It is on every American to exercise these values: Do not gather in large groups. Don't hoard crucial goods. Keep your distance from those you must be near. Protect yourself and others by washing your hands, covering your cough and sneeze, and cleaning commonly used surfaces. Work from home if you can. Check on your neighbors. Call your relatives. Offer to help each other, especially the most vulnerable. We are all in this together. Much as we did before, we must shed party labels and put aside partisan politics. We must band together and hold on to our national identity, our families, and, most importantly, our faith. Throughout history, Americans have risen to the occasion when confronted with crises. I am confident this time will be no different. It is up to each and every American to fight the spread of this deadly virus. Countless lives depend on it. The days and months ahead will be tough for everyone. But just like post-World War II, a safer, a healthier, and a more prosperous United States of America is just around the corner I yield the floor.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. GRASSLEY
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-03-20-pt1-PgS1861-7
| null | 504
|
formal
|
job creator
| null |
conservative
|
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, yesterday I introduced the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act: Senate Republicans' bold proposal to continue combating this health crisis and the economic crisis it is causing. And I called on our Democratic counterparts to join us immediately at the table for urgent discussions so the Senate can deliver measured relief to the American people as soon as humanly possible. I am glad to say that talks are already well underway. Earlier this morning, a number of our committee chairmen began indepth, bipartisan talks with their Democratic counterparts. We were joined by representatives from the administration, and those talks continue right now as we speak. Here are the next steps: These Member-level discussions will proceed with the goal of reaching agreements on each of four components of the legislation by the end of today--by the end of today, agreements on each of these four components. This would allow the first procedural vote to occur before the end of the day tomorrow, and that would allow a bipartisan package focused on immediate challenges to pass the Senate Monday. The Nation's needs and expectations are perfectly clear. Workers, families, small businesses, and the foundations of our economy itself need swift action. And in the Senate, ``swift'' means bipartisan. The Senate rose to the occasion earlier this month. We united across party lines to pass billions in quick funding to support the medical response, and we did it again just this week. We passed the more modest proposal that came over from the Democratic House quickly and in a bipartisan fashion. Now our Nation needs a major next step, and we need it fast. That is why Senate Republicans produced a bold initial proposal to give shape and structure to these discussions. First, our CARES Act will deliver direct financial help as quickly as possible to the American people. Senate Republicans want to put cash in Americans' hands. For Americans who have lost work, this would be the quickest possible first wave of government assistance to supplement unemployment insurance and help with bills and immediate needs. For our Nation's seniors, this would supplement Social Security and provide further relief to those who are at heightened risk and have had to change their routines literally overnight. And for Americans still working, this infusion of money would provide a little more certainty in this very uncertain moment and the opportunities to invest in local economies where possible. Second, our proposal would provide the quickest possible access to desperately needed liquidity for small businesses all across our country. Our proposal would use existing channels and small businesses' existing lending relationships to provide hundreds of billions of dollars in emergency capital, a significant cash infusion as fast as possible so that more small businesses can hold on to their workers, weather this disruption, and come out on the other side instead of having to resort to layoffs or shutdowns right away. So no tangled new bureaucracies, no delay of this urgent aid while we try to redesign complex programs from the ground up, just the most direct path--the most direct path to the cash that small businesses need to keep making payroll, while, in many cases, the government itself is chasing away their customers for the sake of public health. This straightforward approach is already earning support. A coalition of small business advocates has already written to express their hope that ``both Republicans and Democrats can come together'' to pass this. Third, our bill recognizes a big, structural, national crisis requires a big, structural response. Let me say that again. Our bill recognizes that a big, structural national crisis requires a big, structural response. We want to empower the Treasury Department to engage in targeted lending--not bailouts but loans--to key sectors and industries which this pandemic is hurting. Again, we want to preserve employer-employee relationships wherever we can. We have to fight to protect jobs, and we need to recognize that our Nation will need industries to come back online quickly on the other side of the crisis. Fourth--and this is crucial--our legislation will continue to push surged resources to the frontlines of the medical battle against the virus itself. We want to expand access to testing and treatment to further encourage and speed up research on therapeutics and eventually vaccines, to continue to fund the hospitals and health centers that are treating patients, and we want to expand healthcare workers' access to critical equipment and supplies, including--including--respirator masks. These are the four big things our bill seeks to do. As we speak, at this very moment, Senators on both sides are discussing the details and exchanging suggestions on all four of the pillars that I have just outlined. So, once again, this will not be the first bill we pass to combat this crisis or the second, and I do not expect it will be the last. This legislation does not need to contain every piece of the ongoing national effort. In fact, that would be impossible. But everyone--everyone--from public health experts to economists, to working families of this country--everyone--has made it clear that we need to deliver relief and we need to deliver it now. We need to go big. We need to minimize new complexity, and we need to move swiftly. We need to push immediate relief to Americans. We need to keep Americans employed as much as possible and help job creators literally stay afloat. We need to continue taking action to stand with medical professionals and protect our Nation's health. Laid-off workers cannot wait. Struggling Main Street businesses cannot wait. Our hospitals and health centers cannot wait. So, as I said, I hope these Member-level discussions will be able to produce agreements in principle on all four components by the end of the day today. In fact, they must reach agreement by the end of the day today. That would leave tomorrow for drafting legislative text and for the first procedural vote on the shell. And that should allow a bipartisan package, focused on immediate challenges, to pass the Senate on Monday. The crisis is moving fast. The Senate is here, we are working, and we are going to deliver.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. McCONNELL
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-03-20-pt1-PgS1862-2
| null | 505
|
formal
|
job creators
| null |
conservative
|
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, yesterday I introduced the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act: Senate Republicans' bold proposal to continue combating this health crisis and the economic crisis it is causing. And I called on our Democratic counterparts to join us immediately at the table for urgent discussions so the Senate can deliver measured relief to the American people as soon as humanly possible. I am glad to say that talks are already well underway. Earlier this morning, a number of our committee chairmen began indepth, bipartisan talks with their Democratic counterparts. We were joined by representatives from the administration, and those talks continue right now as we speak. Here are the next steps: These Member-level discussions will proceed with the goal of reaching agreements on each of four components of the legislation by the end of today--by the end of today, agreements on each of these four components. This would allow the first procedural vote to occur before the end of the day tomorrow, and that would allow a bipartisan package focused on immediate challenges to pass the Senate Monday. The Nation's needs and expectations are perfectly clear. Workers, families, small businesses, and the foundations of our economy itself need swift action. And in the Senate, ``swift'' means bipartisan. The Senate rose to the occasion earlier this month. We united across party lines to pass billions in quick funding to support the medical response, and we did it again just this week. We passed the more modest proposal that came over from the Democratic House quickly and in a bipartisan fashion. Now our Nation needs a major next step, and we need it fast. That is why Senate Republicans produced a bold initial proposal to give shape and structure to these discussions. First, our CARES Act will deliver direct financial help as quickly as possible to the American people. Senate Republicans want to put cash in Americans' hands. For Americans who have lost work, this would be the quickest possible first wave of government assistance to supplement unemployment insurance and help with bills and immediate needs. For our Nation's seniors, this would supplement Social Security and provide further relief to those who are at heightened risk and have had to change their routines literally overnight. And for Americans still working, this infusion of money would provide a little more certainty in this very uncertain moment and the opportunities to invest in local economies where possible. Second, our proposal would provide the quickest possible access to desperately needed liquidity for small businesses all across our country. Our proposal would use existing channels and small businesses' existing lending relationships to provide hundreds of billions of dollars in emergency capital, a significant cash infusion as fast as possible so that more small businesses can hold on to their workers, weather this disruption, and come out on the other side instead of having to resort to layoffs or shutdowns right away. So no tangled new bureaucracies, no delay of this urgent aid while we try to redesign complex programs from the ground up, just the most direct path--the most direct path to the cash that small businesses need to keep making payroll, while, in many cases, the government itself is chasing away their customers for the sake of public health. This straightforward approach is already earning support. A coalition of small business advocates has already written to express their hope that ``both Republicans and Democrats can come together'' to pass this. Third, our bill recognizes a big, structural, national crisis requires a big, structural response. Let me say that again. Our bill recognizes that a big, structural national crisis requires a big, structural response. We want to empower the Treasury Department to engage in targeted lending--not bailouts but loans--to key sectors and industries which this pandemic is hurting. Again, we want to preserve employer-employee relationships wherever we can. We have to fight to protect jobs, and we need to recognize that our Nation will need industries to come back online quickly on the other side of the crisis. Fourth--and this is crucial--our legislation will continue to push surged resources to the frontlines of the medical battle against the virus itself. We want to expand access to testing and treatment to further encourage and speed up research on therapeutics and eventually vaccines, to continue to fund the hospitals and health centers that are treating patients, and we want to expand healthcare workers' access to critical equipment and supplies, including--including--respirator masks. These are the four big things our bill seeks to do. As we speak, at this very moment, Senators on both sides are discussing the details and exchanging suggestions on all four of the pillars that I have just outlined. So, once again, this will not be the first bill we pass to combat this crisis or the second, and I do not expect it will be the last. This legislation does not need to contain every piece of the ongoing national effort. In fact, that would be impossible. But everyone--everyone--from public health experts to economists, to working families of this country--everyone--has made it clear that we need to deliver relief and we need to deliver it now. We need to go big. We need to minimize new complexity, and we need to move swiftly. We need to push immediate relief to Americans. We need to keep Americans employed as much as possible and help job creators literally stay afloat. We need to continue taking action to stand with medical professionals and protect our Nation's health. Laid-off workers cannot wait. Struggling Main Street businesses cannot wait. Our hospitals and health centers cannot wait. So, as I said, I hope these Member-level discussions will be able to produce agreements in principle on all four components by the end of the day today. In fact, they must reach agreement by the end of the day today. That would leave tomorrow for drafting legislative text and for the first procedural vote on the shell. And that should allow a bipartisan package, focused on immediate challenges, to pass the Senate on Monday. The crisis is moving fast. The Senate is here, we are working, and we are going to deliver.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. McCONNELL
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-03-20-pt1-PgS1862-2
| null | 506
|
formal
|
working families
| null |
racist
|
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, yesterday I introduced the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act: Senate Republicans' bold proposal to continue combating this health crisis and the economic crisis it is causing. And I called on our Democratic counterparts to join us immediately at the table for urgent discussions so the Senate can deliver measured relief to the American people as soon as humanly possible. I am glad to say that talks are already well underway. Earlier this morning, a number of our committee chairmen began indepth, bipartisan talks with their Democratic counterparts. We were joined by representatives from the administration, and those talks continue right now as we speak. Here are the next steps: These Member-level discussions will proceed with the goal of reaching agreements on each of four components of the legislation by the end of today--by the end of today, agreements on each of these four components. This would allow the first procedural vote to occur before the end of the day tomorrow, and that would allow a bipartisan package focused on immediate challenges to pass the Senate Monday. The Nation's needs and expectations are perfectly clear. Workers, families, small businesses, and the foundations of our economy itself need swift action. And in the Senate, ``swift'' means bipartisan. The Senate rose to the occasion earlier this month. We united across party lines to pass billions in quick funding to support the medical response, and we did it again just this week. We passed the more modest proposal that came over from the Democratic House quickly and in a bipartisan fashion. Now our Nation needs a major next step, and we need it fast. That is why Senate Republicans produced a bold initial proposal to give shape and structure to these discussions. First, our CARES Act will deliver direct financial help as quickly as possible to the American people. Senate Republicans want to put cash in Americans' hands. For Americans who have lost work, this would be the quickest possible first wave of government assistance to supplement unemployment insurance and help with bills and immediate needs. For our Nation's seniors, this would supplement Social Security and provide further relief to those who are at heightened risk and have had to change their routines literally overnight. And for Americans still working, this infusion of money would provide a little more certainty in this very uncertain moment and the opportunities to invest in local economies where possible. Second, our proposal would provide the quickest possible access to desperately needed liquidity for small businesses all across our country. Our proposal would use existing channels and small businesses' existing lending relationships to provide hundreds of billions of dollars in emergency capital, a significant cash infusion as fast as possible so that more small businesses can hold on to their workers, weather this disruption, and come out on the other side instead of having to resort to layoffs or shutdowns right away. So no tangled new bureaucracies, no delay of this urgent aid while we try to redesign complex programs from the ground up, just the most direct path--the most direct path to the cash that small businesses need to keep making payroll, while, in many cases, the government itself is chasing away their customers for the sake of public health. This straightforward approach is already earning support. A coalition of small business advocates has already written to express their hope that ``both Republicans and Democrats can come together'' to pass this. Third, our bill recognizes a big, structural, national crisis requires a big, structural response. Let me say that again. Our bill recognizes that a big, structural national crisis requires a big, structural response. We want to empower the Treasury Department to engage in targeted lending--not bailouts but loans--to key sectors and industries which this pandemic is hurting. Again, we want to preserve employer-employee relationships wherever we can. We have to fight to protect jobs, and we need to recognize that our Nation will need industries to come back online quickly on the other side of the crisis. Fourth--and this is crucial--our legislation will continue to push surged resources to the frontlines of the medical battle against the virus itself. We want to expand access to testing and treatment to further encourage and speed up research on therapeutics and eventually vaccines, to continue to fund the hospitals and health centers that are treating patients, and we want to expand healthcare workers' access to critical equipment and supplies, including--including--respirator masks. These are the four big things our bill seeks to do. As we speak, at this very moment, Senators on both sides are discussing the details and exchanging suggestions on all four of the pillars that I have just outlined. So, once again, this will not be the first bill we pass to combat this crisis or the second, and I do not expect it will be the last. This legislation does not need to contain every piece of the ongoing national effort. In fact, that would be impossible. But everyone--everyone--from public health experts to economists, to working families of this country--everyone--has made it clear that we need to deliver relief and we need to deliver it now. We need to go big. We need to minimize new complexity, and we need to move swiftly. We need to push immediate relief to Americans. We need to keep Americans employed as much as possible and help job creators literally stay afloat. We need to continue taking action to stand with medical professionals and protect our Nation's health. Laid-off workers cannot wait. Struggling Main Street businesses cannot wait. Our hospitals and health centers cannot wait. So, as I said, I hope these Member-level discussions will be able to produce agreements in principle on all four components by the end of the day today. In fact, they must reach agreement by the end of the day today. That would leave tomorrow for drafting legislative text and for the first procedural vote on the shell. And that should allow a bipartisan package, focused on immediate challenges, to pass the Senate on Monday. The crisis is moving fast. The Senate is here, we are working, and we are going to deliver.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. McCONNELL
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-03-20-pt1-PgS1862-2
| null | 507
|
formal
|
working families
| null |
racist
|
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, yesterday I came to the floor with some optimism about what we could be includingin the legislation currently being considered in the Senate to respond to the coronavirus public health emergency. I laid out priorities ranging from shoring up the hospital systems to measures to provide direct assistance to students, workers, businesses, and families through this economic crisis. Since that time, Leader McConnell has released the Republican draft of his offering for this third package. It is a 250-page bill that some estimate will cost $1 trillion. That is a daunting pricetag, except when you put it in context of the American economy and what it takes to keep us on track or put us back on track. Our top priority must be immediate, direct relief to the healthcare sector--our heroic doctors, nurses, first responders, lab techs, and the hospitals and health clinics they support. Yesterday I spent an hour on the telephone with the Governor of Illinois, J.B. Pritzker, talking about the reality on the ground in my home State and the choices he faced. It is a tough job being Governor--never tougher than when you have to make a decision about the lifestyle of families and individuals, about the businesses and their future, and, literally, a life-and-death choice in terms of policy. No one willingly accepts that, but when you run for high office, there is always that possibility. He is concerned--and I share his concern--about the capacity of our hospitals and clinics in Illinois to deal with the infections that are becoming more and more common in our State. The numbers of infections are growing as the number of tests are increasing, which is an indication that there are many undiagnosed people in our midst, and that number is likely to continue to increase. Those who administer the hospitals of Illinois have given us some yardsticks to measure the future. They suggest to us that if 20 percent of the population of my State should become infected for a 12-month period of time, they will need 88 percent of our hospital resources to respond. If that same 20 percent becomes infected over a 6-month period of time, it will be double that capacity; in other words, 176 percent of our current hospital capacity. It would push our system beyond the breaking point. If the infection rate, though, is double that--40 percent for any period of time--our hospitals, as good as they are, as big as they are, as prepared as they are, can't handle it. If that is the situation in our State, it is the situation in many other States. At that point, we will be dealing with serious overcrowding and triage decisions being made under heartbreaking circumstances. That is why many of us on this side of the aisle feel that this third package offered by the other side really needs to be changed and improved so that we do have what Senator Schumer is calling a Marshall Plan for the hospital work healthcare of America. We desperately need it, and we need it now. Waiting to come and face us at a later date makes it that much more difficult. Our health system is currently stretched to its absolute limit: surge staffing, emergency protocols, shortfalls of masks and protective equipment, and cashflow running out in just weeks. The plan that we have before us--the draft plan from the other side--does not address these needs. It has no new appropriations, no real funding or authorization for staffing or equipment and only meager changes when it comes to programs like Medicare. What this pandemic demands is that Marshall Plan for healthcare, an immediate funding boost to our healthcare systems, clinics, and health departments, mass production of masks, respirators, gloves, and ventilators. Two days ago, the President acknowledged that he has the authority, under what I believe is called the Defense Recovery Act, to say to manufacturers: change whatever you are making and make more respirators and change whatever you are making in terms of masks and make more medical-grade masks to meet the needs across this country. I hope the President will use that authority. That is why it was created in the law. We also need to support our workforce. We need to increase Medicaid funding, and we need to put an end to Medicare sequestration and DSH cuts. I am also calling for the inclusion in this package of a bill known as the Rural Hospital Relief Act. I am cosponsoring that bill with Senator James Lankford, a Republican, of Oklahoma. It would keep the most financially vulnerable hospitals afloat during this challenging time by providing them access to the stability of the Critical Access Hospital Program. Every State with smalltown hospitals and rural hospitals should pay close attention to this bill that we put in. It could be a great help to hospitals that are otherwise struggling. Anything less, I am afraid, we will be turning our backs on the selfless and heroic work of the frontline health workers. How can we say enough about these nurses and doctors and healthcare workers--these men and women--who literally risk their lives for every patient that comes through the door. We need to maintain access to healthcare for people who lose their jobs as a result of this pandemic too. We must offer Federal funding to cover the costs of COBRA coverage for people who lose their jobs but want to keep health insurance. Currently, if you lose your job and you have health insurance where you work, you can maintain your current health insurance, but you have to pay for the employer's share since you no longer work there. The premiums go through the roof in those circumstances, and many people can't afford these COBRA payments. Why don't we include in this third package coming before us a subsidy for those families so they can keep their health insurance, even if they are not on the job? We certainly don't want them uninsured. It is not good for them. It is not good for our country. It is certainly not good for our health system. It is bad enough that millions of people may lose their jobs; we don't want to also have them lose their healthcare in the midst of a public health emergency. Let's step up and help them now. I was not included during the drafting of the bill that was presented by Senator McConnell, but I would like to give two pieces of feedback from two colleagues from his side of the aisle. The first said, referring to this package: Relief to families in this emergency shouldn't be regressive. Lower income families shouldn't be penalized. That was a quote from Senator Hawley of Missouri, a Republican Senator. A second Republican Senator said, referring to this draft package: [T]he current bill . . . shouldn't give lower earners smaller checks . . . that's directly contrary to my proposal . . . we need to fix this to ensure lower earners get equal payments. That quote is from Senator Romney of Utah. I agree with both of them. We should make sure that if there is any financial relief coming to people across the country, those in lower income categories should get as much, or more, than anyone else. I cannot agree more with their assessment. The direct cash benefit measure in this plan would give those the most in need of assistance in the lower income categories sometimes nothing at all. Additionally, the bill contains a provision that would allow middle and higher income earners to receive more of a benefit than low to moderate earners. That is upside down. Goldman Sachs released projections this week that unemployment claims may rise to 2.25 million this week. That would be the highest level on record. This proposal that we have been given by the other side falls far short of making sure we have enough resources to deal with this influx of unemployment claims. The bill also lacks any moratorium on evictions and foreclosures, leaving those who are particularly vulnerable at risk of being cast out on the street during a public health crisis. Instead of expanding paid sick leave to more who need it, I am afraid the new bill tries to further limit that protection. The McConnell bill provides no additional funds to the military. We have a supplemental appropriation which is supposed to be taken up. Why isn't it married into this bill? Why don't we do it all at once, get it done? We know we are going to need it, and there is no point in delaying it. We need to help our military, and we need to provide resources to many ofour States that are high and dry because of the cost of dealing with this public health crisis and the additional claims on their unemployment benefits. We need the National Guard and the Defense Department pushing assistance to every level of government during the pandemic. That means supplying masks and ventilators and beds to communities that need them. I am also, with Senator Duckworth--my colleague of Illinois--reaching out directly to the Department of Defense. I want to find out if we can start building field hospitals in the parking lots of major hospitals across our State. We have done it before when we had to--particularly when dealing with the Ebola crisis overseas--and we need to do that right here at home and take the expertise of the Army Corps of Engineers and other professionals at the Pentagon. They are ready to move at a moment's notice to build a field hospital, if needed, for our men and women in uniform. Let's take that same willingness and expertise and translate it into more bed capacity and room capacity at the hospitals most in need. The protective equipment across this country still is not at the level it should be for the men and women in the military as well as those in civilian life. The proposal before us ignores the desperation we are hearing from cities and town and States. Without tax revenues coming in, they are running out of cash to keep operating services and meeting payroll. We need a surge of Federal funding through current programs with flexibility for States and localities to allow them to keep paying their workers and ensuring things like transit, airports, schools, and housing. The McConnell plan also does not provide much needed education assistance to deal with the increased expenses related to closing schools and moving to online learning. We have to make sure that this new technology keeps our kids learning, even though they may be home in the process. It provides nothing for these emergency needs. That bill, I hope, will be improved today as the Democrats get a chance to sit down with Republicans for the first time and talk about compromises. The Republican majority leader himself said this is a public health crisis with an economic crisis strapped to its back. I couldn't agree more. Where are the test kits? Where is the protective equipment? Where is the assistance for working families? Let's get it done. The Senator from Kentucky is giving us a deadline to do it by tomorrow. I think that is ambitious, but let's try to meet it and do it on a bipartisan basis. I couldn't agree more that some affected industries--like the airlines and hospitality, along with small and midsized businesses--need to be assisted. We can also take care of American workers and families at the same time. I think it is incumbent on us to do both. In short, the Senate needs to act now to fix the major flaws pointed out by both Republicans and Democrats in this third package. I stand ready to work on these fixes. Just a few minutes ago, I left one of the working groups, and it was a very positive atmosphere and attitude in which the two sides were sitting down and trying to work out their differences. For the dark time ahead, we need to continue reminding American people that we can rise to the challenge--both political parties--not to politically fight but to find political answers and compromises that solve these problems I have outlined here today. The bottom line is, people are sitting at home. Some are even following C-SPAN in their absolute boredom, trying to figure out what to do with their lives, and they are listening to our speeches. My report is this: We passed two major pieces of legislation involving billions of dollars. We have done it in record time. We have done it on a bipartisan basis. Both have been signed by the President. This third measure that may reach a trillion dollars in cost is a challenge, for sure, but one we can meet again on a bipartisan basis. We owe America, at this moment in our history, nothing less. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. DURBIN
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-03-20-pt1-PgS1863-3
| null | 508
|
formal
|
tax cut
| null |
racist
|
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, the coronavirus continues to challenge our Nation in extraordinary ways that were unimaginable a few weeks ago. Our public health systems are coming under enormous strain. Our hospitals and other medical facilities lack the necessary supplies and resources. As measures to isolate the public broaden, workers are filing for unemployment at unprecedented rates. Small businesses are on the brink of collapse. American families are desperately in need of support until they can resume their normal lives. I have heard from these people and the people who are isolated. I have heard from people who have sick loved ones in nursing homes and can't enter to see them. I have heard from small business people who struggled their whole lives to build a small business, and it finally looks like it is beginning to succeed, and they may be wiped out. The urgency of doing something now is so important. Both parties in Congress must work together as swiftly as possible to get something done that is as big and bold as possible. This is one of the worst crises America has faced. The American people need help fast. Senator McConnell has proposed what is now the third phase of legislation to confront the coronavirus. We are all eager to work in a bipartisan way to quickly get another bill to the President's desk. But at the moment, the McConnell bill is inadequate. Leader McConnell's proposal does not do nearly enough to address the public health crisis in terms of hospitals, medical supplies, beds, doctors, nurses, and measures to ensure that Americans can access and afford coronavirus treatment. The bottom line is very simple: If we don't deal with the health crisis, nothing we do will make the economy any better. So that is No. 1. If we don't have help for our hospitals, many small ones are going to close. Rural ones will close. Big ones will have real trouble. We must do something. Yet there is nothing in Leader McConnell's bill to help hospitals. Now we are told we may do it later in a supplemental. Later is no good. We need a Marshall Plan for hospitals right now. Local governments that are also on the frontlines need to get dollars in their pockets. Many of them will go broke. Leader McConnell's proposal is also skewed in favor of corporations rather than the workers and families who urgently and much more acutely feel the pain of reduced hours and unemployment. Leader McConnell's proposal includes a few ideas that shouldn't be included at all, such as tax cuts for multinational corporations and restrictions on paid sick leave that Congress just expanded. This morning, Democratic ranking members of six committees met with the Republican chairs of corresponding committees to hear the rationale behind the McConnell bill and to begin a bipartisan dialogue. Democrats will soon respond with policies we believe must be included in the legislation and things that we don't think belong in this legislation. Our goal is twofold: Address the public health crisis now, and put workers first as we do it. Democrats want to do as much as possible to prepare our healthcare system for the growing storm it faces, and we want to help the working Americans who are most immediately affected by the economic slowdown and help them in real and significant ways. In that respect, Democrats have five important priorities that I will speak about now, among others. We have many other priorities as well. We are sending all of our priorities over to the Republicans soon enough. No. 1, America needs a Marshall Plan for hospitals and our public health infrastructure. In a few weeks, hospitals could be overrun with patients, and there will still be a great shortage of gloves, masks, ICU beds, ventilators, and especially testing. To cite just one example, the two biggest hospitals in Albany--Albany Medical Center and St. Peter's Health Partners--announced they are suspending testing in order to conserve the few they have for healthcare workers and high-risk patients. Access to tests continues to be a problem in other places throughout my State as well. There is great shortage of equipment. The story that rings in my ear is that certain places that have the tests don't have the swabs so they can undertake the tests. We are short of supplies up and down the line. It is masks. It is protective clothing and gear. It is beds. It is doctors and nurses themselves. We have to do more. We need a Marshall Plan right now for our healthcare system. Two weeks ago, 3, 4 weeks ago, many of us were talking about the problem that testing--the lack of good testing was about to occur. Many of us said 3 weeks ago, 4 weeks ago, that if we don't have these tests, everything is going to go down the drain. No one listened--at least no one in the administration--until recently. Well, we are saying now that in 2, 3 weeks, our hospital situation will be the same. It will be massive and deeply in trouble. That is why we need to act now--not later with a supplemental but now. We also need to dramatically increase unemployment insurance--what we are calling employment insurance. It is really unemployment insurance on steroids. But it helps people furloughed from their jobs, so we call it employment insurance. Why do we need it? Because so many workers have been forced home and are prevented from working regular hours. If you work in a restaurant and there are no customers, you are not going to work. The boss you worked for and worked so well with for years can't afford to pay you. To go on existing unemployment insurance won't work. It is hard to access. It doesn't cover a whole lot of people. Furthermore, it does not pay back workers the full wages they were earning. We need to change all three of those things so that, No. 1, every worker who is unemployed gets a paycheck equal to what they were earning before this crisis, paid for by the Federal Government. That way, the business--small, medium, large--can put them on furlough, and then, when the crisis is over, they are back. There is money in their pockets. No workers, no family, no one should lose a paycheck or go into financial ruin as a result of the coronavirus. This is a very important provision. I talk to people all across my State and the country, and when they hear about it, they love it. It is not giving money to everybody. There are some people, thank God, who are still employed, but there are many, many people who have lost their jobs, and one check, when they may be out of their jobs for 3, 4, 5 months, isn't going to be enough. Unemployment insurance gives money the whole period of time the crisis exists at your present salary level and covers just about everyone. It makes the most sense of any program that I have heard in dealing with those who are losing their jobs, and it helps in terms of dealing with stimulating the economy because we will bring the economy back to where it was. All these unemployed people will be getting paid the same amount of money. Third, paid sick leave is a must. We need to be expanding paid sick leave, not restricting it, as this current proposal suggests. Senators Murray and Gillibrand, working in conjunction with their colleague Congresswoman DeLauro in the House, put together a good bill. It should be in this big proposal. Fourth, we need to put our workers first. If we are going to consider bailing out industries, they cannot then be allowed to turn around and cut jobs, cut wages, cut benefits. They cannot be allowed to use the money for stock buybacks. They cannot be allowed to give salary increases to executives. Phase 3 needs to put workers first, period. These are our values. Finally, we need to rescue small businesses. Many of them have been asked to close their doors for the sake of public safety. We need to help businesses access the necessary liquidity to pay their insurance bills, to pay their rent or mortgage, to pay their expenses so that when this crisis ends, they can rebound stronger than ever. Democratic ranking members are already discussing these priorities with their Republican counterparts. Of course, there are many other priorities as well. It would take too long to highlight all of them, but they are all in white paper we have sent to Leader McConnell and to the Republican chairs. In almost all these cases, Democrats already have prepared and drafted the legislative language on these priorities. We are ready to go. About 2 hours ago, I spoke with President Trump about these five priorities. I mentioned them all, and President Trump told me he was open to these ideas. In fact, the President explicitly told me he would oppose companies using bailout money on buybacks, even though such a prohibition is not in McConnell's bill. I also urged the President to immediately employ the Defense Production Act and harness industry to get ventilators and other critically needed medical equipment to those who need it. He told me he would do so and then said to someone who must have been in the Oval Office--or wherever he was--to get it done. So I think we are on the road, because we can't waste a day in terms of getting the DPA going. Congress will make available very quickly whatever resources are needed to the Defense Department in order to implement this act. More broadly, I told the President we need to come together and cooperate in this time of national crisis. He agreed. We need to work with uncommon speed and make this next bill what it needs to be. We need it to be workers first, with a Marshall Plan for hospitals. The Democrats are already at work with our Republican colleagues to get this done. Now, it has been 20 days since the first case of COVID-19 was detected in New York. Today, 20 days later, there are 7,000 cases--more than a third of the total number in our country. In a time of public emergency, New Yorkers have been asked to make extraordinary sacrifices. The Governor has just mandated that, excepting essential services, 100 percent of New York's workforce must stay home. The city that never sleeps is, for the moment, dormant. To all of my fellow New Yorkers, stay strong. We will beat this back, and on the other side, we will come back stronger. To the thousands of New Yorkers and more across the country who have volunteered to join our medical reserves to help sick patients, thank you. God bless you. The Nation owes you a debt for your courage and willingness to answer the call to serve. Our medical workers are already performing a herculean task, and it will only get more daunting in the days to come. Know this, workers: The country is with you. We support you; we respect you; we love you; and we are already working on policies that will ease your burden, as much as that can be achieved. Finally, to my Senate colleagues, what we must do in the next few days is unlike anything any of us has ever done in our time in Congress. This is a crisis without modern precedent. We are going to have to flex some muscles that may have atrophied. We are going to have to cooperate in ways that we may not be accustomed to. We are going to have to work across the aisle and across the span of this Capitol to produce momentous legislation in the span of a few days. We will do it because we must do it. The American people are suffering. Our businesses are shuttered. Our factories lay idle. Our workers are without work. Let us come together and do whatever is necessary to protect the American people in this time of historic challenge. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. SCHUMER
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-03-20-pt1-PgS1865-2
| null | 509
|
formal
|
tax cuts
| null |
racist
|
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, the coronavirus continues to challenge our Nation in extraordinary ways that were unimaginable a few weeks ago. Our public health systems are coming under enormous strain. Our hospitals and other medical facilities lack the necessary supplies and resources. As measures to isolate the public broaden, workers are filing for unemployment at unprecedented rates. Small businesses are on the brink of collapse. American families are desperately in need of support until they can resume their normal lives. I have heard from these people and the people who are isolated. I have heard from people who have sick loved ones in nursing homes and can't enter to see them. I have heard from small business people who struggled their whole lives to build a small business, and it finally looks like it is beginning to succeed, and they may be wiped out. The urgency of doing something now is so important. Both parties in Congress must work together as swiftly as possible to get something done that is as big and bold as possible. This is one of the worst crises America has faced. The American people need help fast. Senator McConnell has proposed what is now the third phase of legislation to confront the coronavirus. We are all eager to work in a bipartisan way to quickly get another bill to the President's desk. But at the moment, the McConnell bill is inadequate. Leader McConnell's proposal does not do nearly enough to address the public health crisis in terms of hospitals, medical supplies, beds, doctors, nurses, and measures to ensure that Americans can access and afford coronavirus treatment. The bottom line is very simple: If we don't deal with the health crisis, nothing we do will make the economy any better. So that is No. 1. If we don't have help for our hospitals, many small ones are going to close. Rural ones will close. Big ones will have real trouble. We must do something. Yet there is nothing in Leader McConnell's bill to help hospitals. Now we are told we may do it later in a supplemental. Later is no good. We need a Marshall Plan for hospitals right now. Local governments that are also on the frontlines need to get dollars in their pockets. Many of them will go broke. Leader McConnell's proposal is also skewed in favor of corporations rather than the workers and families who urgently and much more acutely feel the pain of reduced hours and unemployment. Leader McConnell's proposal includes a few ideas that shouldn't be included at all, such as tax cuts for multinational corporations and restrictions on paid sick leave that Congress just expanded. This morning, Democratic ranking members of six committees met with the Republican chairs of corresponding committees to hear the rationale behind the McConnell bill and to begin a bipartisan dialogue. Democrats will soon respond with policies we believe must be included in the legislation and things that we don't think belong in this legislation. Our goal is twofold: Address the public health crisis now, and put workers first as we do it. Democrats want to do as much as possible to prepare our healthcare system for the growing storm it faces, and we want to help the working Americans who are most immediately affected by the economic slowdown and help them in real and significant ways. In that respect, Democrats have five important priorities that I will speak about now, among others. We have many other priorities as well. We are sending all of our priorities over to the Republicans soon enough. No. 1, America needs a Marshall Plan for hospitals and our public health infrastructure. In a few weeks, hospitals could be overrun with patients, and there will still be a great shortage of gloves, masks, ICU beds, ventilators, and especially testing. To cite just one example, the two biggest hospitals in Albany--Albany Medical Center and St. Peter's Health Partners--announced they are suspending testing in order to conserve the few they have for healthcare workers and high-risk patients. Access to tests continues to be a problem in other places throughout my State as well. There is great shortage of equipment. The story that rings in my ear is that certain places that have the tests don't have the swabs so they can undertake the tests. We are short of supplies up and down the line. It is masks. It is protective clothing and gear. It is beds. It is doctors and nurses themselves. We have to do more. We need a Marshall Plan right now for our healthcare system. Two weeks ago, 3, 4 weeks ago, many of us were talking about the problem that testing--the lack of good testing was about to occur. Many of us said 3 weeks ago, 4 weeks ago, that if we don't have these tests, everything is going to go down the drain. No one listened--at least no one in the administration--until recently. Well, we are saying now that in 2, 3 weeks, our hospital situation will be the same. It will be massive and deeply in trouble. That is why we need to act now--not later with a supplemental but now. We also need to dramatically increase unemployment insurance--what we are calling employment insurance. It is really unemployment insurance on steroids. But it helps people furloughed from their jobs, so we call it employment insurance. Why do we need it? Because so many workers have been forced home and are prevented from working regular hours. If you work in a restaurant and there are no customers, you are not going to work. The boss you worked for and worked so well with for years can't afford to pay you. To go on existing unemployment insurance won't work. It is hard to access. It doesn't cover a whole lot of people. Furthermore, it does not pay back workers the full wages they were earning. We need to change all three of those things so that, No. 1, every worker who is unemployed gets a paycheck equal to what they were earning before this crisis, paid for by the Federal Government. That way, the business--small, medium, large--can put them on furlough, and then, when the crisis is over, they are back. There is money in their pockets. No workers, no family, no one should lose a paycheck or go into financial ruin as a result of the coronavirus. This is a very important provision. I talk to people all across my State and the country, and when they hear about it, they love it. It is not giving money to everybody. There are some people, thank God, who are still employed, but there are many, many people who have lost their jobs, and one check, when they may be out of their jobs for 3, 4, 5 months, isn't going to be enough. Unemployment insurance gives money the whole period of time the crisis exists at your present salary level and covers just about everyone. It makes the most sense of any program that I have heard in dealing with those who are losing their jobs, and it helps in terms of dealing with stimulating the economy because we will bring the economy back to where it was. All these unemployed people will be getting paid the same amount of money. Third, paid sick leave is a must. We need to be expanding paid sick leave, not restricting it, as this current proposal suggests. Senators Murray and Gillibrand, working in conjunction with their colleague Congresswoman DeLauro in the House, put together a good bill. It should be in this big proposal. Fourth, we need to put our workers first. If we are going to consider bailing out industries, they cannot then be allowed to turn around and cut jobs, cut wages, cut benefits. They cannot be allowed to use the money for stock buybacks. They cannot be allowed to give salary increases to executives. Phase 3 needs to put workers first, period. These are our values. Finally, we need to rescue small businesses. Many of them have been asked to close their doors for the sake of public safety. We need to help businesses access the necessary liquidity to pay their insurance bills, to pay their rent or mortgage, to pay their expenses so that when this crisis ends, they can rebound stronger than ever. Democratic ranking members are already discussing these priorities with their Republican counterparts. Of course, there are many other priorities as well. It would take too long to highlight all of them, but they are all in white paper we have sent to Leader McConnell and to the Republican chairs. In almost all these cases, Democrats already have prepared and drafted the legislative language on these priorities. We are ready to go. About 2 hours ago, I spoke with President Trump about these five priorities. I mentioned them all, and President Trump told me he was open to these ideas. In fact, the President explicitly told me he would oppose companies using bailout money on buybacks, even though such a prohibition is not in McConnell's bill. I also urged the President to immediately employ the Defense Production Act and harness industry to get ventilators and other critically needed medical equipment to those who need it. He told me he would do so and then said to someone who must have been in the Oval Office--or wherever he was--to get it done. So I think we are on the road, because we can't waste a day in terms of getting the DPA going. Congress will make available very quickly whatever resources are needed to the Defense Department in order to implement this act. More broadly, I told the President we need to come together and cooperate in this time of national crisis. He agreed. We need to work with uncommon speed and make this next bill what it needs to be. We need it to be workers first, with a Marshall Plan for hospitals. The Democrats are already at work with our Republican colleagues to get this done. Now, it has been 20 days since the first case of COVID-19 was detected in New York. Today, 20 days later, there are 7,000 cases--more than a third of the total number in our country. In a time of public emergency, New Yorkers have been asked to make extraordinary sacrifices. The Governor has just mandated that, excepting essential services, 100 percent of New York's workforce must stay home. The city that never sleeps is, for the moment, dormant. To all of my fellow New Yorkers, stay strong. We will beat this back, and on the other side, we will come back stronger. To the thousands of New Yorkers and more across the country who have volunteered to join our medical reserves to help sick patients, thank you. God bless you. The Nation owes you a debt for your courage and willingness to answer the call to serve. Our medical workers are already performing a herculean task, and it will only get more daunting in the days to come. Know this, workers: The country is with you. We support you; we respect you; we love you; and we are already working on policies that will ease your burden, as much as that can be achieved. Finally, to my Senate colleagues, what we must do in the next few days is unlike anything any of us has ever done in our time in Congress. This is a crisis without modern precedent. We are going to have to flex some muscles that may have atrophied. We are going to have to cooperate in ways that we may not be accustomed to. We are going to have to work across the aisle and across the span of this Capitol to produce momentous legislation in the span of a few days. We will do it because we must do it. The American people are suffering. Our businesses are shuttered. Our factories lay idle. Our workers are without work. Let us come together and do whatever is necessary to protect the American people in this time of historic challenge. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. SCHUMER
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-03-20-pt1-PgS1865-2
| null | 510
|
formal
|
the Fed
| null |
antisemitic
|
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, the coronavirus continues to challenge our Nation in extraordinary ways that were unimaginable a few weeks ago. Our public health systems are coming under enormous strain. Our hospitals and other medical facilities lack the necessary supplies and resources. As measures to isolate the public broaden, workers are filing for unemployment at unprecedented rates. Small businesses are on the brink of collapse. American families are desperately in need of support until they can resume their normal lives. I have heard from these people and the people who are isolated. I have heard from people who have sick loved ones in nursing homes and can't enter to see them. I have heard from small business people who struggled their whole lives to build a small business, and it finally looks like it is beginning to succeed, and they may be wiped out. The urgency of doing something now is so important. Both parties in Congress must work together as swiftly as possible to get something done that is as big and bold as possible. This is one of the worst crises America has faced. The American people need help fast. Senator McConnell has proposed what is now the third phase of legislation to confront the coronavirus. We are all eager to work in a bipartisan way to quickly get another bill to the President's desk. But at the moment, the McConnell bill is inadequate. Leader McConnell's proposal does not do nearly enough to address the public health crisis in terms of hospitals, medical supplies, beds, doctors, nurses, and measures to ensure that Americans can access and afford coronavirus treatment. The bottom line is very simple: If we don't deal with the health crisis, nothing we do will make the economy any better. So that is No. 1. If we don't have help for our hospitals, many small ones are going to close. Rural ones will close. Big ones will have real trouble. We must do something. Yet there is nothing in Leader McConnell's bill to help hospitals. Now we are told we may do it later in a supplemental. Later is no good. We need a Marshall Plan for hospitals right now. Local governments that are also on the frontlines need to get dollars in their pockets. Many of them will go broke. Leader McConnell's proposal is also skewed in favor of corporations rather than the workers and families who urgently and much more acutely feel the pain of reduced hours and unemployment. Leader McConnell's proposal includes a few ideas that shouldn't be included at all, such as tax cuts for multinational corporations and restrictions on paid sick leave that Congress just expanded. This morning, Democratic ranking members of six committees met with the Republican chairs of corresponding committees to hear the rationale behind the McConnell bill and to begin a bipartisan dialogue. Democrats will soon respond with policies we believe must be included in the legislation and things that we don't think belong in this legislation. Our goal is twofold: Address the public health crisis now, and put workers first as we do it. Democrats want to do as much as possible to prepare our healthcare system for the growing storm it faces, and we want to help the working Americans who are most immediately affected by the economic slowdown and help them in real and significant ways. In that respect, Democrats have five important priorities that I will speak about now, among others. We have many other priorities as well. We are sending all of our priorities over to the Republicans soon enough. No. 1, America needs a Marshall Plan for hospitals and our public health infrastructure. In a few weeks, hospitals could be overrun with patients, and there will still be a great shortage of gloves, masks, ICU beds, ventilators, and especially testing. To cite just one example, the two biggest hospitals in Albany--Albany Medical Center and St. Peter's Health Partners--announced they are suspending testing in order to conserve the few they have for healthcare workers and high-risk patients. Access to tests continues to be a problem in other places throughout my State as well. There is great shortage of equipment. The story that rings in my ear is that certain places that have the tests don't have the swabs so they can undertake the tests. We are short of supplies up and down the line. It is masks. It is protective clothing and gear. It is beds. It is doctors and nurses themselves. We have to do more. We need a Marshall Plan right now for our healthcare system. Two weeks ago, 3, 4 weeks ago, many of us were talking about the problem that testing--the lack of good testing was about to occur. Many of us said 3 weeks ago, 4 weeks ago, that if we don't have these tests, everything is going to go down the drain. No one listened--at least no one in the administration--until recently. Well, we are saying now that in 2, 3 weeks, our hospital situation will be the same. It will be massive and deeply in trouble. That is why we need to act now--not later with a supplemental but now. We also need to dramatically increase unemployment insurance--what we are calling employment insurance. It is really unemployment insurance on steroids. But it helps people furloughed from their jobs, so we call it employment insurance. Why do we need it? Because so many workers have been forced home and are prevented from working regular hours. If you work in a restaurant and there are no customers, you are not going to work. The boss you worked for and worked so well with for years can't afford to pay you. To go on existing unemployment insurance won't work. It is hard to access. It doesn't cover a whole lot of people. Furthermore, it does not pay back workers the full wages they were earning. We need to change all three of those things so that, No. 1, every worker who is unemployed gets a paycheck equal to what they were earning before this crisis, paid for by the Federal Government. That way, the business--small, medium, large--can put them on furlough, and then, when the crisis is over, they are back. There is money in their pockets. No workers, no family, no one should lose a paycheck or go into financial ruin as a result of the coronavirus. This is a very important provision. I talk to people all across my State and the country, and when they hear about it, they love it. It is not giving money to everybody. There are some people, thank God, who are still employed, but there are many, many people who have lost their jobs, and one check, when they may be out of their jobs for 3, 4, 5 months, isn't going to be enough. Unemployment insurance gives money the whole period of time the crisis exists at your present salary level and covers just about everyone. It makes the most sense of any program that I have heard in dealing with those who are losing their jobs, and it helps in terms of dealing with stimulating the economy because we will bring the economy back to where it was. All these unemployed people will be getting paid the same amount of money. Third, paid sick leave is a must. We need to be expanding paid sick leave, not restricting it, as this current proposal suggests. Senators Murray and Gillibrand, working in conjunction with their colleague Congresswoman DeLauro in the House, put together a good bill. It should be in this big proposal. Fourth, we need to put our workers first. If we are going to consider bailing out industries, they cannot then be allowed to turn around and cut jobs, cut wages, cut benefits. They cannot be allowed to use the money for stock buybacks. They cannot be allowed to give salary increases to executives. Phase 3 needs to put workers first, period. These are our values. Finally, we need to rescue small businesses. Many of them have been asked to close their doors for the sake of public safety. We need to help businesses access the necessary liquidity to pay their insurance bills, to pay their rent or mortgage, to pay their expenses so that when this crisis ends, they can rebound stronger than ever. Democratic ranking members are already discussing these priorities with their Republican counterparts. Of course, there are many other priorities as well. It would take too long to highlight all of them, but they are all in white paper we have sent to Leader McConnell and to the Republican chairs. In almost all these cases, Democrats already have prepared and drafted the legislative language on these priorities. We are ready to go. About 2 hours ago, I spoke with President Trump about these five priorities. I mentioned them all, and President Trump told me he was open to these ideas. In fact, the President explicitly told me he would oppose companies using bailout money on buybacks, even though such a prohibition is not in McConnell's bill. I also urged the President to immediately employ the Defense Production Act and harness industry to get ventilators and other critically needed medical equipment to those who need it. He told me he would do so and then said to someone who must have been in the Oval Office--or wherever he was--to get it done. So I think we are on the road, because we can't waste a day in terms of getting the DPA going. Congress will make available very quickly whatever resources are needed to the Defense Department in order to implement this act. More broadly, I told the President we need to come together and cooperate in this time of national crisis. He agreed. We need to work with uncommon speed and make this next bill what it needs to be. We need it to be workers first, with a Marshall Plan for hospitals. The Democrats are already at work with our Republican colleagues to get this done. Now, it has been 20 days since the first case of COVID-19 was detected in New York. Today, 20 days later, there are 7,000 cases--more than a third of the total number in our country. In a time of public emergency, New Yorkers have been asked to make extraordinary sacrifices. The Governor has just mandated that, excepting essential services, 100 percent of New York's workforce must stay home. The city that never sleeps is, for the moment, dormant. To all of my fellow New Yorkers, stay strong. We will beat this back, and on the other side, we will come back stronger. To the thousands of New Yorkers and more across the country who have volunteered to join our medical reserves to help sick patients, thank you. God bless you. The Nation owes you a debt for your courage and willingness to answer the call to serve. Our medical workers are already performing a herculean task, and it will only get more daunting in the days to come. Know this, workers: The country is with you. We support you; we respect you; we love you; and we are already working on policies that will ease your burden, as much as that can be achieved. Finally, to my Senate colleagues, what we must do in the next few days is unlike anything any of us has ever done in our time in Congress. This is a crisis without modern precedent. We are going to have to flex some muscles that may have atrophied. We are going to have to cooperate in ways that we may not be accustomed to. We are going to have to work across the aisle and across the span of this Capitol to produce momentous legislation in the span of a few days. We will do it because we must do it. The American people are suffering. Our businesses are shuttered. Our factories lay idle. Our workers are without work. Let us come together and do whatever is necessary to protect the American people in this time of historic challenge. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. SCHUMER
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-03-20-pt1-PgS1865-2
| null | 511
|
formal
|
steroids
| null |
transphobic
|
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, the coronavirus continues to challenge our Nation in extraordinary ways that were unimaginable a few weeks ago. Our public health systems are coming under enormous strain. Our hospitals and other medical facilities lack the necessary supplies and resources. As measures to isolate the public broaden, workers are filing for unemployment at unprecedented rates. Small businesses are on the brink of collapse. American families are desperately in need of support until they can resume their normal lives. I have heard from these people and the people who are isolated. I have heard from people who have sick loved ones in nursing homes and can't enter to see them. I have heard from small business people who struggled their whole lives to build a small business, and it finally looks like it is beginning to succeed, and they may be wiped out. The urgency of doing something now is so important. Both parties in Congress must work together as swiftly as possible to get something done that is as big and bold as possible. This is one of the worst crises America has faced. The American people need help fast. Senator McConnell has proposed what is now the third phase of legislation to confront the coronavirus. We are all eager to work in a bipartisan way to quickly get another bill to the President's desk. But at the moment, the McConnell bill is inadequate. Leader McConnell's proposal does not do nearly enough to address the public health crisis in terms of hospitals, medical supplies, beds, doctors, nurses, and measures to ensure that Americans can access and afford coronavirus treatment. The bottom line is very simple: If we don't deal with the health crisis, nothing we do will make the economy any better. So that is No. 1. If we don't have help for our hospitals, many small ones are going to close. Rural ones will close. Big ones will have real trouble. We must do something. Yet there is nothing in Leader McConnell's bill to help hospitals. Now we are told we may do it later in a supplemental. Later is no good. We need a Marshall Plan for hospitals right now. Local governments that are also on the frontlines need to get dollars in their pockets. Many of them will go broke. Leader McConnell's proposal is also skewed in favor of corporations rather than the workers and families who urgently and much more acutely feel the pain of reduced hours and unemployment. Leader McConnell's proposal includes a few ideas that shouldn't be included at all, such as tax cuts for multinational corporations and restrictions on paid sick leave that Congress just expanded. This morning, Democratic ranking members of six committees met with the Republican chairs of corresponding committees to hear the rationale behind the McConnell bill and to begin a bipartisan dialogue. Democrats will soon respond with policies we believe must be included in the legislation and things that we don't think belong in this legislation. Our goal is twofold: Address the public health crisis now, and put workers first as we do it. Democrats want to do as much as possible to prepare our healthcare system for the growing storm it faces, and we want to help the working Americans who are most immediately affected by the economic slowdown and help them in real and significant ways. In that respect, Democrats have five important priorities that I will speak about now, among others. We have many other priorities as well. We are sending all of our priorities over to the Republicans soon enough. No. 1, America needs a Marshall Plan for hospitals and our public health infrastructure. In a few weeks, hospitals could be overrun with patients, and there will still be a great shortage of gloves, masks, ICU beds, ventilators, and especially testing. To cite just one example, the two biggest hospitals in Albany--Albany Medical Center and St. Peter's Health Partners--announced they are suspending testing in order to conserve the few they have for healthcare workers and high-risk patients. Access to tests continues to be a problem in other places throughout my State as well. There is great shortage of equipment. The story that rings in my ear is that certain places that have the tests don't have the swabs so they can undertake the tests. We are short of supplies up and down the line. It is masks. It is protective clothing and gear. It is beds. It is doctors and nurses themselves. We have to do more. We need a Marshall Plan right now for our healthcare system. Two weeks ago, 3, 4 weeks ago, many of us were talking about the problem that testing--the lack of good testing was about to occur. Many of us said 3 weeks ago, 4 weeks ago, that if we don't have these tests, everything is going to go down the drain. No one listened--at least no one in the administration--until recently. Well, we are saying now that in 2, 3 weeks, our hospital situation will be the same. It will be massive and deeply in trouble. That is why we need to act now--not later with a supplemental but now. We also need to dramatically increase unemployment insurance--what we are calling employment insurance. It is really unemployment insurance on steroids. But it helps people furloughed from their jobs, so we call it employment insurance. Why do we need it? Because so many workers have been forced home and are prevented from working regular hours. If you work in a restaurant and there are no customers, you are not going to work. The boss you worked for and worked so well with for years can't afford to pay you. To go on existing unemployment insurance won't work. It is hard to access. It doesn't cover a whole lot of people. Furthermore, it does not pay back workers the full wages they were earning. We need to change all three of those things so that, No. 1, every worker who is unemployed gets a paycheck equal to what they were earning before this crisis, paid for by the Federal Government. That way, the business--small, medium, large--can put them on furlough, and then, when the crisis is over, they are back. There is money in their pockets. No workers, no family, no one should lose a paycheck or go into financial ruin as a result of the coronavirus. This is a very important provision. I talk to people all across my State and the country, and when they hear about it, they love it. It is not giving money to everybody. There are some people, thank God, who are still employed, but there are many, many people who have lost their jobs, and one check, when they may be out of their jobs for 3, 4, 5 months, isn't going to be enough. Unemployment insurance gives money the whole period of time the crisis exists at your present salary level and covers just about everyone. It makes the most sense of any program that I have heard in dealing with those who are losing their jobs, and it helps in terms of dealing with stimulating the economy because we will bring the economy back to where it was. All these unemployed people will be getting paid the same amount of money. Third, paid sick leave is a must. We need to be expanding paid sick leave, not restricting it, as this current proposal suggests. Senators Murray and Gillibrand, working in conjunction with their colleague Congresswoman DeLauro in the House, put together a good bill. It should be in this big proposal. Fourth, we need to put our workers first. If we are going to consider bailing out industries, they cannot then be allowed to turn around and cut jobs, cut wages, cut benefits. They cannot be allowed to use the money for stock buybacks. They cannot be allowed to give salary increases to executives. Phase 3 needs to put workers first, period. These are our values. Finally, we need to rescue small businesses. Many of them have been asked to close their doors for the sake of public safety. We need to help businesses access the necessary liquidity to pay their insurance bills, to pay their rent or mortgage, to pay their expenses so that when this crisis ends, they can rebound stronger than ever. Democratic ranking members are already discussing these priorities with their Republican counterparts. Of course, there are many other priorities as well. It would take too long to highlight all of them, but they are all in white paper we have sent to Leader McConnell and to the Republican chairs. In almost all these cases, Democrats already have prepared and drafted the legislative language on these priorities. We are ready to go. About 2 hours ago, I spoke with President Trump about these five priorities. I mentioned them all, and President Trump told me he was open to these ideas. In fact, the President explicitly told me he would oppose companies using bailout money on buybacks, even though such a prohibition is not in McConnell's bill. I also urged the President to immediately employ the Defense Production Act and harness industry to get ventilators and other critically needed medical equipment to those who need it. He told me he would do so and then said to someone who must have been in the Oval Office--or wherever he was--to get it done. So I think we are on the road, because we can't waste a day in terms of getting the DPA going. Congress will make available very quickly whatever resources are needed to the Defense Department in order to implement this act. More broadly, I told the President we need to come together and cooperate in this time of national crisis. He agreed. We need to work with uncommon speed and make this next bill what it needs to be. We need it to be workers first, with a Marshall Plan for hospitals. The Democrats are already at work with our Republican colleagues to get this done. Now, it has been 20 days since the first case of COVID-19 was detected in New York. Today, 20 days later, there are 7,000 cases--more than a third of the total number in our country. In a time of public emergency, New Yorkers have been asked to make extraordinary sacrifices. The Governor has just mandated that, excepting essential services, 100 percent of New York's workforce must stay home. The city that never sleeps is, for the moment, dormant. To all of my fellow New Yorkers, stay strong. We will beat this back, and on the other side, we will come back stronger. To the thousands of New Yorkers and more across the country who have volunteered to join our medical reserves to help sick patients, thank you. God bless you. The Nation owes you a debt for your courage and willingness to answer the call to serve. Our medical workers are already performing a herculean task, and it will only get more daunting in the days to come. Know this, workers: The country is with you. We support you; we respect you; we love you; and we are already working on policies that will ease your burden, as much as that can be achieved. Finally, to my Senate colleagues, what we must do in the next few days is unlike anything any of us has ever done in our time in Congress. This is a crisis without modern precedent. We are going to have to flex some muscles that may have atrophied. We are going to have to cooperate in ways that we may not be accustomed to. We are going to have to work across the aisle and across the span of this Capitol to produce momentous legislation in the span of a few days. We will do it because we must do it. The American people are suffering. Our businesses are shuttered. Our factories lay idle. Our workers are without work. Let us come together and do whatever is necessary to protect the American people in this time of historic challenge. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. SCHUMER
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-03-20-pt1-PgS1865-2
| null | 512
|
formal
|
single
| null |
homophobic
|
Mr. BOOKER. Mr. President, this past week, we have seen that the spread of COVID-19 has really become a crisis not just for our Nation but a crisis for every American. Today, millions of Americans are asking themselves how they will endure this crisis, how long will the crisis last, how will it affect their families, their communities, and their Nation as a whole. We have many people who are now trying to do the dollars-and-cents of this crisis, literally sitting down to try to calculate how many weeks they can stretch the last 2 weeks of pay. We see people who have been furloughed, had their hours reduced, been laid off. We have seen that small businesses--from the mom-and-pop pizza joints, to small interior design shops, to barber shops--are all trying to determine how they can keep themselves afloat when their doors are closed and how they can deal with their fixed costs. I have been on the phone with so many employers in my own State who have spoken to me about the challenges they have trying to continue to cover the health insurance of their employees even with the fact that no revenue is being brought in by their businesses. Over and over again, restaurants, bars, coffee shops, our sports arenas, hotels--all of them have been emptied, and millions of workers have been let go and had their hours slashed. On top of that, schools across this country, from colleges to kindergartens, have been closed, and millions of families are now scrambling to try to find childcare. College students are displaced and moving back in with families. This is, on so many levels, a true crisis like none of us have ever faced before in our Nation. The emotions are running the gamut. People are angry. People are afraid. People are fearful for their own physical safety, as well as their economic well-being. This is something that is challenging because we do not know how long it will last. The one thing we do know is that this crisis is a shared one, but many people face their own privately painful challenges. I will give one example. There is a single mother in my State--a mother of two--who works at a nursing home and is also raising her granddaughter. At work, she cares for elderly patients, and because family members can no longer visit, she is rising to the challenge of not just being a professional there, but she also feels she is serving as a surrogate family member. Now, for weeks, the basic personal protective equipment she needs to keep herself safe is in short supply and is literally dwindling. For all of this incredible work, this incredible dedication literally on the frontlines, she makes $14 an hour. With schools now closing, her teenage children will be responsible for caring for her granddaughter while she works because she can't afford childcare. She doesn't know what she would do if she got sick and actually had to miss work. She is living every day afraid of getting the coronavirus. There are millions of families in a similar situation and millions of Americans who are getting up every day knowing that their going to work is essential for the well-being of others. Yet they still don't know how they will take care of their families. The most recent bipartisan relief package that came out of Congress, the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, is a very important step in helping those families and combating the spread of the virus and its effects. It will help to increase testing, ensure the availability of emergency paid family and sick leave for many workers, increase food assistance programs, and make emergency unemployment insurance available for more workers who really, really need it. Now, as we turn to the next package of policies and funding to help Americans who are suffering now, we know this is a moment that demands bold, decisive action and doesn't leave anybody behind. We know we are a nation born out of crisis. We know that our founding ideals--you have to understand that this government was formed to protect people and to defend people. We, in our Declaration of Independence, talk about mutually pledging to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. The spirit of this Nation is about being there for each other and coming together to be stronger despite the crisis, despite the challenge. I am so grateful at this time that we are seeing bipartisan work on both sides of the aisle, as we are all seeing--from our personal lives to our States as a whole--we are all seeing the urgency. I am worried now that the first proposal that we have seen, though, falls short of addressing the needs of our healthcare workers and first responders--those Americans who are really putting themselves out there. I am confident, though, that we are going to come together in the coming hours to try to create a package that rises above or rises to meet the moment we are in. Right now, our Nation's first responders, our firefighters, and our healthcare professionals are being asked to respond to situations where they don't have the personal protective equipment they need to stay safe. In my own city, I talked to the head of public safety, who talked to me about the courage of these folks who, no matter what, are going to go to work, even without that protective gear. But, dear God, shouldn't we be doing everything we can, because if they get sick, if they can't show up, we will see a cascading crisis. It would be disgraceful. It would be dangerous. It is not an exaggeration to say that if we don't move quickly to get personal protective equipment to our frontline responders, we are going to be ill-equipped not just to fight COVID-19, but we could see widespread interruptions in the delivery of all lifesaving emergencies in America. Also, this bill we have seen now, which we must make better, must address not just this issue but also do more for healthcare workers and first responders to get them the equipment they need. There are a lot of things that I feel strongly about that I know will be in these negotiations. We should all be able to agree on supporting our veterans and VA facilities as they prepare to fight this virus. There are gaping holes in that in this bill. We should all agree on funding for our transit systems--like Amtrak--that are going to make sure to keep our country connected, that those systems don't fail and fall, especially when we will need them switched on and running vibrantly when our economy gets going. We should all agree that this is a time to deal with some of the massive shortfalls that we have now more than ever. While places like South Korea have universal broadband penetration, we should all agree that broadband access in devices for our students is critical if we are going to continue to educate our children for the months ahead. We should all agree on providing tests for our troops that are still serving in high-risk areas like Afghanistan. We need to make sure these bills address these holes. We should all agree on strengthening our community colleges and our minority-serving institutions so they, too, can continue to educate their students digitally. These are holes that must be filled. We should all agree that we need to be providing funding and flexibility for our schools and food banks to continue to serve meals to children in our country so that, crisis or no crisis, the next generation can grow healthy and strong. We should all agree that the utilities in our Nation should not be shut off during this crisis--we need to address that in this bill--so that families, regardless of income, who are already now struggling to make ends meet don't see themselves without light, power, and gas. These holes in this bill should be addressed. We should all agree that everyone must have coverage for testing and access to healthcare services that keep them and their families safe, and that includes the people who are in our country, whether they are documented or not, because our health is directly interrelated with their health. And to make sure that the only people who can get treatment are citizens of the United States--ignoring the millions of people who are not--means that the citizens of the United States are at risk. We should also think about those folks whom we don't think aboutenough, like those who are incarcerated, as well as the correction officers and workers who deal with those who are incarcerated. We are not doing enough to address that pending crisis in our country. There are holes in this bill. I want to take one moment, though, to address an aspect of this bill which there seems to be general consensus about but which can be made so much stronger, and that is the issue of cash payments. Economic relief packages coming from this body should be about offering everyone relief, including those who, through no fault of their own, now find themselves on that financial brink. It is why we must strengthen unemployment compensation that includes both increasing benefits across the board and expanding eligibility to include more workers, like gig economy workers and other independent workers. That is why I specifically want to address this cash payment part, because that is not enough. As for the idea of cash payments, I am so grateful to see a lot of my colleagues be supportive of that idea. Earlier this week, Senators Bennet, Brown, and I, along with several of our colleagues, proposed sending cash payments directly to American families, starting with $2,000 sent immediately to every American, low- and middle-income, with additional payments if our economy remains in distress. Under our plan, in the worst case scenario, over an entire year, with three tranches of payments, if our economy remains in distress, a family of four would be eligible for $18,000. Critically, our plan would not require an income threshold to receive payments, which means that everyone under a certain income level would qualify. The current proposal would exclude exactly the people and households who actually need it most. By creating an income requirement and phase-in, this plan currently proposed would be skipping over the most vulnerable people. That means a mom who quit her job to spend the last year caring for her sick child or a husband or a parent with Alzheimer's, whose full-time job has been caring for that spouse or loved one, would receive nothing under this plan. It also means that a college student, forced to leave school, now no longer having the sources of support at college, trying to enter the job market but not able to, would receive nothing under this plan. Some tipped workers, seasonal workers, and people coming out of the criminal justice system, who paid their debt to society, would receive nothing under this plan. This is a moment where we have to understand that we should be thinking boldly and acting in a bipartisan way at a scale we have never seen before because we have never seen a crisis like this before. This is not a time to do something that is anemic, that is inadequate, that leaves some of the most vulnerable people out in the cold, when we know those people--they are our family members; they are our neighbors--wouldn't qualify for the plan as it is right now. I know those family members because they are people who live in my community. Someone who worked their entire life, who has a mother who is dying, just last year quit their job to try to support her. These are folks we know. They might even be in our own family. We shouldn't exclude them at this time. By the way, including them helps to further the impact of the stimulative effects of this plan. It literally puts more money in our economy and into the hands of people who will spend it, and that will have a multiplier effect. We need to be injecting cash directly into our economy and giving people agency again in their lives at a time when so many people feel helpless amidst this health and economic crisis. And, God, we need to be doing it quickly, getting payments to people as soon as possible. For seniors, these payments should simply be added to their next Social Security check. And I remind you that about 7 million of our seniors live at or below the poverty line because their Social Security checks don't go far enough. For veterans, they should receive theirs at the same time they get their VA benefits. We can do that quickly. For everyone else, the IRS should send checks or deposit funds directly into their bank account. These are the kinds of actions we need to ensure that, once we get through this public health crisis, we have the tools in place we need to reactivate the world's greatest economy and enable it to recover. The great thing about designing something this way is that we could put it in place now, while we are all assembled here as a body. I said this to my caucus, and I didn't mean it to be in any way draconian. But there are 100 of us, and it is likely some of us could be sick. While we are all assembled here, let's put things in place so they are triggered. If the economy is still down, it triggers the next set of actions. Instead of having to come back here and negotiate more now, put things in place with automatic triggers so 3 months from now, if the economy is down, it triggers more action, like the next tranche of payments. At the end of the year, if the economy is still where it is, let's trigger another automatic payment. That is not just common sense; it is proactive. It means that people can begin to rely on those resources and do that kind of planning, by having predictable sources of income, and not having the challenges that I am starting to find now, just for a week or 2, which are the emotional challenges, the stress of families. I talked to medical professionals this week who worry about this home isolation, people stressed over bills, and people worried about their next paycheck. This is an emotional strain to our country and will have physical manifestations. I want to say that I love my Nation for so many reasons, but one of the reasons is because it has often been my life experience that during the toughest times, I have witnessed the best of us. I was a college student in 1989, when a horrible earthquake hit the Bay Area. In Stanford, we were closer to the epicenter than even San Francisco was. I remember the fear, as people were knocked out of their homes. But the other thing I saw was America. I saw the best of who we are--people pulling together, sheltering friends, sharing food. It was one of these experiences, as a young person coming of age, that I will never forget. I am not happy an earthquake happened, but, God, it so inspired me to see the best of who we are. Later, as a young man and a city councilman in Newark, about 10 miles from the World Trade Center, 9/11 happened--horrible, horrible things. I lost my childhood best friend in one of those buildings. God, in that crisis, what did we do in this country? God, I remember the lines--people lining up in front of hospitals to donate blood--how people pulled together, stood for each other, and sacrificed for each other. There was something so powerful and so patriotic--people remembering that patriotism is not a flag pin, and patriotism is love of country. You cannot love your country unless you love your fellow country men and women, and love is not sentimentality. It is sacrifice. It is service. It is being there for each other. God, when Hurricane Sandy hit New Jersey and thousands of people lost their homes and power was shut off in our communities for days or over a week, again, I saw the best of who we are as a nation. In a crisis, in a challenge, we don't pull apart. We pull together. We stand up for each other. We serve each other. It may put us back individually, but the generosity I saw--people reaching into their bank accounts, buying blankets, buying food--was inspiring. They were putting people up in hotels who were out of their homes. It hearkened me back to the stories I heard from my parents and my grandparents about what it was like in the Great Depression in poor communities in the South and how much people were there for each other. It reminded me of World War II. My grandmother, literally, until the day she died, an African-American woman, was bragging about her victory gardens, how eagerly and how it gave her pride that she was rationing--how this poor woman, who worked as a domestic at times, was buying war bonds. Everybody was pitching in. That is who we are. That is America. Now the wealthiest Nation on planet Earth is facing one of its biggest trials. I pray it is one of the biggest trials in my lifetime, if not the biggest trial. The wealthiest country on the planet is showing what we are called to be. I have always felt, as the prophet Elijah says in the Bible, that we are the light onto other nations--about how we pull together, stand together, fight through a storm, and fight through a crisis. We are showing what we do for each other. It is not just the men and women sitting in these seats. It is all of us. In the greatest crisis of our lifetime, what are you doing for other people? I pray our legislation keeps that spirit in mind. When the most common faith talks about what are you doing for the widower, what are you doing for the orphan, what are you doing for those people in prison, I hope we keep that in mind. It is not a time for half steps or half measures. It is time for the bold spirit of America, where we stand up for each other. We don't pull apart; we come together. We don't tear down; we rise up. That is where we are right now in American history. In this great global pandemic, we are a light unto each other, as well as to the world. And for the Senate, right now, while there still are 100 of us here doing the work, let's do it nobly and boldly and with generosity of spirit. Let's extend civic grace because this crisis is not bigger than who we are. We will endure. We shall overcome. May God bless America, and may God bless each and every one of us. Thank you. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. BOOKER
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-03-20-pt1-PgS1867
| null | 513
|
formal
|
single mother
| null |
racist
|
Mr. BOOKER. Mr. President, this past week, we have seen that the spread of COVID-19 has really become a crisis not just for our Nation but a crisis for every American. Today, millions of Americans are asking themselves how they will endure this crisis, how long will the crisis last, how will it affect their families, their communities, and their Nation as a whole. We have many people who are now trying to do the dollars-and-cents of this crisis, literally sitting down to try to calculate how many weeks they can stretch the last 2 weeks of pay. We see people who have been furloughed, had their hours reduced, been laid off. We have seen that small businesses--from the mom-and-pop pizza joints, to small interior design shops, to barber shops--are all trying to determine how they can keep themselves afloat when their doors are closed and how they can deal with their fixed costs. I have been on the phone with so many employers in my own State who have spoken to me about the challenges they have trying to continue to cover the health insurance of their employees even with the fact that no revenue is being brought in by their businesses. Over and over again, restaurants, bars, coffee shops, our sports arenas, hotels--all of them have been emptied, and millions of workers have been let go and had their hours slashed. On top of that, schools across this country, from colleges to kindergartens, have been closed, and millions of families are now scrambling to try to find childcare. College students are displaced and moving back in with families. This is, on so many levels, a true crisis like none of us have ever faced before in our Nation. The emotions are running the gamut. People are angry. People are afraid. People are fearful for their own physical safety, as well as their economic well-being. This is something that is challenging because we do not know how long it will last. The one thing we do know is that this crisis is a shared one, but many people face their own privately painful challenges. I will give one example. There is a single mother in my State--a mother of two--who works at a nursing home and is also raising her granddaughter. At work, she cares for elderly patients, and because family members can no longer visit, she is rising to the challenge of not just being a professional there, but she also feels she is serving as a surrogate family member. Now, for weeks, the basic personal protective equipment she needs to keep herself safe is in short supply and is literally dwindling. For all of this incredible work, this incredible dedication literally on the frontlines, she makes $14 an hour. With schools now closing, her teenage children will be responsible for caring for her granddaughter while she works because she can't afford childcare. She doesn't know what she would do if she got sick and actually had to miss work. She is living every day afraid of getting the coronavirus. There are millions of families in a similar situation and millions of Americans who are getting up every day knowing that their going to work is essential for the well-being of others. Yet they still don't know how they will take care of their families. The most recent bipartisan relief package that came out of Congress, the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, is a very important step in helping those families and combating the spread of the virus and its effects. It will help to increase testing, ensure the availability of emergency paid family and sick leave for many workers, increase food assistance programs, and make emergency unemployment insurance available for more workers who really, really need it. Now, as we turn to the next package of policies and funding to help Americans who are suffering now, we know this is a moment that demands bold, decisive action and doesn't leave anybody behind. We know we are a nation born out of crisis. We know that our founding ideals--you have to understand that this government was formed to protect people and to defend people. We, in our Declaration of Independence, talk about mutually pledging to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. The spirit of this Nation is about being there for each other and coming together to be stronger despite the crisis, despite the challenge. I am so grateful at this time that we are seeing bipartisan work on both sides of the aisle, as we are all seeing--from our personal lives to our States as a whole--we are all seeing the urgency. I am worried now that the first proposal that we have seen, though, falls short of addressing the needs of our healthcare workers and first responders--those Americans who are really putting themselves out there. I am confident, though, that we are going to come together in the coming hours to try to create a package that rises above or rises to meet the moment we are in. Right now, our Nation's first responders, our firefighters, and our healthcare professionals are being asked to respond to situations where they don't have the personal protective equipment they need to stay safe. In my own city, I talked to the head of public safety, who talked to me about the courage of these folks who, no matter what, are going to go to work, even without that protective gear. But, dear God, shouldn't we be doing everything we can, because if they get sick, if they can't show up, we will see a cascading crisis. It would be disgraceful. It would be dangerous. It is not an exaggeration to say that if we don't move quickly to get personal protective equipment to our frontline responders, we are going to be ill-equipped not just to fight COVID-19, but we could see widespread interruptions in the delivery of all lifesaving emergencies in America. Also, this bill we have seen now, which we must make better, must address not just this issue but also do more for healthcare workers and first responders to get them the equipment they need. There are a lot of things that I feel strongly about that I know will be in these negotiations. We should all be able to agree on supporting our veterans and VA facilities as they prepare to fight this virus. There are gaping holes in that in this bill. We should all agree on funding for our transit systems--like Amtrak--that are going to make sure to keep our country connected, that those systems don't fail and fall, especially when we will need them switched on and running vibrantly when our economy gets going. We should all agree that this is a time to deal with some of the massive shortfalls that we have now more than ever. While places like South Korea have universal broadband penetration, we should all agree that broadband access in devices for our students is critical if we are going to continue to educate our children for the months ahead. We should all agree on providing tests for our troops that are still serving in high-risk areas like Afghanistan. We need to make sure these bills address these holes. We should all agree on strengthening our community colleges and our minority-serving institutions so they, too, can continue to educate their students digitally. These are holes that must be filled. We should all agree that we need to be providing funding and flexibility for our schools and food banks to continue to serve meals to children in our country so that, crisis or no crisis, the next generation can grow healthy and strong. We should all agree that the utilities in our Nation should not be shut off during this crisis--we need to address that in this bill--so that families, regardless of income, who are already now struggling to make ends meet don't see themselves without light, power, and gas. These holes in this bill should be addressed. We should all agree that everyone must have coverage for testing and access to healthcare services that keep them and their families safe, and that includes the people who are in our country, whether they are documented or not, because our health is directly interrelated with their health. And to make sure that the only people who can get treatment are citizens of the United States--ignoring the millions of people who are not--means that the citizens of the United States are at risk. We should also think about those folks whom we don't think aboutenough, like those who are incarcerated, as well as the correction officers and workers who deal with those who are incarcerated. We are not doing enough to address that pending crisis in our country. There are holes in this bill. I want to take one moment, though, to address an aspect of this bill which there seems to be general consensus about but which can be made so much stronger, and that is the issue of cash payments. Economic relief packages coming from this body should be about offering everyone relief, including those who, through no fault of their own, now find themselves on that financial brink. It is why we must strengthen unemployment compensation that includes both increasing benefits across the board and expanding eligibility to include more workers, like gig economy workers and other independent workers. That is why I specifically want to address this cash payment part, because that is not enough. As for the idea of cash payments, I am so grateful to see a lot of my colleagues be supportive of that idea. Earlier this week, Senators Bennet, Brown, and I, along with several of our colleagues, proposed sending cash payments directly to American families, starting with $2,000 sent immediately to every American, low- and middle-income, with additional payments if our economy remains in distress. Under our plan, in the worst case scenario, over an entire year, with three tranches of payments, if our economy remains in distress, a family of four would be eligible for $18,000. Critically, our plan would not require an income threshold to receive payments, which means that everyone under a certain income level would qualify. The current proposal would exclude exactly the people and households who actually need it most. By creating an income requirement and phase-in, this plan currently proposed would be skipping over the most vulnerable people. That means a mom who quit her job to spend the last year caring for her sick child or a husband or a parent with Alzheimer's, whose full-time job has been caring for that spouse or loved one, would receive nothing under this plan. It also means that a college student, forced to leave school, now no longer having the sources of support at college, trying to enter the job market but not able to, would receive nothing under this plan. Some tipped workers, seasonal workers, and people coming out of the criminal justice system, who paid their debt to society, would receive nothing under this plan. This is a moment where we have to understand that we should be thinking boldly and acting in a bipartisan way at a scale we have never seen before because we have never seen a crisis like this before. This is not a time to do something that is anemic, that is inadequate, that leaves some of the most vulnerable people out in the cold, when we know those people--they are our family members; they are our neighbors--wouldn't qualify for the plan as it is right now. I know those family members because they are people who live in my community. Someone who worked their entire life, who has a mother who is dying, just last year quit their job to try to support her. These are folks we know. They might even be in our own family. We shouldn't exclude them at this time. By the way, including them helps to further the impact of the stimulative effects of this plan. It literally puts more money in our economy and into the hands of people who will spend it, and that will have a multiplier effect. We need to be injecting cash directly into our economy and giving people agency again in their lives at a time when so many people feel helpless amidst this health and economic crisis. And, God, we need to be doing it quickly, getting payments to people as soon as possible. For seniors, these payments should simply be added to their next Social Security check. And I remind you that about 7 million of our seniors live at or below the poverty line because their Social Security checks don't go far enough. For veterans, they should receive theirs at the same time they get their VA benefits. We can do that quickly. For everyone else, the IRS should send checks or deposit funds directly into their bank account. These are the kinds of actions we need to ensure that, once we get through this public health crisis, we have the tools in place we need to reactivate the world's greatest economy and enable it to recover. The great thing about designing something this way is that we could put it in place now, while we are all assembled here as a body. I said this to my caucus, and I didn't mean it to be in any way draconian. But there are 100 of us, and it is likely some of us could be sick. While we are all assembled here, let's put things in place so they are triggered. If the economy is still down, it triggers the next set of actions. Instead of having to come back here and negotiate more now, put things in place with automatic triggers so 3 months from now, if the economy is down, it triggers more action, like the next tranche of payments. At the end of the year, if the economy is still where it is, let's trigger another automatic payment. That is not just common sense; it is proactive. It means that people can begin to rely on those resources and do that kind of planning, by having predictable sources of income, and not having the challenges that I am starting to find now, just for a week or 2, which are the emotional challenges, the stress of families. I talked to medical professionals this week who worry about this home isolation, people stressed over bills, and people worried about their next paycheck. This is an emotional strain to our country and will have physical manifestations. I want to say that I love my Nation for so many reasons, but one of the reasons is because it has often been my life experience that during the toughest times, I have witnessed the best of us. I was a college student in 1989, when a horrible earthquake hit the Bay Area. In Stanford, we were closer to the epicenter than even San Francisco was. I remember the fear, as people were knocked out of their homes. But the other thing I saw was America. I saw the best of who we are--people pulling together, sheltering friends, sharing food. It was one of these experiences, as a young person coming of age, that I will never forget. I am not happy an earthquake happened, but, God, it so inspired me to see the best of who we are. Later, as a young man and a city councilman in Newark, about 10 miles from the World Trade Center, 9/11 happened--horrible, horrible things. I lost my childhood best friend in one of those buildings. God, in that crisis, what did we do in this country? God, I remember the lines--people lining up in front of hospitals to donate blood--how people pulled together, stood for each other, and sacrificed for each other. There was something so powerful and so patriotic--people remembering that patriotism is not a flag pin, and patriotism is love of country. You cannot love your country unless you love your fellow country men and women, and love is not sentimentality. It is sacrifice. It is service. It is being there for each other. God, when Hurricane Sandy hit New Jersey and thousands of people lost their homes and power was shut off in our communities for days or over a week, again, I saw the best of who we are as a nation. In a crisis, in a challenge, we don't pull apart. We pull together. We stand up for each other. We serve each other. It may put us back individually, but the generosity I saw--people reaching into their bank accounts, buying blankets, buying food--was inspiring. They were putting people up in hotels who were out of their homes. It hearkened me back to the stories I heard from my parents and my grandparents about what it was like in the Great Depression in poor communities in the South and how much people were there for each other. It reminded me of World War II. My grandmother, literally, until the day she died, an African-American woman, was bragging about her victory gardens, how eagerly and how it gave her pride that she was rationing--how this poor woman, who worked as a domestic at times, was buying war bonds. Everybody was pitching in. That is who we are. That is America. Now the wealthiest Nation on planet Earth is facing one of its biggest trials. I pray it is one of the biggest trials in my lifetime, if not the biggest trial. The wealthiest country on the planet is showing what we are called to be. I have always felt, as the prophet Elijah says in the Bible, that we are the light onto other nations--about how we pull together, stand together, fight through a storm, and fight through a crisis. We are showing what we do for each other. It is not just the men and women sitting in these seats. It is all of us. In the greatest crisis of our lifetime, what are you doing for other people? I pray our legislation keeps that spirit in mind. When the most common faith talks about what are you doing for the widower, what are you doing for the orphan, what are you doing for those people in prison, I hope we keep that in mind. It is not a time for half steps or half measures. It is time for the bold spirit of America, where we stand up for each other. We don't pull apart; we come together. We don't tear down; we rise up. That is where we are right now in American history. In this great global pandemic, we are a light unto each other, as well as to the world. And for the Senate, right now, while there still are 100 of us here doing the work, let's do it nobly and boldly and with generosity of spirit. Let's extend civic grace because this crisis is not bigger than who we are. We will endure. We shall overcome. May God bless America, and may God bless each and every one of us. Thank you. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. BOOKER
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-03-20-pt1-PgS1867
| null | 514
|
formal
|
single
| null |
homophobic
|
Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. President, it has been so interesting talking to our Tennesseans as they have faced these issues we have with coronavirus and what is happening, our response to it, and how we are going to fight it. And yes, we are going to win this war, and we are going to defeat this, but we have to look at it as our health, food, and financial assistance. Last night, a couple of my Tennesseans and I were discussing this--what their thoughts and their questions to me were about the relationship we have with China and how can we trust that we know what China knew, that we know when they knew it, and their lack of transparency around what happened with COVID-19. As we have gotten a couple of months past the start of this, these questions are unanswered. As I was telling our Tennesseans on the phone last night, even as this virus that came out of Wuhan, China--they had it in December. It has now touched six continents, and we know people are dealing with containment. They are dealing with mitigation. They are dealing with going through the process of getting the anti-virals, getting the vaccines that are necessary to deal with COVID-19. The questions that people have around this are compounded by the growing realization of how China has chosen not to be honest and not to be transparent in their dealings with the rest of the world. The way Beijing handled its initial response to the coronavirus was nothing new. In fact, deflection and lies meant to protect the Communist Party is part of their standard operating procedure. They have defied norms governing the protection of human rights. They embrace innovation by incursion, defy property rights, and steal intellectual property as a matter of course. We have U.S. companies that have suffered for decades from what China has done to steal their intellectual property, to infringe on their intellectual property. They defy the sovereignty of other nations and territories, and they defy what should be their role as a leader in the global economy. Certainly, they want to be a market economy or so they say, but look at their behavior. It is this act of defiance that makes them incredibly dangerous. I have to tell you, this has been something that has been going on for quite a while, but we only need to go back a decade to place a flag marking our awareness of what has become a very familiar story. Over the decades, as China started to manufacture and started to pull U.S. manufacturers there and then started to mistreat their intellectual property rights, people became aware of what was going on. It was right at 10 years ago, when I was a Member in the House, that we were doing much of the same work that we are doing right now in the U.S. Senate; we were preparing a defense authorization bill. Even then we realized the threat that China and Chinese state-owned companies posed to our national security. We drafted amendments to that year's NDAA, blocking the purchase of Huawei-supplied equipment. Indeed, we are still hearing about the need to block the purchase of Huawei equipment not only for us but for our allies. That action was 10 years ago, but China's influence has continued to grow. What we have done is pretty much our part in the Senate to expose those bad actions, even as the rest of the world has allowed Beijing to co-opt the trappings of capitalism to perpetuate totalitarianism. Last year, we saw the people of Hong Kong rise up on behalf of democracy and self-determination. Indeed, to this day, that fight goes on even though the threats and fears of COVID-19 have caused those protesters to have to protest in a different way. I cosponsored the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act and sponsored legislation prohibiting the commercial export of covered munition items to the Hong Kong police force. But the world moves on, even as that standoff in Hong Kong continues. The Senate was forced to pen a resolution asking the International Olympic Committee to rebid the 2022 Winter Games to a country that respects human rights. That was really quite a bold move. It leaves me to wonder, why was China given this honor in the first place? I have to tell you, nobody seems to really know the answer to that question. The aggression they display toward Taiwan and Tibet and the outright repression of the Uighurs--this is something that has gone unchecked many times due to fear of economic retaliation. I have addressed this body several times on the subject of Huawei and China's leveraging of the impending 5G rollout to create national security vulnerabilities in our network. Their efforts to undermine our sovereignty are not limited to high-tech espionage. Indeed, their goal is to place their equipment everywhere. That is why it is so incredibly affordable to so many countries and so many of our allies. In placing this equipment, they are seeking to establish their own high-tech cyber spy network. We know what they are up to. This month, I introduced a bill to temper the influence of China-backed Confucius Institutes on American college campuses. We all have read the stories lately of how they have infiltrated some of our institutions of higher learning and how they have co-opted some of the staff or professors. This is something that needs our attention. It is followed on the heels of the Stop Higher Education Espionage and Theft Act--another effort to prevent Beijing from increasing its hold on the minds of our younger generations. Time and again, we have called Chinese tech companies like Tik Tok onto the carpet for their censorship, their data collection, and their privacy practices--or lack of privacy, we should say. Yet content from their popular apps still dominates social media headlines. China's hold on the global economy has never been more apparent. Now there are reports that Beijing used the media and keyword censorship to suppress information about the coronavirus. Yet Beijing remains defiant, attacking President Trump in tweets and accusing everyday Americans of racism for daring to suggest that COVID-19 originated in Wuhan, China. They are, as many younger people like to say, gaslighting us, and it is madness. It brings us to ask, when will enough be enough? We must not let our present concerns about the response to coronavirus deter us from thinking long term. This pandemic will changeour relationship with China in every single way. It is inevitable. Starting now, we must take advantage of this knowledge. As we think about an exit strategy from the coronavirus crisis, we have to think about this. As we think about a way forward to bring manufacturing back to the United States, we need to remember this.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mrs. BLACKBURN
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-03-20-pt1-PgS1869
| null | 515
|
formal
|
property rights
| null |
racist
|
Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. President, it has been so interesting talking to our Tennesseans as they have faced these issues we have with coronavirus and what is happening, our response to it, and how we are going to fight it. And yes, we are going to win this war, and we are going to defeat this, but we have to look at it as our health, food, and financial assistance. Last night, a couple of my Tennesseans and I were discussing this--what their thoughts and their questions to me were about the relationship we have with China and how can we trust that we know what China knew, that we know when they knew it, and their lack of transparency around what happened with COVID-19. As we have gotten a couple of months past the start of this, these questions are unanswered. As I was telling our Tennesseans on the phone last night, even as this virus that came out of Wuhan, China--they had it in December. It has now touched six continents, and we know people are dealing with containment. They are dealing with mitigation. They are dealing with going through the process of getting the anti-virals, getting the vaccines that are necessary to deal with COVID-19. The questions that people have around this are compounded by the growing realization of how China has chosen not to be honest and not to be transparent in their dealings with the rest of the world. The way Beijing handled its initial response to the coronavirus was nothing new. In fact, deflection and lies meant to protect the Communist Party is part of their standard operating procedure. They have defied norms governing the protection of human rights. They embrace innovation by incursion, defy property rights, and steal intellectual property as a matter of course. We have U.S. companies that have suffered for decades from what China has done to steal their intellectual property, to infringe on their intellectual property. They defy the sovereignty of other nations and territories, and they defy what should be their role as a leader in the global economy. Certainly, they want to be a market economy or so they say, but look at their behavior. It is this act of defiance that makes them incredibly dangerous. I have to tell you, this has been something that has been going on for quite a while, but we only need to go back a decade to place a flag marking our awareness of what has become a very familiar story. Over the decades, as China started to manufacture and started to pull U.S. manufacturers there and then started to mistreat their intellectual property rights, people became aware of what was going on. It was right at 10 years ago, when I was a Member in the House, that we were doing much of the same work that we are doing right now in the U.S. Senate; we were preparing a defense authorization bill. Even then we realized the threat that China and Chinese state-owned companies posed to our national security. We drafted amendments to that year's NDAA, blocking the purchase of Huawei-supplied equipment. Indeed, we are still hearing about the need to block the purchase of Huawei equipment not only for us but for our allies. That action was 10 years ago, but China's influence has continued to grow. What we have done is pretty much our part in the Senate to expose those bad actions, even as the rest of the world has allowed Beijing to co-opt the trappings of capitalism to perpetuate totalitarianism. Last year, we saw the people of Hong Kong rise up on behalf of democracy and self-determination. Indeed, to this day, that fight goes on even though the threats and fears of COVID-19 have caused those protesters to have to protest in a different way. I cosponsored the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act and sponsored legislation prohibiting the commercial export of covered munition items to the Hong Kong police force. But the world moves on, even as that standoff in Hong Kong continues. The Senate was forced to pen a resolution asking the International Olympic Committee to rebid the 2022 Winter Games to a country that respects human rights. That was really quite a bold move. It leaves me to wonder, why was China given this honor in the first place? I have to tell you, nobody seems to really know the answer to that question. The aggression they display toward Taiwan and Tibet and the outright repression of the Uighurs--this is something that has gone unchecked many times due to fear of economic retaliation. I have addressed this body several times on the subject of Huawei and China's leveraging of the impending 5G rollout to create national security vulnerabilities in our network. Their efforts to undermine our sovereignty are not limited to high-tech espionage. Indeed, their goal is to place their equipment everywhere. That is why it is so incredibly affordable to so many countries and so many of our allies. In placing this equipment, they are seeking to establish their own high-tech cyber spy network. We know what they are up to. This month, I introduced a bill to temper the influence of China-backed Confucius Institutes on American college campuses. We all have read the stories lately of how they have infiltrated some of our institutions of higher learning and how they have co-opted some of the staff or professors. This is something that needs our attention. It is followed on the heels of the Stop Higher Education Espionage and Theft Act--another effort to prevent Beijing from increasing its hold on the minds of our younger generations. Time and again, we have called Chinese tech companies like Tik Tok onto the carpet for their censorship, their data collection, and their privacy practices--or lack of privacy, we should say. Yet content from their popular apps still dominates social media headlines. China's hold on the global economy has never been more apparent. Now there are reports that Beijing used the media and keyword censorship to suppress information about the coronavirus. Yet Beijing remains defiant, attacking President Trump in tweets and accusing everyday Americans of racism for daring to suggest that COVID-19 originated in Wuhan, China. They are, as many younger people like to say, gaslighting us, and it is madness. It brings us to ask, when will enough be enough? We must not let our present concerns about the response to coronavirus deter us from thinking long term. This pandemic will changeour relationship with China in every single way. It is inevitable. Starting now, we must take advantage of this knowledge. As we think about an exit strategy from the coronavirus crisis, we have to think about this. As we think about a way forward to bring manufacturing back to the United States, we need to remember this.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mrs. BLACKBURN
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-03-20-pt1-PgS1869
| null | 516
|
formal
|
the Fed
| null |
antisemitic
|
Mr. JONES. Mr. President, I appreciate the opportunity to speak today in the wake of what is going on. I appreciate my colleague from Tennessee talking about supply chains. I completely agree with her. It is something that we are going to have to seriously look at as we get through this process. We have become too dependent. I appreciate her efforts in that regard. I want to talk today--I know we have a lot going on up here. For those who are watching and the American people, you need to understand that while this Gallery may be empty and this floor may be empty, there is a lot going on in the Senate right now. There is a lot happening to try to make sure that we save this economy, that we do those things necessary to try to make sure our businesses, our workers, and our economy from all sectors are saved. Again, I want to go back to the thing you can do as Americans, and that is to stop the spread of this virus. Do social distancing. Do those things we have talked about now for several weeks to try to get folks to do their part because we are trying to do our part. We are doing this in an incredibly bipartisan effort. I think you will see a lot of things coming out of the Senate and out of the House, along with the administration, to try to make sure we do those things for Americans. Over the past few weeks, I have talked with countless business owners and local and State officials. I have heard from a lot of folks who are scared to death, working folks who are now at home. They are not telecommuting because their jobs are not like that. They are alarmed about where we are today and where we are going to be tomorrow and next week and over the coming weeks and even potentially months. Businesses are having to lay off folks. They are having to furlough workers, sending a surge of folks to the unemployment line. We have seen that in just the last few days, which is something that, as we were moving, we thought we would not see. Small businesses, like restaurants and Main Street retailers, will go bankrupt if we are not careful. They are going to go bankrupt without customers, as folks stay home and practice the social distancing that we know we have to do and as States start enacting forced closures of schools and events. Those businesses will shutter. Hopefully, it will only be a temporary shutting. First and foremost, there are steps we can all take to stop the spread of the virus and begin to get the economy on the right track. It is up to us individually. In the meantime, we, as Members of Congress and public officials across this country--from local county officials and city officials to the Governors and State legislators and Members of Congress--we have to do all we can to make sure our businesses, particularly the small businesses, which make up an overwhelming amount of business in the State of Alabama in particular, can continue to meet payroll and keep workers paid so that they can then continue to meet their obligations. That is where my proposal comes in that I talked to a number of colleagues about. In addition to providing the same kind of direct assistance payments that are being kicked around now--whether it is through checks or in some form or another that people are widely talking about right now--I would also like to see a new fund that is created to quickly get cash into the hands of small businesses so they can make their payroll and not have to lay off workers. I am calling this the small business lifeline fund. It would provide a no-interest bridge loan for up to 3 months, to be paid back over 5 years with no interest. This is a work-in-progress, so there are even proposals to make sure that this loan can be forgiven in certain circumstances. It could be administered through the Small Business Administration. It would offer loans up to 75 percent of a business's last 3 months of payroll, with no one employee receiving more than $5,000. I want to repeat that because it would affect so many people in this country. It would offer loans up to 75 percent of a business's last 3 months of payroll, with no one employee receiving more than $5,000 per month. The key to this fund is, it would pass directly through the payroll companies. Payroll companies around this country are used by about 40 percent of American businesses. They mostly cater to the small businesses with fewer than 500 employees. Payroll companies are in the best position to do this because they already have the infrastructure in place. They are a smart choice because they have payroll history. They have the employee data that makes this quick. It makes it efficient. It uses the infrastructure and the pipelines that already exist without having to go back and reinvent or create a new whole set of dynamics that may or may not work. We know the payroll company system in this country works. Again, 40 percent of folks use it. This process would help to alleviate the strain on our unemployment program. It would be a seamless way to continue to pay workers, while also ensuring that payroll taxes can continue to fund important programs, like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. I want you to think about this. What we are talking about doing is not just a one-time $1,000 check or two-time $1,000 check; it is literally funding payroll the way it exists--maybe only 75 percent of it. But people who are used to getting those payroll checks through a payroll processor have their taxes deducted, they have their Social Security deducted, and they have their Medicaid and Medicare expenses deducted. Those things would still come in. It is just that we have created a fund from the Federal Government to do that. Part of what we are fronting comes right back to the Federal Government. As part of this, we would also like to offer assistance to folks who are self-employed or run microbusinesses. According to IRS data, in 2017, there were some 26 million sole proprietorships in the United States. That is a lot of folks out there working hard, hustling every day to make their businesses--their little piece of the American dream--successful, but they don't have the cash reserves to fall back on in times like these. We could carve this out and make sure they are taken care of in the short run. This is not the time, in my view, to shortchange the economy. This is not the time to send out just a check here and a check there--especially for those who are the most vulnerable to the cataclysmic shocks we have seen in recent weeks. We have to be bold. We have tobe big. We need to act fast. We need to cut the bureaucracy. That is why using these payroll companies makes so much sense. Again, I want to emphasize that this is only one piece of this overall puzzle. It doesn't cover everyone. It will not cover folks in the gig economy. We have to do other things to make sure unemployment insurance and other things are available to them in a similar fashion. But this is a big piece of the puzzle that can get money directly to folks. Their wages can get to folks--their wages can get to them right now so that if we also have to do things like forbearance on mortgages and rents, we don't have to do it across the board because these folks will have the money to pay those mortgages and pay those rents and help those businesses stay afloat as well. The ripple effect of doing something like this, I believe, would be enormous. With this small business lifeline fund, we can send a message to folks on Main Street, who are the lifeblood of our communities. We can take this idea up and keep them afloat so they can get right back on track as soon as we get things back to normal. Right now, they need us. They need us in Congress. They need us at the local level, and they need us at the State level. I urge my colleagues to look at this very seriously--at this package that we are putting together and that we will, hopefully, get done in the next day or, hopefully, in hours--so we can all get back to our States and our families and do those things that are necessary. Keep in mind: I think folks will understand that whatever we do in the next day or so will only be the next step. I mean, I don't want anybody who is listening to anything any of us has to say to think that this is the end of it and that we are just going to finish our work and go home. We are going to have to monitor this constantly. We don't know what the future holds in some aspects. So we will be back, if necessary, and, if necessary, we will do things differently. There are two other things I want to mention before I yield the floor, one of which I have talked about with regard to my State for a long time, and that is the need for Medicaid expansion. Alabama is one of those few States--I think out of 14 or 15 States--that did not expand Medicaid. As part of the package we are talking about now, we increase the Federal Government's portion of that and add additional Medicaid funds. For those States like Alabama, we will get the extra benefits for sure, but we will not get as much as we should because we will not have expanded Medicaid. Senator Warner and I have a bill. It is called the SAME Act, or the States Achieve Medicaid Expansion Act. It is not mandatory. It does not make the States that haven't achieved Medicaid expansion do that, but it gives them the same incentives they had a number of years ago. In a State like Alabama, some 300,000 people could get access to Medicaid who do not have insurance right now and cannot get it but who are wondering in our rural communities and everywhere in the State of Alabama: What in the world am I going to do if I catch this virus? Where am I going to go? Ultimately, with our hospitals, our doctors, and our safety nets that we are putting in as part of this package, we are going to have to cover it anyway. We all know that, sooner or later, we are going to have to cover it. So I would love to see the SAME Act, or the States Achieve Medicaid Expansion Act, get out there and be a part of this package. Let States have the opportunity. It is a States' rights issue. Not a single State would have to expand Medicaid if we pass this bill, but we would at least let those local leaders decide for themselves whether it would be time to give this opportunity to so many of the people in our States who are caught between Medicaid and jobs in which they are eligible for health insurance benefits. It would be a quick, easy way to make sure we are doing our part, and I urge that this be put in there. Finally, I have heard from so many people today who are in our underserved communities in Alabama--the African-American community, the poor communities in Alabama. The preachers are calling, and the mayors are calling. I have been on the phone all day because they are concerned. It is not just that they are concerned because they don't believe the State has them in mind, for I have talked to State officials in Alabama, and there are plans. The fact of the matter is that in this country, across the 50 States, we still don't have enough tests, and we don't have enough personal protection equipment for my hospitals, for my testing labs, and for everybody in Alabama. It is just like in every other State. We are hurting, and we need those supplies. We are giving them money, and the States are doing a good job. Yet I want to make sure that, in Alabama and across this country, we don't leave out the poorest of the poor; that we don't leave out the underserved communities; and that we just don't put testing facilities in the big, urban areas--at the mega churches or the big hospitals, like I have in Birmingham, which are awesome. We have to make sure that we have these clinics set up around the State, such as in the Black Belt of Alabama--the poorest of Alabama's counties--wherein people can't drive an hour and a half or 2 hours to get tests. We have to make sure that we spread this out, because this disease is going to spread out. This disease is not just going to be concentrated in our urban areas. It is going to continue to spread. In these underserved areas in particular, families live together. Grandmothers take care of their grandchildren. Aunts and uncles take care of their nieces and nephews. They are all there together, and we have to figure out a way to protect them. We have to figure out a way to get those tests to them and to make sure that they are treated just as if they were part of our urban areas that have easier and ready access. I end with what I talked about the other day and with which I have ended so many of my talks, and that is back to the people of Alabama and the American people. I can assure you we are doing a lot up here. I see my friend from Alaska, who is presiding today. I know she has been working. I have watched her back here as she has worked the phones and talked to different people. Everywhere I go, I do see that Senators--most of us--are doing things by phone and are doing things remotely. Everybody is working the phones back in their States to make sure we do the right thing. Yet, at the end of the day, this is about you. This is about the people of America. Everyone in this country--to use a phrase from the old civil rights days in Birmingham, AL--is a foot soldier in this movement. Everyone can do his part. We can appropriate money, and we can designate, and we can give tax breaks. We can do those things that are necessary that we as the Federal Government can do, but we can't stop the spread of this virus. A U.S. Senator cannot stop the spread of this virus. We can only stop it among ourselves. We can't stop it across this country. Only you can do that. Only the foot soldiers in America--the hundreds of millions of people we have in this country--can stop the spread of the virus by heeding the warnings and by doing the things that are necessary with social distancing and washing their hands. I think my hands are just about raw since I have washed them so much. We are the foot soldiers. You are the foot soldiers. You can stop the spread. The other day, when I was here on the floor, I pulled out a picture of my old friend from my childhood, Smokey Bear, who said that only you can prevent forest fires. I talked about the fact that the coronavirus, the COVID-19 virus, is a forest fire across the country, and you can help to stop the spread. I want to be a little bit more patriotic about it today. I invoke one of my heroes who used this desk at one point, John F. Kennedy. It was 59 years ago when John F. Kennedy was sworn in as President of the United States and uttered the famous words that sent such an emotion throughout America and that really got so many in this country to be patriotic and stand up for what we do. He said: ``Ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country.'' That is what all Americans have to ask themselves today: What can I do for my country? It is not like a day when we have a tornado that has ripped through, and you can go out and get a chain saw and help your neighbor. It is not like a day when a hurricane has come through, and you can go get bottles of water and diapers to send to folks. What you can do for your country today is to stop the spread of this virus. What you can do for your country is to try to stay home as much as you can--social distancing. Work those things. That is what you can do for your country. If you do that, yes, businesses are going to have problems. We know it. That is what we are trying to work on--making sure we provide that safety net and making sure we provide the necessary tools so that, if we can blunt that curve--if we can get past this--then we will come back even stronger. To get there, we have to have you. We have to have you stand up and speak out to everyone--to do your part, to do those things that are necessary to make sure you do for your country what you should be doing. Help everyone in this country, and help everyone around you. When we do that, we will blunt this curve. We will make this the least severe as possible, and we will move forward and be stronger and better because, at the end of the day, we are the United States of America. I yield the floor. (Ms. MURKOWSKI assumed the Chair.)
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. JONES
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-03-20-pt1-PgS1870-2
| null | 517
|
formal
|
urban
| null |
racist
|
Mr. JONES. Mr. President, I appreciate the opportunity to speak today in the wake of what is going on. I appreciate my colleague from Tennessee talking about supply chains. I completely agree with her. It is something that we are going to have to seriously look at as we get through this process. We have become too dependent. I appreciate her efforts in that regard. I want to talk today--I know we have a lot going on up here. For those who are watching and the American people, you need to understand that while this Gallery may be empty and this floor may be empty, there is a lot going on in the Senate right now. There is a lot happening to try to make sure that we save this economy, that we do those things necessary to try to make sure our businesses, our workers, and our economy from all sectors are saved. Again, I want to go back to the thing you can do as Americans, and that is to stop the spread of this virus. Do social distancing. Do those things we have talked about now for several weeks to try to get folks to do their part because we are trying to do our part. We are doing this in an incredibly bipartisan effort. I think you will see a lot of things coming out of the Senate and out of the House, along with the administration, to try to make sure we do those things for Americans. Over the past few weeks, I have talked with countless business owners and local and State officials. I have heard from a lot of folks who are scared to death, working folks who are now at home. They are not telecommuting because their jobs are not like that. They are alarmed about where we are today and where we are going to be tomorrow and next week and over the coming weeks and even potentially months. Businesses are having to lay off folks. They are having to furlough workers, sending a surge of folks to the unemployment line. We have seen that in just the last few days, which is something that, as we were moving, we thought we would not see. Small businesses, like restaurants and Main Street retailers, will go bankrupt if we are not careful. They are going to go bankrupt without customers, as folks stay home and practice the social distancing that we know we have to do and as States start enacting forced closures of schools and events. Those businesses will shutter. Hopefully, it will only be a temporary shutting. First and foremost, there are steps we can all take to stop the spread of the virus and begin to get the economy on the right track. It is up to us individually. In the meantime, we, as Members of Congress and public officials across this country--from local county officials and city officials to the Governors and State legislators and Members of Congress--we have to do all we can to make sure our businesses, particularly the small businesses, which make up an overwhelming amount of business in the State of Alabama in particular, can continue to meet payroll and keep workers paid so that they can then continue to meet their obligations. That is where my proposal comes in that I talked to a number of colleagues about. In addition to providing the same kind of direct assistance payments that are being kicked around now--whether it is through checks or in some form or another that people are widely talking about right now--I would also like to see a new fund that is created to quickly get cash into the hands of small businesses so they can make their payroll and not have to lay off workers. I am calling this the small business lifeline fund. It would provide a no-interest bridge loan for up to 3 months, to be paid back over 5 years with no interest. This is a work-in-progress, so there are even proposals to make sure that this loan can be forgiven in certain circumstances. It could be administered through the Small Business Administration. It would offer loans up to 75 percent of a business's last 3 months of payroll, with no one employee receiving more than $5,000. I want to repeat that because it would affect so many people in this country. It would offer loans up to 75 percent of a business's last 3 months of payroll, with no one employee receiving more than $5,000 per month. The key to this fund is, it would pass directly through the payroll companies. Payroll companies around this country are used by about 40 percent of American businesses. They mostly cater to the small businesses with fewer than 500 employees. Payroll companies are in the best position to do this because they already have the infrastructure in place. They are a smart choice because they have payroll history. They have the employee data that makes this quick. It makes it efficient. It uses the infrastructure and the pipelines that already exist without having to go back and reinvent or create a new whole set of dynamics that may or may not work. We know the payroll company system in this country works. Again, 40 percent of folks use it. This process would help to alleviate the strain on our unemployment program. It would be a seamless way to continue to pay workers, while also ensuring that payroll taxes can continue to fund important programs, like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. I want you to think about this. What we are talking about doing is not just a one-time $1,000 check or two-time $1,000 check; it is literally funding payroll the way it exists--maybe only 75 percent of it. But people who are used to getting those payroll checks through a payroll processor have their taxes deducted, they have their Social Security deducted, and they have their Medicaid and Medicare expenses deducted. Those things would still come in. It is just that we have created a fund from the Federal Government to do that. Part of what we are fronting comes right back to the Federal Government. As part of this, we would also like to offer assistance to folks who are self-employed or run microbusinesses. According to IRS data, in 2017, there were some 26 million sole proprietorships in the United States. That is a lot of folks out there working hard, hustling every day to make their businesses--their little piece of the American dream--successful, but they don't have the cash reserves to fall back on in times like these. We could carve this out and make sure they are taken care of in the short run. This is not the time, in my view, to shortchange the economy. This is not the time to send out just a check here and a check there--especially for those who are the most vulnerable to the cataclysmic shocks we have seen in recent weeks. We have to be bold. We have tobe big. We need to act fast. We need to cut the bureaucracy. That is why using these payroll companies makes so much sense. Again, I want to emphasize that this is only one piece of this overall puzzle. It doesn't cover everyone. It will not cover folks in the gig economy. We have to do other things to make sure unemployment insurance and other things are available to them in a similar fashion. But this is a big piece of the puzzle that can get money directly to folks. Their wages can get to folks--their wages can get to them right now so that if we also have to do things like forbearance on mortgages and rents, we don't have to do it across the board because these folks will have the money to pay those mortgages and pay those rents and help those businesses stay afloat as well. The ripple effect of doing something like this, I believe, would be enormous. With this small business lifeline fund, we can send a message to folks on Main Street, who are the lifeblood of our communities. We can take this idea up and keep them afloat so they can get right back on track as soon as we get things back to normal. Right now, they need us. They need us in Congress. They need us at the local level, and they need us at the State level. I urge my colleagues to look at this very seriously--at this package that we are putting together and that we will, hopefully, get done in the next day or, hopefully, in hours--so we can all get back to our States and our families and do those things that are necessary. Keep in mind: I think folks will understand that whatever we do in the next day or so will only be the next step. I mean, I don't want anybody who is listening to anything any of us has to say to think that this is the end of it and that we are just going to finish our work and go home. We are going to have to monitor this constantly. We don't know what the future holds in some aspects. So we will be back, if necessary, and, if necessary, we will do things differently. There are two other things I want to mention before I yield the floor, one of which I have talked about with regard to my State for a long time, and that is the need for Medicaid expansion. Alabama is one of those few States--I think out of 14 or 15 States--that did not expand Medicaid. As part of the package we are talking about now, we increase the Federal Government's portion of that and add additional Medicaid funds. For those States like Alabama, we will get the extra benefits for sure, but we will not get as much as we should because we will not have expanded Medicaid. Senator Warner and I have a bill. It is called the SAME Act, or the States Achieve Medicaid Expansion Act. It is not mandatory. It does not make the States that haven't achieved Medicaid expansion do that, but it gives them the same incentives they had a number of years ago. In a State like Alabama, some 300,000 people could get access to Medicaid who do not have insurance right now and cannot get it but who are wondering in our rural communities and everywhere in the State of Alabama: What in the world am I going to do if I catch this virus? Where am I going to go? Ultimately, with our hospitals, our doctors, and our safety nets that we are putting in as part of this package, we are going to have to cover it anyway. We all know that, sooner or later, we are going to have to cover it. So I would love to see the SAME Act, or the States Achieve Medicaid Expansion Act, get out there and be a part of this package. Let States have the opportunity. It is a States' rights issue. Not a single State would have to expand Medicaid if we pass this bill, but we would at least let those local leaders decide for themselves whether it would be time to give this opportunity to so many of the people in our States who are caught between Medicaid and jobs in which they are eligible for health insurance benefits. It would be a quick, easy way to make sure we are doing our part, and I urge that this be put in there. Finally, I have heard from so many people today who are in our underserved communities in Alabama--the African-American community, the poor communities in Alabama. The preachers are calling, and the mayors are calling. I have been on the phone all day because they are concerned. It is not just that they are concerned because they don't believe the State has them in mind, for I have talked to State officials in Alabama, and there are plans. The fact of the matter is that in this country, across the 50 States, we still don't have enough tests, and we don't have enough personal protection equipment for my hospitals, for my testing labs, and for everybody in Alabama. It is just like in every other State. We are hurting, and we need those supplies. We are giving them money, and the States are doing a good job. Yet I want to make sure that, in Alabama and across this country, we don't leave out the poorest of the poor; that we don't leave out the underserved communities; and that we just don't put testing facilities in the big, urban areas--at the mega churches or the big hospitals, like I have in Birmingham, which are awesome. We have to make sure that we have these clinics set up around the State, such as in the Black Belt of Alabama--the poorest of Alabama's counties--wherein people can't drive an hour and a half or 2 hours to get tests. We have to make sure that we spread this out, because this disease is going to spread out. This disease is not just going to be concentrated in our urban areas. It is going to continue to spread. In these underserved areas in particular, families live together. Grandmothers take care of their grandchildren. Aunts and uncles take care of their nieces and nephews. They are all there together, and we have to figure out a way to protect them. We have to figure out a way to get those tests to them and to make sure that they are treated just as if they were part of our urban areas that have easier and ready access. I end with what I talked about the other day and with which I have ended so many of my talks, and that is back to the people of Alabama and the American people. I can assure you we are doing a lot up here. I see my friend from Alaska, who is presiding today. I know she has been working. I have watched her back here as she has worked the phones and talked to different people. Everywhere I go, I do see that Senators--most of us--are doing things by phone and are doing things remotely. Everybody is working the phones back in their States to make sure we do the right thing. Yet, at the end of the day, this is about you. This is about the people of America. Everyone in this country--to use a phrase from the old civil rights days in Birmingham, AL--is a foot soldier in this movement. Everyone can do his part. We can appropriate money, and we can designate, and we can give tax breaks. We can do those things that are necessary that we as the Federal Government can do, but we can't stop the spread of this virus. A U.S. Senator cannot stop the spread of this virus. We can only stop it among ourselves. We can't stop it across this country. Only you can do that. Only the foot soldiers in America--the hundreds of millions of people we have in this country--can stop the spread of the virus by heeding the warnings and by doing the things that are necessary with social distancing and washing their hands. I think my hands are just about raw since I have washed them so much. We are the foot soldiers. You are the foot soldiers. You can stop the spread. The other day, when I was here on the floor, I pulled out a picture of my old friend from my childhood, Smokey Bear, who said that only you can prevent forest fires. I talked about the fact that the coronavirus, the COVID-19 virus, is a forest fire across the country, and you can help to stop the spread. I want to be a little bit more patriotic about it today. I invoke one of my heroes who used this desk at one point, John F. Kennedy. It was 59 years ago when John F. Kennedy was sworn in as President of the United States and uttered the famous words that sent such an emotion throughout America and that really got so many in this country to be patriotic and stand up for what we do. He said: ``Ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country.'' That is what all Americans have to ask themselves today: What can I do for my country? It is not like a day when we have a tornado that has ripped through, and you can go out and get a chain saw and help your neighbor. It is not like a day when a hurricane has come through, and you can go get bottles of water and diapers to send to folks. What you can do for your country today is to stop the spread of this virus. What you can do for your country is to try to stay home as much as you can--social distancing. Work those things. That is what you can do for your country. If you do that, yes, businesses are going to have problems. We know it. That is what we are trying to work on--making sure we provide that safety net and making sure we provide the necessary tools so that, if we can blunt that curve--if we can get past this--then we will come back even stronger. To get there, we have to have you. We have to have you stand up and speak out to everyone--to do your part, to do those things that are necessary to make sure you do for your country what you should be doing. Help everyone in this country, and help everyone around you. When we do that, we will blunt this curve. We will make this the least severe as possible, and we will move forward and be stronger and better because, at the end of the day, we are the United States of America. I yield the floor. (Ms. MURKOWSKI assumed the Chair.)
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. JONES
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-03-20-pt1-PgS1870-2
| null | 518
|
formal
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single
| null |
homophobic
|
Mr. JONES. Mr. President, I appreciate the opportunity to speak today in the wake of what is going on. I appreciate my colleague from Tennessee talking about supply chains. I completely agree with her. It is something that we are going to have to seriously look at as we get through this process. We have become too dependent. I appreciate her efforts in that regard. I want to talk today--I know we have a lot going on up here. For those who are watching and the American people, you need to understand that while this Gallery may be empty and this floor may be empty, there is a lot going on in the Senate right now. There is a lot happening to try to make sure that we save this economy, that we do those things necessary to try to make sure our businesses, our workers, and our economy from all sectors are saved. Again, I want to go back to the thing you can do as Americans, and that is to stop the spread of this virus. Do social distancing. Do those things we have talked about now for several weeks to try to get folks to do their part because we are trying to do our part. We are doing this in an incredibly bipartisan effort. I think you will see a lot of things coming out of the Senate and out of the House, along with the administration, to try to make sure we do those things for Americans. Over the past few weeks, I have talked with countless business owners and local and State officials. I have heard from a lot of folks who are scared to death, working folks who are now at home. They are not telecommuting because their jobs are not like that. They are alarmed about where we are today and where we are going to be tomorrow and next week and over the coming weeks and even potentially months. Businesses are having to lay off folks. They are having to furlough workers, sending a surge of folks to the unemployment line. We have seen that in just the last few days, which is something that, as we were moving, we thought we would not see. Small businesses, like restaurants and Main Street retailers, will go bankrupt if we are not careful. They are going to go bankrupt without customers, as folks stay home and practice the social distancing that we know we have to do and as States start enacting forced closures of schools and events. Those businesses will shutter. Hopefully, it will only be a temporary shutting. First and foremost, there are steps we can all take to stop the spread of the virus and begin to get the economy on the right track. It is up to us individually. In the meantime, we, as Members of Congress and public officials across this country--from local county officials and city officials to the Governors and State legislators and Members of Congress--we have to do all we can to make sure our businesses, particularly the small businesses, which make up an overwhelming amount of business in the State of Alabama in particular, can continue to meet payroll and keep workers paid so that they can then continue to meet their obligations. That is where my proposal comes in that I talked to a number of colleagues about. In addition to providing the same kind of direct assistance payments that are being kicked around now--whether it is through checks or in some form or another that people are widely talking about right now--I would also like to see a new fund that is created to quickly get cash into the hands of small businesses so they can make their payroll and not have to lay off workers. I am calling this the small business lifeline fund. It would provide a no-interest bridge loan for up to 3 months, to be paid back over 5 years with no interest. This is a work-in-progress, so there are even proposals to make sure that this loan can be forgiven in certain circumstances. It could be administered through the Small Business Administration. It would offer loans up to 75 percent of a business's last 3 months of payroll, with no one employee receiving more than $5,000. I want to repeat that because it would affect so many people in this country. It would offer loans up to 75 percent of a business's last 3 months of payroll, with no one employee receiving more than $5,000 per month. The key to this fund is, it would pass directly through the payroll companies. Payroll companies around this country are used by about 40 percent of American businesses. They mostly cater to the small businesses with fewer than 500 employees. Payroll companies are in the best position to do this because they already have the infrastructure in place. They are a smart choice because they have payroll history. They have the employee data that makes this quick. It makes it efficient. It uses the infrastructure and the pipelines that already exist without having to go back and reinvent or create a new whole set of dynamics that may or may not work. We know the payroll company system in this country works. Again, 40 percent of folks use it. This process would help to alleviate the strain on our unemployment program. It would be a seamless way to continue to pay workers, while also ensuring that payroll taxes can continue to fund important programs, like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. I want you to think about this. What we are talking about doing is not just a one-time $1,000 check or two-time $1,000 check; it is literally funding payroll the way it exists--maybe only 75 percent of it. But people who are used to getting those payroll checks through a payroll processor have their taxes deducted, they have their Social Security deducted, and they have their Medicaid and Medicare expenses deducted. Those things would still come in. It is just that we have created a fund from the Federal Government to do that. Part of what we are fronting comes right back to the Federal Government. As part of this, we would also like to offer assistance to folks who are self-employed or run microbusinesses. According to IRS data, in 2017, there were some 26 million sole proprietorships in the United States. That is a lot of folks out there working hard, hustling every day to make their businesses--their little piece of the American dream--successful, but they don't have the cash reserves to fall back on in times like these. We could carve this out and make sure they are taken care of in the short run. This is not the time, in my view, to shortchange the economy. This is not the time to send out just a check here and a check there--especially for those who are the most vulnerable to the cataclysmic shocks we have seen in recent weeks. We have to be bold. We have tobe big. We need to act fast. We need to cut the bureaucracy. That is why using these payroll companies makes so much sense. Again, I want to emphasize that this is only one piece of this overall puzzle. It doesn't cover everyone. It will not cover folks in the gig economy. We have to do other things to make sure unemployment insurance and other things are available to them in a similar fashion. But this is a big piece of the puzzle that can get money directly to folks. Their wages can get to folks--their wages can get to them right now so that if we also have to do things like forbearance on mortgages and rents, we don't have to do it across the board because these folks will have the money to pay those mortgages and pay those rents and help those businesses stay afloat as well. The ripple effect of doing something like this, I believe, would be enormous. With this small business lifeline fund, we can send a message to folks on Main Street, who are the lifeblood of our communities. We can take this idea up and keep them afloat so they can get right back on track as soon as we get things back to normal. Right now, they need us. They need us in Congress. They need us at the local level, and they need us at the State level. I urge my colleagues to look at this very seriously--at this package that we are putting together and that we will, hopefully, get done in the next day or, hopefully, in hours--so we can all get back to our States and our families and do those things that are necessary. Keep in mind: I think folks will understand that whatever we do in the next day or so will only be the next step. I mean, I don't want anybody who is listening to anything any of us has to say to think that this is the end of it and that we are just going to finish our work and go home. We are going to have to monitor this constantly. We don't know what the future holds in some aspects. So we will be back, if necessary, and, if necessary, we will do things differently. There are two other things I want to mention before I yield the floor, one of which I have talked about with regard to my State for a long time, and that is the need for Medicaid expansion. Alabama is one of those few States--I think out of 14 or 15 States--that did not expand Medicaid. As part of the package we are talking about now, we increase the Federal Government's portion of that and add additional Medicaid funds. For those States like Alabama, we will get the extra benefits for sure, but we will not get as much as we should because we will not have expanded Medicaid. Senator Warner and I have a bill. It is called the SAME Act, or the States Achieve Medicaid Expansion Act. It is not mandatory. It does not make the States that haven't achieved Medicaid expansion do that, but it gives them the same incentives they had a number of years ago. In a State like Alabama, some 300,000 people could get access to Medicaid who do not have insurance right now and cannot get it but who are wondering in our rural communities and everywhere in the State of Alabama: What in the world am I going to do if I catch this virus? Where am I going to go? Ultimately, with our hospitals, our doctors, and our safety nets that we are putting in as part of this package, we are going to have to cover it anyway. We all know that, sooner or later, we are going to have to cover it. So I would love to see the SAME Act, or the States Achieve Medicaid Expansion Act, get out there and be a part of this package. Let States have the opportunity. It is a States' rights issue. Not a single State would have to expand Medicaid if we pass this bill, but we would at least let those local leaders decide for themselves whether it would be time to give this opportunity to so many of the people in our States who are caught between Medicaid and jobs in which they are eligible for health insurance benefits. It would be a quick, easy way to make sure we are doing our part, and I urge that this be put in there. Finally, I have heard from so many people today who are in our underserved communities in Alabama--the African-American community, the poor communities in Alabama. The preachers are calling, and the mayors are calling. I have been on the phone all day because they are concerned. It is not just that they are concerned because they don't believe the State has them in mind, for I have talked to State officials in Alabama, and there are plans. The fact of the matter is that in this country, across the 50 States, we still don't have enough tests, and we don't have enough personal protection equipment for my hospitals, for my testing labs, and for everybody in Alabama. It is just like in every other State. We are hurting, and we need those supplies. We are giving them money, and the States are doing a good job. Yet I want to make sure that, in Alabama and across this country, we don't leave out the poorest of the poor; that we don't leave out the underserved communities; and that we just don't put testing facilities in the big, urban areas--at the mega churches or the big hospitals, like I have in Birmingham, which are awesome. We have to make sure that we have these clinics set up around the State, such as in the Black Belt of Alabama--the poorest of Alabama's counties--wherein people can't drive an hour and a half or 2 hours to get tests. We have to make sure that we spread this out, because this disease is going to spread out. This disease is not just going to be concentrated in our urban areas. It is going to continue to spread. In these underserved areas in particular, families live together. Grandmothers take care of their grandchildren. Aunts and uncles take care of their nieces and nephews. They are all there together, and we have to figure out a way to protect them. We have to figure out a way to get those tests to them and to make sure that they are treated just as if they were part of our urban areas that have easier and ready access. I end with what I talked about the other day and with which I have ended so many of my talks, and that is back to the people of Alabama and the American people. I can assure you we are doing a lot up here. I see my friend from Alaska, who is presiding today. I know she has been working. I have watched her back here as she has worked the phones and talked to different people. Everywhere I go, I do see that Senators--most of us--are doing things by phone and are doing things remotely. Everybody is working the phones back in their States to make sure we do the right thing. Yet, at the end of the day, this is about you. This is about the people of America. Everyone in this country--to use a phrase from the old civil rights days in Birmingham, AL--is a foot soldier in this movement. Everyone can do his part. We can appropriate money, and we can designate, and we can give tax breaks. We can do those things that are necessary that we as the Federal Government can do, but we can't stop the spread of this virus. A U.S. Senator cannot stop the spread of this virus. We can only stop it among ourselves. We can't stop it across this country. Only you can do that. Only the foot soldiers in America--the hundreds of millions of people we have in this country--can stop the spread of the virus by heeding the warnings and by doing the things that are necessary with social distancing and washing their hands. I think my hands are just about raw since I have washed them so much. We are the foot soldiers. You are the foot soldiers. You can stop the spread. The other day, when I was here on the floor, I pulled out a picture of my old friend from my childhood, Smokey Bear, who said that only you can prevent forest fires. I talked about the fact that the coronavirus, the COVID-19 virus, is a forest fire across the country, and you can help to stop the spread. I want to be a little bit more patriotic about it today. I invoke one of my heroes who used this desk at one point, John F. Kennedy. It was 59 years ago when John F. Kennedy was sworn in as President of the United States and uttered the famous words that sent such an emotion throughout America and that really got so many in this country to be patriotic and stand up for what we do. He said: ``Ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country.'' That is what all Americans have to ask themselves today: What can I do for my country? It is not like a day when we have a tornado that has ripped through, and you can go out and get a chain saw and help your neighbor. It is not like a day when a hurricane has come through, and you can go get bottles of water and diapers to send to folks. What you can do for your country today is to stop the spread of this virus. What you can do for your country is to try to stay home as much as you can--social distancing. Work those things. That is what you can do for your country. If you do that, yes, businesses are going to have problems. We know it. That is what we are trying to work on--making sure we provide that safety net and making sure we provide the necessary tools so that, if we can blunt that curve--if we can get past this--then we will come back even stronger. To get there, we have to have you. We have to have you stand up and speak out to everyone--to do your part, to do those things that are necessary to make sure you do for your country what you should be doing. Help everyone in this country, and help everyone around you. When we do that, we will blunt this curve. We will make this the least severe as possible, and we will move forward and be stronger and better because, at the end of the day, we are the United States of America. I yield the floor. (Ms. MURKOWSKI assumed the Chair.)
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2020-01-06
|
Mr. JONES
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-03-20-pt1-PgS1870-2
| null | 519
|
formal
|
steroids
| null |
transphobic
|
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, negotiations on the third phase of the coronavirus legislation went late into the night last night and will continue through the day today. I have spoken to Speaker Pelosi and Secretary Mnuchin several times, as well as President Trump, to keep them apprised as we continue the work through a number of issues. In fact, I just had a very good, very detailed phone call with Secretary Mnuchin--or ``Steve and Chuck,'' as he prefers to call it. We discussed many of the outstanding issues, and we are making very good progress. I have every expectation that this progress will continue throughout the day. Democratic negotiators will meet with their Republican counterparts throughout the day to continue hammering out the details. The Senate is here, we are working, and we are all eager to come to a bipartisan agreement as soon as humanly possible. There are still a number of priorities that Democrats continue to fight for in the package that is now being assembled. As I have made clear, Democrats have two primary goals, broadly defined, in this next phase of coronavirus legislation. One is to address the impending public health crisis head-on with a massive infusion of resources to our hospitals, our medical facilities, and our other public health infrastructure. The second priority is to put workers first. In fact, our proposal, which we laid out as early as Monday, is entitled ``Workers First.'' Democrats want to do as much as possible to prepare our healthcare system, and we want to give Americans who are most immediately affected by the economic slowdown ample relief so they can weather the storm over the long haul. So, on healthcare, Democrats are fighting for a Marshall Plan for our public health infrastructure. We need hundreds of billions of dollars for ventilators, testing equipment, gloves, masks, ICU beds, and PPE, or personal protective equipment, for our frontline medical workers. I spoke to the head of the nurses union in New York yesterday. They are short of masks. These brave nurses are going to work, doing their job, but they don't have the right equipment that they need. Money must go to our hospitals and our nursing homes, our community health centers, and our State and local governments. This can neither wait for a future bill nor a supplemental package. We need it right now, not 2 weeks from now. A senior doctor at Maimonides hospital in Brooklyn, NY, wrote to me yesterday. Here is what the doctor said: I'm writing to you in a move of desperation. Currently, we have severe shortages in the basic necessities needed to fight the disease and protect health care workers. Disposable masks and gowns are in such short supply, we re-use them until they fall apart. We don't have adequate supplies of supportive medicines. Beds, ventilators, nurses and critical care doctors are also needed. We need a national response to this disease. I urge my colleagues to hear the urgency and strain in this brave doctor's voice, the desperation in his warning. If we don't provide these resources right now, what is already a dire situation will--not could--become catastrophic. It will affect hospitals everywhere: big-city hospitals, medium-sized suburban hospitals, and small rural hospitals. Many of them will go under in a short period of time. So we need a Marshall Plan for our public health infrastructure, and it must be in this legislation, in the opinion of the Democratic caucus. As we have made clear from the beginning, we must also put workers first. That means a dramatic expansion and reform of unemployment insurance. We need unemployment insurance on steroids. Some are calling it ``employment insurance.'' It must be easier to access. It must cover many more Americans during this crisis, including Americans who have nontraditional employment. It must provide more generous benefits. Workers who are laid off should receive a paycheck equal to what they were receiving while employed. Workers must be protected, whether they work for businesses small, medium, or large. The plan we have would allow them to get unemployment insurance quickly. They would be furloughed. So they would stay as employees--even though they weren't working--of their employer, so that when, God-willing, this crisis ends, they can go back to their employer and the businesses that are now closed and decimated can start running again. We propose that this be not just a one-shot deal but a paycheck every work period, and it should go for as long as the crisis lasts. We want to fund it for at least 4 months, maybe 6. If the crisis ends more quickly, of course, we might be able to terminate it, but we need to give the workers of America the assurance that they will have paychecks. The same amount of resources that they had before this crisis they should have now, and it will occur ongoing until we beat this horrible disease. There are other things we must do for American families as well. We should greatly expand paid sick leave and family leave. We need to expand food assistance. The kids who go to school get their best meals, many of them, at the school lunch or school breakfast. They need to be fed. Others who lose work, they need food help right away. I believe our students are under strain. Many of their colleges are gone. Those who have just gotten out of school have difficult employment possibilities. We should cancel student loan payments during the course of the crisis, both principal and interest. I spoke to the President about this yesterday. He said he was sympathetic. He said at the podium yesterday that interest payments he would cancel, but I think we need to do more. We also must rescue small and medium-sized businesses with a generous loan program, so long as they protect their workers. They have other expenses. We will take care of their workers under the expanded unemployment program and on the small business program, but they have other expenses. We don't want them going under when these are good, ongoing businesses that did nothing wrong. They have to come back. So small business really needs help. And, if we are going to bail out any industry, particularly the big companies, we have to include strict conditions that put workers first: no layoffs, no salary cuts for workers or salary increases for corporate executives, guarantees that workers be rehired at their previous wages once the crisis abates, and no stock buybacks. I have heard the President mention that he is against stock buybacks in the past. So when I called him yesterday, I said: Make it clear. It is not in the bill that has been put before us, but Democrats will insist that it be in any proposal once we come together in a bipartisan way, as we are doing now. Democrats have several other priorities, as well, and we are working through each of them with our Republican colleagues even as we speak. As I said, I had a wonderful--well, I had a very good--conversation. I will not go too far, but I had a very good conversation with Secretary Mnuchin, and we are making good progress on many of the issues that we Democrats feel are important. One other need, by the way--because we do have other needs--is that I want to emphasize that one of the issues that is quickly emerging is that State and local governments are running out of cash and may soon be broke. Governors, mayors, county executives, county officials, town officials--Democratic and Republican alike--are clamoring for help. We must provide it. They are on the frontlines. So, in conclusion, I have no illusions about the difficulty of putting together legislation this momentous in this short a period of time, but all parties are working in good faith and as fast as possible to see that we accomplish the task at hand. Of course, far greater than our challenges here in Congress are the challenges that now confront the American people. Working families are at home without a paycheck, with no knowledge of when the next one might arrive. Small businesses are watching the labor of their lives teeter on the brink of collapse. I spoke to a small business owner. He had spent 8 years getting his business to be successful. It just had begun to be that way, and now his doors are closed and his employees are furloughed. We have to help people like that. Our healthcare workers, men and women who perform extraordinarily difficult jobs even in ordinary times, are now asked to bear additional burdens. But know this, healthcare workers: You are our heroes. America stands with you, and Democrats are fighting to help every one of the emergency workers during this crisis. So, to our healthcare workers and to every American out there finding their way through these challenging times: Stay strong. We are working to provide you the relief to see you through the crisis. We will get it done--Democrats, Republicans--together. Once the scourge of this virus has passed, we will come back stronger and even more resilient. President Franklin D. Roosevelt told a generation facing its own national crisis: This great Nation will endure as it [always] has endured. It will revive and it will prosper . . . [because there] is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. With wisdom and with courage, we will endeavor to finish the job here in Congress--whatever it takes. I yield the floor.
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2020-01-06
|
Mr. SCHUMER
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-03-21-pt1-PgS1880
| null | 520
|
formal
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single
| null |
homophobic
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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, Senators' bipartisan discussions continued all day yesterday and through the night. Both sides' negotiators, with the administration, are continuing to work toward a bipartisan agreement on major legislation to support American workers and families, protect small businesses, help to stabilize our economy, and put more resources on the frontlines of our healthcare battle against the coronavirus. As of now, an agreement has yet to be finalized, but our committee chairs, their Democratic counterparts, and President Trump's representatives are making important progress. Yesterday, I took action on the floor to keep the process moving along with the urgency that it demands. By rule, it set up our first procedural vote for tomorrow, and then, on Monday, the Senate will vote on passage. It has only been 2 days since Senate Republicans introduced the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act to give shape and structure to these urgent discussions. We put forward four objectives: First, put emergency cash in the hands of individuals and families as quickly as possible. Second, deliver the major relief that American small businesses need at this unprecedented time, and deliver it fast. Three, help bring some stability to our economy and prevent as many layoffs as possible. Four, continue to rush resources to the frontline healthcare workers and providers who are actually treating patients. And perhaps most important of all, we looked specifically for policies that could do all of the above as quickly as humanly possible. Small businesses all across the country have made it clear: If they are going to keep their lights on and keep their employees on payroll, they need help, and they need it now. Americans who have already been laid off due to this crisis have made it clear they need help and they need it now. Key national industries which are hemorrhaging business through no fault of their own but due to the government's own public health guidance have made it clear: In order to retain their workers, they need help, and they need it now. In particular, every single American who has opened a newspaper or turned on the television in the last week has heard from our brave nurses, doctors, first responders, and public health experts: If our Nation is going to punch back and beat this virus, the people on the medical frontlines need our help, and they need it now. Senate Republicans put out our starting proposal as fast as we could. Then I created a structure for bipartisan discussions to begin as fast as they could. No legislation will move through the Senate that does not contain ideas from both parties. That is the way this body is designed. So these bipartisan talks have been essential, and they are ongoing, but what we need to do now is move forward. Now, 2 days ago the press reported that a senior Member of the House Democratic leadership told his colleagues: ``This is a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision''--a senior Member of the House Democratic leadership. Well, let me suggest that that is exactly--exactly--the wrong approach right now. That is the kind of thinking that could bog down these urgent discussions. That is the kind of mindset that the American people cannot afford for their elected representatives to adopt. I hope it does not describe the view of our own Senate Democratic colleagues as we try to close out these talks. More Americans are being laid off every day. More small businesses are being forced to shed payroll every day. Our nurses and doctors are running lower on key supplies every day. This is not a political opportunity. This is not a political opportunity. This is a national emergency. It is time to come together, finalize the results of our bipartisan discussions, and then close this out. Earlier this week, I had the Senate move quickly to pass the more modest bill that came over from the Democratic House of Representatives. I didn't believe it was perfect--far from it. But Senate Republicans did not delay it needlessly. We did not try to originate our own version and burn several more days trying to fit them together. Instead, we treated that bill with the bipartisanship and urgency this crisis requires. Since then, the situation has only grown more dire, so I hope that our Senate Democratic colleagues and the Democratic House will bring equal bipartisanship and equal urgency to this legislation as well. In closing, I think all of us could take a lesson from our constituents. As we finish negotiating and finalize this bold legislation, we should look to the American people. Everywhere you look these past days, individuals, families, and organizations are stepping up to the plate and finding creative ways to serve those in need. One of my fellow Kentuckians is a woman named Erin Hinson. Erin lives in Louisville. She is someone whom doctors have told to be particularly careful these past few days, so her opportunities to pitch in were somewhat limited, but she was determined to do her part. Here is what she said: ``I may never have the capacity to develop a vaccine or a magic pill to get rid of COVID-19 . . . but I can master a spreadsheet!'' Erin created a website--Louisvillecovid19match.com. There is one signup sheet for neighbors who are older or at heightened risk and another signup sheet for neighbors who are young and healthy. And Erin is performing a kind of matchmaking service. If someone needs a prescription pickup or some groceries delivered or even a friendly phone call, she helps make the connection. With a little help from local media, Erin is already tracking more than 400 volunteers--400 volunteers--from every Louisville ZIP Code. It is the perfect manifestation of Kentucky's State motto: ``United we stand, divided we fall.'' United we stand--even if we have to stand 6 feet apart for a few weeks--and divided we fall. Brave and generous and creative Americans all across our Nation get it. They just need Congress to get it too. I am impressed and heartened by the speed and bipartisan spirit that has characterized the past day's discussions, but we need to keep it up. We absolutely cannot let up now. We need to finish these negotiations and move forward.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. McCONNELL
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-03-21-pt1-PgS1881-2
| null | 521
|
formal
|
single
| null |
homophobic
|
The following communications were laid before the Senate, together with accompanying papers, reports, and documents, and were referred as indicated: EC-4347. A communication from the Secretary of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Foreign Futures Options Transactions'' (RIN3038-AE86) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on March 18, 2020; to the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry. EC-4348. A communication from the Director, Office of Government Ethics, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Supplemental Standards of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Department of Agriculture'' (RIN3209-AA48) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on March 18, 2020; to the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry. EC-4349. A communication from the Alternate Federal Register Liaison Officer, Office of the Secretary, Department of Defense, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``National Guard Bureau Privacy Program'' (RIN0790-AK73) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on March 18, 2020; to the Committee on Armed Services. EC-4350. A communication from the Assistant General Counsel for Legislation, Office of Electricity, Department of Energy, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Critical Electric Infrastructure Information; New Administrative Procedures'' ((RIN1901-AB44) (10 CFR Part 1004)) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on March 19, 2020; to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. EC-4351. A communication from the Director of Congressional Affairs, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Final Rule: Approval of American Society of Mechanical Engineers' Code Cases'' (RIN3150-AJ93) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on March 20, 2020; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works. EC-4352. A communication from the Chairman, Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, transmitting, pursuant to law, a report entitled ``March 2020 Report to the Congress: Medicare Payment Policy''; to the Committee on Finance. EC-4353. A communication from the Administrator, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Department of Homeland Security, transmitting, pursuant to law, a report relative to the cost of response and recovery efforts for FEMA-3392-EM in the State of Louisiana having exceeded the $5,000,000 limit for a single emergency declaration; to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. EC-4354. A communication from the Deputy Assistant Administrator, National Marine Fisheries Service, Department of Commerce, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``New England Industry-Funded Monitoring Ominbus Amendment'' (RIN0648-BG91) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on March 18, 2020; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-4355. A communication from the Deputy Assistant Administrator, National Marine Fisheries Service, Department of Commerce, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Pacific Island Fisheries; 2017 Hawaii Kona Crab Annual Catch Limit and Accountability Measure'' (RIN0648-XF706) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on March 18, 2020; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-4356. A communication from the Assistant Administrator, National Marine Fisheries Service, Department of Commerce, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Interim Final Rule to Reduce the 2018 Sub-Annual Catch Limit for the Atlantic Herring Management Areas'' (RIN0648- XG340) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on March 18, 2020; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-4357. A communication from the Acting Deputy Assistant Administrator, National Marine Fisheries Service, Department of Commerce, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Interim Final Rule Extension to Address Overfishing of Atlantic Shortfin Mako Shark'' (RIN0648-BH49) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on March 18, 2020; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-4358. A communication from the Acting Deputy Assistant Administrator, National Marine Fisheries Service, Department of Commerce, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Final Rule to Revise Atlantic Highly Migratory Species Shark Fishery Closure Regulations'' (RIN0648-BG97) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on March 18, 2020; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-4359. A communication from the Deputy Assistant Administrator, National Marine Fisheries Service, Department of Commerce, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Final Rule for Amendment 43 to the Fishery Management Plan for the Snapper-Grouper Fishery of the South Atlantic Region'' (RIN0648-BH39) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on March 18, 2020; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. EC-4360. A communication from the Deputy Assistant Administrator, National Marine Fisheries Service, Department of Commerce, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Atlantic Highly Migratory Species; 2018 Atlantic Shark Commercial Fishing Season'' (RIN0648-XF486) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on March 18, 2020; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation
|
2020-01-06
|
Unknown
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-03-21-pt1-PgS1890-3
| null | 522
|
formal
|
single
| null |
homophobic
|
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, Senators have now spent days engaged in vigorous bipartisan discussions among ourselves and with the administration. Earlier today, I hosted a productive meeting in my office with the Democratic leader, the Speaker of the House, the House Republican leader, and the Secretary of the Treasury. These intense conversations have built a piece of legislation that is as bold and as big as the American people deserve and as thoroughly bipartisan as our process demands. Now what we need to do is to move forward. This national crisis is not going to wait around if Congress slips back into conventional politics or haggles endlessly over the finer points. Every day, more Americans' jobs are disappearing or coming ever closer to the brink. Every day, more small businesses are faced with hard decisions that could change local communities, literally, forever. Every day, major American companies that employ countless people are seeing their commerce crushed by their own government for the sake of public health. Every day, doctors, nurses, and healthcare professionals will keep reporting to work and treating patients, whether or not Congress has their back. The risks to our country grow every single day that we do not act. The needs of hospitals and healthcare providers grow every day that we do not act. That is why we have worked around the clock to craft a major bipartisan relief package. That is why we are going to hold our first procedural vote in just a few minutes. It is so that we can keep moving forward, because this virus is not going to wait for politics as usual. These past few days have brought unity and bipartisan energy here to the Senate. I think Members on both sides agree that it has been very encouraging. Since Senate Republicans released our initial framework to give some structure to these discussions, both sides have worked hard to create something that can pass the Senate, pass the House, and be signed into law by the President. The bipartisan product delivers strongly on each of the core priorities we identified at the outset. It puts urgently needed cash in the hands of American workers and families. It delivers historic and rapid relief to small businesses so they can make payroll and keep people employed. It helps stabilize key industries to avoid layoffs wherever possible and preserve the greatest economy in the world for when we come out on the other side of this. And, of course, it sends a massive--massive--new infusion of resources to the frontlines of the medical response. That is what we have to do: inject a significant amount of money as quickly as possible into households, small businesses, key sectors, and our Nation's hospitals and health centers. This bill would do that, and it would do it fast. The comprise product also contains many ideas that our Democratic colleagues brought to the table. It balances the administration's focus on sending direct cash to Americans as quickly as possible with our Democratic colleagues' focus on bolstering State unemployment insurance programs. It places conditions which our Democratic colleagues have sought on the loans that would flow to major businesses, conditions which the President has also endorsed. And both parties have made sure to keep strengthening the resources that will be pushed out to the frontlines. The bill includes $75 billion in a new fund for hospitals and health providers, and more than three-quarters of the funds in the appropriations section--nearly $200 billion--will not stay in Washington but will go straight to State and local priorities. So what we have is a comprise product which contains ideas, contributions, and priorities from both sides and which can become law as soon as tomorrow--as soon as tomorrow. In other words, it is just about time to take yes for an answer. We are now at a point which every American who has ever negotiated anything would recognize, whether they have purchased a home, bought a car, or negotiated for their small business. We are at the point where both sides have come a long way toward each other, and each side has to decide whether to continue elbowing and arguing over the last several inches and risk the whole thing or whether to shake hands and get it done. Thus far, throughout this crisis, the Senate has risen to the occasion. It was just a few days ago when the Senate Republican majority moved expeditiously to pass the House Democrats' phase 2 legislation, even though many of my colleagues on this side of the aisle and I had serious reservations and would have written it very differently. We passed it anyway. It was basically written on the House side. Nevertheless, as I just said, I pushed the Speaker's legislation through the Senate because urgency and results matter during a national crisis; because, imperfections notwithstanding, it was the right thing to do for our country. So, look--look--I hope and anticipate that a similar degree of bipartisanship and urgency will be reciprocated now. I understand the Speaker said following our meeting this morning that she may simply give up on these bipartisan talks and begin writing her own separate bill. Perhaps that is related to the remarks of one of her senior House Democratic leaders who reportedly told colleagues a few days ago: ``This is a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision.'' `` . . . a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision.'' Well, I sincerely hope that nobody actually views this crisis in such a cynical manner. This is not a political opportunity. It is a national emergency. That is why we have engaged in days of bipartisan talks to get to this point. It is why it is time to move forward. Americans don't need to see us haggling endlessly. They don't need us to jeopardize all the progress we have made over the past several days for the sake of some eleventh-hour brinkmanship. The American people need an outcome, and they need it tomorrow. They need us to vote to advance this legislation today and pass it tomorrow. As I said yesterday, Congress should take inspiration from our own constituents. We should be inspired by our own constituents. Look at what they are doing. Even during this pandemic, the American people are showing the world the soul of our country. In my home State of Kentucky, the official motto is ``United we stand, divided we fall.'' And every day I hear about new ways Kentuckians are standing united, even if they have to stand 6 feet apart. I recently heard about a resident of Campbell County in Northern Kentucky named Debbie Buckley. In her day job, Debbie works for the local government, but recently she heard about some students at a nearby university who were still living in the dorms even though in-person classes have been canceled. Some had to remain in the area for work. Others were international students who couldn't get home. Their situations were completely uncertain. The local shelves were not fully stocked, so Debbie decided to do something. She put out a call for help, and Kentuckians answered the call. Churches, restaurants, and neighbors all pitched in with food and supplies. Debbie drove all over Northern Kentucky collecting those donations and then delivering them to these young people. She has found everything a college student could need: canned goods, microwaveable meals, and even Airheads candy, which I am proud to say are made right there in Kentucky. There are so many stories like this pouring in from all over our country. Americans are stepping up to the plate. Americans realize this is no time for selfishness and no time for division but a time for solidarity, generosity, and, yes, courage. Americans are rising to the occasion. The Senate must do the same. Let's move this legislation forward this afternoon, as the last few discussions begin to wind down, and then let's get this done tomorrow. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. McCONNELL
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-03-22-pt1-PgS1893-8
| null | 523
|
formal
|
Federal Reserve
| null |
antisemitic
|
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, the eyes of the Nation are on the Senate. For days now, we have been engaged in intense, bipartisan talks to build emergency relief legislation on a historic scale, to push resources to our healthcare heroes and American workers and families. Democrats and Republicans sat down together. We crafted this version of a proposal together. This compromise package would push tens of billions of dollars to hospitals and healthcare providers. It would send direct checks to millions of American households--direct checks. It would massively expand unemployment insurance in this crisis. It would stabilize industries to prevent mass layoffs. And, crucially, it would deliver historic relief to small businesses to help Main Street employees from being totally crushed--crushed--by this pandemic. But, yesterday, when the time came to vote on these urgent measures, our Democratic colleagues chose to block it. So why are the American people still waiting? It is a good question to ask. I hear the markets are not doing well today. They would like to ask the question of us: Why not move? Why are Democrats filibustering the bipartisan bill they helped write? It is an appropriate question to ask this morning as the country waits on us. So let me give the American people a taste of the outstanding issues we woke up to this morning. Here are some of the items on the Democratic wish list over which they chose to block this legislation last night: tax credits for solar energy and wind energy, provisions to force employers to give special new treatment to Big Labor, and--listen to this--new emissions standards for the airlines. Are you kidding me? This is the moment to debate new regulations that have nothing whatsoever to do with this crisis? That is what they are up to over there. The American people need to know it. Democrats will not let us fund hospitals or save small businesses unless they get to dust off the Green New Deal. I would like to see Senate Democrats tell New York City doctors and nurses who are literally overrun as we speak that they are filibustering hospital funding and more masks because they want to argue with the airlines over their carbon footprint. I would like to see Senate Democrats tell small business employees in their States, who are literally being laid off every day, that they are filibustering relief that will keep people on the payroll because Democrats' special interest friends want to squeeze employers while they are vulnerable--squeeze these employers while they are vulnerable. I would like to see Senate Democrats tell all the American seniors who have seen their hard-earned retirement savings literally melt away, as the markets track toward their worst month since 1931, that they are continuing to hold up emergency measures over tax credits for solar panels--tax credits for solar panels Even with the Federal Reserve announcing even further extraordinary steps today, the markets are tanking once again, as I said, because this body can't get its act together, and the only reason it can't get its act together is right over here on the other side of the aisle. So these are just a few of the completely nongermane wish list items that they are rallying behind, preventing us from getting this emergency relief to the American people right now, eleventh-hour demands the Democrats have decided are more important than Americans' paychecks and the personal safety of doctors and nurses. So remember what one of Speaker Pelosi's top lieutenants in the House said a few days ago--and this is a direct quote: This is a tremendous opportunity to restrict things to fit our vision--to fit our vision. That was the Democratic whip in the House, just laying it out there. It reminds me of the definition of a Washington gaffe: when a politician in Washington tells you what he really means. We heard something similar here on the Senate floor last night--just last night. Here was one of our Democraticcolleagues: ``How many times are we going to get a shot at a trillion-dollar-plus program?'' Right here on the floor last night: ``I don't know how many trillion-plus packages we are going to have.'' In other words, let's don't waste this opportunity to take full advantage and get our whole wish list done. They ought to be embarrassed. In fact, I have heard from some of them who are embarrassed, talking like this is some juicy political opportunity. This is not a juicy political opportunity. This is a national emergency. We had days of productive, bipartisan talks to get to this point. Senate Democrats sat down with Senate Republicans and negotiated furiously to get to this point. The bill now contains a huge number of changes that our Democratic colleagues requested, including major changes. We were this close--this close. Then, yesterday morning, the Speaker of the House flew back from San Francisco, and suddenly the Senate's serious bipartisan process turned into this leftwing episode of ``Supermarket Sweep''--unrelated issues, left and right. I will tell you what would really lower our carbon footprint. If the entire economy continues to crumble, with hundreds of thousands more Americans laid off because Senate Democrats will not let us act, that will lower our carbon footprint all right. Every single American outside of Washington knows this is no time for this nonsense. A surgeon in Fresno, CA, says: ``We are at war with no ammo.'' ``We are at war with no ammo.'' That is a surgeon in Fresno. An intensive care nurse in New York City says: ``If we don't get the proper equipment soon, we're going to get sick.'' Democrats are filibustering more masks and aid for hospitals. Every day, more Americans wake up to the news that their jobs are gone--their jobs are gone. Democrats are filibustering programs to keep people on the payroll, and they are filibustering a huge expansion of unemployment insurance, which they themselves negotiated and put into the bill. Hundreds of dollars extra per week for laid-off workers on top of existing unemployment benefits, and Democrats are blocking it? This has to stop, and today is the day it has to stop. The country is out of time--out of time. When the Democratic House passed their phase 2 bill, even though Senate Republicans would have written it very differently, we sped it through the Senate and passed it quickly without even amending it. I literally told my colleagues to ``gag and vote for it,'' for the sake of building bipartisan momentum, because Republicans understand that a national crisis calls for urgency and it calls for bipartisanship. It is time for that good faith to be reciprocated. It is time for Democrats to stop playing politics and step up to the plate. The small businesses in their own States deserve it. Their own States' emergency room doctors deserve it. Their own constituents who have lost their jobs deserve it. In my home State of Kentucky, the Governor has effectively paused commerce across the State, and our unemployment system crashed due to demand. Kentuckians need help now, and we aren't alone. I have heard the pleas from healthcare workers in New York and Seattle. I have listened to the small business owners crying out in Brooklyn and Chicago. Why does only one side understand that this is urgent? Why are these hard-hit cities' own Senators happy to keep this slow-walking going on indefinitely? Is that really something these folks on the other side are comfortable with--indefinitely slow-walking all of this? How can half the Senate not rise to the occasion? At a time when everybody else in the country is pulling together, they are pulling us apart. The examples are all over the country that we ought to look to: healthcare heroes, to neighborhood volunteers, to national industries. Everybody is unifying and pitching in. What about here in the Senate? It is time to get with the program. It is time to pass historic relief that we have built together. The country doesn't have time for these political games. They need progress. So we are going to vote in just a few minutes, and I assure you the American people will be watching.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. McCONNELL
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-03-23-pt1-PgS1919-5
| null | 524
|
formal
|
the Fed
| null |
antisemitic
|
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, the eyes of the Nation are on the Senate. For days now, we have been engaged in intense, bipartisan talks to build emergency relief legislation on a historic scale, to push resources to our healthcare heroes and American workers and families. Democrats and Republicans sat down together. We crafted this version of a proposal together. This compromise package would push tens of billions of dollars to hospitals and healthcare providers. It would send direct checks to millions of American households--direct checks. It would massively expand unemployment insurance in this crisis. It would stabilize industries to prevent mass layoffs. And, crucially, it would deliver historic relief to small businesses to help Main Street employees from being totally crushed--crushed--by this pandemic. But, yesterday, when the time came to vote on these urgent measures, our Democratic colleagues chose to block it. So why are the American people still waiting? It is a good question to ask. I hear the markets are not doing well today. They would like to ask the question of us: Why not move? Why are Democrats filibustering the bipartisan bill they helped write? It is an appropriate question to ask this morning as the country waits on us. So let me give the American people a taste of the outstanding issues we woke up to this morning. Here are some of the items on the Democratic wish list over which they chose to block this legislation last night: tax credits for solar energy and wind energy, provisions to force employers to give special new treatment to Big Labor, and--listen to this--new emissions standards for the airlines. Are you kidding me? This is the moment to debate new regulations that have nothing whatsoever to do with this crisis? That is what they are up to over there. The American people need to know it. Democrats will not let us fund hospitals or save small businesses unless they get to dust off the Green New Deal. I would like to see Senate Democrats tell New York City doctors and nurses who are literally overrun as we speak that they are filibustering hospital funding and more masks because they want to argue with the airlines over their carbon footprint. I would like to see Senate Democrats tell small business employees in their States, who are literally being laid off every day, that they are filibustering relief that will keep people on the payroll because Democrats' special interest friends want to squeeze employers while they are vulnerable--squeeze these employers while they are vulnerable. I would like to see Senate Democrats tell all the American seniors who have seen their hard-earned retirement savings literally melt away, as the markets track toward their worst month since 1931, that they are continuing to hold up emergency measures over tax credits for solar panels--tax credits for solar panels Even with the Federal Reserve announcing even further extraordinary steps today, the markets are tanking once again, as I said, because this body can't get its act together, and the only reason it can't get its act together is right over here on the other side of the aisle. So these are just a few of the completely nongermane wish list items that they are rallying behind, preventing us from getting this emergency relief to the American people right now, eleventh-hour demands the Democrats have decided are more important than Americans' paychecks and the personal safety of doctors and nurses. So remember what one of Speaker Pelosi's top lieutenants in the House said a few days ago--and this is a direct quote: This is a tremendous opportunity to restrict things to fit our vision--to fit our vision. That was the Democratic whip in the House, just laying it out there. It reminds me of the definition of a Washington gaffe: when a politician in Washington tells you what he really means. We heard something similar here on the Senate floor last night--just last night. Here was one of our Democraticcolleagues: ``How many times are we going to get a shot at a trillion-dollar-plus program?'' Right here on the floor last night: ``I don't know how many trillion-plus packages we are going to have.'' In other words, let's don't waste this opportunity to take full advantage and get our whole wish list done. They ought to be embarrassed. In fact, I have heard from some of them who are embarrassed, talking like this is some juicy political opportunity. This is not a juicy political opportunity. This is a national emergency. We had days of productive, bipartisan talks to get to this point. Senate Democrats sat down with Senate Republicans and negotiated furiously to get to this point. The bill now contains a huge number of changes that our Democratic colleagues requested, including major changes. We were this close--this close. Then, yesterday morning, the Speaker of the House flew back from San Francisco, and suddenly the Senate's serious bipartisan process turned into this leftwing episode of ``Supermarket Sweep''--unrelated issues, left and right. I will tell you what would really lower our carbon footprint. If the entire economy continues to crumble, with hundreds of thousands more Americans laid off because Senate Democrats will not let us act, that will lower our carbon footprint all right. Every single American outside of Washington knows this is no time for this nonsense. A surgeon in Fresno, CA, says: ``We are at war with no ammo.'' ``We are at war with no ammo.'' That is a surgeon in Fresno. An intensive care nurse in New York City says: ``If we don't get the proper equipment soon, we're going to get sick.'' Democrats are filibustering more masks and aid for hospitals. Every day, more Americans wake up to the news that their jobs are gone--their jobs are gone. Democrats are filibustering programs to keep people on the payroll, and they are filibustering a huge expansion of unemployment insurance, which they themselves negotiated and put into the bill. Hundreds of dollars extra per week for laid-off workers on top of existing unemployment benefits, and Democrats are blocking it? This has to stop, and today is the day it has to stop. The country is out of time--out of time. When the Democratic House passed their phase 2 bill, even though Senate Republicans would have written it very differently, we sped it through the Senate and passed it quickly without even amending it. I literally told my colleagues to ``gag and vote for it,'' for the sake of building bipartisan momentum, because Republicans understand that a national crisis calls for urgency and it calls for bipartisanship. It is time for that good faith to be reciprocated. It is time for Democrats to stop playing politics and step up to the plate. The small businesses in their own States deserve it. Their own States' emergency room doctors deserve it. Their own constituents who have lost their jobs deserve it. In my home State of Kentucky, the Governor has effectively paused commerce across the State, and our unemployment system crashed due to demand. Kentuckians need help now, and we aren't alone. I have heard the pleas from healthcare workers in New York and Seattle. I have listened to the small business owners crying out in Brooklyn and Chicago. Why does only one side understand that this is urgent? Why are these hard-hit cities' own Senators happy to keep this slow-walking going on indefinitely? Is that really something these folks on the other side are comfortable with--indefinitely slow-walking all of this? How can half the Senate not rise to the occasion? At a time when everybody else in the country is pulling together, they are pulling us apart. The examples are all over the country that we ought to look to: healthcare heroes, to neighborhood volunteers, to national industries. Everybody is unifying and pitching in. What about here in the Senate? It is time to get with the program. It is time to pass historic relief that we have built together. The country doesn't have time for these political games. They need progress. So we are going to vote in just a few minutes, and I assure you the American people will be watching.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. McCONNELL
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-03-23-pt1-PgS1919-5
| null | 525
|
formal
|
single
| null |
homophobic
|
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, the eyes of the Nation are on the Senate. For days now, we have been engaged in intense, bipartisan talks to build emergency relief legislation on a historic scale, to push resources to our healthcare heroes and American workers and families. Democrats and Republicans sat down together. We crafted this version of a proposal together. This compromise package would push tens of billions of dollars to hospitals and healthcare providers. It would send direct checks to millions of American households--direct checks. It would massively expand unemployment insurance in this crisis. It would stabilize industries to prevent mass layoffs. And, crucially, it would deliver historic relief to small businesses to help Main Street employees from being totally crushed--crushed--by this pandemic. But, yesterday, when the time came to vote on these urgent measures, our Democratic colleagues chose to block it. So why are the American people still waiting? It is a good question to ask. I hear the markets are not doing well today. They would like to ask the question of us: Why not move? Why are Democrats filibustering the bipartisan bill they helped write? It is an appropriate question to ask this morning as the country waits on us. So let me give the American people a taste of the outstanding issues we woke up to this morning. Here are some of the items on the Democratic wish list over which they chose to block this legislation last night: tax credits for solar energy and wind energy, provisions to force employers to give special new treatment to Big Labor, and--listen to this--new emissions standards for the airlines. Are you kidding me? This is the moment to debate new regulations that have nothing whatsoever to do with this crisis? That is what they are up to over there. The American people need to know it. Democrats will not let us fund hospitals or save small businesses unless they get to dust off the Green New Deal. I would like to see Senate Democrats tell New York City doctors and nurses who are literally overrun as we speak that they are filibustering hospital funding and more masks because they want to argue with the airlines over their carbon footprint. I would like to see Senate Democrats tell small business employees in their States, who are literally being laid off every day, that they are filibustering relief that will keep people on the payroll because Democrats' special interest friends want to squeeze employers while they are vulnerable--squeeze these employers while they are vulnerable. I would like to see Senate Democrats tell all the American seniors who have seen their hard-earned retirement savings literally melt away, as the markets track toward their worst month since 1931, that they are continuing to hold up emergency measures over tax credits for solar panels--tax credits for solar panels Even with the Federal Reserve announcing even further extraordinary steps today, the markets are tanking once again, as I said, because this body can't get its act together, and the only reason it can't get its act together is right over here on the other side of the aisle. So these are just a few of the completely nongermane wish list items that they are rallying behind, preventing us from getting this emergency relief to the American people right now, eleventh-hour demands the Democrats have decided are more important than Americans' paychecks and the personal safety of doctors and nurses. So remember what one of Speaker Pelosi's top lieutenants in the House said a few days ago--and this is a direct quote: This is a tremendous opportunity to restrict things to fit our vision--to fit our vision. That was the Democratic whip in the House, just laying it out there. It reminds me of the definition of a Washington gaffe: when a politician in Washington tells you what he really means. We heard something similar here on the Senate floor last night--just last night. Here was one of our Democraticcolleagues: ``How many times are we going to get a shot at a trillion-dollar-plus program?'' Right here on the floor last night: ``I don't know how many trillion-plus packages we are going to have.'' In other words, let's don't waste this opportunity to take full advantage and get our whole wish list done. They ought to be embarrassed. In fact, I have heard from some of them who are embarrassed, talking like this is some juicy political opportunity. This is not a juicy political opportunity. This is a national emergency. We had days of productive, bipartisan talks to get to this point. Senate Democrats sat down with Senate Republicans and negotiated furiously to get to this point. The bill now contains a huge number of changes that our Democratic colleagues requested, including major changes. We were this close--this close. Then, yesterday morning, the Speaker of the House flew back from San Francisco, and suddenly the Senate's serious bipartisan process turned into this leftwing episode of ``Supermarket Sweep''--unrelated issues, left and right. I will tell you what would really lower our carbon footprint. If the entire economy continues to crumble, with hundreds of thousands more Americans laid off because Senate Democrats will not let us act, that will lower our carbon footprint all right. Every single American outside of Washington knows this is no time for this nonsense. A surgeon in Fresno, CA, says: ``We are at war with no ammo.'' ``We are at war with no ammo.'' That is a surgeon in Fresno. An intensive care nurse in New York City says: ``If we don't get the proper equipment soon, we're going to get sick.'' Democrats are filibustering more masks and aid for hospitals. Every day, more Americans wake up to the news that their jobs are gone--their jobs are gone. Democrats are filibustering programs to keep people on the payroll, and they are filibustering a huge expansion of unemployment insurance, which they themselves negotiated and put into the bill. Hundreds of dollars extra per week for laid-off workers on top of existing unemployment benefits, and Democrats are blocking it? This has to stop, and today is the day it has to stop. The country is out of time--out of time. When the Democratic House passed their phase 2 bill, even though Senate Republicans would have written it very differently, we sped it through the Senate and passed it quickly without even amending it. I literally told my colleagues to ``gag and vote for it,'' for the sake of building bipartisan momentum, because Republicans understand that a national crisis calls for urgency and it calls for bipartisanship. It is time for that good faith to be reciprocated. It is time for Democrats to stop playing politics and step up to the plate. The small businesses in their own States deserve it. Their own States' emergency room doctors deserve it. Their own constituents who have lost their jobs deserve it. In my home State of Kentucky, the Governor has effectively paused commerce across the State, and our unemployment system crashed due to demand. Kentuckians need help now, and we aren't alone. I have heard the pleas from healthcare workers in New York and Seattle. I have listened to the small business owners crying out in Brooklyn and Chicago. Why does only one side understand that this is urgent? Why are these hard-hit cities' own Senators happy to keep this slow-walking going on indefinitely? Is that really something these folks on the other side are comfortable with--indefinitely slow-walking all of this? How can half the Senate not rise to the occasion? At a time when everybody else in the country is pulling together, they are pulling us apart. The examples are all over the country that we ought to look to: healthcare heroes, to neighborhood volunteers, to national industries. Everybody is unifying and pitching in. What about here in the Senate? It is time to get with the program. It is time to pass historic relief that we have built together. The country doesn't have time for these political games. They need progress. So we are going to vote in just a few minutes, and I assure you the American people will be watching.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. McCONNELL
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-03-23-pt1-PgS1919-5
| null | 526
|
formal
|
Chicago
| null |
racist
|
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, the eyes of the Nation are on the Senate. For days now, we have been engaged in intense, bipartisan talks to build emergency relief legislation on a historic scale, to push resources to our healthcare heroes and American workers and families. Democrats and Republicans sat down together. We crafted this version of a proposal together. This compromise package would push tens of billions of dollars to hospitals and healthcare providers. It would send direct checks to millions of American households--direct checks. It would massively expand unemployment insurance in this crisis. It would stabilize industries to prevent mass layoffs. And, crucially, it would deliver historic relief to small businesses to help Main Street employees from being totally crushed--crushed--by this pandemic. But, yesterday, when the time came to vote on these urgent measures, our Democratic colleagues chose to block it. So why are the American people still waiting? It is a good question to ask. I hear the markets are not doing well today. They would like to ask the question of us: Why not move? Why are Democrats filibustering the bipartisan bill they helped write? It is an appropriate question to ask this morning as the country waits on us. So let me give the American people a taste of the outstanding issues we woke up to this morning. Here are some of the items on the Democratic wish list over which they chose to block this legislation last night: tax credits for solar energy and wind energy, provisions to force employers to give special new treatment to Big Labor, and--listen to this--new emissions standards for the airlines. Are you kidding me? This is the moment to debate new regulations that have nothing whatsoever to do with this crisis? That is what they are up to over there. The American people need to know it. Democrats will not let us fund hospitals or save small businesses unless they get to dust off the Green New Deal. I would like to see Senate Democrats tell New York City doctors and nurses who are literally overrun as we speak that they are filibustering hospital funding and more masks because they want to argue with the airlines over their carbon footprint. I would like to see Senate Democrats tell small business employees in their States, who are literally being laid off every day, that they are filibustering relief that will keep people on the payroll because Democrats' special interest friends want to squeeze employers while they are vulnerable--squeeze these employers while they are vulnerable. I would like to see Senate Democrats tell all the American seniors who have seen their hard-earned retirement savings literally melt away, as the markets track toward their worst month since 1931, that they are continuing to hold up emergency measures over tax credits for solar panels--tax credits for solar panels Even with the Federal Reserve announcing even further extraordinary steps today, the markets are tanking once again, as I said, because this body can't get its act together, and the only reason it can't get its act together is right over here on the other side of the aisle. So these are just a few of the completely nongermane wish list items that they are rallying behind, preventing us from getting this emergency relief to the American people right now, eleventh-hour demands the Democrats have decided are more important than Americans' paychecks and the personal safety of doctors and nurses. So remember what one of Speaker Pelosi's top lieutenants in the House said a few days ago--and this is a direct quote: This is a tremendous opportunity to restrict things to fit our vision--to fit our vision. That was the Democratic whip in the House, just laying it out there. It reminds me of the definition of a Washington gaffe: when a politician in Washington tells you what he really means. We heard something similar here on the Senate floor last night--just last night. Here was one of our Democraticcolleagues: ``How many times are we going to get a shot at a trillion-dollar-plus program?'' Right here on the floor last night: ``I don't know how many trillion-plus packages we are going to have.'' In other words, let's don't waste this opportunity to take full advantage and get our whole wish list done. They ought to be embarrassed. In fact, I have heard from some of them who are embarrassed, talking like this is some juicy political opportunity. This is not a juicy political opportunity. This is a national emergency. We had days of productive, bipartisan talks to get to this point. Senate Democrats sat down with Senate Republicans and negotiated furiously to get to this point. The bill now contains a huge number of changes that our Democratic colleagues requested, including major changes. We were this close--this close. Then, yesterday morning, the Speaker of the House flew back from San Francisco, and suddenly the Senate's serious bipartisan process turned into this leftwing episode of ``Supermarket Sweep''--unrelated issues, left and right. I will tell you what would really lower our carbon footprint. If the entire economy continues to crumble, with hundreds of thousands more Americans laid off because Senate Democrats will not let us act, that will lower our carbon footprint all right. Every single American outside of Washington knows this is no time for this nonsense. A surgeon in Fresno, CA, says: ``We are at war with no ammo.'' ``We are at war with no ammo.'' That is a surgeon in Fresno. An intensive care nurse in New York City says: ``If we don't get the proper equipment soon, we're going to get sick.'' Democrats are filibustering more masks and aid for hospitals. Every day, more Americans wake up to the news that their jobs are gone--their jobs are gone. Democrats are filibustering programs to keep people on the payroll, and they are filibustering a huge expansion of unemployment insurance, which they themselves negotiated and put into the bill. Hundreds of dollars extra per week for laid-off workers on top of existing unemployment benefits, and Democrats are blocking it? This has to stop, and today is the day it has to stop. The country is out of time--out of time. When the Democratic House passed their phase 2 bill, even though Senate Republicans would have written it very differently, we sped it through the Senate and passed it quickly without even amending it. I literally told my colleagues to ``gag and vote for it,'' for the sake of building bipartisan momentum, because Republicans understand that a national crisis calls for urgency and it calls for bipartisanship. It is time for that good faith to be reciprocated. It is time for Democrats to stop playing politics and step up to the plate. The small businesses in their own States deserve it. Their own States' emergency room doctors deserve it. Their own constituents who have lost their jobs deserve it. In my home State of Kentucky, the Governor has effectively paused commerce across the State, and our unemployment system crashed due to demand. Kentuckians need help now, and we aren't alone. I have heard the pleas from healthcare workers in New York and Seattle. I have listened to the small business owners crying out in Brooklyn and Chicago. Why does only one side understand that this is urgent? Why are these hard-hit cities' own Senators happy to keep this slow-walking going on indefinitely? Is that really something these folks on the other side are comfortable with--indefinitely slow-walking all of this? How can half the Senate not rise to the occasion? At a time when everybody else in the country is pulling together, they are pulling us apart. The examples are all over the country that we ought to look to: healthcare heroes, to neighborhood volunteers, to national industries. Everybody is unifying and pitching in. What about here in the Senate? It is time to get with the program. It is time to pass historic relief that we have built together. The country doesn't have time for these political games. They need progress. So we are going to vote in just a few minutes, and I assure you the American people will be watching.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. McCONNELL
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-03-23-pt1-PgS1919-5
| null | 527
|
formal
|
special interest
| null |
antisemitic
|
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, the eyes of the Nation are on the Senate. For days now, we have been engaged in intense, bipartisan talks to build emergency relief legislation on a historic scale, to push resources to our healthcare heroes and American workers and families. Democrats and Republicans sat down together. We crafted this version of a proposal together. This compromise package would push tens of billions of dollars to hospitals and healthcare providers. It would send direct checks to millions of American households--direct checks. It would massively expand unemployment insurance in this crisis. It would stabilize industries to prevent mass layoffs. And, crucially, it would deliver historic relief to small businesses to help Main Street employees from being totally crushed--crushed--by this pandemic. But, yesterday, when the time came to vote on these urgent measures, our Democratic colleagues chose to block it. So why are the American people still waiting? It is a good question to ask. I hear the markets are not doing well today. They would like to ask the question of us: Why not move? Why are Democrats filibustering the bipartisan bill they helped write? It is an appropriate question to ask this morning as the country waits on us. So let me give the American people a taste of the outstanding issues we woke up to this morning. Here are some of the items on the Democratic wish list over which they chose to block this legislation last night: tax credits for solar energy and wind energy, provisions to force employers to give special new treatment to Big Labor, and--listen to this--new emissions standards for the airlines. Are you kidding me? This is the moment to debate new regulations that have nothing whatsoever to do with this crisis? That is what they are up to over there. The American people need to know it. Democrats will not let us fund hospitals or save small businesses unless they get to dust off the Green New Deal. I would like to see Senate Democrats tell New York City doctors and nurses who are literally overrun as we speak that they are filibustering hospital funding and more masks because they want to argue with the airlines over their carbon footprint. I would like to see Senate Democrats tell small business employees in their States, who are literally being laid off every day, that they are filibustering relief that will keep people on the payroll because Democrats' special interest friends want to squeeze employers while they are vulnerable--squeeze these employers while they are vulnerable. I would like to see Senate Democrats tell all the American seniors who have seen their hard-earned retirement savings literally melt away, as the markets track toward their worst month since 1931, that they are continuing to hold up emergency measures over tax credits for solar panels--tax credits for solar panels Even with the Federal Reserve announcing even further extraordinary steps today, the markets are tanking once again, as I said, because this body can't get its act together, and the only reason it can't get its act together is right over here on the other side of the aisle. So these are just a few of the completely nongermane wish list items that they are rallying behind, preventing us from getting this emergency relief to the American people right now, eleventh-hour demands the Democrats have decided are more important than Americans' paychecks and the personal safety of doctors and nurses. So remember what one of Speaker Pelosi's top lieutenants in the House said a few days ago--and this is a direct quote: This is a tremendous opportunity to restrict things to fit our vision--to fit our vision. That was the Democratic whip in the House, just laying it out there. It reminds me of the definition of a Washington gaffe: when a politician in Washington tells you what he really means. We heard something similar here on the Senate floor last night--just last night. Here was one of our Democraticcolleagues: ``How many times are we going to get a shot at a trillion-dollar-plus program?'' Right here on the floor last night: ``I don't know how many trillion-plus packages we are going to have.'' In other words, let's don't waste this opportunity to take full advantage and get our whole wish list done. They ought to be embarrassed. In fact, I have heard from some of them who are embarrassed, talking like this is some juicy political opportunity. This is not a juicy political opportunity. This is a national emergency. We had days of productive, bipartisan talks to get to this point. Senate Democrats sat down with Senate Republicans and negotiated furiously to get to this point. The bill now contains a huge number of changes that our Democratic colleagues requested, including major changes. We were this close--this close. Then, yesterday morning, the Speaker of the House flew back from San Francisco, and suddenly the Senate's serious bipartisan process turned into this leftwing episode of ``Supermarket Sweep''--unrelated issues, left and right. I will tell you what would really lower our carbon footprint. If the entire economy continues to crumble, with hundreds of thousands more Americans laid off because Senate Democrats will not let us act, that will lower our carbon footprint all right. Every single American outside of Washington knows this is no time for this nonsense. A surgeon in Fresno, CA, says: ``We are at war with no ammo.'' ``We are at war with no ammo.'' That is a surgeon in Fresno. An intensive care nurse in New York City says: ``If we don't get the proper equipment soon, we're going to get sick.'' Democrats are filibustering more masks and aid for hospitals. Every day, more Americans wake up to the news that their jobs are gone--their jobs are gone. Democrats are filibustering programs to keep people on the payroll, and they are filibustering a huge expansion of unemployment insurance, which they themselves negotiated and put into the bill. Hundreds of dollars extra per week for laid-off workers on top of existing unemployment benefits, and Democrats are blocking it? This has to stop, and today is the day it has to stop. The country is out of time--out of time. When the Democratic House passed their phase 2 bill, even though Senate Republicans would have written it very differently, we sped it through the Senate and passed it quickly without even amending it. I literally told my colleagues to ``gag and vote for it,'' for the sake of building bipartisan momentum, because Republicans understand that a national crisis calls for urgency and it calls for bipartisanship. It is time for that good faith to be reciprocated. It is time for Democrats to stop playing politics and step up to the plate. The small businesses in their own States deserve it. Their own States' emergency room doctors deserve it. Their own constituents who have lost their jobs deserve it. In my home State of Kentucky, the Governor has effectively paused commerce across the State, and our unemployment system crashed due to demand. Kentuckians need help now, and we aren't alone. I have heard the pleas from healthcare workers in New York and Seattle. I have listened to the small business owners crying out in Brooklyn and Chicago. Why does only one side understand that this is urgent? Why are these hard-hit cities' own Senators happy to keep this slow-walking going on indefinitely? Is that really something these folks on the other side are comfortable with--indefinitely slow-walking all of this? How can half the Senate not rise to the occasion? At a time when everybody else in the country is pulling together, they are pulling us apart. The examples are all over the country that we ought to look to: healthcare heroes, to neighborhood volunteers, to national industries. Everybody is unifying and pitching in. What about here in the Senate? It is time to get with the program. It is time to pass historic relief that we have built together. The country doesn't have time for these political games. They need progress. So we are going to vote in just a few minutes, and I assure you the American people will be watching.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. McCONNELL
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-03-23-pt1-PgS1919-5
| null | 528
|
formal
|
the Fed
| null |
antisemitic
|
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, every time we hear the majority leader come out, it is a partisan screed. I am in my office with the President's Secretary of Treasury, the President's congressional liaison, getting things done. We Democrats are trying to get things done, not making partisan speech after partisan speech. In the past 24 hours, we got word that a Member of this Chamber, Senator Paul, has tested positive for coronavirus, and the husband of another Member, Senator Klobuchar, also tested positive. He is in the hospital. I want to let them know--both of them--that the Senate is thinking of them and praying for their speedy recovery, as we are for tens of thousands of American families who are confronting the same situation right now. Whether you are afraid for a sick family member, an older relative in the hospital, or struggling without work, income, or the knowledge of when your isolation might end, our thoughts are with you right now. These are trying times for all of us, but the scourge of this disease will pass. The American people, as always, will prevail. As the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States eclipses 35,000, the Senate continues to negotiate what will likely be the largest emergency funding bill in American history. As I have mentioned, we have had almost continuous discussions with Secretary Mnuchin. He left my office at about 12:15 last night and was there at about 9 o'clock this morning. The White House congressional liaison, Eric Ueland, has been in and out of the office as well. We are very close to reaching a deal--very close. Our goal is to reach a deal today, and we are hopeful, even confident, that we will meet that goal. We have been working on a few outstanding issues that are no surprise to everyone. From the very beginning, Democrats have insisted on a Marshall Plan for our medical system, more money for hospitals, community health centers, nursing homes, and urgent medical supplies, such as gloves and masks, ICU beds, testing kits, ventilators, and PPE. Since our negotiations, the numbers have gone up dramatically because the hospitals and our healthcare workers need the help. We are fighting hard and making progress on funding for State and local governments. They are propping up local healthcare networks virtually on their own. Their revenues are dramatically declining. Many towns and villages across America--the smaller ones in particular--might go broke pretty soon if we do nothing. If we can help the big corporations, we can help our local towns and villages and the taxpayers they represent. On unemployment insurance, the bill has moved in the direction we have outlined. The original bill has the unexpanded employment benefits last only 3 months. We need to make it longer because the dislocation caused by this crisis will not be over in 90 days, and people who lose their jobs need help. It says to every American who loses his or her job--the Democratic plan that is now in the bill: You will get your full pay from the Federal Government. You can be furloughed by your employer. That means you will keep your benefits, health and otherwise. And it means that you will beable to come back, and the business you had to leave can reassemble itself quickly after, God willing, this crisis ends. The bill still includes something that most Americans don't want to see: large corporate bailouts with almost no strings attached. Maybe the majority leader thinks it is unfair to have protections for workers and labor to companies that are getting hundreds of billions of dollars. We think it is very fair to ask for those. Those are not extraneous issues. That is a wish list for workers--nobody else. We are looking for protection. We are looking for oversight. If this Federal Government is making a big loan to someone--to a big company, we ought to know it and know the details immediately. The bill that was put on the floor by the Republican leader said no one would know a thing about those loans for 6 months at least. In those so-called bailouts, we need to protect workers--the workers those industries employ. We have been guided by one plan: workers first. That is the name of our proposal. The bill needs to reflect that priority. We are working on all of these items in good faith as we speak, and we hope and expect to conclude negotiations today. This vote the Senate--it is no surprise--is about to take is merely a repeat of the vote that failed last night. Leader McConnell continues to set arbitrary vote deadlines when the matter of real importance is the status of the bipartisan negotiations. Let me be clear. The upcoming procedural votes are essentially irrelevant. The negotiations continue no more than 30 feet away from the floor of the Senate in our offices, where the real progress is taking place. Once we have an agreement that everyone can get behind, we are prepared to speed up the consideration of that agreement on the floor. So I am going to get back to negotiations. We all know time is of the essence. The country is facing twin crises in our healthcare system and in our economy. We have an obligation to get the details right and get them done quickly. That doesn't mean blindly accepting a Republican-only bill. That was the bill we were given. There were lots of things we didn't even know about on Saturday. That means working to make this bill better--better for our small businesses, better for our working families, better for our healthcare system. Democrats--Democrats--will not stop working with our Republican counterparts until we get the job done. I will continue to update the Senate on the progress of our negotiations. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. SCHUMER
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-03-23-pt1-PgS1920-2
| null | 529
|
formal
|
working families
| null |
racist
|
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, every time we hear the majority leader come out, it is a partisan screed. I am in my office with the President's Secretary of Treasury, the President's congressional liaison, getting things done. We Democrats are trying to get things done, not making partisan speech after partisan speech. In the past 24 hours, we got word that a Member of this Chamber, Senator Paul, has tested positive for coronavirus, and the husband of another Member, Senator Klobuchar, also tested positive. He is in the hospital. I want to let them know--both of them--that the Senate is thinking of them and praying for their speedy recovery, as we are for tens of thousands of American families who are confronting the same situation right now. Whether you are afraid for a sick family member, an older relative in the hospital, or struggling without work, income, or the knowledge of when your isolation might end, our thoughts are with you right now. These are trying times for all of us, but the scourge of this disease will pass. The American people, as always, will prevail. As the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States eclipses 35,000, the Senate continues to negotiate what will likely be the largest emergency funding bill in American history. As I have mentioned, we have had almost continuous discussions with Secretary Mnuchin. He left my office at about 12:15 last night and was there at about 9 o'clock this morning. The White House congressional liaison, Eric Ueland, has been in and out of the office as well. We are very close to reaching a deal--very close. Our goal is to reach a deal today, and we are hopeful, even confident, that we will meet that goal. We have been working on a few outstanding issues that are no surprise to everyone. From the very beginning, Democrats have insisted on a Marshall Plan for our medical system, more money for hospitals, community health centers, nursing homes, and urgent medical supplies, such as gloves and masks, ICU beds, testing kits, ventilators, and PPE. Since our negotiations, the numbers have gone up dramatically because the hospitals and our healthcare workers need the help. We are fighting hard and making progress on funding for State and local governments. They are propping up local healthcare networks virtually on their own. Their revenues are dramatically declining. Many towns and villages across America--the smaller ones in particular--might go broke pretty soon if we do nothing. If we can help the big corporations, we can help our local towns and villages and the taxpayers they represent. On unemployment insurance, the bill has moved in the direction we have outlined. The original bill has the unexpanded employment benefits last only 3 months. We need to make it longer because the dislocation caused by this crisis will not be over in 90 days, and people who lose their jobs need help. It says to every American who loses his or her job--the Democratic plan that is now in the bill: You will get your full pay from the Federal Government. You can be furloughed by your employer. That means you will keep your benefits, health and otherwise. And it means that you will beable to come back, and the business you had to leave can reassemble itself quickly after, God willing, this crisis ends. The bill still includes something that most Americans don't want to see: large corporate bailouts with almost no strings attached. Maybe the majority leader thinks it is unfair to have protections for workers and labor to companies that are getting hundreds of billions of dollars. We think it is very fair to ask for those. Those are not extraneous issues. That is a wish list for workers--nobody else. We are looking for protection. We are looking for oversight. If this Federal Government is making a big loan to someone--to a big company, we ought to know it and know the details immediately. The bill that was put on the floor by the Republican leader said no one would know a thing about those loans for 6 months at least. In those so-called bailouts, we need to protect workers--the workers those industries employ. We have been guided by one plan: workers first. That is the name of our proposal. The bill needs to reflect that priority. We are working on all of these items in good faith as we speak, and we hope and expect to conclude negotiations today. This vote the Senate--it is no surprise--is about to take is merely a repeat of the vote that failed last night. Leader McConnell continues to set arbitrary vote deadlines when the matter of real importance is the status of the bipartisan negotiations. Let me be clear. The upcoming procedural votes are essentially irrelevant. The negotiations continue no more than 30 feet away from the floor of the Senate in our offices, where the real progress is taking place. Once we have an agreement that everyone can get behind, we are prepared to speed up the consideration of that agreement on the floor. So I am going to get back to negotiations. We all know time is of the essence. The country is facing twin crises in our healthcare system and in our economy. We have an obligation to get the details right and get them done quickly. That doesn't mean blindly accepting a Republican-only bill. That was the bill we were given. There were lots of things we didn't even know about on Saturday. That means working to make this bill better--better for our small businesses, better for our working families, better for our healthcare system. Democrats--Democrats--will not stop working with our Republican counterparts until we get the job done. I will continue to update the Senate on the progress of our negotiations. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. SCHUMER
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-03-23-pt1-PgS1920-2
| null | 530
|
formal
|
hard-working Americans
| null |
racist
|
Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, for weeks now, the American people have been contending with the coronavirus pandemic that is spreading across our country and the massive, massive disruptions to daily life it is creating for all of us. They are grappling with small business closures, mass layoffs, and uncertainty for their families. But that isn't all. For the last several days now, in the midst of all that--in the midst of all that--they have also had to watch the Senate spin its wheels. As we convene this morning, roughly 40 percent of our population is under stay-at-home orders from State leaders. Employers across America are wondering how they will keep the lights on. Doctors, nurses, and healthcare professionals are literally crying out for support. We literally have Army field hospitals on the way to being set up in our major American cities. In the space of just a few weeks, this has become, unfortunately, our new normal. This is a national crisis. It is the most serious threat to Americans' health in over a century and quite likely the greatest risk to Americans' jobs and prosperity that we have seen since the Great Depression. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have already lost their jobs because so much of our commerce has been put on pause. Families are wondering how they are going to pay their rent or mortgage in 8 days. Rent is due on April 1. People don't know how they are going to pay bills or make their car payment. Many other hard-working Americans are still employed for now but fall asleep every night wondering if it will be there when they wake up to that email or phone call tomorrow. American seniors have seen decades of savings cut down in the space of days as the markets literally tumble. Our national life has literally been transformed in less than a month. The urgency and the gravity of this moment cannot be lost on anyone. Every day, every hour the Congress delays in passing a significant relief package, we risk more American livelihoods and the safety of more healthcare professionals. That is why, right after I fast-tracked the Democratic House relief bill through the Senate, I immediately turned the Senate toward developing an even bigger and bolder relief package for the American people. Nine days ago, I laid out the key objectives of our work. We had to send direct financial assistance to Americans--direct assistance to Americans. We had to help Main Street small businesses. We had to act to stabilize the foundations of our economy for workers. And, of course, we had to send more resources to medical professionals and our healthcare system. Five days ago, Senate Republicans released our initial framework for the CARES Act. We put forward bold policies like sending cash directly to Americans, pouring money into small businesses, lending to national industries to prevent mass layoffs, and surge resources for doctors, nurses, and patients. We knew we needed a proposal to address our Nation's pain at literally every level. Now, in the past few days, some voices have tried to pit some Americans against other Americans and argue that directly helping workers and strengthening businesses are somehow conflicting priorities. That is utter nonsense. American workers need paychecks. They need jobs. The working men and women of this country do need direct relief from government in this crisis, but for goodness' sake, they also need their paychecks. They need to be able to resume their lives and their jobs once this is over. The two things can't be separated. There is a term for when you separate employees from employers. There is a term for that. It is called unemployment. Let me say that again. There is a term for when you separate employees from employers. It is called unemployment. That is what we are trying to avoid. This is no time to point fingers or stoke these culture wars. This is the time to unify. Perhaps now more than at any moment in living memory, all of us Americans are in this together. This pandemic is not the fault of the American workers who make this country run. It is not the fault of small business owners. It is not the fault of major national employers. Everyone needs help. We are all in this together. We need an ``all of the above'' approach, and that is what our framework put forward: help for workers and families and employers and healthcare providers. As soon as Republicans put out a draft proposal to treat every aspect of this crisis, I immediately called for bipartisan talks. That is not something you see often in Washington. As soon as I released our first draft, I immediately invited the other side, these folks over here, to make their suggestions. That is what you call urgency. We set up bipartisan working groups. I asked negotiators to work together to turn our rough draft into something that could pass the Senate with overwhelming bipartisan support. Republicans and Democrats traded ideas. Democrats asked for many changes to the initial draft and received many. The updated text, released a few days ago, included proposals from the other side. And, of course, as our colleagues have dragged out the last several days, even further changes have been made at their request. This majority has gone out of its way to make this process as bipartisan and as open as possible. The administration has bent over backward to work with Democrats and address their concerns. Now, at last, I believe we are on the 5-yard line. It has taken a lot of noise and a lot of rhetoric to get us here. That, of course, sometimes happens in this town. At different times, we received Democratic counteroffers that demanded things like new emission standards or tax credits for solar panels. We saw the Speaker of the House release an encyclopedia of unrelated demands as though it were a coronavirus proposal somehow. In spite of all that, we are very close. We are close to a bill that takes our bold Republican framework, integrates further ideas from both parties, and delivers huge progress on each of the four core priorities I laid out a week ago. Today the Senate has a chance to get back on track. Today we can make all of the Washington drama fade away. If we act today, what Americans will remember and what history will record is that the Senate did the right thing, that we came together, that we took a lesson from the way Americans are uniting all across the country and working together, that we combined ideas from both sides and took a bold step to protect Americans and help our Nation through this crisis. I am not sure how many ways to say it, but the clock has run out. The buzzer is sounding. The hour for bargaining as though this were business as usual has expired. The American people need our Democratic friends to take yes for an answer. I hope that will happen today. Doctors and nurses need masks. Families need help. Small businesses need cash. Hospitals need funding. Their Senate majority is ready to deliver those things. We have been ready to deliver those things for a while. I hope today is the day this body will get it done.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. McCONNELL
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-03-24-pt1-PgS1975-6
| null | 531
|
formal
|
hard-working American
| null |
racist
|
Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, for weeks now, the American people have been contending with the coronavirus pandemic that is spreading across our country and the massive, massive disruptions to daily life it is creating for all of us. They are grappling with small business closures, mass layoffs, and uncertainty for their families. But that isn't all. For the last several days now, in the midst of all that--in the midst of all that--they have also had to watch the Senate spin its wheels. As we convene this morning, roughly 40 percent of our population is under stay-at-home orders from State leaders. Employers across America are wondering how they will keep the lights on. Doctors, nurses, and healthcare professionals are literally crying out for support. We literally have Army field hospitals on the way to being set up in our major American cities. In the space of just a few weeks, this has become, unfortunately, our new normal. This is a national crisis. It is the most serious threat to Americans' health in over a century and quite likely the greatest risk to Americans' jobs and prosperity that we have seen since the Great Depression. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have already lost their jobs because so much of our commerce has been put on pause. Families are wondering how they are going to pay their rent or mortgage in 8 days. Rent is due on April 1. People don't know how they are going to pay bills or make their car payment. Many other hard-working Americans are still employed for now but fall asleep every night wondering if it will be there when they wake up to that email or phone call tomorrow. American seniors have seen decades of savings cut down in the space of days as the markets literally tumble. Our national life has literally been transformed in less than a month. The urgency and the gravity of this moment cannot be lost on anyone. Every day, every hour the Congress delays in passing a significant relief package, we risk more American livelihoods and the safety of more healthcare professionals. That is why, right after I fast-tracked the Democratic House relief bill through the Senate, I immediately turned the Senate toward developing an even bigger and bolder relief package for the American people. Nine days ago, I laid out the key objectives of our work. We had to send direct financial assistance to Americans--direct assistance to Americans. We had to help Main Street small businesses. We had to act to stabilize the foundations of our economy for workers. And, of course, we had to send more resources to medical professionals and our healthcare system. Five days ago, Senate Republicans released our initial framework for the CARES Act. We put forward bold policies like sending cash directly to Americans, pouring money into small businesses, lending to national industries to prevent mass layoffs, and surge resources for doctors, nurses, and patients. We knew we needed a proposal to address our Nation's pain at literally every level. Now, in the past few days, some voices have tried to pit some Americans against other Americans and argue that directly helping workers and strengthening businesses are somehow conflicting priorities. That is utter nonsense. American workers need paychecks. They need jobs. The working men and women of this country do need direct relief from government in this crisis, but for goodness' sake, they also need their paychecks. They need to be able to resume their lives and their jobs once this is over. The two things can't be separated. There is a term for when you separate employees from employers. There is a term for that. It is called unemployment. Let me say that again. There is a term for when you separate employees from employers. It is called unemployment. That is what we are trying to avoid. This is no time to point fingers or stoke these culture wars. This is the time to unify. Perhaps now more than at any moment in living memory, all of us Americans are in this together. This pandemic is not the fault of the American workers who make this country run. It is not the fault of small business owners. It is not the fault of major national employers. Everyone needs help. We are all in this together. We need an ``all of the above'' approach, and that is what our framework put forward: help for workers and families and employers and healthcare providers. As soon as Republicans put out a draft proposal to treat every aspect of this crisis, I immediately called for bipartisan talks. That is not something you see often in Washington. As soon as I released our first draft, I immediately invited the other side, these folks over here, to make their suggestions. That is what you call urgency. We set up bipartisan working groups. I asked negotiators to work together to turn our rough draft into something that could pass the Senate with overwhelming bipartisan support. Republicans and Democrats traded ideas. Democrats asked for many changes to the initial draft and received many. The updated text, released a few days ago, included proposals from the other side. And, of course, as our colleagues have dragged out the last several days, even further changes have been made at their request. This majority has gone out of its way to make this process as bipartisan and as open as possible. The administration has bent over backward to work with Democrats and address their concerns. Now, at last, I believe we are on the 5-yard line. It has taken a lot of noise and a lot of rhetoric to get us here. That, of course, sometimes happens in this town. At different times, we received Democratic counteroffers that demanded things like new emission standards or tax credits for solar panels. We saw the Speaker of the House release an encyclopedia of unrelated demands as though it were a coronavirus proposal somehow. In spite of all that, we are very close. We are close to a bill that takes our bold Republican framework, integrates further ideas from both parties, and delivers huge progress on each of the four core priorities I laid out a week ago. Today the Senate has a chance to get back on track. Today we can make all of the Washington drama fade away. If we act today, what Americans will remember and what history will record is that the Senate did the right thing, that we came together, that we took a lesson from the way Americans are uniting all across the country and working together, that we combined ideas from both sides and took a bold step to protect Americans and help our Nation through this crisis. I am not sure how many ways to say it, but the clock has run out. The buzzer is sounding. The hour for bargaining as though this were business as usual has expired. The American people need our Democratic friends to take yes for an answer. I hope that will happen today. Doctors and nurses need masks. Families need help. Small businesses need cash. Hospitals need funding. Their Senate majority is ready to deliver those things. We have been ready to deliver those things for a while. I hope today is the day this body will get it done.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. McCONNELL
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-03-24-pt1-PgS1975-6
| null | 532
|
formal
|
XX
| null |
transphobic
|
The SPEAKER. Under clause 5(d) of rule XX, the Chair announces to the House that, in light of the resignation of the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Meadows), the whole number of the House is 429.
|
2020-01-06
|
The SPEAKER
|
House
|
CREC-2020-03-31-pt1-PgH1870-4
| null | 533
|
formal
|
bankers
| null |
antisemitic
|
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object. This is an unfortunate moment for the U.S. Senate. We came together on a bipartisan basis just a very short time ago to pass the CARES Act. It passed here 96 to nothing. That followed two other bipartisan efforts that came out of the House, passed the Senate, and were signed by the President, again, with overwhelming support. Yet, today, we see from the majority leader a complete political stunt here on the floor of the U.S. Senate--something that does not have bipartisan support, something that is go it alone, take it or leave it, and totally violates the spirit all of us have been working on during this crisis where we were able to come together in the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives with the White House to, on three prior occasions, pass legislation in a way that addressed the issues that are important to this country. Yet, today, we have this situation where the majority leader knew full well there was not agreement and consensus on moving forward with this proposal. That is why we are here today. This was, in fact, designed to fail, designed as a political stunt. It is actually not the first time we have seen this. You may recall that, just before we came together and passed the CARES Act 96-0, the majority leader came to the floor of the Senate back then and tried to ram through an unfinished product while negotiations were going on between Secretary Mnuchin and Democrats in the House and the Senate to try to finalize the bill, and that actually caused unnecessary delay. But the majority leader came to the floor then and tried to ram it through. It didn't work then, and it is not going to work today. I would ask the majority leader--and I think all of us would--to go back to trying to address these issues the way we addressed them in a successful manner before. I am going to shortly propose an amendment that addresses some of those concerns--an amendment to the majority leader's proposal. I would like to address some of the issues first, and my colleague, Senator Cardin, has addressed many with respect to small businesses. First of all, he pointed out that the one program to help small businesses that has actually really run out of money is the emergency loan and grant program. Let's talk about the PPP program. This is a really important program to incentivize small businesses and nonprofits to keep employees on the payroll and allow them to help keep the lights on, pay fixed costs, pay the mortgage, pay the rent, whatever it may be, so that they can emerge on the other side of this storm without having had to fold. Many of us anticipated long before the CARES Act passed that this program would need more money. I was part of a group that proposed $600 billion for a program like this, recognizing the demand would be huge, as it is on other programs. It is not just in need of more money. It needs some important fixes, which I daresay would have bipartisan support as well. I don't know if the majority leader saw the letter just this morning from the National Restaurant Association. Here is what they say: The PPP is funded at $349 billion, and we expect that lenders will reach that ceiling shortly. We appreciate the bipartisan calls this week to provide prompt additional funding for the program. Then they go on to say: However, equally important is the need to address the limitations of the program that do not recognize the unique and evolving challenges of the restaurant business cycle and our path to recovery. This is not a Republican group or a Democratic group. This is a group that represents small businesses, restaurants, just trying to get by, and what they say to us this morning is: Yes, we do need additional money. We know that. But equally important, let's fix some of the kinks, and there are kinks in this program. I got a letter at 12:44 a.m. this morning from a small business owner who had been banking with Wells Fargo. Then, of course, Wells Fargo hit the cap. We thought we had dealt with that in recent days. But he is not sure he is still going to be able to get that loan through Wells Fargo, and he says: I've also now looked at more than 100 websites of 7(a) lenders in the greater DC area and have found that NONE-- capital letters NONE--will accept a PPP application from any small business that did not bank with them before February 15, 2020. Here are some other headlines in recent days: ``Baltimore-area small businesses complain of continuing problems gaining access to federal lending program.'' `` `Nightmare': 3 small-business owners describe process of applying for PPP coronavirus loans.'' The Journal Record: ``Community bankers frustrated with PPP rollout.'' Another headline, this one from another part of the country: ``PPP loan plan a mess so far for small businesses riding out coronavirus crisis.'' ``Billions `disbursed' through Paycheck Protection Program? Small businesses say not yet.'' The Wall Street Journal: ``Big Banks Favor Certain Customers in $350 Billion Small-Business Loan Program.'' Another article: ``Many small businesses are being shut out of the new loan program by major banks.'' Mr. President, what we are saying here today is, yes, we know we need more money for this program. Many of us predicted this before we passed the CARES Act. But for goodness' sakes, let's take the opportunity to make some bipartisan fixes to allow this program to work better for the very people it is designed to help: small businesses, nonprofits. That is what they are asking us to do. That is what the restaurant association is asking us to do. That is whatthey want us to do, and we could do it probably just as quickly if the majority leader took a moment to sit down with us and negotiate that piece. There are also other major demands on the system right now that we should address at this moment, and one of them is something I know we are all hearing about every day, which is to protect the healthcare workers on the frontlines. After all, if we want to address the economic crisis, we need to address the health crisis that precipitated that. We need to flatten this virus out, bring it down, and that is the best way to get on the road to economic recovery. I am sure all of my colleagues are hearing from their nurses and doctors and frontline healthcare workers about the urgent need for personal protective equipment. We provided funds in the original bill, but we know, today, that that will be exhausted quickly. We know it because we can add up the requests coming from around the country. So let's address that issue. We are hearing about it every day. Just yesterday at our delegation, our region, Senator Cardin and I and other members of the Maryland delegation, we wrote to FEMA just yesterday, to the Administrator of FEMA. We pointed out that in our most recent requests, Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia received just a small percentage of the equipment that we requested from FEMA. The District received no hospital ventilators. I would point out for all of us who are following this, it is predicted that this--Maryland, DC, and Virginia--is going to be one of the next hotspots. Zero ventilators, zero safety goggles--we asked for 663,000 gloves, and over 1 million respirators masks. We got 4,000 of one. That is one problem we need to address on an urgent basis, just as urgently as we need to address the small business situation. Testing--my goodness, look, this virus, we all know, got an 8 to 10-week head start on us because we were flat-footed when it came to testing. We need a national rapid testing system so that we can ensure that people will get the tests and find out whether they have the virus. That not only helps us fight the virus, but it will also help us as we try to get the country back to work on the other end of this. I would propose those are real needs as well and that we can address those here now. In addition to that, as Senator Cardin said, we just spoke to Maryland's Governor yesterday who, in addition to being Maryland's Governor, is the head of the National Governors Association. He and Governor Cuomo have worked very closely together. We have a bipartisan request from the National Governors Association to help States and local jurisdictions. We have been on the phone nonstop with our local officials. They are running out of equipment. We have got firefighters who need help. We have emergency responders who need help. All of these requests are urgent and, I believe, could be dealt with on a bipartisan basis, if the majority leader would just take a moment, instead of trying to rush this through, and we could actually get it done, as we were able to do before with the 96-to-nothing vote. So, at this time, Mr. President, I have an amendment at the desk. I know people are anxious to get out of here. We didn't have to come in at all, if it hadn't been for the decision to try to ram this through. I just want to make that point. To the majority leader, we knew this wasn't going to get through. I see people are frustrated and want to leave, but let's get it done, and let's get it done right, and let's have another 96-to-nothing vote here in the U.S. Senate. So I ask unanimous consent that the majority leader modify the request and ask that the amendment at the desk, which is the text of the interim emergency COVID-19 Relief Act, be agreed to; the bill, as amended, be read a third time and passed with no further intervening action or debate.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. VAN HOLLEN
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-04-09-pt1-PgS2169
| null | 534
|
formal
|
Baltimore
| null |
racist
|
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object. This is an unfortunate moment for the U.S. Senate. We came together on a bipartisan basis just a very short time ago to pass the CARES Act. It passed here 96 to nothing. That followed two other bipartisan efforts that came out of the House, passed the Senate, and were signed by the President, again, with overwhelming support. Yet, today, we see from the majority leader a complete political stunt here on the floor of the U.S. Senate--something that does not have bipartisan support, something that is go it alone, take it or leave it, and totally violates the spirit all of us have been working on during this crisis where we were able to come together in the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives with the White House to, on three prior occasions, pass legislation in a way that addressed the issues that are important to this country. Yet, today, we have this situation where the majority leader knew full well there was not agreement and consensus on moving forward with this proposal. That is why we are here today. This was, in fact, designed to fail, designed as a political stunt. It is actually not the first time we have seen this. You may recall that, just before we came together and passed the CARES Act 96-0, the majority leader came to the floor of the Senate back then and tried to ram through an unfinished product while negotiations were going on between Secretary Mnuchin and Democrats in the House and the Senate to try to finalize the bill, and that actually caused unnecessary delay. But the majority leader came to the floor then and tried to ram it through. It didn't work then, and it is not going to work today. I would ask the majority leader--and I think all of us would--to go back to trying to address these issues the way we addressed them in a successful manner before. I am going to shortly propose an amendment that addresses some of those concerns--an amendment to the majority leader's proposal. I would like to address some of the issues first, and my colleague, Senator Cardin, has addressed many with respect to small businesses. First of all, he pointed out that the one program to help small businesses that has actually really run out of money is the emergency loan and grant program. Let's talk about the PPP program. This is a really important program to incentivize small businesses and nonprofits to keep employees on the payroll and allow them to help keep the lights on, pay fixed costs, pay the mortgage, pay the rent, whatever it may be, so that they can emerge on the other side of this storm without having had to fold. Many of us anticipated long before the CARES Act passed that this program would need more money. I was part of a group that proposed $600 billion for a program like this, recognizing the demand would be huge, as it is on other programs. It is not just in need of more money. It needs some important fixes, which I daresay would have bipartisan support as well. I don't know if the majority leader saw the letter just this morning from the National Restaurant Association. Here is what they say: The PPP is funded at $349 billion, and we expect that lenders will reach that ceiling shortly. We appreciate the bipartisan calls this week to provide prompt additional funding for the program. Then they go on to say: However, equally important is the need to address the limitations of the program that do not recognize the unique and evolving challenges of the restaurant business cycle and our path to recovery. This is not a Republican group or a Democratic group. This is a group that represents small businesses, restaurants, just trying to get by, and what they say to us this morning is: Yes, we do need additional money. We know that. But equally important, let's fix some of the kinks, and there are kinks in this program. I got a letter at 12:44 a.m. this morning from a small business owner who had been banking with Wells Fargo. Then, of course, Wells Fargo hit the cap. We thought we had dealt with that in recent days. But he is not sure he is still going to be able to get that loan through Wells Fargo, and he says: I've also now looked at more than 100 websites of 7(a) lenders in the greater DC area and have found that NONE-- capital letters NONE--will accept a PPP application from any small business that did not bank with them before February 15, 2020. Here are some other headlines in recent days: ``Baltimore-area small businesses complain of continuing problems gaining access to federal lending program.'' `` `Nightmare': 3 small-business owners describe process of applying for PPP coronavirus loans.'' The Journal Record: ``Community bankers frustrated with PPP rollout.'' Another headline, this one from another part of the country: ``PPP loan plan a mess so far for small businesses riding out coronavirus crisis.'' ``Billions `disbursed' through Paycheck Protection Program? Small businesses say not yet.'' The Wall Street Journal: ``Big Banks Favor Certain Customers in $350 Billion Small-Business Loan Program.'' Another article: ``Many small businesses are being shut out of the new loan program by major banks.'' Mr. President, what we are saying here today is, yes, we know we need more money for this program. Many of us predicted this before we passed the CARES Act. But for goodness' sakes, let's take the opportunity to make some bipartisan fixes to allow this program to work better for the very people it is designed to help: small businesses, nonprofits. That is what they are asking us to do. That is what the restaurant association is asking us to do. That is whatthey want us to do, and we could do it probably just as quickly if the majority leader took a moment to sit down with us and negotiate that piece. There are also other major demands on the system right now that we should address at this moment, and one of them is something I know we are all hearing about every day, which is to protect the healthcare workers on the frontlines. After all, if we want to address the economic crisis, we need to address the health crisis that precipitated that. We need to flatten this virus out, bring it down, and that is the best way to get on the road to economic recovery. I am sure all of my colleagues are hearing from their nurses and doctors and frontline healthcare workers about the urgent need for personal protective equipment. We provided funds in the original bill, but we know, today, that that will be exhausted quickly. We know it because we can add up the requests coming from around the country. So let's address that issue. We are hearing about it every day. Just yesterday at our delegation, our region, Senator Cardin and I and other members of the Maryland delegation, we wrote to FEMA just yesterday, to the Administrator of FEMA. We pointed out that in our most recent requests, Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia received just a small percentage of the equipment that we requested from FEMA. The District received no hospital ventilators. I would point out for all of us who are following this, it is predicted that this--Maryland, DC, and Virginia--is going to be one of the next hotspots. Zero ventilators, zero safety goggles--we asked for 663,000 gloves, and over 1 million respirators masks. We got 4,000 of one. That is one problem we need to address on an urgent basis, just as urgently as we need to address the small business situation. Testing--my goodness, look, this virus, we all know, got an 8 to 10-week head start on us because we were flat-footed when it came to testing. We need a national rapid testing system so that we can ensure that people will get the tests and find out whether they have the virus. That not only helps us fight the virus, but it will also help us as we try to get the country back to work on the other end of this. I would propose those are real needs as well and that we can address those here now. In addition to that, as Senator Cardin said, we just spoke to Maryland's Governor yesterday who, in addition to being Maryland's Governor, is the head of the National Governors Association. He and Governor Cuomo have worked very closely together. We have a bipartisan request from the National Governors Association to help States and local jurisdictions. We have been on the phone nonstop with our local officials. They are running out of equipment. We have got firefighters who need help. We have emergency responders who need help. All of these requests are urgent and, I believe, could be dealt with on a bipartisan basis, if the majority leader would just take a moment, instead of trying to rush this through, and we could actually get it done, as we were able to do before with the 96-to-nothing vote. So, at this time, Mr. President, I have an amendment at the desk. I know people are anxious to get out of here. We didn't have to come in at all, if it hadn't been for the decision to try to ram this through. I just want to make that point. To the majority leader, we knew this wasn't going to get through. I see people are frustrated and want to leave, but let's get it done, and let's get it done right, and let's have another 96-to-nothing vote here in the U.S. Senate. So I ask unanimous consent that the majority leader modify the request and ask that the amendment at the desk, which is the text of the interim emergency COVID-19 Relief Act, be agreed to; the bill, as amended, be read a third time and passed with no further intervening action or debate.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. VAN HOLLEN
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-04-09-pt1-PgS2169
| null | 535
|
formal
|
the Fed
| null |
antisemitic
|
Under clause 2 of rule XIV, executive communications were taken from the Speaker's table and referred as follows: 4229. A letter from the Secretary of the Army, Department of Defense, transmitting the annual audit of the American Red Cross's consolidated financial statements for the year ending June 30, 2019, pursuant to 36 U.S.C. 300110(b); Public Law 105-225, Sec. 300110(b); (112 Stat. 1493); to the Committee on Foreign Affairs. 4230. A letter from the Assistant Legal Advisor, Office of Treaty Affairs, Department of State, transmitting a report concerning international agreements other than treaties entered into by the United States to be transmitted to the Congress within the sixty-day period specified in the Case- Zablocki Act, pursuant to 1 U.S.C. 112b(a); Public Law 92- 403, Sec. 1(a) (as amended by Public Law 108-458, Sec. 7121(b)); (118 Stat. 3807); to the Committee on Foreign Affairs. 4231. A letter from the Director, Peace Corps, transmitting the Annual Volunteer Survey: Fiscal Year 2019; to the Committee on Foreign Affairs. 4232. A letter from the Director, Peace Corps, transmitting the Early Termination of Peace Corps Volunteers: Fiscal Year 2019; to the Committee on Foreign Affairs. 4233. A letter from the Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legislative Affairs, Department of Justice, transmitting the Department's Freedom of Information Act 2019 Litigation and Compliance Report, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 552(a)(4)(F)(ii)(II); Public Law 89-554, Sec. 5(ii)(II) (as added by Public Law 110-175, Sec. 5); (121 Stat. 2526); to the Committee on Oversight and Reform. 4234. A letter from the Assistant Secretary for Congressional and Intergovernmental Relations, Department of Housing and Urban Development, transmitting the Federal Housing Administration's Annual Management Report for Fiscal Year 2019; to the Committee on Oversight and Reform. 4235. A letter from the Chief Human Resource Office and Executive Vice President, United States Postal Service, transmitting the Service's FY 2019 No FEAR Act report, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 2301 note; Public Law 107-174, 203(a) (as amended by Public Law 109-435, Sec. 604(f)); (120 Stat. 3242); to the Committee on Oversight and Reform. 4236. A letter from the General Counsel, Department of Transportation, transmitting the Annual Report on Disability- Related Air Travel Complaints received During Calendar Year 2018, pursuant to 49 U.S.C. Sec. 41705(c)(3); Public Law 103- 272, Sec. 41705(c)(3) (as added by Public Law 106-181, Sec. 707(a)(3)); (114 Stat. 158); to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. 4237. A letter from the Acting Assistant Secretary for Legislation, Department of Health and Human Services, transmitting the Annual Report to Congress on the Medicare and Medicaid Integrity Programs for Fiscal Year 2018, pursuant to 42 U.S.C. 1395ddd(i)(2); Aug. 14, 1935, ch. 531, title XVIII, Sec. 1893(i)(2) (as amended by Public Law 111- 148, Sec. 6402(j)(1)(B)); (124 Stat. 762) and 42 U.S.C. 1396u-6(e)(5); Aug. 14, 1935, ch. 531, Sec.1936(e)(5) (as added by Public Law 109-171, Sec. 6034(a)(2)); (120 Stat. 76); jointly to the Committees on Energy and Commerce and Ways and Means. 4238. A letter from the Assistant Secretary, Legislative Affairs, Department of Defense, transmitting additional legislative proposals that the Department requests be enacted during the second session of the 116th Congress; jointly to the Committees on Armed Services, Oversight and Reform, Veterans' Affairs, and Foreign Affairs.
|
2020-01-06
|
Unknown
|
House
|
CREC-2020-04-17-pt1-PgH1891-7
| null | 536
|
formal
|
the Fed
| null |
antisemitic
|
Under clause 2 of rule XIV, executive communications were taken from the Speaker's table and referred as follows: 4239. A letter from the Director, Regulations Policy and Management Staff, Food and Drug Administration, transmitting the Department's final rule -- Office of Regulatory Affairs Division Director; Technical Amendments [Docket No.: FDA-2019-N-0011] received April 14, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Energy and Commerce. 4240. A letter from the Inspector General, Federal Maritime Commission, transmitting the Commission's response to requested information regarding the whistleblower protections and practices at the Federal Maritime Commission; to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.
|
2020-01-06
|
Unknown
|
House
|
CREC-2020-04-21-pt1-PgH1897-10
| null | 537
|
formal
|
banker
| null |
antisemitic
|
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, well, in the month since I last addressed this Chamber, life for nearly every American has been upended. Stay-at-home orders have swept across the country. The monthly toll of new unemployment claims are measured in the millions. Our health system has been strained to the breaking point. American workers and businesses are suffering financial hardship not seen since the Great Recession. Almost 800,000 of our fellow citizens have tested positive for COVID-19. And most heartbreakingly, America has lost more than 37,000 precious lives to this coronavirus--many, many of them New Yorkers. Over the past 2 months, the Senate has come together on three occasions to pass legislation in response to this multifaceted crisis, to rescue our ailing healthcare system, to cushion the blow to American workers and businesses, and to prepare our country for a more prosperous future on the other side of this pandemic. Our last legislative effort, the CARES Act, was unprecedented in size and in scope--the largest stimulus in American history. Remarkably, on such a large and complex bill, the Senate came together 96-0 to pass this crucial emergency relief, getting ayes from Senator Sanders to Senator Cruz and everyone in between. It shows that, even with the partisanship here, as tough and harsh as it can be, we can come together unanimously in a time of great crisis. Still, the depth of the crisis we now face meant that funding for certain programs in this bill had already been depleted, and a number of required fixes had to be made to make sure these programs worked as intended. An interim bill, COVID 3.5, is necessary. Now, my friend, the Republican leader, tried to bypass negotiations on such an interim measure. He tried to jam through a bill that would have increased funding for one small business lending program but not others, when they were all running out of funding. His proposal did not attempt to fix the dire lack of lending to small businesses that are truly small, underbanked, underserved, minority, or women-owned. His proposal included nothing at all for our healthcare system, nothing to address the national shortage in testing, nothing to help State, local, or Tribal governments who are breaking their budgets to fight this disease. All of us want to help our small businesses--all of us--but this emergency demands we take action on many fronts. So we have spent the last week negotiating with the administration--Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, Chief of Staff Meadows, as well as Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats with us, the Senate Democrats, to improve the legislation. We reached a final agreement earlier today. Now, there are plenty of disagreements between our parties these days, but once again, we are coming together to pass this legislation by unanimous consent--not a single Senator objected. I want to thank Secretary Mnuchin. I spent hours and hours with him at all hours of the day. I want to thank someone I didn't know very well, Chief of Staff Meadows, who is very good at making sure an agreement can come to fruition, even in the wee hours of the morning. Of course, I want to thank my dear friend and partner, Speaker Pelosi. I want to thank Leaders McConnell and McCarthy who, at the end of the day, did not let partisan disagreement stand in the way of doing what is right for this country. Again, just like the CARES Act, the hard work of bipartisan negotiation paid off. The fact that Democrats said, You need to talk to us, not try to steamroll us, once again, made a huge and positive difference. This legislation is significantly better and broader than the initial proposal offered by the Republican leader. Republicans asked us to funnel more money into a program that wasn't working the way it should. We negotiated a bill that not only provided support but made it more effective, more inclusive, and addressed other urgent national priorities as well. The legislation before us contains 220 billion more dollars, including funding for small businesses through community financial institutions, new funding for our hospitals and healthcare systems, and a substantial downpayment on a national testing regime so desperately needed and asked for by one and all. Let me repeat that: The legislation now includes an additional $220 billion, $120 billion for small businesses, $100 billion for our healthcare system, divided among healthcare providers and a need for testing and contact tracing. The new money includes $50 billion in additional emergency small business loans and $10 billion in additional business grants. That includes $60 billion in new funding set aside for small lenders. If you don't know a banker, if you are not a relatively large-sized company, you were left out. Two out of three loans in New York were ignored. The mom-and-pops, the small businesses, the restaurants, and the barber shops, the hardware stores, the butchers, and small startups, both service and manufacturing, they couldn't get in. Now, they will be because of our work. Our bill will help rural small businesses, minority small businesses, women-owned small businesses get the money they need. I believe every Member of our Caucus heard from businesses in their States who couldn't access Federal lending because they didn't have a prior relationship with a big bank. So what we have done is set aside lending for smaller, community-based lenders and dedicated half of that funding--$30 billion--to Community Development Financial Institutions and Minority Depository Institutions. We insisted that this money be separate from the competition with the bigger companies, so that moms-and-pops, restaurants and nail salons, startups, and minority businesses can get some access. Unlike Leader McConnell's proposal, this bill also includes $100 billion in money to fight the coronavirus itself. We are not going to cure the economic problem unless we cure the health problem. We can give loans to small businesses, but if there are no customers walking the streets to go into their stores, what good is that? So we insisted that $75 billion go to our hospitals. Our hospitals are going underwater--certainly, the big ones in cities like mine that have an epicenter of corona, but smaller hospitals in rural areas. Talk to our rural representatives, and they are telling you their hospitals might go under. And medium-sized hospitals in New York State--St. Joseph's in Syracuse and St. Peter's in Albany--each laid off 700 people this week. They are going to get help because of what we did. The experts are clear. To fight this disease and reopen the economy safely, we need to dramatically--dramatically--expand testing capacity and frequency. We don't have enough tests; that cry rings from one end of America to the other. It is urban, suburban, rural, north, east, south, and west; we don't have enough tests. Well, now, help is on the way because Democrats stood and fought for it--$25 billion, $11 billion to go to the States to help them test and do the contact tracing they need, money to help create a manufacturing and supply chain that will have adequate tests and adequate supplies for those tests so we can finally get them going. We need them desperately. One of the last provisions secured in these negotiations at midnight last night was a requirement that the administration report on a national strategic testing plan on how it plans to increase domestic testing capacity, testing supplies, and the disparities in all communities. Thus far, unfortunately,the administration has refused to accept responsibility for the sorry state of testing in our country. Under this agreement, the Trump administration will now, at last, be required to report on what its national testing plan actually looks like. Congress provided the startup funds for the testing program. It is now up to the administration to prepare a national testing strategy and implement those funds to proper effect before it is too late. Of course, this bill is not perfect. We are sorely disappointed Republicans refused to work with us to strengthen food assistance. I am sorely disappointed that Republicans turned a deaf ear to Governors, mayors, Tribal leaders, county and local officials, Democratic and Republican, all 50 Governors who have been pleading with the Federal Government for more help. And it is not about abstract government. I know we don't like government on the other side of the aisle. It is about policemen, firefighters, bus drivers, hospital workers. They are being laid off because the local governments and the State governments are starving and not getting their revenues. We fought and fought, but unfortunately, on the other side of the aisle, they resisted. I hope they won't resist in COVID 4. We are going to need a large, large amount of money to help our localities so those policemen, firefighters, and bus drivers are not laid off. Republicans need to come to the table and work with us to give our States the help they need. They should be eager to do it. Secretary Mnuchin committed--and the President tweeted today--that they will support State and local funding in the next round of legislation, as well--and this is very important--as a provision providing flexibility to use all past and future relief dollars to offset lost revenue. The President signaled his support for this concept as well in a tweet this morning. We should have passed support for State and local governments. Democrats will see to it that it gets done in the next package. Now, finally, I would remind my colleagues that this is an interim measure. There are plenty of hard-won provisions that we Democrats are pleased with, but it is, ultimately, a building block. In the weeks ahead, Congress must prepare another major bill, similar in size and ambition to the CARES Act. The next bill must be big and bold and suited to the needs of a beleaguered country. State localities and Tribal governments need support, so does the Postal Service. Working Americans need rental assistance. Frontline workers deserve hazard pay, and it is not just doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and other medical workers, but truck drivers, grocery store clerks, police officers, firefighters, and more. We must make sure that our elections this fall are conducted fairly, that States have enough money to run them properly, and that every American can exercise his or her constitutional franchise safely and confidently. This is a COVID-related issue. So those issues and more will be priorities for the Senate Democratic Caucus in the next bill. Yes, it has been a long few months for the American people, but even now, there are signs that the sacrifices Americans have made are beginning to slow the spread of the disease. We are a long way from the end, but this, too, shall pass. Until the day when we can begin to return to normal, it is up to Congress and the entire Federal Government to deliver the leadership and resources that only we can provide. The private sector will not provide the aid our Nation requires. The efforts of individual States or even individual citizens, heroic as they are, will not be enough. We dare not abandon them in these dark and difficult times. The American people need their government. They need their government to act strongly, boldly, wisely. Let us do what we were elected to do and pass this bill today. I yield the floor.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. SCHUMER
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-04-21-pt1-PgS2178-3
| null | 538
|
formal
|
based
| null |
white supremacist
|
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, well, in the month since I last addressed this Chamber, life for nearly every American has been upended. Stay-at-home orders have swept across the country. The monthly toll of new unemployment claims are measured in the millions. Our health system has been strained to the breaking point. American workers and businesses are suffering financial hardship not seen since the Great Recession. Almost 800,000 of our fellow citizens have tested positive for COVID-19. And most heartbreakingly, America has lost more than 37,000 precious lives to this coronavirus--many, many of them New Yorkers. Over the past 2 months, the Senate has come together on three occasions to pass legislation in response to this multifaceted crisis, to rescue our ailing healthcare system, to cushion the blow to American workers and businesses, and to prepare our country for a more prosperous future on the other side of this pandemic. Our last legislative effort, the CARES Act, was unprecedented in size and in scope--the largest stimulus in American history. Remarkably, on such a large and complex bill, the Senate came together 96-0 to pass this crucial emergency relief, getting ayes from Senator Sanders to Senator Cruz and everyone in between. It shows that, even with the partisanship here, as tough and harsh as it can be, we can come together unanimously in a time of great crisis. Still, the depth of the crisis we now face meant that funding for certain programs in this bill had already been depleted, and a number of required fixes had to be made to make sure these programs worked as intended. An interim bill, COVID 3.5, is necessary. Now, my friend, the Republican leader, tried to bypass negotiations on such an interim measure. He tried to jam through a bill that would have increased funding for one small business lending program but not others, when they were all running out of funding. His proposal did not attempt to fix the dire lack of lending to small businesses that are truly small, underbanked, underserved, minority, or women-owned. His proposal included nothing at all for our healthcare system, nothing to address the national shortage in testing, nothing to help State, local, or Tribal governments who are breaking their budgets to fight this disease. All of us want to help our small businesses--all of us--but this emergency demands we take action on many fronts. So we have spent the last week negotiating with the administration--Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, Chief of Staff Meadows, as well as Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats with us, the Senate Democrats, to improve the legislation. We reached a final agreement earlier today. Now, there are plenty of disagreements between our parties these days, but once again, we are coming together to pass this legislation by unanimous consent--not a single Senator objected. I want to thank Secretary Mnuchin. I spent hours and hours with him at all hours of the day. I want to thank someone I didn't know very well, Chief of Staff Meadows, who is very good at making sure an agreement can come to fruition, even in the wee hours of the morning. Of course, I want to thank my dear friend and partner, Speaker Pelosi. I want to thank Leaders McConnell and McCarthy who, at the end of the day, did not let partisan disagreement stand in the way of doing what is right for this country. Again, just like the CARES Act, the hard work of bipartisan negotiation paid off. The fact that Democrats said, You need to talk to us, not try to steamroll us, once again, made a huge and positive difference. This legislation is significantly better and broader than the initial proposal offered by the Republican leader. Republicans asked us to funnel more money into a program that wasn't working the way it should. We negotiated a bill that not only provided support but made it more effective, more inclusive, and addressed other urgent national priorities as well. The legislation before us contains 220 billion more dollars, including funding for small businesses through community financial institutions, new funding for our hospitals and healthcare systems, and a substantial downpayment on a national testing regime so desperately needed and asked for by one and all. Let me repeat that: The legislation now includes an additional $220 billion, $120 billion for small businesses, $100 billion for our healthcare system, divided among healthcare providers and a need for testing and contact tracing. The new money includes $50 billion in additional emergency small business loans and $10 billion in additional business grants. That includes $60 billion in new funding set aside for small lenders. If you don't know a banker, if you are not a relatively large-sized company, you were left out. Two out of three loans in New York were ignored. The mom-and-pops, the small businesses, the restaurants, and the barber shops, the hardware stores, the butchers, and small startups, both service and manufacturing, they couldn't get in. Now, they will be because of our work. Our bill will help rural small businesses, minority small businesses, women-owned small businesses get the money they need. I believe every Member of our Caucus heard from businesses in their States who couldn't access Federal lending because they didn't have a prior relationship with a big bank. So what we have done is set aside lending for smaller, community-based lenders and dedicated half of that funding--$30 billion--to Community Development Financial Institutions and Minority Depository Institutions. We insisted that this money be separate from the competition with the bigger companies, so that moms-and-pops, restaurants and nail salons, startups, and minority businesses can get some access. Unlike Leader McConnell's proposal, this bill also includes $100 billion in money to fight the coronavirus itself. We are not going to cure the economic problem unless we cure the health problem. We can give loans to small businesses, but if there are no customers walking the streets to go into their stores, what good is that? So we insisted that $75 billion go to our hospitals. Our hospitals are going underwater--certainly, the big ones in cities like mine that have an epicenter of corona, but smaller hospitals in rural areas. Talk to our rural representatives, and they are telling you their hospitals might go under. And medium-sized hospitals in New York State--St. Joseph's in Syracuse and St. Peter's in Albany--each laid off 700 people this week. They are going to get help because of what we did. The experts are clear. To fight this disease and reopen the economy safely, we need to dramatically--dramatically--expand testing capacity and frequency. We don't have enough tests; that cry rings from one end of America to the other. It is urban, suburban, rural, north, east, south, and west; we don't have enough tests. Well, now, help is on the way because Democrats stood and fought for it--$25 billion, $11 billion to go to the States to help them test and do the contact tracing they need, money to help create a manufacturing and supply chain that will have adequate tests and adequate supplies for those tests so we can finally get them going. We need them desperately. One of the last provisions secured in these negotiations at midnight last night was a requirement that the administration report on a national strategic testing plan on how it plans to increase domestic testing capacity, testing supplies, and the disparities in all communities. Thus far, unfortunately,the administration has refused to accept responsibility for the sorry state of testing in our country. Under this agreement, the Trump administration will now, at last, be required to report on what its national testing plan actually looks like. Congress provided the startup funds for the testing program. It is now up to the administration to prepare a national testing strategy and implement those funds to proper effect before it is too late. Of course, this bill is not perfect. We are sorely disappointed Republicans refused to work with us to strengthen food assistance. I am sorely disappointed that Republicans turned a deaf ear to Governors, mayors, Tribal leaders, county and local officials, Democratic and Republican, all 50 Governors who have been pleading with the Federal Government for more help. And it is not about abstract government. I know we don't like government on the other side of the aisle. It is about policemen, firefighters, bus drivers, hospital workers. They are being laid off because the local governments and the State governments are starving and not getting their revenues. We fought and fought, but unfortunately, on the other side of the aisle, they resisted. I hope they won't resist in COVID 4. We are going to need a large, large amount of money to help our localities so those policemen, firefighters, and bus drivers are not laid off. Republicans need to come to the table and work with us to give our States the help they need. They should be eager to do it. Secretary Mnuchin committed--and the President tweeted today--that they will support State and local funding in the next round of legislation, as well--and this is very important--as a provision providing flexibility to use all past and future relief dollars to offset lost revenue. The President signaled his support for this concept as well in a tweet this morning. We should have passed support for State and local governments. Democrats will see to it that it gets done in the next package. Now, finally, I would remind my colleagues that this is an interim measure. There are plenty of hard-won provisions that we Democrats are pleased with, but it is, ultimately, a building block. In the weeks ahead, Congress must prepare another major bill, similar in size and ambition to the CARES Act. The next bill must be big and bold and suited to the needs of a beleaguered country. State localities and Tribal governments need support, so does the Postal Service. Working Americans need rental assistance. Frontline workers deserve hazard pay, and it is not just doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and other medical workers, but truck drivers, grocery store clerks, police officers, firefighters, and more. We must make sure that our elections this fall are conducted fairly, that States have enough money to run them properly, and that every American can exercise his or her constitutional franchise safely and confidently. This is a COVID-related issue. So those issues and more will be priorities for the Senate Democratic Caucus in the next bill. Yes, it has been a long few months for the American people, but even now, there are signs that the sacrifices Americans have made are beginning to slow the spread of the disease. We are a long way from the end, but this, too, shall pass. Until the day when we can begin to return to normal, it is up to Congress and the entire Federal Government to deliver the leadership and resources that only we can provide. The private sector will not provide the aid our Nation requires. The efforts of individual States or even individual citizens, heroic as they are, will not be enough. We dare not abandon them in these dark and difficult times. The American people need their government. They need their government to act strongly, boldly, wisely. Let us do what we were elected to do and pass this bill today. I yield the floor.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. SCHUMER
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-04-21-pt1-PgS2178-3
| null | 539
|
formal
|
dual citizen
| null |
antisemitic
|
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, well, in the month since I last addressed this Chamber, life for nearly every American has been upended. Stay-at-home orders have swept across the country. The monthly toll of new unemployment claims are measured in the millions. Our health system has been strained to the breaking point. American workers and businesses are suffering financial hardship not seen since the Great Recession. Almost 800,000 of our fellow citizens have tested positive for COVID-19. And most heartbreakingly, America has lost more than 37,000 precious lives to this coronavirus--many, many of them New Yorkers. Over the past 2 months, the Senate has come together on three occasions to pass legislation in response to this multifaceted crisis, to rescue our ailing healthcare system, to cushion the blow to American workers and businesses, and to prepare our country for a more prosperous future on the other side of this pandemic. Our last legislative effort, the CARES Act, was unprecedented in size and in scope--the largest stimulus in American history. Remarkably, on such a large and complex bill, the Senate came together 96-0 to pass this crucial emergency relief, getting ayes from Senator Sanders to Senator Cruz and everyone in between. It shows that, even with the partisanship here, as tough and harsh as it can be, we can come together unanimously in a time of great crisis. Still, the depth of the crisis we now face meant that funding for certain programs in this bill had already been depleted, and a number of required fixes had to be made to make sure these programs worked as intended. An interim bill, COVID 3.5, is necessary. Now, my friend, the Republican leader, tried to bypass negotiations on such an interim measure. He tried to jam through a bill that would have increased funding for one small business lending program but not others, when they were all running out of funding. His proposal did not attempt to fix the dire lack of lending to small businesses that are truly small, underbanked, underserved, minority, or women-owned. His proposal included nothing at all for our healthcare system, nothing to address the national shortage in testing, nothing to help State, local, or Tribal governments who are breaking their budgets to fight this disease. All of us want to help our small businesses--all of us--but this emergency demands we take action on many fronts. So we have spent the last week negotiating with the administration--Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, Chief of Staff Meadows, as well as Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats with us, the Senate Democrats, to improve the legislation. We reached a final agreement earlier today. Now, there are plenty of disagreements between our parties these days, but once again, we are coming together to pass this legislation by unanimous consent--not a single Senator objected. I want to thank Secretary Mnuchin. I spent hours and hours with him at all hours of the day. I want to thank someone I didn't know very well, Chief of Staff Meadows, who is very good at making sure an agreement can come to fruition, even in the wee hours of the morning. Of course, I want to thank my dear friend and partner, Speaker Pelosi. I want to thank Leaders McConnell and McCarthy who, at the end of the day, did not let partisan disagreement stand in the way of doing what is right for this country. Again, just like the CARES Act, the hard work of bipartisan negotiation paid off. The fact that Democrats said, You need to talk to us, not try to steamroll us, once again, made a huge and positive difference. This legislation is significantly better and broader than the initial proposal offered by the Republican leader. Republicans asked us to funnel more money into a program that wasn't working the way it should. We negotiated a bill that not only provided support but made it more effective, more inclusive, and addressed other urgent national priorities as well. The legislation before us contains 220 billion more dollars, including funding for small businesses through community financial institutions, new funding for our hospitals and healthcare systems, and a substantial downpayment on a national testing regime so desperately needed and asked for by one and all. Let me repeat that: The legislation now includes an additional $220 billion, $120 billion for small businesses, $100 billion for our healthcare system, divided among healthcare providers and a need for testing and contact tracing. The new money includes $50 billion in additional emergency small business loans and $10 billion in additional business grants. That includes $60 billion in new funding set aside for small lenders. If you don't know a banker, if you are not a relatively large-sized company, you were left out. Two out of three loans in New York were ignored. The mom-and-pops, the small businesses, the restaurants, and the barber shops, the hardware stores, the butchers, and small startups, both service and manufacturing, they couldn't get in. Now, they will be because of our work. Our bill will help rural small businesses, minority small businesses, women-owned small businesses get the money they need. I believe every Member of our Caucus heard from businesses in their States who couldn't access Federal lending because they didn't have a prior relationship with a big bank. So what we have done is set aside lending for smaller, community-based lenders and dedicated half of that funding--$30 billion--to Community Development Financial Institutions and Minority Depository Institutions. We insisted that this money be separate from the competition with the bigger companies, so that moms-and-pops, restaurants and nail salons, startups, and minority businesses can get some access. Unlike Leader McConnell's proposal, this bill also includes $100 billion in money to fight the coronavirus itself. We are not going to cure the economic problem unless we cure the health problem. We can give loans to small businesses, but if there are no customers walking the streets to go into their stores, what good is that? So we insisted that $75 billion go to our hospitals. Our hospitals are going underwater--certainly, the big ones in cities like mine that have an epicenter of corona, but smaller hospitals in rural areas. Talk to our rural representatives, and they are telling you their hospitals might go under. And medium-sized hospitals in New York State--St. Joseph's in Syracuse and St. Peter's in Albany--each laid off 700 people this week. They are going to get help because of what we did. The experts are clear. To fight this disease and reopen the economy safely, we need to dramatically--dramatically--expand testing capacity and frequency. We don't have enough tests; that cry rings from one end of America to the other. It is urban, suburban, rural, north, east, south, and west; we don't have enough tests. Well, now, help is on the way because Democrats stood and fought for it--$25 billion, $11 billion to go to the States to help them test and do the contact tracing they need, money to help create a manufacturing and supply chain that will have adequate tests and adequate supplies for those tests so we can finally get them going. We need them desperately. One of the last provisions secured in these negotiations at midnight last night was a requirement that the administration report on a national strategic testing plan on how it plans to increase domestic testing capacity, testing supplies, and the disparities in all communities. Thus far, unfortunately,the administration has refused to accept responsibility for the sorry state of testing in our country. Under this agreement, the Trump administration will now, at last, be required to report on what its national testing plan actually looks like. Congress provided the startup funds for the testing program. It is now up to the administration to prepare a national testing strategy and implement those funds to proper effect before it is too late. Of course, this bill is not perfect. We are sorely disappointed Republicans refused to work with us to strengthen food assistance. I am sorely disappointed that Republicans turned a deaf ear to Governors, mayors, Tribal leaders, county and local officials, Democratic and Republican, all 50 Governors who have been pleading with the Federal Government for more help. And it is not about abstract government. I know we don't like government on the other side of the aisle. It is about policemen, firefighters, bus drivers, hospital workers. They are being laid off because the local governments and the State governments are starving and not getting their revenues. We fought and fought, but unfortunately, on the other side of the aisle, they resisted. I hope they won't resist in COVID 4. We are going to need a large, large amount of money to help our localities so those policemen, firefighters, and bus drivers are not laid off. Republicans need to come to the table and work with us to give our States the help they need. They should be eager to do it. Secretary Mnuchin committed--and the President tweeted today--that they will support State and local funding in the next round of legislation, as well--and this is very important--as a provision providing flexibility to use all past and future relief dollars to offset lost revenue. The President signaled his support for this concept as well in a tweet this morning. We should have passed support for State and local governments. Democrats will see to it that it gets done in the next package. Now, finally, I would remind my colleagues that this is an interim measure. There are plenty of hard-won provisions that we Democrats are pleased with, but it is, ultimately, a building block. In the weeks ahead, Congress must prepare another major bill, similar in size and ambition to the CARES Act. The next bill must be big and bold and suited to the needs of a beleaguered country. State localities and Tribal governments need support, so does the Postal Service. Working Americans need rental assistance. Frontline workers deserve hazard pay, and it is not just doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and other medical workers, but truck drivers, grocery store clerks, police officers, firefighters, and more. We must make sure that our elections this fall are conducted fairly, that States have enough money to run them properly, and that every American can exercise his or her constitutional franchise safely and confidently. This is a COVID-related issue. So those issues and more will be priorities for the Senate Democratic Caucus in the next bill. Yes, it has been a long few months for the American people, but even now, there are signs that the sacrifices Americans have made are beginning to slow the spread of the disease. We are a long way from the end, but this, too, shall pass. Until the day when we can begin to return to normal, it is up to Congress and the entire Federal Government to deliver the leadership and resources that only we can provide. The private sector will not provide the aid our Nation requires. The efforts of individual States or even individual citizens, heroic as they are, will not be enough. We dare not abandon them in these dark and difficult times. The American people need their government. They need their government to act strongly, boldly, wisely. Let us do what we were elected to do and pass this bill today. I yield the floor.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. SCHUMER
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-04-21-pt1-PgS2178-3
| null | 540
|
formal
|
dual citizens
| null |
antisemitic
|
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, well, in the month since I last addressed this Chamber, life for nearly every American has been upended. Stay-at-home orders have swept across the country. The monthly toll of new unemployment claims are measured in the millions. Our health system has been strained to the breaking point. American workers and businesses are suffering financial hardship not seen since the Great Recession. Almost 800,000 of our fellow citizens have tested positive for COVID-19. And most heartbreakingly, America has lost more than 37,000 precious lives to this coronavirus--many, many of them New Yorkers. Over the past 2 months, the Senate has come together on three occasions to pass legislation in response to this multifaceted crisis, to rescue our ailing healthcare system, to cushion the blow to American workers and businesses, and to prepare our country for a more prosperous future on the other side of this pandemic. Our last legislative effort, the CARES Act, was unprecedented in size and in scope--the largest stimulus in American history. Remarkably, on such a large and complex bill, the Senate came together 96-0 to pass this crucial emergency relief, getting ayes from Senator Sanders to Senator Cruz and everyone in between. It shows that, even with the partisanship here, as tough and harsh as it can be, we can come together unanimously in a time of great crisis. Still, the depth of the crisis we now face meant that funding for certain programs in this bill had already been depleted, and a number of required fixes had to be made to make sure these programs worked as intended. An interim bill, COVID 3.5, is necessary. Now, my friend, the Republican leader, tried to bypass negotiations on such an interim measure. He tried to jam through a bill that would have increased funding for one small business lending program but not others, when they were all running out of funding. His proposal did not attempt to fix the dire lack of lending to small businesses that are truly small, underbanked, underserved, minority, or women-owned. His proposal included nothing at all for our healthcare system, nothing to address the national shortage in testing, nothing to help State, local, or Tribal governments who are breaking their budgets to fight this disease. All of us want to help our small businesses--all of us--but this emergency demands we take action on many fronts. So we have spent the last week negotiating with the administration--Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, Chief of Staff Meadows, as well as Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats with us, the Senate Democrats, to improve the legislation. We reached a final agreement earlier today. Now, there are plenty of disagreements between our parties these days, but once again, we are coming together to pass this legislation by unanimous consent--not a single Senator objected. I want to thank Secretary Mnuchin. I spent hours and hours with him at all hours of the day. I want to thank someone I didn't know very well, Chief of Staff Meadows, who is very good at making sure an agreement can come to fruition, even in the wee hours of the morning. Of course, I want to thank my dear friend and partner, Speaker Pelosi. I want to thank Leaders McConnell and McCarthy who, at the end of the day, did not let partisan disagreement stand in the way of doing what is right for this country. Again, just like the CARES Act, the hard work of bipartisan negotiation paid off. The fact that Democrats said, You need to talk to us, not try to steamroll us, once again, made a huge and positive difference. This legislation is significantly better and broader than the initial proposal offered by the Republican leader. Republicans asked us to funnel more money into a program that wasn't working the way it should. We negotiated a bill that not only provided support but made it more effective, more inclusive, and addressed other urgent national priorities as well. The legislation before us contains 220 billion more dollars, including funding for small businesses through community financial institutions, new funding for our hospitals and healthcare systems, and a substantial downpayment on a national testing regime so desperately needed and asked for by one and all. Let me repeat that: The legislation now includes an additional $220 billion, $120 billion for small businesses, $100 billion for our healthcare system, divided among healthcare providers and a need for testing and contact tracing. The new money includes $50 billion in additional emergency small business loans and $10 billion in additional business grants. That includes $60 billion in new funding set aside for small lenders. If you don't know a banker, if you are not a relatively large-sized company, you were left out. Two out of three loans in New York were ignored. The mom-and-pops, the small businesses, the restaurants, and the barber shops, the hardware stores, the butchers, and small startups, both service and manufacturing, they couldn't get in. Now, they will be because of our work. Our bill will help rural small businesses, minority small businesses, women-owned small businesses get the money they need. I believe every Member of our Caucus heard from businesses in their States who couldn't access Federal lending because they didn't have a prior relationship with a big bank. So what we have done is set aside lending for smaller, community-based lenders and dedicated half of that funding--$30 billion--to Community Development Financial Institutions and Minority Depository Institutions. We insisted that this money be separate from the competition with the bigger companies, so that moms-and-pops, restaurants and nail salons, startups, and minority businesses can get some access. Unlike Leader McConnell's proposal, this bill also includes $100 billion in money to fight the coronavirus itself. We are not going to cure the economic problem unless we cure the health problem. We can give loans to small businesses, but if there are no customers walking the streets to go into their stores, what good is that? So we insisted that $75 billion go to our hospitals. Our hospitals are going underwater--certainly, the big ones in cities like mine that have an epicenter of corona, but smaller hospitals in rural areas. Talk to our rural representatives, and they are telling you their hospitals might go under. And medium-sized hospitals in New York State--St. Joseph's in Syracuse and St. Peter's in Albany--each laid off 700 people this week. They are going to get help because of what we did. The experts are clear. To fight this disease and reopen the economy safely, we need to dramatically--dramatically--expand testing capacity and frequency. We don't have enough tests; that cry rings from one end of America to the other. It is urban, suburban, rural, north, east, south, and west; we don't have enough tests. Well, now, help is on the way because Democrats stood and fought for it--$25 billion, $11 billion to go to the States to help them test and do the contact tracing they need, money to help create a manufacturing and supply chain that will have adequate tests and adequate supplies for those tests so we can finally get them going. We need them desperately. One of the last provisions secured in these negotiations at midnight last night was a requirement that the administration report on a national strategic testing plan on how it plans to increase domestic testing capacity, testing supplies, and the disparities in all communities. Thus far, unfortunately,the administration has refused to accept responsibility for the sorry state of testing in our country. Under this agreement, the Trump administration will now, at last, be required to report on what its national testing plan actually looks like. Congress provided the startup funds for the testing program. It is now up to the administration to prepare a national testing strategy and implement those funds to proper effect before it is too late. Of course, this bill is not perfect. We are sorely disappointed Republicans refused to work with us to strengthen food assistance. I am sorely disappointed that Republicans turned a deaf ear to Governors, mayors, Tribal leaders, county and local officials, Democratic and Republican, all 50 Governors who have been pleading with the Federal Government for more help. And it is not about abstract government. I know we don't like government on the other side of the aisle. It is about policemen, firefighters, bus drivers, hospital workers. They are being laid off because the local governments and the State governments are starving and not getting their revenues. We fought and fought, but unfortunately, on the other side of the aisle, they resisted. I hope they won't resist in COVID 4. We are going to need a large, large amount of money to help our localities so those policemen, firefighters, and bus drivers are not laid off. Republicans need to come to the table and work with us to give our States the help they need. They should be eager to do it. Secretary Mnuchin committed--and the President tweeted today--that they will support State and local funding in the next round of legislation, as well--and this is very important--as a provision providing flexibility to use all past and future relief dollars to offset lost revenue. The President signaled his support for this concept as well in a tweet this morning. We should have passed support for State and local governments. Democrats will see to it that it gets done in the next package. Now, finally, I would remind my colleagues that this is an interim measure. There are plenty of hard-won provisions that we Democrats are pleased with, but it is, ultimately, a building block. In the weeks ahead, Congress must prepare another major bill, similar in size and ambition to the CARES Act. The next bill must be big and bold and suited to the needs of a beleaguered country. State localities and Tribal governments need support, so does the Postal Service. Working Americans need rental assistance. Frontline workers deserve hazard pay, and it is not just doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and other medical workers, but truck drivers, grocery store clerks, police officers, firefighters, and more. We must make sure that our elections this fall are conducted fairly, that States have enough money to run them properly, and that every American can exercise his or her constitutional franchise safely and confidently. This is a COVID-related issue. So those issues and more will be priorities for the Senate Democratic Caucus in the next bill. Yes, it has been a long few months for the American people, but even now, there are signs that the sacrifices Americans have made are beginning to slow the spread of the disease. We are a long way from the end, but this, too, shall pass. Until the day when we can begin to return to normal, it is up to Congress and the entire Federal Government to deliver the leadership and resources that only we can provide. The private sector will not provide the aid our Nation requires. The efforts of individual States or even individual citizens, heroic as they are, will not be enough. We dare not abandon them in these dark and difficult times. The American people need their government. They need their government to act strongly, boldly, wisely. Let us do what we were elected to do and pass this bill today. I yield the floor.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. SCHUMER
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-04-21-pt1-PgS2178-3
| null | 541
|
formal
|
the Fed
| null |
antisemitic
|
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, well, in the month since I last addressed this Chamber, life for nearly every American has been upended. Stay-at-home orders have swept across the country. The monthly toll of new unemployment claims are measured in the millions. Our health system has been strained to the breaking point. American workers and businesses are suffering financial hardship not seen since the Great Recession. Almost 800,000 of our fellow citizens have tested positive for COVID-19. And most heartbreakingly, America has lost more than 37,000 precious lives to this coronavirus--many, many of them New Yorkers. Over the past 2 months, the Senate has come together on three occasions to pass legislation in response to this multifaceted crisis, to rescue our ailing healthcare system, to cushion the blow to American workers and businesses, and to prepare our country for a more prosperous future on the other side of this pandemic. Our last legislative effort, the CARES Act, was unprecedented in size and in scope--the largest stimulus in American history. Remarkably, on such a large and complex bill, the Senate came together 96-0 to pass this crucial emergency relief, getting ayes from Senator Sanders to Senator Cruz and everyone in between. It shows that, even with the partisanship here, as tough and harsh as it can be, we can come together unanimously in a time of great crisis. Still, the depth of the crisis we now face meant that funding for certain programs in this bill had already been depleted, and a number of required fixes had to be made to make sure these programs worked as intended. An interim bill, COVID 3.5, is necessary. Now, my friend, the Republican leader, tried to bypass negotiations on such an interim measure. He tried to jam through a bill that would have increased funding for one small business lending program but not others, when they were all running out of funding. His proposal did not attempt to fix the dire lack of lending to small businesses that are truly small, underbanked, underserved, minority, or women-owned. His proposal included nothing at all for our healthcare system, nothing to address the national shortage in testing, nothing to help State, local, or Tribal governments who are breaking their budgets to fight this disease. All of us want to help our small businesses--all of us--but this emergency demands we take action on many fronts. So we have spent the last week negotiating with the administration--Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, Chief of Staff Meadows, as well as Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats with us, the Senate Democrats, to improve the legislation. We reached a final agreement earlier today. Now, there are plenty of disagreements between our parties these days, but once again, we are coming together to pass this legislation by unanimous consent--not a single Senator objected. I want to thank Secretary Mnuchin. I spent hours and hours with him at all hours of the day. I want to thank someone I didn't know very well, Chief of Staff Meadows, who is very good at making sure an agreement can come to fruition, even in the wee hours of the morning. Of course, I want to thank my dear friend and partner, Speaker Pelosi. I want to thank Leaders McConnell and McCarthy who, at the end of the day, did not let partisan disagreement stand in the way of doing what is right for this country. Again, just like the CARES Act, the hard work of bipartisan negotiation paid off. The fact that Democrats said, You need to talk to us, not try to steamroll us, once again, made a huge and positive difference. This legislation is significantly better and broader than the initial proposal offered by the Republican leader. Republicans asked us to funnel more money into a program that wasn't working the way it should. We negotiated a bill that not only provided support but made it more effective, more inclusive, and addressed other urgent national priorities as well. The legislation before us contains 220 billion more dollars, including funding for small businesses through community financial institutions, new funding for our hospitals and healthcare systems, and a substantial downpayment on a national testing regime so desperately needed and asked for by one and all. Let me repeat that: The legislation now includes an additional $220 billion, $120 billion for small businesses, $100 billion for our healthcare system, divided among healthcare providers and a need for testing and contact tracing. The new money includes $50 billion in additional emergency small business loans and $10 billion in additional business grants. That includes $60 billion in new funding set aside for small lenders. If you don't know a banker, if you are not a relatively large-sized company, you were left out. Two out of three loans in New York were ignored. The mom-and-pops, the small businesses, the restaurants, and the barber shops, the hardware stores, the butchers, and small startups, both service and manufacturing, they couldn't get in. Now, they will be because of our work. Our bill will help rural small businesses, minority small businesses, women-owned small businesses get the money they need. I believe every Member of our Caucus heard from businesses in their States who couldn't access Federal lending because they didn't have a prior relationship with a big bank. So what we have done is set aside lending for smaller, community-based lenders and dedicated half of that funding--$30 billion--to Community Development Financial Institutions and Minority Depository Institutions. We insisted that this money be separate from the competition with the bigger companies, so that moms-and-pops, restaurants and nail salons, startups, and minority businesses can get some access. Unlike Leader McConnell's proposal, this bill also includes $100 billion in money to fight the coronavirus itself. We are not going to cure the economic problem unless we cure the health problem. We can give loans to small businesses, but if there are no customers walking the streets to go into their stores, what good is that? So we insisted that $75 billion go to our hospitals. Our hospitals are going underwater--certainly, the big ones in cities like mine that have an epicenter of corona, but smaller hospitals in rural areas. Talk to our rural representatives, and they are telling you their hospitals might go under. And medium-sized hospitals in New York State--St. Joseph's in Syracuse and St. Peter's in Albany--each laid off 700 people this week. They are going to get help because of what we did. The experts are clear. To fight this disease and reopen the economy safely, we need to dramatically--dramatically--expand testing capacity and frequency. We don't have enough tests; that cry rings from one end of America to the other. It is urban, suburban, rural, north, east, south, and west; we don't have enough tests. Well, now, help is on the way because Democrats stood and fought for it--$25 billion, $11 billion to go to the States to help them test and do the contact tracing they need, money to help create a manufacturing and supply chain that will have adequate tests and adequate supplies for those tests so we can finally get them going. We need them desperately. One of the last provisions secured in these negotiations at midnight last night was a requirement that the administration report on a national strategic testing plan on how it plans to increase domestic testing capacity, testing supplies, and the disparities in all communities. Thus far, unfortunately,the administration has refused to accept responsibility for the sorry state of testing in our country. Under this agreement, the Trump administration will now, at last, be required to report on what its national testing plan actually looks like. Congress provided the startup funds for the testing program. It is now up to the administration to prepare a national testing strategy and implement those funds to proper effect before it is too late. Of course, this bill is not perfect. We are sorely disappointed Republicans refused to work with us to strengthen food assistance. I am sorely disappointed that Republicans turned a deaf ear to Governors, mayors, Tribal leaders, county and local officials, Democratic and Republican, all 50 Governors who have been pleading with the Federal Government for more help. And it is not about abstract government. I know we don't like government on the other side of the aisle. It is about policemen, firefighters, bus drivers, hospital workers. They are being laid off because the local governments and the State governments are starving and not getting their revenues. We fought and fought, but unfortunately, on the other side of the aisle, they resisted. I hope they won't resist in COVID 4. We are going to need a large, large amount of money to help our localities so those policemen, firefighters, and bus drivers are not laid off. Republicans need to come to the table and work with us to give our States the help they need. They should be eager to do it. Secretary Mnuchin committed--and the President tweeted today--that they will support State and local funding in the next round of legislation, as well--and this is very important--as a provision providing flexibility to use all past and future relief dollars to offset lost revenue. The President signaled his support for this concept as well in a tweet this morning. We should have passed support for State and local governments. Democrats will see to it that it gets done in the next package. Now, finally, I would remind my colleagues that this is an interim measure. There are plenty of hard-won provisions that we Democrats are pleased with, but it is, ultimately, a building block. In the weeks ahead, Congress must prepare another major bill, similar in size and ambition to the CARES Act. The next bill must be big and bold and suited to the needs of a beleaguered country. State localities and Tribal governments need support, so does the Postal Service. Working Americans need rental assistance. Frontline workers deserve hazard pay, and it is not just doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and other medical workers, but truck drivers, grocery store clerks, police officers, firefighters, and more. We must make sure that our elections this fall are conducted fairly, that States have enough money to run them properly, and that every American can exercise his or her constitutional franchise safely and confidently. This is a COVID-related issue. So those issues and more will be priorities for the Senate Democratic Caucus in the next bill. Yes, it has been a long few months for the American people, but even now, there are signs that the sacrifices Americans have made are beginning to slow the spread of the disease. We are a long way from the end, but this, too, shall pass. Until the day when we can begin to return to normal, it is up to Congress and the entire Federal Government to deliver the leadership and resources that only we can provide. The private sector will not provide the aid our Nation requires. The efforts of individual States or even individual citizens, heroic as they are, will not be enough. We dare not abandon them in these dark and difficult times. The American people need their government. They need their government to act strongly, boldly, wisely. Let us do what we were elected to do and pass this bill today. I yield the floor.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. SCHUMER
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-04-21-pt1-PgS2178-3
| null | 542
|
formal
|
urban
| null |
racist
|
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, well, in the month since I last addressed this Chamber, life for nearly every American has been upended. Stay-at-home orders have swept across the country. The monthly toll of new unemployment claims are measured in the millions. Our health system has been strained to the breaking point. American workers and businesses are suffering financial hardship not seen since the Great Recession. Almost 800,000 of our fellow citizens have tested positive for COVID-19. And most heartbreakingly, America has lost more than 37,000 precious lives to this coronavirus--many, many of them New Yorkers. Over the past 2 months, the Senate has come together on three occasions to pass legislation in response to this multifaceted crisis, to rescue our ailing healthcare system, to cushion the blow to American workers and businesses, and to prepare our country for a more prosperous future on the other side of this pandemic. Our last legislative effort, the CARES Act, was unprecedented in size and in scope--the largest stimulus in American history. Remarkably, on such a large and complex bill, the Senate came together 96-0 to pass this crucial emergency relief, getting ayes from Senator Sanders to Senator Cruz and everyone in between. It shows that, even with the partisanship here, as tough and harsh as it can be, we can come together unanimously in a time of great crisis. Still, the depth of the crisis we now face meant that funding for certain programs in this bill had already been depleted, and a number of required fixes had to be made to make sure these programs worked as intended. An interim bill, COVID 3.5, is necessary. Now, my friend, the Republican leader, tried to bypass negotiations on such an interim measure. He tried to jam through a bill that would have increased funding for one small business lending program but not others, when they were all running out of funding. His proposal did not attempt to fix the dire lack of lending to small businesses that are truly small, underbanked, underserved, minority, or women-owned. His proposal included nothing at all for our healthcare system, nothing to address the national shortage in testing, nothing to help State, local, or Tribal governments who are breaking their budgets to fight this disease. All of us want to help our small businesses--all of us--but this emergency demands we take action on many fronts. So we have spent the last week negotiating with the administration--Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, Chief of Staff Meadows, as well as Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats with us, the Senate Democrats, to improve the legislation. We reached a final agreement earlier today. Now, there are plenty of disagreements between our parties these days, but once again, we are coming together to pass this legislation by unanimous consent--not a single Senator objected. I want to thank Secretary Mnuchin. I spent hours and hours with him at all hours of the day. I want to thank someone I didn't know very well, Chief of Staff Meadows, who is very good at making sure an agreement can come to fruition, even in the wee hours of the morning. Of course, I want to thank my dear friend and partner, Speaker Pelosi. I want to thank Leaders McConnell and McCarthy who, at the end of the day, did not let partisan disagreement stand in the way of doing what is right for this country. Again, just like the CARES Act, the hard work of bipartisan negotiation paid off. The fact that Democrats said, You need to talk to us, not try to steamroll us, once again, made a huge and positive difference. This legislation is significantly better and broader than the initial proposal offered by the Republican leader. Republicans asked us to funnel more money into a program that wasn't working the way it should. We negotiated a bill that not only provided support but made it more effective, more inclusive, and addressed other urgent national priorities as well. The legislation before us contains 220 billion more dollars, including funding for small businesses through community financial institutions, new funding for our hospitals and healthcare systems, and a substantial downpayment on a national testing regime so desperately needed and asked for by one and all. Let me repeat that: The legislation now includes an additional $220 billion, $120 billion for small businesses, $100 billion for our healthcare system, divided among healthcare providers and a need for testing and contact tracing. The new money includes $50 billion in additional emergency small business loans and $10 billion in additional business grants. That includes $60 billion in new funding set aside for small lenders. If you don't know a banker, if you are not a relatively large-sized company, you were left out. Two out of three loans in New York were ignored. The mom-and-pops, the small businesses, the restaurants, and the barber shops, the hardware stores, the butchers, and small startups, both service and manufacturing, they couldn't get in. Now, they will be because of our work. Our bill will help rural small businesses, minority small businesses, women-owned small businesses get the money they need. I believe every Member of our Caucus heard from businesses in their States who couldn't access Federal lending because they didn't have a prior relationship with a big bank. So what we have done is set aside lending for smaller, community-based lenders and dedicated half of that funding--$30 billion--to Community Development Financial Institutions and Minority Depository Institutions. We insisted that this money be separate from the competition with the bigger companies, so that moms-and-pops, restaurants and nail salons, startups, and minority businesses can get some access. Unlike Leader McConnell's proposal, this bill also includes $100 billion in money to fight the coronavirus itself. We are not going to cure the economic problem unless we cure the health problem. We can give loans to small businesses, but if there are no customers walking the streets to go into their stores, what good is that? So we insisted that $75 billion go to our hospitals. Our hospitals are going underwater--certainly, the big ones in cities like mine that have an epicenter of corona, but smaller hospitals in rural areas. Talk to our rural representatives, and they are telling you their hospitals might go under. And medium-sized hospitals in New York State--St. Joseph's in Syracuse and St. Peter's in Albany--each laid off 700 people this week. They are going to get help because of what we did. The experts are clear. To fight this disease and reopen the economy safely, we need to dramatically--dramatically--expand testing capacity and frequency. We don't have enough tests; that cry rings from one end of America to the other. It is urban, suburban, rural, north, east, south, and west; we don't have enough tests. Well, now, help is on the way because Democrats stood and fought for it--$25 billion, $11 billion to go to the States to help them test and do the contact tracing they need, money to help create a manufacturing and supply chain that will have adequate tests and adequate supplies for those tests so we can finally get them going. We need them desperately. One of the last provisions secured in these negotiations at midnight last night was a requirement that the administration report on a national strategic testing plan on how it plans to increase domestic testing capacity, testing supplies, and the disparities in all communities. Thus far, unfortunately,the administration has refused to accept responsibility for the sorry state of testing in our country. Under this agreement, the Trump administration will now, at last, be required to report on what its national testing plan actually looks like. Congress provided the startup funds for the testing program. It is now up to the administration to prepare a national testing strategy and implement those funds to proper effect before it is too late. Of course, this bill is not perfect. We are sorely disappointed Republicans refused to work with us to strengthen food assistance. I am sorely disappointed that Republicans turned a deaf ear to Governors, mayors, Tribal leaders, county and local officials, Democratic and Republican, all 50 Governors who have been pleading with the Federal Government for more help. And it is not about abstract government. I know we don't like government on the other side of the aisle. It is about policemen, firefighters, bus drivers, hospital workers. They are being laid off because the local governments and the State governments are starving and not getting their revenues. We fought and fought, but unfortunately, on the other side of the aisle, they resisted. I hope they won't resist in COVID 4. We are going to need a large, large amount of money to help our localities so those policemen, firefighters, and bus drivers are not laid off. Republicans need to come to the table and work with us to give our States the help they need. They should be eager to do it. Secretary Mnuchin committed--and the President tweeted today--that they will support State and local funding in the next round of legislation, as well--and this is very important--as a provision providing flexibility to use all past and future relief dollars to offset lost revenue. The President signaled his support for this concept as well in a tweet this morning. We should have passed support for State and local governments. Democrats will see to it that it gets done in the next package. Now, finally, I would remind my colleagues that this is an interim measure. There are plenty of hard-won provisions that we Democrats are pleased with, but it is, ultimately, a building block. In the weeks ahead, Congress must prepare another major bill, similar in size and ambition to the CARES Act. The next bill must be big and bold and suited to the needs of a beleaguered country. State localities and Tribal governments need support, so does the Postal Service. Working Americans need rental assistance. Frontline workers deserve hazard pay, and it is not just doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and other medical workers, but truck drivers, grocery store clerks, police officers, firefighters, and more. We must make sure that our elections this fall are conducted fairly, that States have enough money to run them properly, and that every American can exercise his or her constitutional franchise safely and confidently. This is a COVID-related issue. So those issues and more will be priorities for the Senate Democratic Caucus in the next bill. Yes, it has been a long few months for the American people, but even now, there are signs that the sacrifices Americans have made are beginning to slow the spread of the disease. We are a long way from the end, but this, too, shall pass. Until the day when we can begin to return to normal, it is up to Congress and the entire Federal Government to deliver the leadership and resources that only we can provide. The private sector will not provide the aid our Nation requires. The efforts of individual States or even individual citizens, heroic as they are, will not be enough. We dare not abandon them in these dark and difficult times. The American people need their government. They need their government to act strongly, boldly, wisely. Let us do what we were elected to do and pass this bill today. I yield the floor.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. SCHUMER
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-04-21-pt1-PgS2178-3
| null | 543
|
formal
|
single
| null |
homophobic
|
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, well, in the month since I last addressed this Chamber, life for nearly every American has been upended. Stay-at-home orders have swept across the country. The monthly toll of new unemployment claims are measured in the millions. Our health system has been strained to the breaking point. American workers and businesses are suffering financial hardship not seen since the Great Recession. Almost 800,000 of our fellow citizens have tested positive for COVID-19. And most heartbreakingly, America has lost more than 37,000 precious lives to this coronavirus--many, many of them New Yorkers. Over the past 2 months, the Senate has come together on three occasions to pass legislation in response to this multifaceted crisis, to rescue our ailing healthcare system, to cushion the blow to American workers and businesses, and to prepare our country for a more prosperous future on the other side of this pandemic. Our last legislative effort, the CARES Act, was unprecedented in size and in scope--the largest stimulus in American history. Remarkably, on such a large and complex bill, the Senate came together 96-0 to pass this crucial emergency relief, getting ayes from Senator Sanders to Senator Cruz and everyone in between. It shows that, even with the partisanship here, as tough and harsh as it can be, we can come together unanimously in a time of great crisis. Still, the depth of the crisis we now face meant that funding for certain programs in this bill had already been depleted, and a number of required fixes had to be made to make sure these programs worked as intended. An interim bill, COVID 3.5, is necessary. Now, my friend, the Republican leader, tried to bypass negotiations on such an interim measure. He tried to jam through a bill that would have increased funding for one small business lending program but not others, when they were all running out of funding. His proposal did not attempt to fix the dire lack of lending to small businesses that are truly small, underbanked, underserved, minority, or women-owned. His proposal included nothing at all for our healthcare system, nothing to address the national shortage in testing, nothing to help State, local, or Tribal governments who are breaking their budgets to fight this disease. All of us want to help our small businesses--all of us--but this emergency demands we take action on many fronts. So we have spent the last week negotiating with the administration--Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, Chief of Staff Meadows, as well as Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats with us, the Senate Democrats, to improve the legislation. We reached a final agreement earlier today. Now, there are plenty of disagreements between our parties these days, but once again, we are coming together to pass this legislation by unanimous consent--not a single Senator objected. I want to thank Secretary Mnuchin. I spent hours and hours with him at all hours of the day. I want to thank someone I didn't know very well, Chief of Staff Meadows, who is very good at making sure an agreement can come to fruition, even in the wee hours of the morning. Of course, I want to thank my dear friend and partner, Speaker Pelosi. I want to thank Leaders McConnell and McCarthy who, at the end of the day, did not let partisan disagreement stand in the way of doing what is right for this country. Again, just like the CARES Act, the hard work of bipartisan negotiation paid off. The fact that Democrats said, You need to talk to us, not try to steamroll us, once again, made a huge and positive difference. This legislation is significantly better and broader than the initial proposal offered by the Republican leader. Republicans asked us to funnel more money into a program that wasn't working the way it should. We negotiated a bill that not only provided support but made it more effective, more inclusive, and addressed other urgent national priorities as well. The legislation before us contains 220 billion more dollars, including funding for small businesses through community financial institutions, new funding for our hospitals and healthcare systems, and a substantial downpayment on a national testing regime so desperately needed and asked for by one and all. Let me repeat that: The legislation now includes an additional $220 billion, $120 billion for small businesses, $100 billion for our healthcare system, divided among healthcare providers and a need for testing and contact tracing. The new money includes $50 billion in additional emergency small business loans and $10 billion in additional business grants. That includes $60 billion in new funding set aside for small lenders. If you don't know a banker, if you are not a relatively large-sized company, you were left out. Two out of three loans in New York were ignored. The mom-and-pops, the small businesses, the restaurants, and the barber shops, the hardware stores, the butchers, and small startups, both service and manufacturing, they couldn't get in. Now, they will be because of our work. Our bill will help rural small businesses, minority small businesses, women-owned small businesses get the money they need. I believe every Member of our Caucus heard from businesses in their States who couldn't access Federal lending because they didn't have a prior relationship with a big bank. So what we have done is set aside lending for smaller, community-based lenders and dedicated half of that funding--$30 billion--to Community Development Financial Institutions and Minority Depository Institutions. We insisted that this money be separate from the competition with the bigger companies, so that moms-and-pops, restaurants and nail salons, startups, and minority businesses can get some access. Unlike Leader McConnell's proposal, this bill also includes $100 billion in money to fight the coronavirus itself. We are not going to cure the economic problem unless we cure the health problem. We can give loans to small businesses, but if there are no customers walking the streets to go into their stores, what good is that? So we insisted that $75 billion go to our hospitals. Our hospitals are going underwater--certainly, the big ones in cities like mine that have an epicenter of corona, but smaller hospitals in rural areas. Talk to our rural representatives, and they are telling you their hospitals might go under. And medium-sized hospitals in New York State--St. Joseph's in Syracuse and St. Peter's in Albany--each laid off 700 people this week. They are going to get help because of what we did. The experts are clear. To fight this disease and reopen the economy safely, we need to dramatically--dramatically--expand testing capacity and frequency. We don't have enough tests; that cry rings from one end of America to the other. It is urban, suburban, rural, north, east, south, and west; we don't have enough tests. Well, now, help is on the way because Democrats stood and fought for it--$25 billion, $11 billion to go to the States to help them test and do the contact tracing they need, money to help create a manufacturing and supply chain that will have adequate tests and adequate supplies for those tests so we can finally get them going. We need them desperately. One of the last provisions secured in these negotiations at midnight last night was a requirement that the administration report on a national strategic testing plan on how it plans to increase domestic testing capacity, testing supplies, and the disparities in all communities. Thus far, unfortunately,the administration has refused to accept responsibility for the sorry state of testing in our country. Under this agreement, the Trump administration will now, at last, be required to report on what its national testing plan actually looks like. Congress provided the startup funds for the testing program. It is now up to the administration to prepare a national testing strategy and implement those funds to proper effect before it is too late. Of course, this bill is not perfect. We are sorely disappointed Republicans refused to work with us to strengthen food assistance. I am sorely disappointed that Republicans turned a deaf ear to Governors, mayors, Tribal leaders, county and local officials, Democratic and Republican, all 50 Governors who have been pleading with the Federal Government for more help. And it is not about abstract government. I know we don't like government on the other side of the aisle. It is about policemen, firefighters, bus drivers, hospital workers. They are being laid off because the local governments and the State governments are starving and not getting their revenues. We fought and fought, but unfortunately, on the other side of the aisle, they resisted. I hope they won't resist in COVID 4. We are going to need a large, large amount of money to help our localities so those policemen, firefighters, and bus drivers are not laid off. Republicans need to come to the table and work with us to give our States the help they need. They should be eager to do it. Secretary Mnuchin committed--and the President tweeted today--that they will support State and local funding in the next round of legislation, as well--and this is very important--as a provision providing flexibility to use all past and future relief dollars to offset lost revenue. The President signaled his support for this concept as well in a tweet this morning. We should have passed support for State and local governments. Democrats will see to it that it gets done in the next package. Now, finally, I would remind my colleagues that this is an interim measure. There are plenty of hard-won provisions that we Democrats are pleased with, but it is, ultimately, a building block. In the weeks ahead, Congress must prepare another major bill, similar in size and ambition to the CARES Act. The next bill must be big and bold and suited to the needs of a beleaguered country. State localities and Tribal governments need support, so does the Postal Service. Working Americans need rental assistance. Frontline workers deserve hazard pay, and it is not just doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and other medical workers, but truck drivers, grocery store clerks, police officers, firefighters, and more. We must make sure that our elections this fall are conducted fairly, that States have enough money to run them properly, and that every American can exercise his or her constitutional franchise safely and confidently. This is a COVID-related issue. So those issues and more will be priorities for the Senate Democratic Caucus in the next bill. Yes, it has been a long few months for the American people, but even now, there are signs that the sacrifices Americans have made are beginning to slow the spread of the disease. We are a long way from the end, but this, too, shall pass. Until the day when we can begin to return to normal, it is up to Congress and the entire Federal Government to deliver the leadership and resources that only we can provide. The private sector will not provide the aid our Nation requires. The efforts of individual States or even individual citizens, heroic as they are, will not be enough. We dare not abandon them in these dark and difficult times. The American people need their government. They need their government to act strongly, boldly, wisely. Let us do what we were elected to do and pass this bill today. I yield the floor.
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2020-01-06
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Mr. SCHUMER
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Senate
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CREC-2020-04-21-pt1-PgS2178-3
| null | 544
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formal
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coincidence
| null |
antisemitic
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Mr. LEE. Mr. President, it is with a heavy heart that I come to the floor of the Senate today. Over the last few weeks, I talked to countless people throughout Utah and across the Nation, but especially in Utah, about the troubles that they have encountered, about the profound sadness that the American people are experiencing right now, the frustrations that they have. This is something that we have never seen in this country, not on this scale, not during our lifetimes. My thoughts and prayers go out to my fellow Americans and my fellow Utahns as they are struggling to make ends meet, whether it is figuring out how to make payroll or keep food on the table at home or a combination of both, as it is for so many. I am mindful of them and of all the difficulty that the American people are going through right now. I want to begin by echoing something that Senator Schumer said a moment ago. We need to do what we were elected to do. Now, I don't agree with everything Senator Schumer just said--in fact, I would strongly disagree with a lot of what he just said--but I do agree with that. We need to do the job we were elected to do. Let's think about where we are right now and where we have been over the last few weeks. We have seen healthcare providers working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We have seen the President and his staff at the White House working 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. We have seen the Centers for Disease Control and members of the public health community who have continued to work tirelessly--farmers, truck drivers, grocery store employees, and pharmacists working to make sure that we continue to have access to the things we need in order to live. We have seen members of the news media working overtime, even if, as is the case for many of them, they do so only to blame all of this--rather unfairly in my opinion--on the President of the United States. We have seen parents working both their jobs--both of them--from home and simultaneously home schooling their children; yet Congress is in recess. This, Mr. President, is simply unacceptable. If COVID-19 requires Congress to act, then it requires Congress to convene. Now, look, I understand the need for distancing, and there are ways we can accommodate that here. Support staff can stay home. Policy experts can mostly work from home. Many of our meetings--most of them, in fact--can be conducted over the phone or by video conference. I have seen this myself in the last few weeks. I have been working as many hours as ever, just with a lot of meetings over the phone and through Zoom and platforms like that. The meetings can continue, but all the essential work of Congress--that is, any steps necessary in order to enact legislation, the task of legislating itself--can be done only by Members who are voting and present in their respective legislative Chambers, either the Senate or the House of Representatives. This is a nondelegable duty. We can't delegate it to anyone else in government, and so we have got exactly two choices. We can choose to legislate, in which case we have to convene, or we can stay in recess and not legislate. Those really are the only two options. It is no coincidence, it is no accident that the very first clause of the very first section of the very first article of the Constitution says that ``all legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in the Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives.'' Article I, section 7 then goes on to prescribe the formula by which all Federal law will be enacted. This may happen only when the same discrete set of words presented in the form of a legislative proposal passes the House and the Senate and is then submitted to the President for signature or veto. Under our constitutional system, under any definition of the term, Senators are essential employees. We are being paid. We have a crisis to continue to work through. Our services are necessary. In order to perform those services, we have to perform them here in Washington. To be very clear about this, this isn't entirely a new thing. Sure, the most recent iteration of this is new and began when the COVID-19 crisis began about a month ago, but the fact is Congress has, in many respects, been shirking its responsibilities for years--for decades, in fact. For the better part of the last--I don't know--three, four,five, six decades, Congress has been sort of backing away from its lawmaking responsibilities. We have ceded voluntarily--sometimes willfully--the responsibility for making law, in some cases, to the courts--in many, many cases to executive branch agencies. This, for many, is a feature, not a bug, but it is an unconstitutional feature. It is something we should dismiss and render a bug. You see, we can't delegate that power. It is supposed to belong only to us, and that means we are not supposed to enact law saying, Entity X, Y, or Z shall enact good law in the area of expertise of that agency. But in this crisis, we have doubled down on that decades-long bad habit. In many cases, within Congress itself, we have empowered party leaders to negotiate in secret, sort of asking us to rubberstamp out these take-it-or-leave-it proposals without individual Members being able to read them, let alone have meaningful input in their negotiation, and reducing the role of each individual elected lawmaker in the law-making process through a series of tweets and press conferences. This isn't legislating. I was interested a few minutes ago when Senator Schumer was talking, as he was referring to provisions that were negotiated successfully just last night to add this or that provision into this deal. Well, most of us were not part of that process. Most of us saw this legislative package, this bill, only within the last few hours. That isn't a true negotiation, and it is not a true legislative process. Now, I understand that we are in unusual circumstances, but we can't let it happen this way again. This is not acceptable. We should not be passing major legislation--especially legislation providing nearly a half trillion dollars in new spending--without Congress actually being in session, without Members actually being here to debate, discuss, amend, and consider legislation and vote on it individually, rather than on an absentee basis, rather than by delegating that power to someone else. This crisis is too big to leave up to a small handful of people. Different parts of the country will face different kinds of threats and, therefore, have different kinds of needs. Different industries will need different kinds of help in order to recover the health of the economy. As long as Congress remains in recess, Democrats are free to politicize and stifle legislation with impunity as they did just a couple of weeks ago. Only returning to work and indeed actually working will give the American people the government they deserve. The American people need to know who is helping them and who is simply playing politics. We can't allow them to know that if we are not in session. We can't just spend another half trillion dollars every week or 2 or 3 and hope and pretend that it is going to turn out okay. The upcoming challenges are far too numerous and onerous and complex to leave up to just a few staff meetings behind closed doors. We have got issues involving testing, masks, healthcare policy, liability, leave, regulatory reform, immigration, and the judicial system, just to name a few. All of these things require serious legislative action. We can't just give those issues the attention that they deserve simply by sitting in our respective homes. Now, look, I am not saying that Members aren't working. I and most of the Members I know have been working as hard as ever in the last few weeks, but we can't do that which is uniquely our job--sure, we can have meetings. We can make phone calls. We can help solve problems just like any other American could, but we cannot do the job for which we were elected without actually being here. You see, the reason Congress works so little, even in moments like this one, is because Congress has chosen to prioritize its own convenience. The 3\1/2\-day legislative workweek, blocking tough amendment votes, nuclear options, things like this are all reminders of the fact that we have to get back to work, especially if we are going to have a debate about when everyone else will be able to return to work. If it makes anyone feel better, remember the Senate floor is often empty--just as it is at this very moment--making it perhaps the safest place in America. We can, in fact, structure our votes in such a way that we can distance ourselves. We have proven that in recent weeks. We can do it again. In closing, we have to remember that challenges don't, themselves, build character. They reveal it. Our character is revealed rather than built on challenging times. The character of our institution is on the line here. It is being exposed and revealed for all the world to see. COVID-19 certainly has revealed to us the character of the Chinese Government and its lackeys inside the World Health Organization. It has revealed the character of America's doctors and nurses, our priests and our pastors. Our families and our communities have pulled together. Many State and local leaders have proven themselves to be up to the challenge, especially, I say with great pride, both Democrats and Republicans in my home State of Utah. Congress stepped up before we recessed to appropriate money for workers and businesses who were facing an unprecedented monumental crisis, but that was weeks ago. That was literally 20 million lost jobs ago. There is more to do--there is a lot more to do--more than we have ever faced. The country is changing along with the rest of the world, and we need policy to change with it. Unlike millions of our constituents, Members of Congress are still receiving paychecks. It is time for us to earn them. It is time to do our job. It is time to return to Washington and get to work. We are not currently scheduled to come back until May 4. When we come back on May 4--which I hope we do--I hope the force will be with us, but we have got to get back together even sooner than that because we can't legislate without our Members here. We can't do that from recess.
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2020-01-06
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Mr. LEE
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Senate
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CREC-2020-04-21-pt1-PgS2179
| null | 545
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formal
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based
| null |
white supremacist
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Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I am pleased that we are ready to act and we will be able to pass legislation in a few moments that will help deal with this pandemic. Like my colleagues, I have been in teleconferences with different groups in Maryland, and I have seen the pain caused by the coronavirus. In Maryland, we are losing around 30 citizens every day to the coronavirus. Over the last week, our Nation has lost over 15,000 to the coronavirus. This pandemic is with us in a very serious way, and we need to respond. I am pleased that, this afternoon, we will be providing additional resources to our healthcare providers, particularly those that are on the frontlines, in dealing with the coronavirus and that we will be passing legislation to establish a national strategy on testing, working with our States to make sure all communities have adequate testing so that, when we reopen our society, we can do so in a safe manner. I am also pleased that we are acting on the small business provisions. The programs that we passed in the CARES Act that provide help to small businesses was very popular and was oversubscribed. I am particularly pleased that we are able to pass today provisions that are greatly improved from when I was last on the floor a little over 1 week ago when the majority leader made the unanimous consent request that would have included only additional money for the Paycheck Protection Program,--$250 billion--and would not have dealt with the healthcare issues or the challenges that I expressed on the floor at that time in regards to the small business provisions. The reason that we now have a bill that we can be very proud of is because this has been negotiated with all Members of the Senate being involved through a bipartisan process, rather than just being brought to the floor by the majority. We saw that happen on the CARES Act originally. The original bill that was brought to the floor by the majority leader that he attempted to pass did not include major help for our State and local governments, did not include major help for our healthcare institutions, did not provide funds for many of our programs that are critically important to our local communities. We were able to improve that program because we worked together. Democrats and Republicans have produced a bill that we can be proud of. As I said when I was last on the floor in regards to the small business provisions, we have a bipartisan process.Senator Rubio and I have been working closely together to develop the tools for small businesses. Yes, I do acknowledge the work with Senator Collins and Senator Shaheen because we have come together to try to put together a package that could work. What I had mentioned on the floor when the last UC was made was that there were problems with the original request made by the majority leader, and I pointed that out. Underserved communities have not been able to get in, in the same number as those larger small businesses who have relations with banking institutions. I pointed that out to the Secretary of the Treasury and to the Small Business Administrator on April 7 by a letter I authored along with Senator Schumer and the Democratic members of the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee. We pointed this out 2 days before we had the original UC request. Quoting from that letter to the Secretary and the Administrator: We believe that more can be done to reach out to and authorize those lenders, such as Community Development Financial Institutions, Minority Depository Institutions, and mission-based non-profit lenders, which are best positioned to bridge the trust gap between many underserved communities and the traditional financial sector. For example, a survey conducted by the Association for Enterprise Opportunity found that more than half of Black respondents indicated they felt unfairly treated by financial institutions, compared to only 26 [percent] of White respondents. We knew we had to do something to bridge that gap. When the request was made 10 days ago, it did not include any help for these minority businesses or the rural areas or women-owned businesses that have been shut out in great numbers to the first requests under the Paycheck Protection Program. What this bill that we now have on the floor does corrects that. It corrects that by providing $60 billion, in addition to the $250 billion. We are now up to $310 billion more going into the Paycheck Protection Program; but $60 billion is dedicated to dealing with minority communities, rural communities, and women-owned businesses by having more funds going out to the community banking institutions and minority banking institutions and mission-based nonprofit lenders so that we can get more of the funds into the hands of those small businesses that are in desperate need: the smaller small businesses. I have numerous examples. I will just use one, if I might, from a business in Maryland, e-End Frederick, that writes to us and says that thanks to this program--this employer has 20 employees. This is a small business, 20 employees. What he says basically is: I was looking to how I could transition my employees to unemployment because I couldn't afford to continue to keep them on payroll, but now, thanks to the Paycheck Protection Program, I am able to keep my employees on the payroll. He says, ``That's the best thing about the PPP.'' I couldn't agree more. That is what we are trying to do. It is paycheck protection--keep workers employed so small businesses don't have to go back out when this virus is over and try to find a workforce in order to be competitive. They can keep their workforce in place and, by the way, keeping the pressure off our unemployment compensation system. We were able, through the change we were able to make--and I applaud Senator Schumer and Speaker Pelosi for sticking to the principle that all small businesses needed to be included, and as a result, this package now includes these allocations that will get to our minority and underserved communities. There is a second issue I raised on the floor 10 days ago, and that is the Economic Injury Disaster Loans, the EIDL loans. It ran out of money before the PPP program ran out of money. It was not part of the unanimous consent request by the majority leader, as well as the grant program that was created under CARES. Smaller small businesses use these disaster loans. Why? Because it gives them working capital so they can stay in business. PPP covers payroll, but they need more than payroll. These are longer-term loans with no payments during the first year so that businesses can stay afloat after a disaster, and we qualify the coronavirus as one of those disasters. This is a critically important program in our State and in our Nation. We added to it by providing a grant program up to $10,000 in grants, not loans, to small businesses. In my State of Maryland, we had 12,000 small businesses that applied for that grant. We had 26,000 apply for the PPP. I am just pointing out how popular this program is. The grant program is $10 billion. The PPP program is $349 billion. It ran out of money before the PPP grant program. We need to put more money in that grant program. The unanimous consent agreement didn't do that. Thanks to the negotiations of Senator Schumer and the Democrats, we were able to get $50 billion put into the EIDL, the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program, which will be able to leverage about $300 billion of additional loans under that program that will help the smaller of the small businesses. We were able to get $10 billion put into the EIDL grant program so that they can open, once again, applications from small businesses that want to get the cash grant from the Small Business Administration. These loans and grants are made by SBA, not by financial institutions, so all small businesses have access. I did some rough calculations, and if my math is correct, in Maryland, the average size of the business that qualified for the EIDL grant was between four and five employees. These are really the smallest of small businesses, and that is the group I hope we would want to help. The original UC did not have that. We now have funds in it. This package is much better to reach those small businesses that desperately need help. I brought this to the attention of Secretary Mnuchin shortly after our conversations on the floor last time, and I want to thank Secretary Mnuchin. When I explained to him the EIDL program and I explained to him how these programs work for smaller small businesses, he showed interest, and I am glad that we were able to negotiate with him the additional $60 billion going into those programs. It is a better package thanks to the bipartisan process. I do want to mention one additional issue that we need to deal with, and that is accountability. We need to get information on how these programs are working, and I would hope we would get bipartisan support for that. On April 17, I authored a letter with Senators Schumer, Wyden, and Shaheen to Secretary Mnuchin and Administrator Carranza in which we asked for the PPP to give us the numbers and amount of loans disbursed to small businesses, including a breakout of loans by State, demographics, industry, and loan size; the number and amount of loans disbursed to businesses under the NAICS 72 exception--that is the one for restaurants and the hospitality field; including a breakout of loans by State, demographics, and loan size. Give us a number of loans provided to nonprofits--nonprofits were for the first time eligible for these 7(a) loans--and religious institutions, including a breakout of the loans by State, industry, and loan size; and the number of loans disbursed by lending institutions, so we could find out what the concentration is of these loans. We asked for similar information in regards to the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program, the numbers, et cetera, giving us that information, including those who received the grants. Lastly, we ask for information about the loan forgiveness program because there is another program under the CARES Act that allows for a 6-month forgiveness of repayment of existing 7(a) or 504 loans, and we need information on that in order to carry out our responsibility of accountability. We have a responsibility to make sure the money is getting to the right places. I had a communication with Senator Rubio this week in which we both agreed that we are concerned that we might be seeing some large chains getting more money than we think we intended under the act. We intended there would be a $10 million cap; yet we see reports where certain businesses were able to find a way to get more than $10 million. We also had self-certification that there is need. You have to show that you were damaged by the coronavirus. We think we should examine whether there was any false certification. The first thing we want to do on the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee on a bipartisan basis is do our oversight to make sure that, if there is abuse, that we put a spotlight on it and correct it to make sure that the moneys go to the small businesses that we intended to receive help. We need now to work on the next stimulus package. I was glad to hear the President talk about this. Senator Schumer talked about it. Yes, our first priority should be the health and welfare of the American people in dealing with the coronavirus itself, and we need to do more. We clearly need to do more with State and local governments. That is going to be a critical part of the next package. But we also need to look at improvements in the small business package. We know that, through this 8-week period for repayment, many of us have heard that they need additional flexibility. After all, how do they predict when they can reopen if government has told them they have to stay closed? We need to give some degree of flexibility in the 8-week period. We have different small businesses that want us to consider their eligibility. What happens after 8 weeks? If we are still seeing our economy not up to full speed, we need to talk about how we transition after 8 weeks to make sure these small businesses can succeed. The lessons learned on the CARES Act, the lesson learned on this legislation we are taking up this afternoon is, when we work together, when we negotiate together, when we do a bipartisan package which the American people expect us to do during this national emergency, we get a better product, and we can do it quicker. I urge us all, as we move on to the fourth stimulus package, let's start from the beginning in a bipartisan way so that we can get the very best product for the American people and deal with this national crisis. I yield the floor.
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2020-01-06
|
Mr. CARDIN
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Senate
|
CREC-2020-04-21-pt1-PgS2180
| null | 546
|
formal
|
welfare
| null |
racist
|
Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I am pleased that we are ready to act and we will be able to pass legislation in a few moments that will help deal with this pandemic. Like my colleagues, I have been in teleconferences with different groups in Maryland, and I have seen the pain caused by the coronavirus. In Maryland, we are losing around 30 citizens every day to the coronavirus. Over the last week, our Nation has lost over 15,000 to the coronavirus. This pandemic is with us in a very serious way, and we need to respond. I am pleased that, this afternoon, we will be providing additional resources to our healthcare providers, particularly those that are on the frontlines, in dealing with the coronavirus and that we will be passing legislation to establish a national strategy on testing, working with our States to make sure all communities have adequate testing so that, when we reopen our society, we can do so in a safe manner. I am also pleased that we are acting on the small business provisions. The programs that we passed in the CARES Act that provide help to small businesses was very popular and was oversubscribed. I am particularly pleased that we are able to pass today provisions that are greatly improved from when I was last on the floor a little over 1 week ago when the majority leader made the unanimous consent request that would have included only additional money for the Paycheck Protection Program,--$250 billion--and would not have dealt with the healthcare issues or the challenges that I expressed on the floor at that time in regards to the small business provisions. The reason that we now have a bill that we can be very proud of is because this has been negotiated with all Members of the Senate being involved through a bipartisan process, rather than just being brought to the floor by the majority. We saw that happen on the CARES Act originally. The original bill that was brought to the floor by the majority leader that he attempted to pass did not include major help for our State and local governments, did not include major help for our healthcare institutions, did not provide funds for many of our programs that are critically important to our local communities. We were able to improve that program because we worked together. Democrats and Republicans have produced a bill that we can be proud of. As I said when I was last on the floor in regards to the small business provisions, we have a bipartisan process.Senator Rubio and I have been working closely together to develop the tools for small businesses. Yes, I do acknowledge the work with Senator Collins and Senator Shaheen because we have come together to try to put together a package that could work. What I had mentioned on the floor when the last UC was made was that there were problems with the original request made by the majority leader, and I pointed that out. Underserved communities have not been able to get in, in the same number as those larger small businesses who have relations with banking institutions. I pointed that out to the Secretary of the Treasury and to the Small Business Administrator on April 7 by a letter I authored along with Senator Schumer and the Democratic members of the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee. We pointed this out 2 days before we had the original UC request. Quoting from that letter to the Secretary and the Administrator: We believe that more can be done to reach out to and authorize those lenders, such as Community Development Financial Institutions, Minority Depository Institutions, and mission-based non-profit lenders, which are best positioned to bridge the trust gap between many underserved communities and the traditional financial sector. For example, a survey conducted by the Association for Enterprise Opportunity found that more than half of Black respondents indicated they felt unfairly treated by financial institutions, compared to only 26 [percent] of White respondents. We knew we had to do something to bridge that gap. When the request was made 10 days ago, it did not include any help for these minority businesses or the rural areas or women-owned businesses that have been shut out in great numbers to the first requests under the Paycheck Protection Program. What this bill that we now have on the floor does corrects that. It corrects that by providing $60 billion, in addition to the $250 billion. We are now up to $310 billion more going into the Paycheck Protection Program; but $60 billion is dedicated to dealing with minority communities, rural communities, and women-owned businesses by having more funds going out to the community banking institutions and minority banking institutions and mission-based nonprofit lenders so that we can get more of the funds into the hands of those small businesses that are in desperate need: the smaller small businesses. I have numerous examples. I will just use one, if I might, from a business in Maryland, e-End Frederick, that writes to us and says that thanks to this program--this employer has 20 employees. This is a small business, 20 employees. What he says basically is: I was looking to how I could transition my employees to unemployment because I couldn't afford to continue to keep them on payroll, but now, thanks to the Paycheck Protection Program, I am able to keep my employees on the payroll. He says, ``That's the best thing about the PPP.'' I couldn't agree more. That is what we are trying to do. It is paycheck protection--keep workers employed so small businesses don't have to go back out when this virus is over and try to find a workforce in order to be competitive. They can keep their workforce in place and, by the way, keeping the pressure off our unemployment compensation system. We were able, through the change we were able to make--and I applaud Senator Schumer and Speaker Pelosi for sticking to the principle that all small businesses needed to be included, and as a result, this package now includes these allocations that will get to our minority and underserved communities. There is a second issue I raised on the floor 10 days ago, and that is the Economic Injury Disaster Loans, the EIDL loans. It ran out of money before the PPP program ran out of money. It was not part of the unanimous consent request by the majority leader, as well as the grant program that was created under CARES. Smaller small businesses use these disaster loans. Why? Because it gives them working capital so they can stay in business. PPP covers payroll, but they need more than payroll. These are longer-term loans with no payments during the first year so that businesses can stay afloat after a disaster, and we qualify the coronavirus as one of those disasters. This is a critically important program in our State and in our Nation. We added to it by providing a grant program up to $10,000 in grants, not loans, to small businesses. In my State of Maryland, we had 12,000 small businesses that applied for that grant. We had 26,000 apply for the PPP. I am just pointing out how popular this program is. The grant program is $10 billion. The PPP program is $349 billion. It ran out of money before the PPP grant program. We need to put more money in that grant program. The unanimous consent agreement didn't do that. Thanks to the negotiations of Senator Schumer and the Democrats, we were able to get $50 billion put into the EIDL, the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program, which will be able to leverage about $300 billion of additional loans under that program that will help the smaller of the small businesses. We were able to get $10 billion put into the EIDL grant program so that they can open, once again, applications from small businesses that want to get the cash grant from the Small Business Administration. These loans and grants are made by SBA, not by financial institutions, so all small businesses have access. I did some rough calculations, and if my math is correct, in Maryland, the average size of the business that qualified for the EIDL grant was between four and five employees. These are really the smallest of small businesses, and that is the group I hope we would want to help. The original UC did not have that. We now have funds in it. This package is much better to reach those small businesses that desperately need help. I brought this to the attention of Secretary Mnuchin shortly after our conversations on the floor last time, and I want to thank Secretary Mnuchin. When I explained to him the EIDL program and I explained to him how these programs work for smaller small businesses, he showed interest, and I am glad that we were able to negotiate with him the additional $60 billion going into those programs. It is a better package thanks to the bipartisan process. I do want to mention one additional issue that we need to deal with, and that is accountability. We need to get information on how these programs are working, and I would hope we would get bipartisan support for that. On April 17, I authored a letter with Senators Schumer, Wyden, and Shaheen to Secretary Mnuchin and Administrator Carranza in which we asked for the PPP to give us the numbers and amount of loans disbursed to small businesses, including a breakout of loans by State, demographics, industry, and loan size; the number and amount of loans disbursed to businesses under the NAICS 72 exception--that is the one for restaurants and the hospitality field; including a breakout of loans by State, demographics, and loan size. Give us a number of loans provided to nonprofits--nonprofits were for the first time eligible for these 7(a) loans--and religious institutions, including a breakout of the loans by State, industry, and loan size; and the number of loans disbursed by lending institutions, so we could find out what the concentration is of these loans. We asked for similar information in regards to the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program, the numbers, et cetera, giving us that information, including those who received the grants. Lastly, we ask for information about the loan forgiveness program because there is another program under the CARES Act that allows for a 6-month forgiveness of repayment of existing 7(a) or 504 loans, and we need information on that in order to carry out our responsibility of accountability. We have a responsibility to make sure the money is getting to the right places. I had a communication with Senator Rubio this week in which we both agreed that we are concerned that we might be seeing some large chains getting more money than we think we intended under the act. We intended there would be a $10 million cap; yet we see reports where certain businesses were able to find a way to get more than $10 million. We also had self-certification that there is need. You have to show that you were damaged by the coronavirus. We think we should examine whether there was any false certification. The first thing we want to do on the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee on a bipartisan basis is do our oversight to make sure that, if there is abuse, that we put a spotlight on it and correct it to make sure that the moneys go to the small businesses that we intended to receive help. We need now to work on the next stimulus package. I was glad to hear the President talk about this. Senator Schumer talked about it. Yes, our first priority should be the health and welfare of the American people in dealing with the coronavirus itself, and we need to do more. We clearly need to do more with State and local governments. That is going to be a critical part of the next package. But we also need to look at improvements in the small business package. We know that, through this 8-week period for repayment, many of us have heard that they need additional flexibility. After all, how do they predict when they can reopen if government has told them they have to stay closed? We need to give some degree of flexibility in the 8-week period. We have different small businesses that want us to consider their eligibility. What happens after 8 weeks? If we are still seeing our economy not up to full speed, we need to talk about how we transition after 8 weeks to make sure these small businesses can succeed. The lessons learned on the CARES Act, the lesson learned on this legislation we are taking up this afternoon is, when we work together, when we negotiate together, when we do a bipartisan package which the American people expect us to do during this national emergency, we get a better product, and we can do it quicker. I urge us all, as we move on to the fourth stimulus package, let's start from the beginning in a bipartisan way so that we can get the very best product for the American people and deal with this national crisis. I yield the floor.
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2020-01-06
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Mr. CARDIN
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Senate
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CREC-2020-04-21-pt1-PgS2180
| null | 547
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formal
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XX
| null |
transphobic
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The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, the unfinished business is the vote on adoption of the resolution (H. Res. 938) providing for adoption of the resolution (H. Res. 935) establishing a Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis as a select investigative subcommittee of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, on which the yeas and nays were ordered.
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2020-01-06
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The SPEAKER pro tempore
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House
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CREC-2020-04-23-pt1-PgH1952
| null | 548
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formal
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XX
| null |
transphobic
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The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, the unfinished business is the vote on the motion to suspend the rules and concur in the Senate amendment to the bill (H.R. 266) making appropriations for the Department of the Interior, Environment, and related agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2019, and for other purposes, on which the yeas and nays were ordered.
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2020-01-06
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The SPEAKER pro tempore
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House
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CREC-2020-04-23-pt1-PgH1954-4
| null | 549
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formal
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the Fed
| null |
antisemitic
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The President notified the Clerk of the House that on the following dates he had approved and signed bills and joint resolutions of the Senate of the following titles: January 27, 2020: S. 457. An Act to require that $1 coins issued during 2019 honor President George H.W. Bush and to direct the Secretary of the Treasury to issue bullion coins during 2019 in honor of Barbara Bush. February 6, 2020: S. 3201. An Act to extend the temporary scheduling order for fentanyl-related substances, and for other purposes. February 11, 2020: S. 153. An Act to promote veteran involvement in STEM education, computer science, scientific research, and for other purposes. March 2, 2020: S. 375. An Act to improve efforts to identify and reduce Government-wide improper payments, and for other purposes. S.J. Res. 65. A joint resolution providing for the reappointment of John Fahey as a citizen regent of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution. S.J. Res. 67. A joint resolution providing for the reappointment of Risa Lavizzo-Mourey as a citizen regent of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution. March 3, 2020: S. 394. An Act to amend the Presidential Transition Act of 1963 to improve the orderly transfer of the executive power during Presidential transitions. S. 2107. An Act to increase the number of CBP Agriculture Specialists and support staff in the Office of Field Operations of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and for other purposes. March 21, 2020: S. 3503. An Act to authorize the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to treat certain programs of education converted to distance learning by reason of emergencies and health-related situations in the same manner as programs of education pursued at educational institutions, and for other purposes. March 23, 2020: S. 893. An Act to require the President to develop a strategy to ensure the security of next generation mobile telecommunications systems and infrastructure in the United States and to assist allies and strategic partners in maximizing the security of next generation mobile telecommunications systems, infrastructure, and software, and for other purposes. S. 1822. An Act to require the Federal Communications Commission to issue rules relating to the collection of data with respect to the availability of broadband services, and for other purposes.
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2020-01-06
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Unknown
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House
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CREC-2020-04-23-pt1-PgH1955-4
| null | 550
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formal
|
the Fed
| null |
antisemitic
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Under clause 2 of rule XIV, executive communications were taken from the Speaker's table and referred as follows: 4262. A communication from the President of the United States, transmitting a designation of funding as an emergency requirement all funding so designated by the Congress, pursuant to Public Law 116-6, Sec. 7058(d)(5); (133 Stat. 374) (H. Doc. No. 116--118); to the Committee on Appropriations and ordered to be printed. 4263. A letter from the Director, Office of Legislative Affairs, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, transmitting the Corporation's Major interim final rule -- Regulatory Capital Rule: Revised Transition of the Current Expected Credit Losses Methodology for Allowances (RIN: 3064-AF42) received April 22, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Financial Services. 4264. A letter from the Director, Office of Legislative Affairs, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, transmitting the Corporation's Major interim final rule -- Regulatory Capital Rule: Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility (RIN: 3064-AF41) received April 22, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Financial Services. 4265. A letter from the Compliance Specialist, Wage and Hour Division, Department of Labor, transmitting the Department's Major temporary rule -- Paid Leave Under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act; Correction (RIN: 1235-AA35) received April 23, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Education and Labor. 4266. A letter from the Director, Regulations Policy and Management Staff, Food and Drug Administration, Department of Health and Human Services, transmitting the Department's Major final rule -- Tobacco Products; Required Warnings for Cigarette Packages and Advertisements [Docket No.: FDA-2019- N-3065] (RIN: 0910-AI39) received April 23, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Energy and Commerce. 4267. A letter from the Program Analyst, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Department of Transportation, Environmental Protection Agency, transmitting the Department's Major final rule -- The Safer Affordable Fuel- Efficient (SAFE) Vehicles Rule for Model Years 2021-2026 Passenger Cars and Light Trucks [NHTSA-2018-0067; EPA-HQ-OAR- 2018-0283; FRL 10000-45-OAR] (RIN: 2127-AL76) (RIN: 2060- AU09) received April 17, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Energy and Commerce. 4268. A letter from the Chief Justice, Supreme Court of the United States, transmitting amendments to the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, pursuant to 2072 U.S.C. 28 (H. Doc. No. 116--119); to the Committee on the Judiciary and ordered to be printed. 4269. A letter from the United States Trade Representative, Executive Office of the President, transmitting notification to Congress that it has been determined that Canada and Mexico have taken measures necessary to comply with provisions in the Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities and Accountability Act of 2015, pursuant to 19 U.S.C. 4205(a)(1)(G); Public Law 114-26, Sec. 106(a)(1)(G); (129 Stat. 350); to the Committee on Ways and Means.
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2020-01-06
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Unknown
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House
|
CREC-2020-04-28-pt1-PgH1963-7
| null | 551
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formal
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the Fed
| null |
antisemitic
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Under clause 2 of rule XIV, executive communications were taken from the Speaker's table and referred as follows: 4270. A communication from the President of the United States, transmitting an Executive Order ordering the Selected Reserve of the Armed Forces to active duty, pursuant to 10 U.S.C. 12304(f); Public Law 94-286, Sec. 1; (90 Stat. 517) (H. Doc. No. 116--120); to the Committee on Armed Services and ordered to be printed. 4271. A letter from the Secretary of Defense, Department of Defense, transmitting a letter on the approved retirement of Vice Admiral Mary M. Jackson, United States Navy, and her advancement to the grade of vice admiral on the retired list, pursuant to 10 U.S.C. 1370(c)(1); Public Law 96-513, Sec. 112 (as amended by Public Law 104-106, Sec. 502(b)); (110 Stat. 293); to the Committee on Armed Services. 4272. A letter from the Secretary of Defense, Department of Defense, transmitting a letter on the approved retirement of Lieutenant General Leon S. Rice, Air National Guard of the United States, and his advancement to the grade of lieutenant general on the retired list, pursuant to 10 U.S.C. 1370(c)(1); Public Law 96-513, Sec. 112 (as amended by Public Law 104-106, Sec. 502(b)); (110 Stat. 293); to the Committee on Armed Services. 4273. A letter from the Under Secretary, Acquisition and Sustainment, Department of Defense, transmitting a Report on Realignment of the Defense Acquisition System to Implement Acquisition Reforms, pursuant to Public Law 116-92, Sec. 836; to the Committee on Armed Services. 4274. A communication from the President of the United States, transmitting an Executive Order declaring a national emergency to deal with the threat posed by the unrestricted acquisition or use in the United States of bulk-power system electric equipment designed, developed, manufactured, or supplied by persons owned by, controlled by, or subject to the jurisdiction or direction of foreign adversaries, pursuant to 50 U.S.C. 1621(a); Public Law 94-412, Sec. 201(a); (90 Stat. 1255) and 50 U.S.C. 1703(b); Public Law 95- 223, Sec. 204(b); (91 Stat. 1627) (H. Doc. No. 116--124); to the Committee on Foreign Affairs and ordered to be printed. 4275. A letter from the Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Legislative Affairs, Department of State, transmitting the 37th Annual Report to Congress on the Multinational Force and Observers Pursuant to Sec. 6 Public Law 97-132, 22 U.S.C. 3425, for the Period Ending January 15, 2020; to the Committee on Foreign Affairs. 4276. A letter from the Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Legislative Affairs, Department of State, transmitting the Report to Congress on Gifts Given to Foreign Individuals in Fiscal Year 2019, pursuant to 22 U.S.C. 2694; to the Committee on Foreign Affairs. 4277. A letter from the Board of Trustees, Federal Old-Age And Survivors Insurance And Federal Disability Insurance Trust Funds, transmitting the 2020 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees of the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Federal Disability Insurance Trust Funds, pursuant to 42 U.S.C. 1395i(b)(2); Aug. 14, 1935, ch. 531, title XVIII, Sec. 1817(b)(2) (as amended by Public Law 108-173, Sec. 801(d)(1)); (117 Stat. 2359) and 42 U.S.C. 1395t(b)(2); Aug. 14, 1935, ch. 531, title XVIII, Sec. 1841(b)(2) (as amended by Public Law 108-173, Sec. 801(d)(2)); (117 (H. Doc. No. 116--123); to the Committee on Ways and Means and ordered to be printed. 4278. A letter from the Board of Trustees of the Federal Hospital Insurance Trust Fund, transmitting notification of a projection that the asset reserves held in the Federal Hospital Insurance Trust Fund will become inadequate under the meaning of Section 709 of the Social Security Act, pursuant to 42 U.S.C. 910(a); Aug. 14, 1935, ch. 531, title VII, Sec. 709 (as added by Public Law 98-21, Sec. 143); (97 Stat. 102) (H. Doc. No. 116--121); to the Committee on Ways and Means and ordered to be printed. 4279. A letter from the Board of Trustees, Federal Hospital Insurance and Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Funds, transmitting the 2020 Annual Report of the Boards of Trustees of the Federal Hospital Insurance and Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Funds, pursuant to 42 U.S.C. 401(c)(2); Aug. 14, 1935, ch. 531, title II, Sec. 201 (as amended by Public Law 100-647, Sec. 8005(a)); (102 Stat. 3781) (H. Doc. No. 116--122); to the Committee on Ways and Means and ordered to be printed.
|
2020-01-06
|
Unknown
|
House
|
CREC-2020-05-01-pt1-PgH1969-2
| null | 552
|
formal
|
the Fed
| null |
antisemitic
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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, the Senate is back in session. In this unusual period for our Nation, it has been more than 5 weeks since the full Senate last convened. As I explained on March 25, right before we passed the CARES Act 96 to 0, the Senate has kept right on working this whole time. We have monitored the implementation of that bill--the largest rescue package in American history--and strengthened it where necessary. We passed further legislation to provide even more economic assistance, even more support of testing, and more relief for hospitals and healthcare workers. This deadly coronavirus does not take days off, and so the U.S. Senate has not either. For more than a month, we were among the many Americans who have found creative ways to telework and continue doing our jobs remotely. But now the time has come for us to continue conducting our Nation's business in ways that are only possible with Senators here in the Capitol. For this work period, the Senate will shift out of the ranks of those Americans who are working remotely and into the ranks of the Americans working in essential sectors who are listening to expert guidance and modifying their routines and ultimately continuing to man their posts to keep the country running. If it is essential that brave healthcare workers, grocery store workers, truckdrivers, and many other Americans continue to carefully show up for work, then it is essential that their U.S. Senators carefully show up ourselves and support them. I want to thank the dedicated men and women who worked hard to develop solutions so the Senate can takethese careful steps back toward in-person operations: Dr. Brian Monahan and the entire Office of the Attending Physician, well done; everyone in the Offices of the Architect of the Capitol, the Sergeant at Arms, the Secretary of the Senate, and our colleagues on the Rules Committee and their staff. Of course, the teams who support our networks and telecommunications were working hard day and night during these weeks of remote work. Even more broadly, I want to recognize and thank all--all--the essential Senate staff who are here with us today in person so the Senate can function. Whether they be staff members in our own offices and committee offices, all the nonpartisan professionals who serve the institution itself, and, particularly, our facilities employees, custodians, food service staff, and, of course, the men and women of the Capitol Police, we are grateful for your service, and, more importantly, your country is grateful for your service. You are literally helping our government function in the midst of this crisis. The Senate is back in session because we have important work to do for the Nation. Critical posts throughout the Federal Government--from public health to national security and beyond--remain vacant. Qualified nominees who have been held up for too long already have become even more necessary in these uncertain times. On the floor and in committee, the Senate will be acting on key nominations that relate directly to the safety of the American people, oversight of our coronavirus legislation, and more. We need to continue to maintain and safeguard our domestic nuclear resources. That is our first nominee, Mr. Feitel. We need to keep protecting our Nation against foreign intelligence services. That is another nominee we will be moving soon, Mr. Evanina. Those around the world who wish harm on Americans are not going to give us a free pass until the pandemic is over, so the Senate needs to overcome obstruction and continue to act. I don't think anybody could seriously argue that filling critical national security posts is not essential Senate business. But to any of my colleagues who may wish that we did not have to devote floor time and rollcall votes to these kinds of nominations, I would simply say: I agree with you. I agree with you. Unfortunately, for more than 3 years now, my colleagues in Democratic leadership have used across-the-board obstruction to force floor time and even cloture votes for the kinds of sub-Cabinet level nominations that used to travel easily by voice vote. If any of my colleagues on either side wish that we could recover the Senate's tradition and spend less floor time on these sorts of nominations, I would invite them to share their view with the distinguished Democratic leadership and invite them to change their tactics. But as long as floor time and rollcall votes remain the only way for the Senate to fill important posts, that is what we will do. We cannot let nuclear watchdogs or counterintelligence leaders stay on the sidelines. The Senate is going to be as smart and safe as we possibly can, and we are going to show up for work like the essential workers we are. Our bosses are the American people, and they are counting on us to keep on serving. It is good to see the Chair and all of our colleagues again. I am grateful that all 100 of us have come through the last several weeks safely and in good health. Let's work together, across the aisle, and get some more work done for the American people
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2020-01-06
|
Mr. McCONNELL
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-05-04-pt1-PgS2195-8
| null | 553
|
formal
|
safeguard
| null |
transphobic
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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, the Senate is back in session. In this unusual period for our Nation, it has been more than 5 weeks since the full Senate last convened. As I explained on March 25, right before we passed the CARES Act 96 to 0, the Senate has kept right on working this whole time. We have monitored the implementation of that bill--the largest rescue package in American history--and strengthened it where necessary. We passed further legislation to provide even more economic assistance, even more support of testing, and more relief for hospitals and healthcare workers. This deadly coronavirus does not take days off, and so the U.S. Senate has not either. For more than a month, we were among the many Americans who have found creative ways to telework and continue doing our jobs remotely. But now the time has come for us to continue conducting our Nation's business in ways that are only possible with Senators here in the Capitol. For this work period, the Senate will shift out of the ranks of those Americans who are working remotely and into the ranks of the Americans working in essential sectors who are listening to expert guidance and modifying their routines and ultimately continuing to man their posts to keep the country running. If it is essential that brave healthcare workers, grocery store workers, truckdrivers, and many other Americans continue to carefully show up for work, then it is essential that their U.S. Senators carefully show up ourselves and support them. I want to thank the dedicated men and women who worked hard to develop solutions so the Senate can takethese careful steps back toward in-person operations: Dr. Brian Monahan and the entire Office of the Attending Physician, well done; everyone in the Offices of the Architect of the Capitol, the Sergeant at Arms, the Secretary of the Senate, and our colleagues on the Rules Committee and their staff. Of course, the teams who support our networks and telecommunications were working hard day and night during these weeks of remote work. Even more broadly, I want to recognize and thank all--all--the essential Senate staff who are here with us today in person so the Senate can function. Whether they be staff members in our own offices and committee offices, all the nonpartisan professionals who serve the institution itself, and, particularly, our facilities employees, custodians, food service staff, and, of course, the men and women of the Capitol Police, we are grateful for your service, and, more importantly, your country is grateful for your service. You are literally helping our government function in the midst of this crisis. The Senate is back in session because we have important work to do for the Nation. Critical posts throughout the Federal Government--from public health to national security and beyond--remain vacant. Qualified nominees who have been held up for too long already have become even more necessary in these uncertain times. On the floor and in committee, the Senate will be acting on key nominations that relate directly to the safety of the American people, oversight of our coronavirus legislation, and more. We need to continue to maintain and safeguard our domestic nuclear resources. That is our first nominee, Mr. Feitel. We need to keep protecting our Nation against foreign intelligence services. That is another nominee we will be moving soon, Mr. Evanina. Those around the world who wish harm on Americans are not going to give us a free pass until the pandemic is over, so the Senate needs to overcome obstruction and continue to act. I don't think anybody could seriously argue that filling critical national security posts is not essential Senate business. But to any of my colleagues who may wish that we did not have to devote floor time and rollcall votes to these kinds of nominations, I would simply say: I agree with you. I agree with you. Unfortunately, for more than 3 years now, my colleagues in Democratic leadership have used across-the-board obstruction to force floor time and even cloture votes for the kinds of sub-Cabinet level nominations that used to travel easily by voice vote. If any of my colleagues on either side wish that we could recover the Senate's tradition and spend less floor time on these sorts of nominations, I would invite them to share their view with the distinguished Democratic leadership and invite them to change their tactics. But as long as floor time and rollcall votes remain the only way for the Senate to fill important posts, that is what we will do. We cannot let nuclear watchdogs or counterintelligence leaders stay on the sidelines. The Senate is going to be as smart and safe as we possibly can, and we are going to show up for work like the essential workers we are. Our bosses are the American people, and they are counting on us to keep on serving. It is good to see the Chair and all of our colleagues again. I am grateful that all 100 of us have come through the last several weeks safely and in good health. Let's work together, across the aisle, and get some more work done for the American people
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2020-01-06
|
Mr. McCONNELL
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Senate
|
CREC-2020-05-04-pt1-PgS2195-8
| null | 554
|
formal
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based
| null |
white supremacist
|
Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, since June of 2018, I have objected to the nomination of William R. Evanina to be Director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center. Today, due to the recent actions by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence ODNI, and the Attorney General to finally respond to my very longstanding oversight requests, I withdraw my objection to Mr. Evanina's nomination. When I noticed my intention to object to this nominee in June of 2018, I made it very clear to the public and to the administration my reasons for doing so. I did not question Mr. Evanina's credentials in any way, and I put my statement of those reasons in the Record. I have done that consistently, not only since the rules of the Senate first required every Member to do that, but even before that rule was put in place. At the time, I experienced difficulties obtaining relevant documents and briefings from the Justice Department and ODNI related to the 2016 election controversies. On several occasions, then-Deputy Attorney General--DAG--Rod Rosenstein personally assured me that the Senate Judiciary Committee, of which I was chairman, would receive equal access to information provided to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence--HPSCI--with regard to any concessions in its negotiations regarding pending subpoenas from that committee. However, I, and the Judiciary Committee, never received equal access from DAG Rosenstein. For example, on August 7, 2018, I wrote to the Justice Department and pointed out that the House Intelligence Committee had received documents related to Bruce Ohr that the Judiciary Committee had not received. The Department initially denied those records had been provided to the House Intelligence Committee. After my staff confronted the Department, we eventually received some Bruce Ohr documents. In that same 2018 letter, I also asked for other documents based on my equal access agreement with DAG Rosenstein. I then learned that the Justice Department took the position that then-ODNI Director Dan Coats prohibited the Department from sharing the requested records with the committee. Needless to say, it was your typical bureaucratic blame-game. Then, some personnel changes took place. I voiced my concerns to Acting Director Grenell and Attorney General Barr. Recently, thanks to their commitment to transparency, I have received access to the types of documents that I asked for almost 2 years ago in June 2018. Moreover, both Acting Director Grenell and Attorney General Barr have gone multiple steps further by declassifying much of the information that I had sought access to. Credit should be given when it is due and Acting Director Grenell and Attorney General Barr deserve that credit here today. If their predecessors had simply respected legitimate congressional oversight and their agreements with me and the Judiciary Committee from the beginning, Mr. Evanina would have been confirmed long ago. Now, I also want to remind everyone, especially future administrations, that the Senate Judiciary Committee's jurisdiction extends to the intelligence community. In the authorizing resolution that created the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the Senate explicitly reserved for other standing committees, such as the Senate Judiciary Committee, independent authority to ``study and review any intelligence activity'' and ``to obtain full and prompt access to the product of the intelligence activities of any department or agency'' when such activity ``directly affects a matter otherwise within the jurisdiction of such committee''--S. Res. 400. The Senate Judiciary Committee has jurisdiction over all federal courts, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, FISC. As I understand it, the records at issue here fall into that category. Let this also be a reminder that when it comes to congressional oversight, I will use all the tools at my disposal to get to the truth of the matter and get access to the records that I believe are necessary to advance my investigations. The executive branch must recognize that it has an ongoing obligation to respond to congressional inquiries in a timely and reasonable manner. As I have said many times before, transparency brings accountability and congressional oversight helps to bring about the sunlight necessary for that to happen.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. GRASSLEY
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-05-04-pt1-PgS2203-2
| null | 555
|
formal
|
XX
| null |
transphobic
|
The SPEAKER. Under clause 5(d) of rule XX, the Chair announces to the House that, in light of the administration of the oath to the gentleman from Maryland, the whole number of the House is 430.
|
2020-01-06
|
The SPEAKER
|
House
|
CREC-2020-05-05-pt1-PgH1976-2
| null | 556
|
formal
|
Federal Reserve
| null |
antisemitic
|
Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, it has been a little more than 100 days since the first case of COVID-19 was reported in the United States. Since then, our Nation has come face-to-face with this full-scale pandemic. Families have hunkered down and changed their routines. Bustling Main Streets have literally come to a halt. Essential workers have taken new precautions to keep the supply chains running. And, of course, brave healthcare providers have stretched the limits of their supplies and their stamina to care for patients. All the while, even with the entire country doing its best to fight this disease, it has stolen the lives of nearly 70,000 of our fellow Americans. Our Nation is facing the most severe pandemic since 1918 and quite possibly the worst economic shock since the Great Depression. And we are facing them at the same time. This is a historic challenge, and the Senate is helping the country meet it. In early March, we passed an initial response to help communities handle the outbreak. We spent billions of dollars to enhance our public health response, to promote development of vaccines and treatment, and to help the healthcare providers and small businesses in places that were bearing the brunt of the virus. Just days later, we delivered billions more in phase 2. It sought to expand access to testing and to help workers. Then we built the historic CARES Act, the largest rescue package in America's history, and then passed it without a single vote in opposition. It sent more than $2 trillion in direct money to American households, support for employees' paychecks, stability for major employers, and resources for the healthcare fight itself. Predictably, these huge, historic efforts have encountered some challenges along the way. There is no way the Federal Government could make years' worth of small business loans in a few weeks or rapidly cut checks to most American households without any hiccups at all. But on the whole, it has been encouraging to see Congress, the administration, the Federal Reserve, and the American people--all of us--leap into action together to help our country. Our work is making a difference. But, ultimately, we know there is no policy Congress could pass, nor any amount of money we could spend, that would keep the entire economy glued together if these blunt shutdowns continue indefinitely. So while our legislation has rightly poured money into short-term help for the economy, we have also made sure to invest in the tools and tactics we will need to contain and beat the virus so that our country can step back toward normalcy: testing, tracking, treatments, and the race for a vaccine. Our task in the weeks ahead will be to keep seeking thoughtful solutions that are not just for the very short term but will help pivot toward a phased reopening and recovery. We will need to ask not only how we endure each week but also how we foster recovery on the other side. Early February feels like it was about 2 years ago, but the truth is, it was just 12 weeks ago. American workers and families were in one of the most prosperous economic moments in our history. Wages were growing. Unemployment was near a 50-year low. Formerly discouraged Americans were being drawn off the sidelines. The country was buzzing--literally buzzing--from coast to coast. The American people built that. It is our job to help them build it again. As we carefully consider what may come in the weeks ahead, we will need smart and targeted policies to help jump-start our economic engine, not unrelated ideological wish-list items that would gum it up even further. The country will need pro-growth, pro-certainty policies--pro-growth, pro-certainty policies. The last thing we need is for the political left to view this national crisis as an exploitable opportunity to achieve other goals they have wanted for a very long time. That is how, for example, former Vice President Biden has repeatedly described the pandemic. Here is what he had to say: ``an incredible opportunity . . . to fundamentally transform the country''--``an incredible opportunity . . . to fundamentally transform the country.'' This cannot be about ideological transformation. It needs to be what will actually work for the American people. Here is just one example of a commonsense policy Republicans will insist on. Even as the entire country is rallying behind healthcare workers and small businesses, trial lawyers are already looking for ways to line their pockets by suing the very people we are bending over backward to help. As one recent Washington Post column put it, ``[f]ear of COVID-19 lawsuits is not [some] mere Republican reflex''--a Washington Post column: ``[f]ear of COVID-19 lawsuits is not [some] mere Republican reflex.' It went on to list all sorts of lawsuits that are already pouring in. This kind of hostile climate would create yet another major headwind we cannot afford. Republicans will be insisting on strong legal protections for the frontlines. We will not let our historic recovery efforts be diverted so that taxpayers foot the bill for the biggest trial lawyer bonanza in our history. Our discussions in the weeks ahead do not need to be partisan or contentious. There is nothing partisan about the coronavirus, and there is nothing partisan about the inspiring example being set by citizens across our country. In my home State of Kentucky, we are proud of a father-daughter duo in Breathitt County. They both came down with the virus. They both beat it and then turned right around and started donating plasma to the race for new medicines. We are proud of the family resource coordinators of Fayette County Public Schools who are collecting donated household supplies to add to weekly food deliveries for thousands of students and families. These stories only scratch the surface in the Bluegrass, and I know every one of my colleagues has stories of their own to tell. We are all in this together. We have stepped up to meet the challenge. Let's continue to stand together for our country.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. McCONNELL
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-05-05-pt1-PgS2225-6
| null | 557
|
formal
|
the Fed
| null |
antisemitic
|
Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, it has been a little more than 100 days since the first case of COVID-19 was reported in the United States. Since then, our Nation has come face-to-face with this full-scale pandemic. Families have hunkered down and changed their routines. Bustling Main Streets have literally come to a halt. Essential workers have taken new precautions to keep the supply chains running. And, of course, brave healthcare providers have stretched the limits of their supplies and their stamina to care for patients. All the while, even with the entire country doing its best to fight this disease, it has stolen the lives of nearly 70,000 of our fellow Americans. Our Nation is facing the most severe pandemic since 1918 and quite possibly the worst economic shock since the Great Depression. And we are facing them at the same time. This is a historic challenge, and the Senate is helping the country meet it. In early March, we passed an initial response to help communities handle the outbreak. We spent billions of dollars to enhance our public health response, to promote development of vaccines and treatment, and to help the healthcare providers and small businesses in places that were bearing the brunt of the virus. Just days later, we delivered billions more in phase 2. It sought to expand access to testing and to help workers. Then we built the historic CARES Act, the largest rescue package in America's history, and then passed it without a single vote in opposition. It sent more than $2 trillion in direct money to American households, support for employees' paychecks, stability for major employers, and resources for the healthcare fight itself. Predictably, these huge, historic efforts have encountered some challenges along the way. There is no way the Federal Government could make years' worth of small business loans in a few weeks or rapidly cut checks to most American households without any hiccups at all. But on the whole, it has been encouraging to see Congress, the administration, the Federal Reserve, and the American people--all of us--leap into action together to help our country. Our work is making a difference. But, ultimately, we know there is no policy Congress could pass, nor any amount of money we could spend, that would keep the entire economy glued together if these blunt shutdowns continue indefinitely. So while our legislation has rightly poured money into short-term help for the economy, we have also made sure to invest in the tools and tactics we will need to contain and beat the virus so that our country can step back toward normalcy: testing, tracking, treatments, and the race for a vaccine. Our task in the weeks ahead will be to keep seeking thoughtful solutions that are not just for the very short term but will help pivot toward a phased reopening and recovery. We will need to ask not only how we endure each week but also how we foster recovery on the other side. Early February feels like it was about 2 years ago, but the truth is, it was just 12 weeks ago. American workers and families were in one of the most prosperous economic moments in our history. Wages were growing. Unemployment was near a 50-year low. Formerly discouraged Americans were being drawn off the sidelines. The country was buzzing--literally buzzing--from coast to coast. The American people built that. It is our job to help them build it again. As we carefully consider what may come in the weeks ahead, we will need smart and targeted policies to help jump-start our economic engine, not unrelated ideological wish-list items that would gum it up even further. The country will need pro-growth, pro-certainty policies--pro-growth, pro-certainty policies. The last thing we need is for the political left to view this national crisis as an exploitable opportunity to achieve other goals they have wanted for a very long time. That is how, for example, former Vice President Biden has repeatedly described the pandemic. Here is what he had to say: ``an incredible opportunity . . . to fundamentally transform the country''--``an incredible opportunity . . . to fundamentally transform the country.'' This cannot be about ideological transformation. It needs to be what will actually work for the American people. Here is just one example of a commonsense policy Republicans will insist on. Even as the entire country is rallying behind healthcare workers and small businesses, trial lawyers are already looking for ways to line their pockets by suing the very people we are bending over backward to help. As one recent Washington Post column put it, ``[f]ear of COVID-19 lawsuits is not [some] mere Republican reflex''--a Washington Post column: ``[f]ear of COVID-19 lawsuits is not [some] mere Republican reflex.' It went on to list all sorts of lawsuits that are already pouring in. This kind of hostile climate would create yet another major headwind we cannot afford. Republicans will be insisting on strong legal protections for the frontlines. We will not let our historic recovery efforts be diverted so that taxpayers foot the bill for the biggest trial lawyer bonanza in our history. Our discussions in the weeks ahead do not need to be partisan or contentious. There is nothing partisan about the coronavirus, and there is nothing partisan about the inspiring example being set by citizens across our country. In my home State of Kentucky, we are proud of a father-daughter duo in Breathitt County. They both came down with the virus. They both beat it and then turned right around and started donating plasma to the race for new medicines. We are proud of the family resource coordinators of Fayette County Public Schools who are collecting donated household supplies to add to weekly food deliveries for thousands of students and families. These stories only scratch the surface in the Bluegrass, and I know every one of my colleagues has stories of their own to tell. We are all in this together. We have stepped up to meet the challenge. Let's continue to stand together for our country.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. McCONNELL
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-05-05-pt1-PgS2225-6
| null | 558
|
formal
|
single
| null |
homophobic
|
Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, it has been a little more than 100 days since the first case of COVID-19 was reported in the United States. Since then, our Nation has come face-to-face with this full-scale pandemic. Families have hunkered down and changed their routines. Bustling Main Streets have literally come to a halt. Essential workers have taken new precautions to keep the supply chains running. And, of course, brave healthcare providers have stretched the limits of their supplies and their stamina to care for patients. All the while, even with the entire country doing its best to fight this disease, it has stolen the lives of nearly 70,000 of our fellow Americans. Our Nation is facing the most severe pandemic since 1918 and quite possibly the worst economic shock since the Great Depression. And we are facing them at the same time. This is a historic challenge, and the Senate is helping the country meet it. In early March, we passed an initial response to help communities handle the outbreak. We spent billions of dollars to enhance our public health response, to promote development of vaccines and treatment, and to help the healthcare providers and small businesses in places that were bearing the brunt of the virus. Just days later, we delivered billions more in phase 2. It sought to expand access to testing and to help workers. Then we built the historic CARES Act, the largest rescue package in America's history, and then passed it without a single vote in opposition. It sent more than $2 trillion in direct money to American households, support for employees' paychecks, stability for major employers, and resources for the healthcare fight itself. Predictably, these huge, historic efforts have encountered some challenges along the way. There is no way the Federal Government could make years' worth of small business loans in a few weeks or rapidly cut checks to most American households without any hiccups at all. But on the whole, it has been encouraging to see Congress, the administration, the Federal Reserve, and the American people--all of us--leap into action together to help our country. Our work is making a difference. But, ultimately, we know there is no policy Congress could pass, nor any amount of money we could spend, that would keep the entire economy glued together if these blunt shutdowns continue indefinitely. So while our legislation has rightly poured money into short-term help for the economy, we have also made sure to invest in the tools and tactics we will need to contain and beat the virus so that our country can step back toward normalcy: testing, tracking, treatments, and the race for a vaccine. Our task in the weeks ahead will be to keep seeking thoughtful solutions that are not just for the very short term but will help pivot toward a phased reopening and recovery. We will need to ask not only how we endure each week but also how we foster recovery on the other side. Early February feels like it was about 2 years ago, but the truth is, it was just 12 weeks ago. American workers and families were in one of the most prosperous economic moments in our history. Wages were growing. Unemployment was near a 50-year low. Formerly discouraged Americans were being drawn off the sidelines. The country was buzzing--literally buzzing--from coast to coast. The American people built that. It is our job to help them build it again. As we carefully consider what may come in the weeks ahead, we will need smart and targeted policies to help jump-start our economic engine, not unrelated ideological wish-list items that would gum it up even further. The country will need pro-growth, pro-certainty policies--pro-growth, pro-certainty policies. The last thing we need is for the political left to view this national crisis as an exploitable opportunity to achieve other goals they have wanted for a very long time. That is how, for example, former Vice President Biden has repeatedly described the pandemic. Here is what he had to say: ``an incredible opportunity . . . to fundamentally transform the country''--``an incredible opportunity . . . to fundamentally transform the country.'' This cannot be about ideological transformation. It needs to be what will actually work for the American people. Here is just one example of a commonsense policy Republicans will insist on. Even as the entire country is rallying behind healthcare workers and small businesses, trial lawyers are already looking for ways to line their pockets by suing the very people we are bending over backward to help. As one recent Washington Post column put it, ``[f]ear of COVID-19 lawsuits is not [some] mere Republican reflex''--a Washington Post column: ``[f]ear of COVID-19 lawsuits is not [some] mere Republican reflex.' It went on to list all sorts of lawsuits that are already pouring in. This kind of hostile climate would create yet another major headwind we cannot afford. Republicans will be insisting on strong legal protections for the frontlines. We will not let our historic recovery efforts be diverted so that taxpayers foot the bill for the biggest trial lawyer bonanza in our history. Our discussions in the weeks ahead do not need to be partisan or contentious. There is nothing partisan about the coronavirus, and there is nothing partisan about the inspiring example being set by citizens across our country. In my home State of Kentucky, we are proud of a father-daughter duo in Breathitt County. They both came down with the virus. They both beat it and then turned right around and started donating plasma to the race for new medicines. We are proud of the family resource coordinators of Fayette County Public Schools who are collecting donated household supplies to add to weekly food deliveries for thousands of students and families. These stories only scratch the surface in the Bluegrass, and I know every one of my colleagues has stories of their own to tell. We are all in this together. We have stepped up to meet the challenge. Let's continue to stand together for our country.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. McCONNELL
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-05-05-pt1-PgS2225-6
| null | 559
|
formal
|
family values
| null |
homophobic
|
Mr. MENENDEZ (for himself and Mr. Crapo) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary: S. Res. 558 Whereas, each year in the United States, El Dia de los Ninos-Celebrating Young Americans is recognized as a day to affirm and recognize the importance of young children and adolescents in the United States; Whereas children and adolescents represent the hopes and dreams of the people of the United States, and the well-being of children and adolescents is emphasized as a top priority in the United States; Whereas, according to data of the Bureau of the Census, the Hispanic population in the United States is the youngest major racial or ethnic group in the United States, as-- (1) more than 18,100,000 Hispanics in the United States, a group that represents nearly \1/3\ of the Hispanic population in the United States, are younger than 18 years of age; and (2) in 2017, more than 15,600,000 Hispanics in the United States, a group that represents more than \1/4\ of the Hispanic population in the United States, were individuals between 18 and 34 years of age (commonly referred to as ``millennials''); Whereas the Hispanic population in the United States continues to grow and is a significant part of the workforce in the United States, and children in that population will be consumers, taxpayers, and voters in the future; Whereas, as the United States becomes more culturally and ethnically diverse, the people of the United States must strive to bring about cultural understanding and celebrate a tradition that honors all children and adolescents on El Dia de los Ninos-Celebrating Young Americans, a day that acknowledges and shares traditions and customs with all people in the United States; Whereas parents are at the center of teaching children about family values, morality, life preparation, health, survival, and culture; Whereas the designation of a day of special recognition to honor children and adolescents in the United States-- (1) will help affirm the significance of family, education, health, and community among the people of the United States; and (2) will provide an opportunity for those children and adolescents to reflect on their futures, to articulate their aspirations, to find comfort and security in the support of their family members, communities, and schools, and to grow to contribute to the United States; Whereas the National Latino Children's Institute, which serves as an advocate and a voice for young Latino children-- (1) will celebrate its 22nd anniversary in 2020; (2) has partnered with States and cities throughout the United States since 1998; and (3) will declare April 30, 2020, as ``El Dia de los Ninos- Celebrating Young Americans'', a day to bring communities and Latinos together across the United States to celebrate and uplift children; and Whereas April 30, 2020, would be an appropriate day to recognize as ``El Dia de los Ninos-Celebrating Young Americans'': Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That the Senate-- (1) recognizes April 30, 2020, as ``El Dia de los Ninos- Celebrating Young Americans''; (2) encourages the people of the United States-- (A) to nurture and invest in children and adolescents in order to preserve and enhance economic prosperity, democracy, and the free and open exchange of ideas, which are concepts that are essential to the spirit of the United States; and (B) to celebrate the gifts of children and adolescents and to help them take their rightful place in the future of the United States; and (3) calls on the people of the United States to join with children, families, communities, schools, churches, cities, and States across the United States to observe El Dia de los Ninos-Celebrating Young Americans with appropriate ceremonies, including activities that-- (A) center on children and are free or of minimal cost so as to facilitate full participation by all people; (B) uplift and help children positively envision a path to their futures by allowing children to voice their hopes and dreams; (C) offer opportunities for children of diverse backgrounds to learn about the cultures of one another and to share ideas; (D) include family members, especially extended and elderly family members, so as to-- (i) promote understanding and communication among generations within families; and (ii) enable young people to learn from, and respect and benefit from the experiences of, their family elders; (E) enable diverse communities to build relationships of understanding; and (F) provide children with safe schools, homes, and communities that give them the long-term support they need to learn, develop, and become confident young adults who are ready and eager to believe in and contribute to the United States.
|
2020-01-06
|
Unknown
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-05-05-pt1-PgS2242-2
| null | 560
|
formal
|
the Fed
| null |
antisemitic
|
Nomination of Justin Walker Mr. President, speaking of nominations, this morning our colleagues on the Judiciary Committee are examining the qualifications of Judge Justin Walker. Judge Walker is a fellow Kentuckian. He is a district judge of the Western District of Kentucky, and he is President Trump's nominee to serve on our second most important Federal Court, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. I am grateful to Chairman Graham and all the other chairmen who are finding creative ways to conduct important business. The Senate is demonstrating that the work of governing must and can continue, albeit in new ways. So to respect this time of social distancing, I am going to offer my introduction here on the floor instead of over in the committee. Since Judge Walker was tapped to serve the people of Kentucky on the Federal district bench, he wasted no time in expanding his strong reputation for intellectual brilliance, legal acumen, and total fairness and impartiality. In just the last few weeks, Judge Walker has won national attention for an eloquent and persuasive opinion that forcefully defended Kentuckians' basic First Amendment freedom of religion, and he has earned a ``well-qualified'' rating from the left-leaning American Bar Association that Senate Democrats, like my friend the Democratic leader, have frequently described as ``the gold standard.'' Let me say that again. In the span of just a couple of weeks, almost simultaneously, Judge Walker has won praise from religious freedom advocates nationwide and the approval of the ABA, which Democrats call ``the gold standard.'' That illustrates the kind of impressive individual the committee is considering this morning. Already, Judge Walker's reputation as a brilliant legal rising star precedes him. Yet, when you consider the full scope of his education and experience, it is hardly a surprise. Judge Walker graduated from Duke University summa cum laude. He graduated from Harvard Law School magna cum laude, and he edited the Law Review. He had prestigious clerkships at the DC Circuit for then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh and at the Supreme Court for then-Justice Anthony Kennedy. He learned at the elbows of legal giants. Then, he moved on to skilled performance in private practice, and then to distinguished scholarship at the University of Louisville Law School, with particular expertise in national security, administrative law, and the separation of powers. Indeed, it is an impressive record. As Kentucky's secretary of State, Mike Adams, put it recently, ``Judge Walker is more than just a [C.V.].'' Hence, the outpouring of praise from his peers, colleagues, and neighbors in Kentucky who know him well. One hundred Kentucky lawyers, many of whom have practiced before Judge Walker in the district court, wrote to praise his ``courage to apply precedent faithfully.'' Sixteen State attorneys general wrote to share their confidence in Judge Walker's ability to ``weigh the facts against the law as it is written . . . not as he wishes it to be.'' I am confident our colleagues on the committee will find that this nominee possesses a generational legal mind, a kind heart, and total judicial impartiality. President Trump made an outstanding choice when he asked this Kentuckian to take his public service to the next level. I am confident Judge Walker will not disappoint. I urge the committee to approve his nomination. I look forward to voting to confirm him soon here on the Senate floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
|
2020-01-06
|
Unknown
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-05-06-pt1-PgS2254
| null | 561
|
formal
|
religious freedom
| null |
homophobic
|
Nomination of Justin Walker Mr. President, speaking of nominations, this morning our colleagues on the Judiciary Committee are examining the qualifications of Judge Justin Walker. Judge Walker is a fellow Kentuckian. He is a district judge of the Western District of Kentucky, and he is President Trump's nominee to serve on our second most important Federal Court, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. I am grateful to Chairman Graham and all the other chairmen who are finding creative ways to conduct important business. The Senate is demonstrating that the work of governing must and can continue, albeit in new ways. So to respect this time of social distancing, I am going to offer my introduction here on the floor instead of over in the committee. Since Judge Walker was tapped to serve the people of Kentucky on the Federal district bench, he wasted no time in expanding his strong reputation for intellectual brilliance, legal acumen, and total fairness and impartiality. In just the last few weeks, Judge Walker has won national attention for an eloquent and persuasive opinion that forcefully defended Kentuckians' basic First Amendment freedom of religion, and he has earned a ``well-qualified'' rating from the left-leaning American Bar Association that Senate Democrats, like my friend the Democratic leader, have frequently described as ``the gold standard.'' Let me say that again. In the span of just a couple of weeks, almost simultaneously, Judge Walker has won praise from religious freedom advocates nationwide and the approval of the ABA, which Democrats call ``the gold standard.'' That illustrates the kind of impressive individual the committee is considering this morning. Already, Judge Walker's reputation as a brilliant legal rising star precedes him. Yet, when you consider the full scope of his education and experience, it is hardly a surprise. Judge Walker graduated from Duke University summa cum laude. He graduated from Harvard Law School magna cum laude, and he edited the Law Review. He had prestigious clerkships at the DC Circuit for then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh and at the Supreme Court for then-Justice Anthony Kennedy. He learned at the elbows of legal giants. Then, he moved on to skilled performance in private practice, and then to distinguished scholarship at the University of Louisville Law School, with particular expertise in national security, administrative law, and the separation of powers. Indeed, it is an impressive record. As Kentucky's secretary of State, Mike Adams, put it recently, ``Judge Walker is more than just a [C.V.].'' Hence, the outpouring of praise from his peers, colleagues, and neighbors in Kentucky who know him well. One hundred Kentucky lawyers, many of whom have practiced before Judge Walker in the district court, wrote to praise his ``courage to apply precedent faithfully.'' Sixteen State attorneys general wrote to share their confidence in Judge Walker's ability to ``weigh the facts against the law as it is written . . . not as he wishes it to be.'' I am confident our colleagues on the committee will find that this nominee possesses a generational legal mind, a kind heart, and total judicial impartiality. President Trump made an outstanding choice when he asked this Kentuckian to take his public service to the next level. I am confident Judge Walker will not disappoint. I urge the committee to approve his nomination. I look forward to voting to confirm him soon here on the Senate floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
|
2020-01-06
|
Unknown
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-05-06-pt1-PgS2254
| null | 562
|
formal
|
freedom of religion
| null |
homophobic
|
Nomination of Justin Walker Mr. President, speaking of nominations, this morning our colleagues on the Judiciary Committee are examining the qualifications of Judge Justin Walker. Judge Walker is a fellow Kentuckian. He is a district judge of the Western District of Kentucky, and he is President Trump's nominee to serve on our second most important Federal Court, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. I am grateful to Chairman Graham and all the other chairmen who are finding creative ways to conduct important business. The Senate is demonstrating that the work of governing must and can continue, albeit in new ways. So to respect this time of social distancing, I am going to offer my introduction here on the floor instead of over in the committee. Since Judge Walker was tapped to serve the people of Kentucky on the Federal district bench, he wasted no time in expanding his strong reputation for intellectual brilliance, legal acumen, and total fairness and impartiality. In just the last few weeks, Judge Walker has won national attention for an eloquent and persuasive opinion that forcefully defended Kentuckians' basic First Amendment freedom of religion, and he has earned a ``well-qualified'' rating from the left-leaning American Bar Association that Senate Democrats, like my friend the Democratic leader, have frequently described as ``the gold standard.'' Let me say that again. In the span of just a couple of weeks, almost simultaneously, Judge Walker has won praise from religious freedom advocates nationwide and the approval of the ABA, which Democrats call ``the gold standard.'' That illustrates the kind of impressive individual the committee is considering this morning. Already, Judge Walker's reputation as a brilliant legal rising star precedes him. Yet, when you consider the full scope of his education and experience, it is hardly a surprise. Judge Walker graduated from Duke University summa cum laude. He graduated from Harvard Law School magna cum laude, and he edited the Law Review. He had prestigious clerkships at the DC Circuit for then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh and at the Supreme Court for then-Justice Anthony Kennedy. He learned at the elbows of legal giants. Then, he moved on to skilled performance in private practice, and then to distinguished scholarship at the University of Louisville Law School, with particular expertise in national security, administrative law, and the separation of powers. Indeed, it is an impressive record. As Kentucky's secretary of State, Mike Adams, put it recently, ``Judge Walker is more than just a [C.V.].'' Hence, the outpouring of praise from his peers, colleagues, and neighbors in Kentucky who know him well. One hundred Kentucky lawyers, many of whom have practiced before Judge Walker in the district court, wrote to praise his ``courage to apply precedent faithfully.'' Sixteen State attorneys general wrote to share their confidence in Judge Walker's ability to ``weigh the facts against the law as it is written . . . not as he wishes it to be.'' I am confident our colleagues on the committee will find that this nominee possesses a generational legal mind, a kind heart, and total judicial impartiality. President Trump made an outstanding choice when he asked this Kentuckian to take his public service to the next level. I am confident Judge Walker will not disappoint. I urge the committee to approve his nomination. I look forward to voting to confirm him soon here on the Senate floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
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2020-01-06
|
Unknown
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-05-06-pt1-PgS2254
| null | 563
|
formal
|
based
| null |
white supremacist
|
Trump Administration Now, on the administration, Congress can only do so much. I have actually been very proud of how both parties have come together over the past few months to pass historic legislation 96 to nothing--96 to nothing--with a great deal of input and improvement by the Democratic minority. But to make this legislation work, we need a competent, steady, focused administration to not only implement our laws but coordinate our national response. It is no secret that the Trump administration has been anything but focused, anything but steady, anything but competent. President Trump seems to spend more time deflecting blame, attacking others, pushing quack medicines, and hiding from the truth than he does actually leading our Nation's response to this crisis. Last night, in an interview on ABC News, the President said that his failure to prepare our national stockpiles with medical equipment was because ``he had a lot of other things going on.'' The national stockpile for the vital PPE that our frontline workers need and other materials--the President failed to prepare our stockpiles with this equipment because he had a lot of other things going on? That is a President? Vice President Pence yesterday confirmed that the White House was winding down its Coronavirus Task Force long before the disease has been contained, waving the white flag of surrender to COVID-19 long before the battle is over. A report in today's New York Times details the failures of the administration and Mr. Kushner in particular to procure critical supplies at a time when we lack masks, gloves, and other protective equipment. Instead of appointing a military person with experience in command and control, as I suggested, Mr. Kushner recruited a team of consultants who had ``little to no experience with government procurement procedures or medical equipment.'' Now we are reading reports of a whistleblower from the Department of Health and Human Services who reports that there was ``pressure from HHS leadership to ignore scientific merit and expert recommendations and instead to award lucrative contracts based on political connections and cronyism.'' This whistleblower is scheduled to appear before a House committee next week. This whistleblower should come before the Senate as well. Senators have many questions to ask him. I believe Senators on both sides of the aisle would have those questions. So this was and is a time when the American people need the executive branch to lead a coordinated response to this evil virus, to listen to medical experts, to heed their advice, to respect and listen to science, but President Trump seems unwilling and unable to handle the truth, and it is hurting our country each and every day. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
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2020-01-06
|
Unknown
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-05-06-pt1-PgS2255
| null | 564
|
formal
|
based
| null |
white supremacist
|
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I spent 5 weeks in my home in Springfield, IL, following orders--good ones--to suggest that I had to get out of circulation and so should everyone else. It was an interesting moment. My wife and I think it may have been the longest stretch we had ever spent under the same roof together. We got along, which is good, and I got to field the neighborhood a little more than I usually do as I travel back and forth almost every week. I got to know the people a little more, waving from a distance. I looked around and noticed that almost every lawn had a sign on it saying: ``We love healthcare workers.'' Many people had signs in their windows to back that up too, and we should. These doctors, these nurses, and these people who work in nursing homes caring for the elderly and making certain they are in a good, safe environment are important, and they are risking their lives for the people whom we love. We thank them over and over. But there is one part of that group that I would like to highlight for just a few moments on the floor of the Senate. I want to spend a few minutes talking about one special group of healthcare workers--immigrants. One in six healthcare and social service workers--3.1 million out of 18.7 million--are immigrants. When they come on television and give us a breakdown of what is going on in emergency rooms and the likelihood of our success in communities in dealing with this coronavirus, you must notice so many times and think that they may be newcomers to the United States. Many of them are. These immigrants are playing a critical role in the battle against this pandemic. Yet the President of the United States and many around him continue to disparage immigrants, falsely claiming that they are just a drain on society, that all they are doing is taking our jobs away and we really wouldn't miss them if they were gone. So I came to the floor today to tell a story about one of them, an immigrant health hero. I will be joined by some of my colleagues who have similar stories to tell. We are inviting people to share their own stories on social media using the hashtag ``immigranthealthheroes.'' I will put up the hashtag here so that if anyone wants to check in, they can do so. Many of these healthcare workers are young immigrants who came to the United States as children. They are known as Dreamers. They are American in every way except for their legal immigration status. They were brought here at an early age by parents who didn't give them a vote on the decision, grew up in the United States, went to our schools, sometimes all the way through college and professional school, want to make a life in this country, have no criminal record, and are just looking for a chance. It was 9 years ago when I joined Republican Senator Dick Lugar on a bipartisan basis asking President Obama to use his executive authority to protect these Dreamers from deportation. He responded and created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. DACA provides temporary protection from deportation for Dreamers if they register with the government, pay a substantial fee, and go through a criminal background check. More than 800,000 Dreamers came forward and received President Obama's DACA protection. DACA unleashed the full potential for these Dreamers that they never dreamed they would have, and they started contributing to America as soldiers and teachers and small business owners. More than 200,000 DACA recipients are now categorized as ``essential critical infrastructure workers''--``essential critical infrastructure workers.'' Who came up with that name? It is the definition of President Trump's own Department of Homeland Security. One out of four of these DACA protectees are essential critical infrastructure workers, and among these essential workers are 41,700 DACA recipients in the healthcare industry. They include doctors, intensive care nurses, paramedics, and respiratory therapists. But on September 5, 2017, President Trump repealed DACA. Because of that action by the President, hundreds of thousands of Dreamers face losing their jobs, but, more importantly, they face being deported, many to countries they barely remember, if they remember at all. The courts stepped in and blocked the President from enforcing this DACA decision, but he took on the appeal of that decision, and now it is in the Supreme Court, just across the street. I was proud to lead 172 current and former Members of Congress on a bipartisan brief asking the Supreme Court to rule against President Trump's repeal of DACA. These young DACA recipients are being protected while the case is being considered by the Supreme Court, but a decision could come down any day--could come down any day--that basically makes these young people subject to deportation and takes away any legal rightthey have to work. If the Court rules in favor of President Trump on DACA, 200,000 essential American workers will be sidelined and deported, even as we fight this pandemic. Last month, I sent a letter to the President--37 of my colleagues joined me--urging him to extend the work authorization for DACA recipients, not to make their future depend on what happens in the Court. The President has the authority to say that, at least until the end of the calendar year--or beyond, I hope--we are not going to deport these young people, and we are not going to take their jobs away, particularly those in the healthcare industry. But if you consider President Trump's attitude toward immigrants, you know he is likely to forge ahead with his decision to deport the Dreamers. That means we have to do our part. I worked with Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to include a provision to automatically extend work authorizations for DACA recipients in the CARES Act that Congress just passed a few weeks ago. We presented it to the leaders on a bipartisan basis. We had the approval of Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, but not the Republican leader in the Senate. He stopped us from extending this protection. I don't know what his situation is in Kentucky, but I can tell you that in Illinois, we need every one of these healthcare workers we have today. We can't afford to lose them. To think that 41,000 DACA recipients and another 11,000 TPS critical healthcare workers would be deported would mean that many Americans who count on these great professionals are going to get less care and perhaps terrible results. As Congress debates the next legislation to address the COVID-19 pandemic, I will continue pushing for this provision. It is not too much to ask that if these people simply want to be working in ERs and hospitals, risking their lives for all of us, that they at least have the peace of mind to know that they can stay until the end of the calendar year. That is all I am asking for. Is it too much to ask? Some of them are suffering, and their families are suffering too. All they want is the authority to stay here. Last year, the House of Representatives passed the Dream and Promise Act, based on the Dream Act, with a strong vote. Senator McConnell has refused to call it in the Senate. It could help us. I wish he would consider it. I have come to the floor over 100 times and told the stories of Dreamers. I don't think there is any better way to make the case--meet them, know them, realize what they brought to America and what they bring each day. Today, I want to tell you the story of this man. His name is Manuel Bernal. He works in the emergency department at the Advocate Christ Medical Center. Manuel was brought to the United States when he was 2 years old. He grew up in Memphis, TN. He always wanted to become a doctor. He wrote me a letter, and he said: Early on, I developed an appreciation for the medical profession when I witnessed the compassionate care received by a loved one at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Manuel graduated in the top 10 percent of his hospital class. He was a leader of several high school honor societies. In his spare time, he was a swimmer, a football player, and volunteered at the St. Jude Club and the Key Club. He continued his education at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He graduated summa cum laude in biology with a minor in chemistry. In college, he worked as a medical scribe for doctors in the emergency room at a small community hospital in Chattanooga. After this experience, he decided he wanted to go all the way. He wanted to become an emergency room physician. He continued his education at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine. Allow me a few seconds to praise this wonderful school. He was one of dozens of DACA recipients at Stritch, which was the first medical school to admit DACA students. They do not receive any special treatment in the selection process, and they are not eligible for a penny in Federal financial assistance. Many of them borrowed money from the State of Illinois to complete their medical education in the hopes that once they are licensed, they can come back and practice in our State, which they promise to do. Here is what Manuel says DACA means to him: DACA has undoubtedly opened up many doors for me. It meant allowing me to obtain my dream of serving others through emergency medicine. If DACA ended, I would be forced to stop doing not only what I love doing but what I trained so hard to do. Today, Dr. Manuel Bernal is an emergency room resident at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Chicago, one of the busiest trauma hospitals in our city. His supervisor told him he did not have to treat COVID-19 patients because he is only a resident, but he stepped forward and volunteered to do it anyway. Manuel's DACA is set to expire in October, 5 months from now. Will America be stronger if this doctor leaves? Will they be better at Advocate Christ Medical Center, the trauma hospital, if Manuel was forced to leave this country? I can't imagine anyone would answer yes. Manuel and hundreds of thousands of other Dreamers are counting on the Supreme Court to reject President Trump's abolition of DACA and counting on us who serve in the Senate to solve this crisis President Trump alone created. As long as I am a U.S. Senator, I will continue to come to the floor of the Senate to advocate for Manuel and for thousands of others who simply want a chance to prove themselves to earn their way into America's future. It would be an American tragedy at this moment when we face this national emergency to lose these brave and talented young people. They are saving lives every day, and they are risking their own to do it. Can we ask anything more of anyone else in this country? We must ensure that Manuel and hundreds of thousands of others in our essential workforce are not forced to stop working when their services are needed now more than ever. Ultimately, we need to pass legislation that is just common sense, that says these young people who came here as kids and have worked doubly hard under the greatest of pressures and have made a success of their lives, like this young man, can stay in America and be part of our future. He is truly a healthcare hero, and he is an immigrant. He is an immigrant healthcare hero, and there are thousands just like him across America. We need them now more than ever. I see that Senator Cortez Masto is here. I know she wants to speak on this subject. I yield the floor to her.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. DURBIN
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-05-06-pt1-PgS2266
| null | 565
|
formal
|
Chicago
| null |
racist
|
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I spent 5 weeks in my home in Springfield, IL, following orders--good ones--to suggest that I had to get out of circulation and so should everyone else. It was an interesting moment. My wife and I think it may have been the longest stretch we had ever spent under the same roof together. We got along, which is good, and I got to field the neighborhood a little more than I usually do as I travel back and forth almost every week. I got to know the people a little more, waving from a distance. I looked around and noticed that almost every lawn had a sign on it saying: ``We love healthcare workers.'' Many people had signs in their windows to back that up too, and we should. These doctors, these nurses, and these people who work in nursing homes caring for the elderly and making certain they are in a good, safe environment are important, and they are risking their lives for the people whom we love. We thank them over and over. But there is one part of that group that I would like to highlight for just a few moments on the floor of the Senate. I want to spend a few minutes talking about one special group of healthcare workers--immigrants. One in six healthcare and social service workers--3.1 million out of 18.7 million--are immigrants. When they come on television and give us a breakdown of what is going on in emergency rooms and the likelihood of our success in communities in dealing with this coronavirus, you must notice so many times and think that they may be newcomers to the United States. Many of them are. These immigrants are playing a critical role in the battle against this pandemic. Yet the President of the United States and many around him continue to disparage immigrants, falsely claiming that they are just a drain on society, that all they are doing is taking our jobs away and we really wouldn't miss them if they were gone. So I came to the floor today to tell a story about one of them, an immigrant health hero. I will be joined by some of my colleagues who have similar stories to tell. We are inviting people to share their own stories on social media using the hashtag ``immigranthealthheroes.'' I will put up the hashtag here so that if anyone wants to check in, they can do so. Many of these healthcare workers are young immigrants who came to the United States as children. They are known as Dreamers. They are American in every way except for their legal immigration status. They were brought here at an early age by parents who didn't give them a vote on the decision, grew up in the United States, went to our schools, sometimes all the way through college and professional school, want to make a life in this country, have no criminal record, and are just looking for a chance. It was 9 years ago when I joined Republican Senator Dick Lugar on a bipartisan basis asking President Obama to use his executive authority to protect these Dreamers from deportation. He responded and created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. DACA provides temporary protection from deportation for Dreamers if they register with the government, pay a substantial fee, and go through a criminal background check. More than 800,000 Dreamers came forward and received President Obama's DACA protection. DACA unleashed the full potential for these Dreamers that they never dreamed they would have, and they started contributing to America as soldiers and teachers and small business owners. More than 200,000 DACA recipients are now categorized as ``essential critical infrastructure workers''--``essential critical infrastructure workers.'' Who came up with that name? It is the definition of President Trump's own Department of Homeland Security. One out of four of these DACA protectees are essential critical infrastructure workers, and among these essential workers are 41,700 DACA recipients in the healthcare industry. They include doctors, intensive care nurses, paramedics, and respiratory therapists. But on September 5, 2017, President Trump repealed DACA. Because of that action by the President, hundreds of thousands of Dreamers face losing their jobs, but, more importantly, they face being deported, many to countries they barely remember, if they remember at all. The courts stepped in and blocked the President from enforcing this DACA decision, but he took on the appeal of that decision, and now it is in the Supreme Court, just across the street. I was proud to lead 172 current and former Members of Congress on a bipartisan brief asking the Supreme Court to rule against President Trump's repeal of DACA. These young DACA recipients are being protected while the case is being considered by the Supreme Court, but a decision could come down any day--could come down any day--that basically makes these young people subject to deportation and takes away any legal rightthey have to work. If the Court rules in favor of President Trump on DACA, 200,000 essential American workers will be sidelined and deported, even as we fight this pandemic. Last month, I sent a letter to the President--37 of my colleagues joined me--urging him to extend the work authorization for DACA recipients, not to make their future depend on what happens in the Court. The President has the authority to say that, at least until the end of the calendar year--or beyond, I hope--we are not going to deport these young people, and we are not going to take their jobs away, particularly those in the healthcare industry. But if you consider President Trump's attitude toward immigrants, you know he is likely to forge ahead with his decision to deport the Dreamers. That means we have to do our part. I worked with Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to include a provision to automatically extend work authorizations for DACA recipients in the CARES Act that Congress just passed a few weeks ago. We presented it to the leaders on a bipartisan basis. We had the approval of Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, but not the Republican leader in the Senate. He stopped us from extending this protection. I don't know what his situation is in Kentucky, but I can tell you that in Illinois, we need every one of these healthcare workers we have today. We can't afford to lose them. To think that 41,000 DACA recipients and another 11,000 TPS critical healthcare workers would be deported would mean that many Americans who count on these great professionals are going to get less care and perhaps terrible results. As Congress debates the next legislation to address the COVID-19 pandemic, I will continue pushing for this provision. It is not too much to ask that if these people simply want to be working in ERs and hospitals, risking their lives for all of us, that they at least have the peace of mind to know that they can stay until the end of the calendar year. That is all I am asking for. Is it too much to ask? Some of them are suffering, and their families are suffering too. All they want is the authority to stay here. Last year, the House of Representatives passed the Dream and Promise Act, based on the Dream Act, with a strong vote. Senator McConnell has refused to call it in the Senate. It could help us. I wish he would consider it. I have come to the floor over 100 times and told the stories of Dreamers. I don't think there is any better way to make the case--meet them, know them, realize what they brought to America and what they bring each day. Today, I want to tell you the story of this man. His name is Manuel Bernal. He works in the emergency department at the Advocate Christ Medical Center. Manuel was brought to the United States when he was 2 years old. He grew up in Memphis, TN. He always wanted to become a doctor. He wrote me a letter, and he said: Early on, I developed an appreciation for the medical profession when I witnessed the compassionate care received by a loved one at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Manuel graduated in the top 10 percent of his hospital class. He was a leader of several high school honor societies. In his spare time, he was a swimmer, a football player, and volunteered at the St. Jude Club and the Key Club. He continued his education at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He graduated summa cum laude in biology with a minor in chemistry. In college, he worked as a medical scribe for doctors in the emergency room at a small community hospital in Chattanooga. After this experience, he decided he wanted to go all the way. He wanted to become an emergency room physician. He continued his education at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine. Allow me a few seconds to praise this wonderful school. He was one of dozens of DACA recipients at Stritch, which was the first medical school to admit DACA students. They do not receive any special treatment in the selection process, and they are not eligible for a penny in Federal financial assistance. Many of them borrowed money from the State of Illinois to complete their medical education in the hopes that once they are licensed, they can come back and practice in our State, which they promise to do. Here is what Manuel says DACA means to him: DACA has undoubtedly opened up many doors for me. It meant allowing me to obtain my dream of serving others through emergency medicine. If DACA ended, I would be forced to stop doing not only what I love doing but what I trained so hard to do. Today, Dr. Manuel Bernal is an emergency room resident at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Chicago, one of the busiest trauma hospitals in our city. His supervisor told him he did not have to treat COVID-19 patients because he is only a resident, but he stepped forward and volunteered to do it anyway. Manuel's DACA is set to expire in October, 5 months from now. Will America be stronger if this doctor leaves? Will they be better at Advocate Christ Medical Center, the trauma hospital, if Manuel was forced to leave this country? I can't imagine anyone would answer yes. Manuel and hundreds of thousands of other Dreamers are counting on the Supreme Court to reject President Trump's abolition of DACA and counting on us who serve in the Senate to solve this crisis President Trump alone created. As long as I am a U.S. Senator, I will continue to come to the floor of the Senate to advocate for Manuel and for thousands of others who simply want a chance to prove themselves to earn their way into America's future. It would be an American tragedy at this moment when we face this national emergency to lose these brave and talented young people. They are saving lives every day, and they are risking their own to do it. Can we ask anything more of anyone else in this country? We must ensure that Manuel and hundreds of thousands of others in our essential workforce are not forced to stop working when their services are needed now more than ever. Ultimately, we need to pass legislation that is just common sense, that says these young people who came here as kids and have worked doubly hard under the greatest of pressures and have made a success of their lives, like this young man, can stay in America and be part of our future. He is truly a healthcare hero, and he is an immigrant. He is an immigrant healthcare hero, and there are thousands just like him across America. We need them now more than ever. I see that Senator Cortez Masto is here. I know she wants to speak on this subject. I yield the floor to her.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. DURBIN
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-05-06-pt1-PgS2266
| null | 566
|
formal
|
based
| null |
white supremacist
|
Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I come to the floor today in the midst of this national crisis, this pandemic, to talk about one hero among, of course, many. First, I thank my friend Senator Durbin for his tireless leadership on a very important topic--and that is the topic of immigration--and for his taking the lead in bringing us together today to recognize heroes in healthcare during this coronavirus pandemic. As many of you know, this pandemic is personal for me. My husband John was hospitalized with the coronavirus not too long ago, and although he is a great person and I am so proud of him for coming through it all and giving his plasma recently, he is actually not the hero I am referring to. I am talking about an immigrant doctor who is on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic in Rochester, MN. She has asked that her name not be used publicly because she is applying for a green card. She came to the United States from her home country for postgraduate medical training and completed not one but two fellowships in critical care and pulmonary diseases at the Mayo Clinic, which happens to be where my husband gave the plasma, which we hope will save other lives. Under normal circumstances, an immigrant doctor who completes his or her postgraduate training in the United States has to leave the country for at least 2 years when their residency is complete. Now, let's look at that again. They have studied in an American medical school, they have completed their postgraduate training in the United States, but then they have to leave the country for 2 years when their residency is complete, just at a time when we need more doctors and more healthcare professionals and not less. Why? Because our immigration laws require them to be outside of the country for 2 years before they can apply to come back here on a work visa. But under the Conrad 30 program, doctors--and that is named after Kent Conrad, the Senator who once represented North Dakota. Since he left, I have taken this on, with many of my colleagues, to continue this program and make sure it gets reauthorized, and we would like to see it expanded. Why did he get involved in this in North Dakota? Well, that is because they had a shortage of doctors in rural areas, and under the Conrad 30 program, doctors who commit to caring for patients in an underserved area like rural communities or other areas that may be underserved, including urban areas, if they face a shortage of doctors, these doctors are allowed to start practicing in the United States immediately without having to wait 2 years. I just keep repeating this. They got their training in the United States. They got degrees in the United States. That is why for years I have led bipartisan legislation--which has been endorsed by the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association, and the National Rural Health Association--that would extend this program and allow international doctors trained in the United States to remain in the country if--if--they practice in underserved areas. It was through this program that this hero I am talking about today, this immigrant doctor, was able to stay inMinnesota and eventually began practicing at the Mayo Clinic as a critical care specialist, where she sees patients from all over rural areas of southern Minnesota. She was working in the intensive care unit when the first coronavirus cases started coming through the door. Critical care and pulmonary disease specialists are some of the most in-demand doctors during this pandemic, and as one of these specialists, this doctor has been managing patients on ventilators, patients with kidney failure, and patients with blood clots. She has cared for coronavirus patients on oxygen, and she manages the team that resuscitates patients whose hearts have stopped. This immigrant doctor has literally saved lives. Her hospital regularly provides telemedical support to other Mayo Clinic facilities, and they even helped a hospital in Georgia. And when the Mayo Clinic received clearance to provide assistance to a hospital in the Bronx where the medical staff was stretched dangerously thin, as we see on TV every single day, she volunteered. This immigrant doctor volunteered during her free time using the hospital's telemedicine equipment. Talking about her service during this pandemic, she has said: ``This is not a job, this is a calling. We do this for love.'' Her requirement to work in an underserved area as a condition of the Conrad 30 program ends this year. She has no plans to move and to leave our country and to stop providing care to patients if she can help it. She said: ``I love Minnesota. I hope Mayo never lets me go.'' I hope that too. She is an American hero, and we could use a lot more like her. Over the last 15 years, the Conrad 30 program has brought more than 15,000 doctors to underserved areas, including many rural areas that are short on doctors and rely on the program to fill the gap. I have been at VA hospitals in other parts of the country, and their No. 1 ask was this because they don't have enough doctors in the rural areas where their clinics are located to serve their patients. This is a commonsense program with bipartisan support. I introduced a bill to reauthorize the program, which we have successfully done in the past. I introduced a bill to reauthorize it with Senator Collins and Senator Rosen, and it has 15 cosponsors. Listen to the names here: Senators King, Ernst, Cramer, Coons, Blunt, Capito, Baldwin, Wyden, Thune, Merkley, Wicker, Carper, and Paul. What brings all these Senators together? It is not a common ideological belief on many issues; it is because they are looking out for their States, and they want to save the lives of people in their States, especially during this pandemic, by allowing doctors who have been trained in the United States of America, who have gotten their degrees, who have done their residencies here, to be able to stay in our country. Today I am asking all my colleagues to support its inclusion in the next piece of legislation that is coming our way that we must pass to address the coronavirus. I have also called on the administration to take action to increase the number of doctors who are here to help fight this pandemic and help alleviate the serious strain this pandemic has placed on our healthcare system. First, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services should resume expedited processing for employment-based visas for doctors. On March 20, USCIS announced a freeze on expedited processing during the pandemic, which would exacerbate our shortage of doctors, especially in underserved rural areas. With Representative Bradley Schneider from Illinois, I led a bipartisan group of 24 Senators--I again thank Senator Durbin, who has been such a leader on these issues, for his support for this--and 13 Members of the House in asking USCIS to expedite processing for doctors again. We still haven't received a response. Let's think about what has been happening since we sent that letter on March 20--the increasing number of deaths in the assisted living homes, including those in rural areas, which have been plagued by this pandemic, which have lost dozens of their residents to this pandemic. Think about some of the rural areas that have been hit hard that simply don't have the hospital beds or the ventilators. Think about all that is going on, the thousands and thousands of people who have lost their lives. And still we wait. March 20--a bipartisan group of Senators has asked for help since that freeze on March 20 was put into place. We await a response. Second, USCIS should give flexibility to health systems so that doctors on employment-based visas, like the Minnesota doctor, the hero I just told you about today who couldn't even have her name released when she is managing teams of people--not because she is here illegally, no; because she wants that chance to get her green card. Like that doctor whom I told you about today who can provide care where they need it the most, many doctors in similar circumstances are willing to volunteer to treat patients in the hardest hit areas, just like she did when she volunteered to help with the hospital in the Bronx. They are worried that doing so and leaving their home hospital will put their immigration status in jeopardy. Last month, I led a letter with Representative Tom Cole, Abby Finkenauer from Iowa, and Bradley Schneider, that was signed by 18 other Senators--again, including Senator Durbin and 29 House Members--urging USCIS to waive restrictions so that doctors can practice in crisis locations. Once again, we have not received a response. Is that because the President wants to take a back seat again to the Governors of this country, when, in fact, Federal policy is holding back not just equipment from going where we have hot spots but now also actual doctors and medical personnel? And if they are good enough to get a degree in a medical school in the United States and if they are good enough to practice in some areas of the country, they are not good enough to practice where we have the hot spots? Rather than acknowledging the help that immigrant doctors are providing during this public health emergency, this administration's rhetoric has made them feel, well, unwelcome. That would be a euphemism. It is one of the reasons that Minnesota doctor asked that I not use her name. When discussing the process of applying for a work visa, she noted: ``At the same time you're taking boards [medical boards] you are also filling out hundreds of pages of paperwork to prove that you're worth keeping.'' OK, picture this. While she is saving lives, managing the team that resuscitates people, volunteering her time to help at the hospital in the Bronx, caring for patients on ventilators and bringing their hearts back to life, she somehow has to prove to our government that she is someone worth keeping. She said: It is very disheartening at times. But she isn't giving up on us. She said: All of us who come from foreign countries, we are here because we want to be here. We love this country. For these brave men and women, it is so important that we do everything we can to protect them and their loved ones, not just from the uncertainty that comes with being immigrants but the risk of the current crisis. So many of our immigrant medical personnel have died, not just in our country but in other parts of the world as well. They have died saving lives for people in the country that they love. We need to ensure that all our doctors and frontline health workers have supplies and equipment, like face masks, gowns, and shoe covers, so that no one has to reuse their supplies and risk exposure to the virus. We need to implement a real national testing strategy so that we can get ahead of the virus and target resources accordingly. The testing blueprint announced by the administration on April 27 falls well short of a comprehensive testing plan and puts all responsibility for testing on the States. Two weeks ago, I was proud that we passed an interim relief package that included $25 billion to expand our Nation's coronavirus testing capacity. It will go a long way to ramp up molecular and serum testing--something that Mayo was a leader in across the country--to diagnose active virus infections, identify antibiotics against the virus, and support contact tracing. This investment is a start, but we know there is so much more work to be done to ensure Americans across thecountry have access to accurate testing technologies and innovative treatments that they need to reduce the risk of infection. Our healthcare workers on the frontlines, including our immigrant health heroes who sacrifice so much in the pursuit of medicine and service, deserve better. When the President goes after immigrants in his press conference, do you know whom I keep thinking of? I keep thinking of this doctor, this hero in my home State who risks her life every day managing these patients and managing teams of doctors because of her know-how and because of the trust that an institution like the Mayo Clinic has put in her. What are we thinking? These heroes should be heralded and not condemned. In closing, I want to share this quote from President Franklin Roosevelt: ``Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.'' That is exactly what these immigrant health heroes are doing. They chose to be in this country and to come here because, yes, they wanted a good life for themselves and their families, and they knew they were going to have to work hard to make that happen. They got a degree. They are on the frontlines. Then they chose to keep working and to save lives during an incredibly dangerous pandemic. They understand that courage is not the absence of fear--of course, they are afraid when they go to those jobs--but, rather, the assessment that something else is more important than fear. Their life's mission, to them, is more important than fear. Saving someone's grandma or saving someone's husband--they decided that is more important to them than fear. They choose service over fear. What I am asking our colleagues to do here is--we understand there is anti-immigrant sentiment out there. We know it. We hear it every day from the President. But I am asking you to actually believe that your service is more important than that fear that has been stoked. Certainly, a number of our colleagues decided that when they were willing to get on that bill--Democrats and Republicans--to reauthorize the Conrad 30 program to allow these immigrant heroes, these doctors who were trained in our country, to be able to keep doing their work. Let me again mention the names of the cosponsors of this bill: Collins, Rosen, King, Ernst, Cramer, Coons, Blunt, Capito, Baldwin, Wyden, Thune, Merkley, Wicker, Carper, and Paul, and, of course, I mentioned Senator Durbin. They are willing to do that, and there is so much more we can do. We still await an answer for why the visa processing for these healthcare workers was suspended. Service first, fear last--that is what these doctors did, and that is what we must do first. That is what we must do now. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
|
2020-01-06
|
Ms. KLOBUCHAR
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-05-06-pt1-PgS2270
| null | 567
|
formal
|
urban
| null |
racist
|
Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I come to the floor today in the midst of this national crisis, this pandemic, to talk about one hero among, of course, many. First, I thank my friend Senator Durbin for his tireless leadership on a very important topic--and that is the topic of immigration--and for his taking the lead in bringing us together today to recognize heroes in healthcare during this coronavirus pandemic. As many of you know, this pandemic is personal for me. My husband John was hospitalized with the coronavirus not too long ago, and although he is a great person and I am so proud of him for coming through it all and giving his plasma recently, he is actually not the hero I am referring to. I am talking about an immigrant doctor who is on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic in Rochester, MN. She has asked that her name not be used publicly because she is applying for a green card. She came to the United States from her home country for postgraduate medical training and completed not one but two fellowships in critical care and pulmonary diseases at the Mayo Clinic, which happens to be where my husband gave the plasma, which we hope will save other lives. Under normal circumstances, an immigrant doctor who completes his or her postgraduate training in the United States has to leave the country for at least 2 years when their residency is complete. Now, let's look at that again. They have studied in an American medical school, they have completed their postgraduate training in the United States, but then they have to leave the country for 2 years when their residency is complete, just at a time when we need more doctors and more healthcare professionals and not less. Why? Because our immigration laws require them to be outside of the country for 2 years before they can apply to come back here on a work visa. But under the Conrad 30 program, doctors--and that is named after Kent Conrad, the Senator who once represented North Dakota. Since he left, I have taken this on, with many of my colleagues, to continue this program and make sure it gets reauthorized, and we would like to see it expanded. Why did he get involved in this in North Dakota? Well, that is because they had a shortage of doctors in rural areas, and under the Conrad 30 program, doctors who commit to caring for patients in an underserved area like rural communities or other areas that may be underserved, including urban areas, if they face a shortage of doctors, these doctors are allowed to start practicing in the United States immediately without having to wait 2 years. I just keep repeating this. They got their training in the United States. They got degrees in the United States. That is why for years I have led bipartisan legislation--which has been endorsed by the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association, and the National Rural Health Association--that would extend this program and allow international doctors trained in the United States to remain in the country if--if--they practice in underserved areas. It was through this program that this hero I am talking about today, this immigrant doctor, was able to stay inMinnesota and eventually began practicing at the Mayo Clinic as a critical care specialist, where she sees patients from all over rural areas of southern Minnesota. She was working in the intensive care unit when the first coronavirus cases started coming through the door. Critical care and pulmonary disease specialists are some of the most in-demand doctors during this pandemic, and as one of these specialists, this doctor has been managing patients on ventilators, patients with kidney failure, and patients with blood clots. She has cared for coronavirus patients on oxygen, and she manages the team that resuscitates patients whose hearts have stopped. This immigrant doctor has literally saved lives. Her hospital regularly provides telemedical support to other Mayo Clinic facilities, and they even helped a hospital in Georgia. And when the Mayo Clinic received clearance to provide assistance to a hospital in the Bronx where the medical staff was stretched dangerously thin, as we see on TV every single day, she volunteered. This immigrant doctor volunteered during her free time using the hospital's telemedicine equipment. Talking about her service during this pandemic, she has said: ``This is not a job, this is a calling. We do this for love.'' Her requirement to work in an underserved area as a condition of the Conrad 30 program ends this year. She has no plans to move and to leave our country and to stop providing care to patients if she can help it. She said: ``I love Minnesota. I hope Mayo never lets me go.'' I hope that too. She is an American hero, and we could use a lot more like her. Over the last 15 years, the Conrad 30 program has brought more than 15,000 doctors to underserved areas, including many rural areas that are short on doctors and rely on the program to fill the gap. I have been at VA hospitals in other parts of the country, and their No. 1 ask was this because they don't have enough doctors in the rural areas where their clinics are located to serve their patients. This is a commonsense program with bipartisan support. I introduced a bill to reauthorize the program, which we have successfully done in the past. I introduced a bill to reauthorize it with Senator Collins and Senator Rosen, and it has 15 cosponsors. Listen to the names here: Senators King, Ernst, Cramer, Coons, Blunt, Capito, Baldwin, Wyden, Thune, Merkley, Wicker, Carper, and Paul. What brings all these Senators together? It is not a common ideological belief on many issues; it is because they are looking out for their States, and they want to save the lives of people in their States, especially during this pandemic, by allowing doctors who have been trained in the United States of America, who have gotten their degrees, who have done their residencies here, to be able to stay in our country. Today I am asking all my colleagues to support its inclusion in the next piece of legislation that is coming our way that we must pass to address the coronavirus. I have also called on the administration to take action to increase the number of doctors who are here to help fight this pandemic and help alleviate the serious strain this pandemic has placed on our healthcare system. First, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services should resume expedited processing for employment-based visas for doctors. On March 20, USCIS announced a freeze on expedited processing during the pandemic, which would exacerbate our shortage of doctors, especially in underserved rural areas. With Representative Bradley Schneider from Illinois, I led a bipartisan group of 24 Senators--I again thank Senator Durbin, who has been such a leader on these issues, for his support for this--and 13 Members of the House in asking USCIS to expedite processing for doctors again. We still haven't received a response. Let's think about what has been happening since we sent that letter on March 20--the increasing number of deaths in the assisted living homes, including those in rural areas, which have been plagued by this pandemic, which have lost dozens of their residents to this pandemic. Think about some of the rural areas that have been hit hard that simply don't have the hospital beds or the ventilators. Think about all that is going on, the thousands and thousands of people who have lost their lives. And still we wait. March 20--a bipartisan group of Senators has asked for help since that freeze on March 20 was put into place. We await a response. Second, USCIS should give flexibility to health systems so that doctors on employment-based visas, like the Minnesota doctor, the hero I just told you about today who couldn't even have her name released when she is managing teams of people--not because she is here illegally, no; because she wants that chance to get her green card. Like that doctor whom I told you about today who can provide care where they need it the most, many doctors in similar circumstances are willing to volunteer to treat patients in the hardest hit areas, just like she did when she volunteered to help with the hospital in the Bronx. They are worried that doing so and leaving their home hospital will put their immigration status in jeopardy. Last month, I led a letter with Representative Tom Cole, Abby Finkenauer from Iowa, and Bradley Schneider, that was signed by 18 other Senators--again, including Senator Durbin and 29 House Members--urging USCIS to waive restrictions so that doctors can practice in crisis locations. Once again, we have not received a response. Is that because the President wants to take a back seat again to the Governors of this country, when, in fact, Federal policy is holding back not just equipment from going where we have hot spots but now also actual doctors and medical personnel? And if they are good enough to get a degree in a medical school in the United States and if they are good enough to practice in some areas of the country, they are not good enough to practice where we have the hot spots? Rather than acknowledging the help that immigrant doctors are providing during this public health emergency, this administration's rhetoric has made them feel, well, unwelcome. That would be a euphemism. It is one of the reasons that Minnesota doctor asked that I not use her name. When discussing the process of applying for a work visa, she noted: ``At the same time you're taking boards [medical boards] you are also filling out hundreds of pages of paperwork to prove that you're worth keeping.'' OK, picture this. While she is saving lives, managing the team that resuscitates people, volunteering her time to help at the hospital in the Bronx, caring for patients on ventilators and bringing their hearts back to life, she somehow has to prove to our government that she is someone worth keeping. She said: It is very disheartening at times. But she isn't giving up on us. She said: All of us who come from foreign countries, we are here because we want to be here. We love this country. For these brave men and women, it is so important that we do everything we can to protect them and their loved ones, not just from the uncertainty that comes with being immigrants but the risk of the current crisis. So many of our immigrant medical personnel have died, not just in our country but in other parts of the world as well. They have died saving lives for people in the country that they love. We need to ensure that all our doctors and frontline health workers have supplies and equipment, like face masks, gowns, and shoe covers, so that no one has to reuse their supplies and risk exposure to the virus. We need to implement a real national testing strategy so that we can get ahead of the virus and target resources accordingly. The testing blueprint announced by the administration on April 27 falls well short of a comprehensive testing plan and puts all responsibility for testing on the States. Two weeks ago, I was proud that we passed an interim relief package that included $25 billion to expand our Nation's coronavirus testing capacity. It will go a long way to ramp up molecular and serum testing--something that Mayo was a leader in across the country--to diagnose active virus infections, identify antibiotics against the virus, and support contact tracing. This investment is a start, but we know there is so much more work to be done to ensure Americans across thecountry have access to accurate testing technologies and innovative treatments that they need to reduce the risk of infection. Our healthcare workers on the frontlines, including our immigrant health heroes who sacrifice so much in the pursuit of medicine and service, deserve better. When the President goes after immigrants in his press conference, do you know whom I keep thinking of? I keep thinking of this doctor, this hero in my home State who risks her life every day managing these patients and managing teams of doctors because of her know-how and because of the trust that an institution like the Mayo Clinic has put in her. What are we thinking? These heroes should be heralded and not condemned. In closing, I want to share this quote from President Franklin Roosevelt: ``Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.'' That is exactly what these immigrant health heroes are doing. They chose to be in this country and to come here because, yes, they wanted a good life for themselves and their families, and they knew they were going to have to work hard to make that happen. They got a degree. They are on the frontlines. Then they chose to keep working and to save lives during an incredibly dangerous pandemic. They understand that courage is not the absence of fear--of course, they are afraid when they go to those jobs--but, rather, the assessment that something else is more important than fear. Their life's mission, to them, is more important than fear. Saving someone's grandma or saving someone's husband--they decided that is more important to them than fear. They choose service over fear. What I am asking our colleagues to do here is--we understand there is anti-immigrant sentiment out there. We know it. We hear it every day from the President. But I am asking you to actually believe that your service is more important than that fear that has been stoked. Certainly, a number of our colleagues decided that when they were willing to get on that bill--Democrats and Republicans--to reauthorize the Conrad 30 program to allow these immigrant heroes, these doctors who were trained in our country, to be able to keep doing their work. Let me again mention the names of the cosponsors of this bill: Collins, Rosen, King, Ernst, Cramer, Coons, Blunt, Capito, Baldwin, Wyden, Thune, Merkley, Wicker, Carper, and Paul, and, of course, I mentioned Senator Durbin. They are willing to do that, and there is so much more we can do. We still await an answer for why the visa processing for these healthcare workers was suspended. Service first, fear last--that is what these doctors did, and that is what we must do first. That is what we must do now. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
|
2020-01-06
|
Ms. KLOBUCHAR
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-05-06-pt1-PgS2270
| null | 568
|
formal
|
single
| null |
homophobic
|
Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I come to the floor today in the midst of this national crisis, this pandemic, to talk about one hero among, of course, many. First, I thank my friend Senator Durbin for his tireless leadership on a very important topic--and that is the topic of immigration--and for his taking the lead in bringing us together today to recognize heroes in healthcare during this coronavirus pandemic. As many of you know, this pandemic is personal for me. My husband John was hospitalized with the coronavirus not too long ago, and although he is a great person and I am so proud of him for coming through it all and giving his plasma recently, he is actually not the hero I am referring to. I am talking about an immigrant doctor who is on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic in Rochester, MN. She has asked that her name not be used publicly because she is applying for a green card. She came to the United States from her home country for postgraduate medical training and completed not one but two fellowships in critical care and pulmonary diseases at the Mayo Clinic, which happens to be where my husband gave the plasma, which we hope will save other lives. Under normal circumstances, an immigrant doctor who completes his or her postgraduate training in the United States has to leave the country for at least 2 years when their residency is complete. Now, let's look at that again. They have studied in an American medical school, they have completed their postgraduate training in the United States, but then they have to leave the country for 2 years when their residency is complete, just at a time when we need more doctors and more healthcare professionals and not less. Why? Because our immigration laws require them to be outside of the country for 2 years before they can apply to come back here on a work visa. But under the Conrad 30 program, doctors--and that is named after Kent Conrad, the Senator who once represented North Dakota. Since he left, I have taken this on, with many of my colleagues, to continue this program and make sure it gets reauthorized, and we would like to see it expanded. Why did he get involved in this in North Dakota? Well, that is because they had a shortage of doctors in rural areas, and under the Conrad 30 program, doctors who commit to caring for patients in an underserved area like rural communities or other areas that may be underserved, including urban areas, if they face a shortage of doctors, these doctors are allowed to start practicing in the United States immediately without having to wait 2 years. I just keep repeating this. They got their training in the United States. They got degrees in the United States. That is why for years I have led bipartisan legislation--which has been endorsed by the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association, and the National Rural Health Association--that would extend this program and allow international doctors trained in the United States to remain in the country if--if--they practice in underserved areas. It was through this program that this hero I am talking about today, this immigrant doctor, was able to stay inMinnesota and eventually began practicing at the Mayo Clinic as a critical care specialist, where she sees patients from all over rural areas of southern Minnesota. She was working in the intensive care unit when the first coronavirus cases started coming through the door. Critical care and pulmonary disease specialists are some of the most in-demand doctors during this pandemic, and as one of these specialists, this doctor has been managing patients on ventilators, patients with kidney failure, and patients with blood clots. She has cared for coronavirus patients on oxygen, and she manages the team that resuscitates patients whose hearts have stopped. This immigrant doctor has literally saved lives. Her hospital regularly provides telemedical support to other Mayo Clinic facilities, and they even helped a hospital in Georgia. And when the Mayo Clinic received clearance to provide assistance to a hospital in the Bronx where the medical staff was stretched dangerously thin, as we see on TV every single day, she volunteered. This immigrant doctor volunteered during her free time using the hospital's telemedicine equipment. Talking about her service during this pandemic, she has said: ``This is not a job, this is a calling. We do this for love.'' Her requirement to work in an underserved area as a condition of the Conrad 30 program ends this year. She has no plans to move and to leave our country and to stop providing care to patients if she can help it. She said: ``I love Minnesota. I hope Mayo never lets me go.'' I hope that too. She is an American hero, and we could use a lot more like her. Over the last 15 years, the Conrad 30 program has brought more than 15,000 doctors to underserved areas, including many rural areas that are short on doctors and rely on the program to fill the gap. I have been at VA hospitals in other parts of the country, and their No. 1 ask was this because they don't have enough doctors in the rural areas where their clinics are located to serve their patients. This is a commonsense program with bipartisan support. I introduced a bill to reauthorize the program, which we have successfully done in the past. I introduced a bill to reauthorize it with Senator Collins and Senator Rosen, and it has 15 cosponsors. Listen to the names here: Senators King, Ernst, Cramer, Coons, Blunt, Capito, Baldwin, Wyden, Thune, Merkley, Wicker, Carper, and Paul. What brings all these Senators together? It is not a common ideological belief on many issues; it is because they are looking out for their States, and they want to save the lives of people in their States, especially during this pandemic, by allowing doctors who have been trained in the United States of America, who have gotten their degrees, who have done their residencies here, to be able to stay in our country. Today I am asking all my colleagues to support its inclusion in the next piece of legislation that is coming our way that we must pass to address the coronavirus. I have also called on the administration to take action to increase the number of doctors who are here to help fight this pandemic and help alleviate the serious strain this pandemic has placed on our healthcare system. First, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services should resume expedited processing for employment-based visas for doctors. On March 20, USCIS announced a freeze on expedited processing during the pandemic, which would exacerbate our shortage of doctors, especially in underserved rural areas. With Representative Bradley Schneider from Illinois, I led a bipartisan group of 24 Senators--I again thank Senator Durbin, who has been such a leader on these issues, for his support for this--and 13 Members of the House in asking USCIS to expedite processing for doctors again. We still haven't received a response. Let's think about what has been happening since we sent that letter on March 20--the increasing number of deaths in the assisted living homes, including those in rural areas, which have been plagued by this pandemic, which have lost dozens of their residents to this pandemic. Think about some of the rural areas that have been hit hard that simply don't have the hospital beds or the ventilators. Think about all that is going on, the thousands and thousands of people who have lost their lives. And still we wait. March 20--a bipartisan group of Senators has asked for help since that freeze on March 20 was put into place. We await a response. Second, USCIS should give flexibility to health systems so that doctors on employment-based visas, like the Minnesota doctor, the hero I just told you about today who couldn't even have her name released when she is managing teams of people--not because she is here illegally, no; because she wants that chance to get her green card. Like that doctor whom I told you about today who can provide care where they need it the most, many doctors in similar circumstances are willing to volunteer to treat patients in the hardest hit areas, just like she did when she volunteered to help with the hospital in the Bronx. They are worried that doing so and leaving their home hospital will put their immigration status in jeopardy. Last month, I led a letter with Representative Tom Cole, Abby Finkenauer from Iowa, and Bradley Schneider, that was signed by 18 other Senators--again, including Senator Durbin and 29 House Members--urging USCIS to waive restrictions so that doctors can practice in crisis locations. Once again, we have not received a response. Is that because the President wants to take a back seat again to the Governors of this country, when, in fact, Federal policy is holding back not just equipment from going where we have hot spots but now also actual doctors and medical personnel? And if they are good enough to get a degree in a medical school in the United States and if they are good enough to practice in some areas of the country, they are not good enough to practice where we have the hot spots? Rather than acknowledging the help that immigrant doctors are providing during this public health emergency, this administration's rhetoric has made them feel, well, unwelcome. That would be a euphemism. It is one of the reasons that Minnesota doctor asked that I not use her name. When discussing the process of applying for a work visa, she noted: ``At the same time you're taking boards [medical boards] you are also filling out hundreds of pages of paperwork to prove that you're worth keeping.'' OK, picture this. While she is saving lives, managing the team that resuscitates people, volunteering her time to help at the hospital in the Bronx, caring for patients on ventilators and bringing their hearts back to life, she somehow has to prove to our government that she is someone worth keeping. She said: It is very disheartening at times. But she isn't giving up on us. She said: All of us who come from foreign countries, we are here because we want to be here. We love this country. For these brave men and women, it is so important that we do everything we can to protect them and their loved ones, not just from the uncertainty that comes with being immigrants but the risk of the current crisis. So many of our immigrant medical personnel have died, not just in our country but in other parts of the world as well. They have died saving lives for people in the country that they love. We need to ensure that all our doctors and frontline health workers have supplies and equipment, like face masks, gowns, and shoe covers, so that no one has to reuse their supplies and risk exposure to the virus. We need to implement a real national testing strategy so that we can get ahead of the virus and target resources accordingly. The testing blueprint announced by the administration on April 27 falls well short of a comprehensive testing plan and puts all responsibility for testing on the States. Two weeks ago, I was proud that we passed an interim relief package that included $25 billion to expand our Nation's coronavirus testing capacity. It will go a long way to ramp up molecular and serum testing--something that Mayo was a leader in across the country--to diagnose active virus infections, identify antibiotics against the virus, and support contact tracing. This investment is a start, but we know there is so much more work to be done to ensure Americans across thecountry have access to accurate testing technologies and innovative treatments that they need to reduce the risk of infection. Our healthcare workers on the frontlines, including our immigrant health heroes who sacrifice so much in the pursuit of medicine and service, deserve better. When the President goes after immigrants in his press conference, do you know whom I keep thinking of? I keep thinking of this doctor, this hero in my home State who risks her life every day managing these patients and managing teams of doctors because of her know-how and because of the trust that an institution like the Mayo Clinic has put in her. What are we thinking? These heroes should be heralded and not condemned. In closing, I want to share this quote from President Franklin Roosevelt: ``Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.'' That is exactly what these immigrant health heroes are doing. They chose to be in this country and to come here because, yes, they wanted a good life for themselves and their families, and they knew they were going to have to work hard to make that happen. They got a degree. They are on the frontlines. Then they chose to keep working and to save lives during an incredibly dangerous pandemic. They understand that courage is not the absence of fear--of course, they are afraid when they go to those jobs--but, rather, the assessment that something else is more important than fear. Their life's mission, to them, is more important than fear. Saving someone's grandma or saving someone's husband--they decided that is more important to them than fear. They choose service over fear. What I am asking our colleagues to do here is--we understand there is anti-immigrant sentiment out there. We know it. We hear it every day from the President. But I am asking you to actually believe that your service is more important than that fear that has been stoked. Certainly, a number of our colleagues decided that when they were willing to get on that bill--Democrats and Republicans--to reauthorize the Conrad 30 program to allow these immigrant heroes, these doctors who were trained in our country, to be able to keep doing their work. Let me again mention the names of the cosponsors of this bill: Collins, Rosen, King, Ernst, Cramer, Coons, Blunt, Capito, Baldwin, Wyden, Thune, Merkley, Wicker, Carper, and Paul, and, of course, I mentioned Senator Durbin. They are willing to do that, and there is so much more we can do. We still await an answer for why the visa processing for these healthcare workers was suspended. Service first, fear last--that is what these doctors did, and that is what we must do first. That is what we must do now. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
|
2020-01-06
|
Ms. KLOBUCHAR
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-05-06-pt1-PgS2270
| null | 569
|
formal
|
you know who
| null |
antisemitic
|
Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I come to the floor today in the midst of this national crisis, this pandemic, to talk about one hero among, of course, many. First, I thank my friend Senator Durbin for his tireless leadership on a very important topic--and that is the topic of immigration--and for his taking the lead in bringing us together today to recognize heroes in healthcare during this coronavirus pandemic. As many of you know, this pandemic is personal for me. My husband John was hospitalized with the coronavirus not too long ago, and although he is a great person and I am so proud of him for coming through it all and giving his plasma recently, he is actually not the hero I am referring to. I am talking about an immigrant doctor who is on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic in Rochester, MN. She has asked that her name not be used publicly because she is applying for a green card. She came to the United States from her home country for postgraduate medical training and completed not one but two fellowships in critical care and pulmonary diseases at the Mayo Clinic, which happens to be where my husband gave the plasma, which we hope will save other lives. Under normal circumstances, an immigrant doctor who completes his or her postgraduate training in the United States has to leave the country for at least 2 years when their residency is complete. Now, let's look at that again. They have studied in an American medical school, they have completed their postgraduate training in the United States, but then they have to leave the country for 2 years when their residency is complete, just at a time when we need more doctors and more healthcare professionals and not less. Why? Because our immigration laws require them to be outside of the country for 2 years before they can apply to come back here on a work visa. But under the Conrad 30 program, doctors--and that is named after Kent Conrad, the Senator who once represented North Dakota. Since he left, I have taken this on, with many of my colleagues, to continue this program and make sure it gets reauthorized, and we would like to see it expanded. Why did he get involved in this in North Dakota? Well, that is because they had a shortage of doctors in rural areas, and under the Conrad 30 program, doctors who commit to caring for patients in an underserved area like rural communities or other areas that may be underserved, including urban areas, if they face a shortage of doctors, these doctors are allowed to start practicing in the United States immediately without having to wait 2 years. I just keep repeating this. They got their training in the United States. They got degrees in the United States. That is why for years I have led bipartisan legislation--which has been endorsed by the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association, and the National Rural Health Association--that would extend this program and allow international doctors trained in the United States to remain in the country if--if--they practice in underserved areas. It was through this program that this hero I am talking about today, this immigrant doctor, was able to stay inMinnesota and eventually began practicing at the Mayo Clinic as a critical care specialist, where she sees patients from all over rural areas of southern Minnesota. She was working in the intensive care unit when the first coronavirus cases started coming through the door. Critical care and pulmonary disease specialists are some of the most in-demand doctors during this pandemic, and as one of these specialists, this doctor has been managing patients on ventilators, patients with kidney failure, and patients with blood clots. She has cared for coronavirus patients on oxygen, and she manages the team that resuscitates patients whose hearts have stopped. This immigrant doctor has literally saved lives. Her hospital regularly provides telemedical support to other Mayo Clinic facilities, and they even helped a hospital in Georgia. And when the Mayo Clinic received clearance to provide assistance to a hospital in the Bronx where the medical staff was stretched dangerously thin, as we see on TV every single day, she volunteered. This immigrant doctor volunteered during her free time using the hospital's telemedicine equipment. Talking about her service during this pandemic, she has said: ``This is not a job, this is a calling. We do this for love.'' Her requirement to work in an underserved area as a condition of the Conrad 30 program ends this year. She has no plans to move and to leave our country and to stop providing care to patients if she can help it. She said: ``I love Minnesota. I hope Mayo never lets me go.'' I hope that too. She is an American hero, and we could use a lot more like her. Over the last 15 years, the Conrad 30 program has brought more than 15,000 doctors to underserved areas, including many rural areas that are short on doctors and rely on the program to fill the gap. I have been at VA hospitals in other parts of the country, and their No. 1 ask was this because they don't have enough doctors in the rural areas where their clinics are located to serve their patients. This is a commonsense program with bipartisan support. I introduced a bill to reauthorize the program, which we have successfully done in the past. I introduced a bill to reauthorize it with Senator Collins and Senator Rosen, and it has 15 cosponsors. Listen to the names here: Senators King, Ernst, Cramer, Coons, Blunt, Capito, Baldwin, Wyden, Thune, Merkley, Wicker, Carper, and Paul. What brings all these Senators together? It is not a common ideological belief on many issues; it is because they are looking out for their States, and they want to save the lives of people in their States, especially during this pandemic, by allowing doctors who have been trained in the United States of America, who have gotten their degrees, who have done their residencies here, to be able to stay in our country. Today I am asking all my colleagues to support its inclusion in the next piece of legislation that is coming our way that we must pass to address the coronavirus. I have also called on the administration to take action to increase the number of doctors who are here to help fight this pandemic and help alleviate the serious strain this pandemic has placed on our healthcare system. First, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services should resume expedited processing for employment-based visas for doctors. On March 20, USCIS announced a freeze on expedited processing during the pandemic, which would exacerbate our shortage of doctors, especially in underserved rural areas. With Representative Bradley Schneider from Illinois, I led a bipartisan group of 24 Senators--I again thank Senator Durbin, who has been such a leader on these issues, for his support for this--and 13 Members of the House in asking USCIS to expedite processing for doctors again. We still haven't received a response. Let's think about what has been happening since we sent that letter on March 20--the increasing number of deaths in the assisted living homes, including those in rural areas, which have been plagued by this pandemic, which have lost dozens of their residents to this pandemic. Think about some of the rural areas that have been hit hard that simply don't have the hospital beds or the ventilators. Think about all that is going on, the thousands and thousands of people who have lost their lives. And still we wait. March 20--a bipartisan group of Senators has asked for help since that freeze on March 20 was put into place. We await a response. Second, USCIS should give flexibility to health systems so that doctors on employment-based visas, like the Minnesota doctor, the hero I just told you about today who couldn't even have her name released when she is managing teams of people--not because she is here illegally, no; because she wants that chance to get her green card. Like that doctor whom I told you about today who can provide care where they need it the most, many doctors in similar circumstances are willing to volunteer to treat patients in the hardest hit areas, just like she did when she volunteered to help with the hospital in the Bronx. They are worried that doing so and leaving their home hospital will put their immigration status in jeopardy. Last month, I led a letter with Representative Tom Cole, Abby Finkenauer from Iowa, and Bradley Schneider, that was signed by 18 other Senators--again, including Senator Durbin and 29 House Members--urging USCIS to waive restrictions so that doctors can practice in crisis locations. Once again, we have not received a response. Is that because the President wants to take a back seat again to the Governors of this country, when, in fact, Federal policy is holding back not just equipment from going where we have hot spots but now also actual doctors and medical personnel? And if they are good enough to get a degree in a medical school in the United States and if they are good enough to practice in some areas of the country, they are not good enough to practice where we have the hot spots? Rather than acknowledging the help that immigrant doctors are providing during this public health emergency, this administration's rhetoric has made them feel, well, unwelcome. That would be a euphemism. It is one of the reasons that Minnesota doctor asked that I not use her name. When discussing the process of applying for a work visa, she noted: ``At the same time you're taking boards [medical boards] you are also filling out hundreds of pages of paperwork to prove that you're worth keeping.'' OK, picture this. While she is saving lives, managing the team that resuscitates people, volunteering her time to help at the hospital in the Bronx, caring for patients on ventilators and bringing their hearts back to life, she somehow has to prove to our government that she is someone worth keeping. She said: It is very disheartening at times. But she isn't giving up on us. She said: All of us who come from foreign countries, we are here because we want to be here. We love this country. For these brave men and women, it is so important that we do everything we can to protect them and their loved ones, not just from the uncertainty that comes with being immigrants but the risk of the current crisis. So many of our immigrant medical personnel have died, not just in our country but in other parts of the world as well. They have died saving lives for people in the country that they love. We need to ensure that all our doctors and frontline health workers have supplies and equipment, like face masks, gowns, and shoe covers, so that no one has to reuse their supplies and risk exposure to the virus. We need to implement a real national testing strategy so that we can get ahead of the virus and target resources accordingly. The testing blueprint announced by the administration on April 27 falls well short of a comprehensive testing plan and puts all responsibility for testing on the States. Two weeks ago, I was proud that we passed an interim relief package that included $25 billion to expand our Nation's coronavirus testing capacity. It will go a long way to ramp up molecular and serum testing--something that Mayo was a leader in across the country--to diagnose active virus infections, identify antibiotics against the virus, and support contact tracing. This investment is a start, but we know there is so much more work to be done to ensure Americans across thecountry have access to accurate testing technologies and innovative treatments that they need to reduce the risk of infection. Our healthcare workers on the frontlines, including our immigrant health heroes who sacrifice so much in the pursuit of medicine and service, deserve better. When the President goes after immigrants in his press conference, do you know whom I keep thinking of? I keep thinking of this doctor, this hero in my home State who risks her life every day managing these patients and managing teams of doctors because of her know-how and because of the trust that an institution like the Mayo Clinic has put in her. What are we thinking? These heroes should be heralded and not condemned. In closing, I want to share this quote from President Franklin Roosevelt: ``Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.'' That is exactly what these immigrant health heroes are doing. They chose to be in this country and to come here because, yes, they wanted a good life for themselves and their families, and they knew they were going to have to work hard to make that happen. They got a degree. They are on the frontlines. Then they chose to keep working and to save lives during an incredibly dangerous pandemic. They understand that courage is not the absence of fear--of course, they are afraid when they go to those jobs--but, rather, the assessment that something else is more important than fear. Their life's mission, to them, is more important than fear. Saving someone's grandma or saving someone's husband--they decided that is more important to them than fear. They choose service over fear. What I am asking our colleagues to do here is--we understand there is anti-immigrant sentiment out there. We know it. We hear it every day from the President. But I am asking you to actually believe that your service is more important than that fear that has been stoked. Certainly, a number of our colleagues decided that when they were willing to get on that bill--Democrats and Republicans--to reauthorize the Conrad 30 program to allow these immigrant heroes, these doctors who were trained in our country, to be able to keep doing their work. Let me again mention the names of the cosponsors of this bill: Collins, Rosen, King, Ernst, Cramer, Coons, Blunt, Capito, Baldwin, Wyden, Thune, Merkley, Wicker, Carper, and Paul, and, of course, I mentioned Senator Durbin. They are willing to do that, and there is so much more we can do. We still await an answer for why the visa processing for these healthcare workers was suspended. Service first, fear last--that is what these doctors did, and that is what we must do first. That is what we must do now. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
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2020-01-06
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Ms. KLOBUCHAR
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Senate
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CREC-2020-05-06-pt1-PgS2270
| null | 570
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formal
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job creation
| null |
conservative
|
Mr. CARDIN. Madam President, I take this time to go over with my colleagues the status of where we are in regard to the provisions in the CARES Act that relate to small businesses. First, I want to make it clear that our top priority for America's businesses, whether they be small businesses or large businesses, is to get this COVID-19 behind us, to stop the spread of this deadly disease, and to give confidence back to the American people that it is safe to pursue their economic desires and therefore to have businesses be able to go back to a situation where they have customers and they can be open for business. We have appropriated significant resources in order to make sure we do what is right financially to deal with this deadly disease, and we have provided the tools to protect our economy. Let me talk a little bit about the attention to small business. I am pleased and proud to be the ranking Democrat on the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee. I serve with Senator Rubio, who is the chairman of the committee. We have worked together, Democrats and Republicans, in order to help small businesses during this pandemic. We did that because we understand that small businesses do not have the same degree of financial resiliency that larger companies have. When they are going through an emergency situation, when they are going through a pandemic, they don't have the same capacity to get credit and to get the cash they need that larger companies have. We also understand that small business is where the job creation mostly will take place in our country. Most jobs are created through smaller companies. We also understand that smaller companies are more innovative. They come up with new and creative ways in order to build our economy. But we recognized that we had to do something to make sure they could survive through the pandemic, and that is where the CARES Act came in. On a bipartisan basis, we crafted new tools under the Small Business Administration to help small businesses. I was proud to work with Senator Rubio, Senator Shaheen, and Senator Collins. The four of us got together well before the CARES Act was brought to the floor of the U.S. Senate in order to deal with what is necessary to keep small businesses afloat during the pandemic. New tools were created, and the CARES Act enacted tools that can help small businesses survive this pandemic. The program that is getting the most attention is the Paycheck Protection Program, the PPP program. In the original CARES Act, we authorized and appropriated $349 billion for that program, and then we replenished in a second round an additional $310 billion, for a total of $659 billion for the PPP program. It is a program in which small businesses go to their financial institution and take out a 7(a) loan, which is a loan that is provided for under the Small Business Act, but there are private lenders that lend the money to the small businesses. But we made special provisions in this law to provide 100 percent Federal guarantee so that there is no risk to the borrower. We made it easier for companies to be able to get those 7(a) loans and provided additional lenders for other communities. We expanded the 7(a) program to include not only conventional, for-profit small businesses but also nonprofit businesses, as well as individual proprietors. To date, the program has been very successful. Over 4 million 7(a) loans have been made under the Paycheck Protection Program. But we have concerns. Let me talk a little bit about the concerns we have. One of our concerns is that it has been difficult for the underserved community, the underbanked community, to be able to get these 7(a) loans as a priority. We failed them in the first round. It was the larger companies that had established relationships with their banks that got priority on the processing of these loans, so that minority businesses, women-owned businesses, businesses located in rural communities, and veteran-owned businesses did not receive the same attention as the larger businesses did. So our first priority is to find out exactly how the program is working. We need to get the data. We need to know where these loans were made. We need to know what industries got the different loans. We need to know the location of these loans. We need to know the size by dollar value and by number of employees. We also need to know how the different provisions of the PPP program have been allocated by loans. For example, we made exceptions on the 500-employee limit for those companies that come under the NAICS code 72--this is our hospitality industry--and for good reason: They are really hurting during this time. We need to know how many hotels and how many restaurants qualified under the NAICS code exception. We need to know how many franchisees have been able to get loans. We need to know how much went to the nonprofit community and how much went to the self-employed community. For that reason, I have introduced legislation with Senator Shaheen and Senator Schumer to require the SBA to makethat information available to us on a very regular basis. We need to get that information in order to properly carry out our oversight function. Today, the Small Business Committee in the Senate had a briefing with Secretary Mnuchin and Administrator Carranza, and we talked about one of the problems we have in administering this law. There is a self-certification; that is, the business makes the certification that they meet the standards and need under the act. We are concerned that there may have been abuses. But until we see the information, it is difficult for us to do our respective oversight. We don't know if we still have adequate funding. To date, there has been somewhere around--over $500 billion, closer to $600 billion has already been lent out; $550-some billion has already been lent out under this program. Are we going to need more money? Until we get this information, we don't know what the future funding needs are going to be. So we need to be able to get that information so we can provide adequate resources. I must tell you that I think every Member of the Senate has been approached with ways this program can be made better. There are questions as to why certain groups are eligible and others are not. There is going to be a need for modification in this program, and it will be difficult for us to make those modifications unless we get the data we need to understand where the loans have been made. There is a second program that was created under the CARES Act and expanded under the CARES Act, and that is the EIDL Program, the Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program, and we added a grant program to that. The initial CARES Act provided $10 billion. When we went through the second round of funding, we put another $60 billion into this program. Why did we do that? Because the loan program under EIDL, which is an emergency program for businesses that have suffered disasters, and COVID-19 qualifies as that, gives relief beyond just the 8 weeks of payroll and the other expenses covered under the PPP program. So small businesses need help with working capital. They can get that help under the EIDL Loan Program. A small business might need an immediate influx of cash. They can get that under the grant program under EIDL, up to $10,000. Yes, when the programs were announced, they were overprescribed. We had over 1 million small businesses make immediate applications for these funds, and the Small Business Administration was overwhelmed. That is why we provided, in addition to the original $10 billion for the grant program, another $10 billion. And in addition to the loaning capacity, we put another $50 billion into that program so they could execute $300 billion worth of loans. But it has been very slow at the SBA, which is a concern of ours. Only about 50,000 loans have been successfully processed under EIDL. We just got that information today. Yes, there have been over 1 million grants given out. Most of them have been under $10,000, whereas the maximum we thought most small businesses would get is a $10,000 grant. There needs to be better coordination between the PPP program and the EIDL Program, and we must make sure that the window remains open. But, today, a non-agricultural business that applies for an EIDL loan is told that they can't process that loan, that the window is basically closed. That is not the intent of Congress. We want to make sure those windows are open. So I come here today to tell you that the first priority is that we need to get the facts, and we need to fix the program to make sure it works well. But I want to qualify that by saying how proud we are of the men and women at the SBA and Treasury. They are implementing this new program literally overnight and working 24 hours a day in order to make sure this program can work. We recognize that, and we recognize this is a major challenge, but we need to make sure the program works right. We need oversight and accountability, and we can't do that oversight and accountability unless we get all of the facts and unless we get the information. Those who abuse the program need to be held accountable. I was pleased to hear Secretary Mnuchin talk about that today in the briefing to our committee. We have to have oversight as to the program working efficiently. We also have to make sure that we take care of the problems that we have seen in the program with the underserved community. We can do a better job in reaching those businesses that are traditionally underserved. We specifically allocated $60 billion of PPP to smaller financial institutions. We now need to make sure they really get to the institutions that can serve minority small businesses, that can serve those smaller of the small businesses, that can serve women-owned businesses and veteran-owned businesses and businesses located in rural communities. I would suggest that we need to make sure that the CDFIs and minority depository institutions get their fair share of allocations under the PPP program in order to reach these hard-to-serve small businesses. Yes, we do need to look at how we can modify the program to make it work even better. We recognize that when we crafted the program, we thought that 8 weeks would be enough. We now know that our economy in most of the country is not going to be up and running within that 8-week period. How do we improve that program? I want to tell you that we all recognize that the Paycheck Protection Program may not be enough. Even in conjunction with the EIDL program, it may not be enough because businesses are not returning to normal within the next few weeks. We need to design a program that provides the next level of relief to those small businesses that really need it, those that have had significant revenue losses, those small businesses that are really small businesses, like the mom-and-pop-type businesses, and, yes, those small businesses that have traditionally been left out--the minority-owned businesses, and women-owned businesses, and businesses in smaller, rural communities, and veteran-owned businesses. The success of the PPP program and the success of the EIDL program were because Democrats and Republicans worked together in a strong bipartisan manner. We are continuing to do that in the Small Business Committee. I applaud our leader, Senator Rubio, for reaching out to work together between Democrats and Republicans. We need to continue to work together and enact the type of oversight that is necessary for the programs that are currently existing and make the modifications so these programs can work effectively and well. We heard today about the inflexibility of the 8-week period and how we need to deal with that. We need to work together to improve the program and to make sure that the next level of help for small businesses is targeted to those small businesses that really need the help so that we can continue to have an economy that can grow, that can create jobs, that can be innovative, and that protects the ability of small business owners to be able to participate in our economy. I yield the floor.
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2020-01-06
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Mr. CARDIN
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Senate
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CREC-2020-05-06-pt1-PgS2272
| null | 571
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formal
|
Reagan
| null |
white supremacist
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Mr. CARPER. I have come today to talk about a couple of bills that the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works reported out today unanimously that would vastly improve our Nation's water infrastructure. What does infrastructure include? It includes the pipes that bring us our water or that take our wastewater where it can be treated. Infrastructure includes our dams, includes our harbors, our ports, our waterways--all that and a whole lot more. When we talk about improving our water infrastructure, what we are really talking about is keeping the promises afforded to every American through the Declaration of Independence. Remember those words: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? The legislation that we acted on today--the two bills that will be combined into one later on, on the floor--called the Water Resources Development Act, the underlying message is that our work today directly reflects those words in the Declaration of Independence: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Certainly, none of those things--life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness--are possible without access to clean water, whether it is to wash our hands or to drink. We can't have life without clean water to drink. The COVID-19 pandemic has reminded us of that too--just how important it is to have access to clean water to wash our hands and soap to wash our hands. We are reminded daily--I would say almost hourly--to wash our hands with soap and water. It is a simple yet effective way to prevent the spread of this deadly, virulent disease. In our committee today, the Environment and Public Works Committee, Senator Sullivan from Alaska talked about the Native Americans who live in his State who don't have running water. They don't have a spigot to turn on. They don't even have the ability to flush toilets. For them, the idea that you can actually do those things is just a dream that they could never imagine being realized. The thing is that too many communities across our country do not have access to clean water because of harmful contamination in their groundwater or water supply pipes. Sadly, this public health disparity usually goes hand in hand with economic opportunity. While water is the essence of life, it is also an essential part of our economy. More than 99 percent of the U.S. overseas trade--more than 99 percent of U.S. overseas trade--moves through our waterways. Imagine that. Most people would never imagine that. Our Nation's water infrastructure, our ports, our shipping channels, and other related projects support economic growth, facilitate commerce, sustain jobs, and create new jobs as well. Americans cannot truly pursue happiness without the economic opportunity that comes with having strong water infrastructure, a lot of which we can't see--we have been joined on the floor by the chairman of our committee. There are pipes and wastewater treatment plants and the facilities that clean the water for us; we don't see those. Fortunately, somebody does--somebody builds them, somebody maintains them--in order for us to have that life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Well, today, our committee, led by John Barrasso, Senator from Wyoming--I happen to have the privilege of being the ranking Democrat on that committee--we approved two bills that are going to help us keep those promises laid out in that Declaration of Independence--life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. America's Water Infrastructure Act of 2020 and the Drinking Water Infrastructure Act of 2020 will help the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency make improvements to key water infrastructure systems throughout our country. The programs we passed in our committee today will support the Army Corps of Engineers' operation and maintenance of--listen to this--13,000 miles of commercial, deep-draft ship channels--13,000 miles--and 12,000 miles of commercial inland waterways. I had explained earlier, Mr. Chairman, before you joined, how 99 percent of the cargo that we send to other countries or that comes to us comes by ship. It doesn't come by airplanes; it doesn't come by train. It comes by ships. Those ships don't move without waterways largely maintained by theArmy Corps of Engineers. These are little known projects that keep our economy moving. They are essential to our way of life as well. What comes into the Port of Los Angeles today will be on shelves in stores in the Midwest a day or so later. In Delaware, we have a port on the Delaware River. It is called the Port of Wilmington, not far from where my wife and I live. It supports more than 19,000 jobs in our region. For a big State, 19,000 jobs is not much. For Delaware, that is a huge deal. The Port of Wilmington is the United States' top seaport for fresh fruit imports. If you happen to live in the eastern part of the United States and you got up and had cereal this morning with some banana on your cereal, there is a good chance that that banana came through Port Wilmington. The Army Corps is working diligently with our port on an expansion project that will open a channel to a new containment facility just a couple miles north of the current port along the Delaware River. The Army Corps is responsible for dredging and maintaining access to this new channel which, over time, will support more commerce, more jobs for our region--not just for our State, but for our region. For such a small State, if you were to stand and draw a circle around the house where my wife and I live, in about a 10-mile radius, you cover New Jersey, you cover Pennsylvania, you get pretty darn close to Maryland as well. So the impact will be regional. In addition to authorizing necessary Corps projects, the two bills that we reported out of our committee today unanimously included authorizing the Clean Water Revolving Loan Fund for the first time since 1987. We used to be able to provide grant programs to fund water projects in States, to help fund water projects, to help fund wastewater treatment projects in our States, and we changed that when Ronald Reagan was President, and then we have these revolving loan funds. The Federal Government replenishes them every now and then. The States invest the money out of those funds, but we haven't reauthorized the Clean Water Revolving Fund which focuses less on drinking water and more on cleaning water, reducing the effluent it is putting out in our community. So many of our communities rely on these funds to improve their wastewater systems. In the drinking water bill, a corollary, we also authorized more than a half billion dollars to provide critical drinking water infrastructure through the Small and Disadvantaged Communities grant program. I just talked earlier, when I spoke of Senator Dan Sullivan's comments at our hearing today, we talked about Native American communities in his State who don't have flush toilets. In a number of cases, they don't turn on the faucets and the clean water just comes out. There are other communities, not just there, in my State at one time, not long ago, in other States where there are disadvantaged communities, and we have a grant program that we are going to use to help more and more of them--not all of them--and this will help us keep the promise of clean and safe drinking water, maybe not for every American, but more Americans, no matter what their ZIP Code is or what kind of bank account they have. I think of Matthew 25--I don't care what our faith is--Matthew 25 starts out with these words: When I was thirsty, did you give me a drink; when I was hungry, did you feed me? Well, when I was thirsty and I didn't have any clean water to drink, what did you do about it? Well, in this bill, we do something about it, and I am proud of what we have done. As we work to ensure clean water for all, our drinking water bill will continue our work to address what are called ``forever chemicals.'' A forever chemical is a chemical that doesn't degrade, and there is a word that is about a mile long--there are a couple of words that describe it--we call it PFAS. That is the acronym. I am not big on acronyms, but I like this one a lot. There are thousands of ``forever chemicals'' that just don't degrade in our environment. For the most part, they are not dangerous, but a couple of them are really dangerous, and they can lead to thyroid and liver disorders. They can increase the risk of cancer. They can adversely affect people's immune systems. We have a pretty good idea of which ones they are, and we need to do something about it. We sought to do that early this year and late last year, through other legislation. We have an opportunity with the bill that we reported out today to do more good work on addressing these forever chemicals. One of the ways is by developing a clean drinking water standard for two of them that are most concerning: PFOA and PFOS. Between today, reporting the bill out of committee, and the time we come back to the floor to debate it here, we have an opportunity, I hope, to do even more good work in addressing that. Madam President, I know you have a military base in your State. I have been to one or two of them. We have one big military base in our State, the Dover Air Force Base. It is the biggest employer in the central and southern part of our State: 6,000 uniformed and civilian personnel. They have some of the biggest planes in the world, C-5, C-17. It is a cargo base. It has been recognized many times as the best cargo base in the world, best Air Force base in the world too. About 5, 6, 7 years ago, one of our C-5s took off--they fly around the world--they had a full load of fuel, full load of cargo, and as they took off, the flight engineer noticed that an engine light came on from one of the engines--not a good sign--and the flight engineer turned off--not that engine--turned off another engine, and then he had two engines working and two engines not working. Long story short, the airplane came around and tried to land again where it had just taken off. It crashed a mile short of the runway, and fortunately, nobody was killed. The fire department came rushing out and foamed down the area and helped put out the fire. Nobody died. I am sad to say that, when I was on Active Duty as a naval flight officer at a naval air station one morning, driving into work many years ago, there was a huge fire. One NASA airplane, big plane, landed on top of one of the Navy airplanes. It killed everybody. I think one person survived in the whole crash. Again, folks, firefighters rushed out and tried to save lives with this firefighting foam. The true irony is that the firefighting foam which is used to save lives in air crashes actually, when it rains, it gets washed into the ground and a lot of times ends up in wells and groundwater that people drink and consume, and it creates very serious health results for them. At any rate, between today and the time our bills come to the floor, we hope to make a lot more progress in adjusting those for everyone. While millions of Americans rely on the Army Corps projects to safely navigate our waters, stay safe from flooding and storm damage, and reap the benefits of healthy aquatic ecosystems and marshlands, we know impacts of climate change propose a real threat to public safety and to the durability of our infrastructure. I would like to use the example of Ellicott City, MD--not even 30, 40 miles from here. A couple years ago, within 18 months of each other, they had two 1,000-year floods. What is a 1,000-year flood? It is a flood that is supposed to occur every 1,000 years. We had two of them within 18 months of each other, and we are seeing that kind of extreme weather in places all over the country, and not only does it wreak havoc at our homes and our businesses and our transportation system, but also our drinking water systems. One of the things that we do in our bill is to address that. These two bills expand grants that will help small and medium-sized communities increase the resiliency of their water systems to natural hazards and extreme weather, like what was experienced in Ellicott City and any number of places around our country. Before I yield the floor to my friend and colleague, our chairman, John Barrasso, who is patiently waiting for me to stop talking, I want to thank him again. I already thanked him once, but now that he is here, I want to thank him again. I want to thank him for his leadership and helping us to move this legislation through. We have all heard the saying--I think it was Joe Biden that said it--just because somebody is my adversary or somebody is on the other side of the aisle, they don't have to be my enemy. We are actually--don't let this word get out in Wyoming--I think we couldsay we are friends and we like to work together. Our staffs, most days, like to work together, hopefully. But I want to thank his staff. I want to thank all the Senators. He and I pleaded with our colleagues from all 50 States to give us their ideas of what should go into this bill, and a bunch of our colleagues--a majority of them--did that. So it is not just something we dreamed up in our committee, but had great input from a whole bunch of our colleagues, Democrats and Republicans, and we were able to put together a bill that passed our committee unanimously. I just want to mention the names of a couple of people on both sides of the aisle, and they include Richard Russell, Brian Clifford, Andy Harding, Lizzie Olsen, Susan Lucas, Craig Thomas, Beth Lange, Christina Rabuse, Matt Leggett, who worked for Senator Barrasso; and on my team, Mary Frances Repko, our staff director, Mark Mendenhall, Annie D'Amato, and John Kane, who works harder than just about any person I have ever had the privilege of working with. Lastly, Senator Barrasso introduced me last year or so to a fellow from Wyoming who had been nominated to be a very senior official at the Commerce Department, and he had been nominated for a position where he would be Assistant Secretary of the Interior to handle, among other things, national parks, national wildlife refuges, fish and wildlife--big job, important job for all of our States--certainly mine and certainly Wyoming. During his testimony, Rob Wallace testified, I thought, so well, and it is hard not to like the guy. I liked him almost immediately, but he said these words to our committee. He said: Bipartisan solutions are lasting solutions. That is what he said: Bipartisan solutions are lasting solutions. I sat there that day thinking: Boy, he nailed it. I have stolen that line--sometimes, I give him credit for it; sometimes, I don't--but think about that. Bipartisan solutions are lasting solutions. We need the lasting solutions. We especially need them with respect to making sure those words in the Declaration of Independence--life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness--aren't just words on a sheet of paper or old words on a piece of parchment, but they are real words today, and we have renewed our commitment to them, and we have done that with the legislation we reported out of our committee. We still have some work to do. Harbor maintenance, we need to try and resolve that--people have strong views, not always in sync with one another--and the legislation on forever chemicals and how do we deal with that in ways that are smart and respect science and enable us to make sure that we better protect people's health. So these bills, in closing, are a win, win, win, for our Nation's economy, for our public health, and for our environment at a time we desperately need it. As we face down the COVID-19 crisis before us, I hope that these two pieces of legislation will serve as a model for how we can continue to work together, which is what I intend to do with our chairman. I yield the floor.
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2020-01-06
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Mr. CARPER
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Senate
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CREC-2020-05-06-pt1-PgS2275
| null | 572
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formal
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terrorist
| null |
Islamophobic
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Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, a couple of months ago, I introduced legislation here on the floor of the Senate with my colleague Dick Durbin from Illinois. He is on the other side of the aisle. In a bipartisan way, we said: Let's let Congress vote remotely. Let's use safe and secure means to do that. The technology is out there to do that. It has to be safe, but let's let Congress weigh in and vote remotely when we can't meet. These last 6 weeks are an example of that, but it is not just about this pandemic. I have actually been talking about this for 25 years because I believe it is important for Congress to be able to meet when there is any reason we can't come together or shouldn't come together. After 9/11, a lot of people were more focused on this because a terrorist act--particularly a bioterrorist act--could have the same effect, of course. There have been periods of time where Congress has not been able to meet here, and there have been other periods of time like during the Cold War, when there was actually a bunker set up in the hills of West Virginia somewhere for us to convene for fear that there could be a nuclear attack. So Congress has thought about this before, but Congress has never been able to put in place the ability for us to vote remotely, for us to have debate remotely, and for us to have hearings remotely. I think that is too bad because we are the voice of the people. We represent individual congressional districts on the other side of the Capitol. We represent individual States here. The Constitution set it up so that we are out here listening to people we represent, and we come here to represent that voice. The executive branch has its own role, and it is a very important one, but it shouldn't take over the legislative branch role because they are different, and the Founders intended it that way, to have this separation of powers By the way, other countries have done this. The United Kingdom has begun to conduct its proceedings remotely. The EU has started to vote remotely--the European Union. There are several other countries that have come up with one way or another to work remotely--to telework, in essence. By the way, about 14 States have also figured this out so that they can convene meetings and so on, and some of them even vote remotely. So I think it is time to do it. Last week, the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which I chair, had the first remote hearing in the history of the Congress, and it worked really well. We had three witnesses. We had several Members of the Senate participate. The witnesses were all around the country, so we didn't have to call them here to Washington. We didn't have to gather as a group and therefore risk one of us infecting another or exposing us to the coronavirus. The witnesses were testifying from their homes, from a living room in one case. One of the witnesses actually testified from the cab of a pickup truck because she was at her sister's placeand didn't want to do it in the house. So she got in the pickup truck with her laptop, and it worked great. It worked great. We were able to ask questions and get answers. It worked just like a regular hearing. I was appreciative that the Rules Committee allowed us to do that. By the way, the technology is, in a sense, off-the-shelf technology because it is their technology. They have it. We didn't have to recreate the wheel. It worked last week. We used it. I think it can be a template for other hearings. By the way, I am pleased to say that today, I participated in two more remote hearings. Even though we are here in session, we are having remote hearings because it is not wise for us to all gather together with the staff and with the Capitol Police and others. It is safer for us to do this remotely. By the way, both of these hearings went well. One was in the Finance Committee, and the other was in the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. By the way, our hearing last week was online. You can check it out at psi.gov. The two hearings today were both online, live-streamed today. This does not mean that you cut out the public. In fact, I would say it is just the opposite. During these last 6 weeks, we could have had hearings every week and kept the public informed as to what we were thinking and gotten more input from the public in an official way and in a way that was so transparent that everybody could have been engaged in it, if they wanted to, just like C-SPAN, except it is online. This is something we can now do, and I hope we will continue to do it. I hope we will be sure that, as we do this, we also take serious this idea of not just having hearings and not just having the ability to interact as Republicans and Democrats but actually have the ability to vote remotely when we shouldn't be here. Again, it needs to be safe, and I think we can do that. I am convinced that if we put our minds to it, the technology is not the problem; the problem is tradition. I am not against tradition. A lot of them make sense. But do you know what? Tradition around here has changed a lot over the years. There didn't used to be a filibuster, as an example, which is how we live right now, to get 60 votes for everything. That is OK. I am not saying it is a bad tradition to have changed, but the point is that we change tradition here a lot, and it is time for us to look at this. It is time for us essentially to catch up. Most of the people I represent are doing this. To one extent or another, they are teleworking. Most people in America today are realizing that you can actually get a lot done online, remotely. Today, I talked to some healthcare professionals who were telling me about one of the rare silver linings in this dark cloud that has descended upon our country. It is the fact that telemedicine has been proved over the past couple of months to be pretty darn effective. In many cases, it has been used because people are concerned or afraid about coming to a hospital or going to their doctor, but they can get the advice through telemedicine. I talked to some educators today. In fact, I also talked to the Ohio Farm Bureau today. I talked to a mom who is at home with her kids during the day now because her kids are home from school because schools have been closed. We talked about how much she has been able to learn about telelearning and how there is an opportunity here to do more outside of the classroom. It is not that we shouldn't get back to classrooms--I think we should. I think that is an opportunity for kids to interact, which is important. But we are beginning to acknowledge that we can also do more after school in terms of telelearning. So this is just another example of it. This is a change that I think must be made to prepare us for the realities of this 21st century, where these contingencies come up. It is a pandemic today. It may be something else tomorrow. By the way, the way our legislation works for voting is that it is temporary. So I don't think this should be the norm. I think it should be only in emergencies and only when the majority leader and the Democratic leader--so in a bipartisan way--decide it is the appropriate thing to do, and then, under our legislation, every 30 days, Congress would have to vote--presumably remotely--to reaffirm it. Otherwise, it ends. So it would be temporary, it would be in emergencies only, and it would be up to Republicans and Democrats alike at the leadership level to decide it is time to try remote voting and to be sure that we, as the Members of the people's House across the way and the Members of the world's greatest deliberative body here in the Senate, as we are called, have the chance to represent the millions of people we are charged with representing by being their voice here on the Senate floor. I hope we can, along with the times, change here and begin to be more effective in representing those constituents.
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2020-01-06
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Mr. PORTMAN
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Senate
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CREC-2020-05-06-pt1-PgS2280-2
| null | 573
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formal
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based
| null |
white supremacist
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Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I am also here to talk today about the work that is being done to help my home State of Ohio to get through this coronavirus. It is a crisis in so many ways. It is a healthcare crisis, but it has also become an economic crisis and a family crisis. It is affecting everybody in ways that are truly heartbreaking for me to see in so many instances. I have talked to people who have been unemployed for the first time in their lives and have never had access to the unemployment insurance office. They have been fortunate. And now they have to. I have talked to people who started a small business and took a big risk to do that. They have five or six employees--it is a family-owned business--and they have been through the thick and thin over the years, but this one has really knocked them out. They have no income coming because they are in one of these businesses that by government order were shut down and cannot continue to serve the customers. I have talked to hospitals in a rural area of our State that cannot continue to operate. They have about a week left of cash reserves. Luckily, they are going to get some of this funding that Congress just provided with regard to the phase 3.5, as we are calling it, legislation of the CARES Act. But they are really hurting. They have had to lay off more than half of their hospital staff. They can't do elective surgery. They can't have the normal work they are used to because people aren't coming in to see the doctor. They aren't coming into the emergency room. The good news is, in Ohio and other States around the country, we are starting to open up and doing so safely. We are doing more testing and that is all good. It has been a tough time. Like so many Americans, I have been on the phone a lot. I have been on the phone pretty much all day, every day, into the night. A lot of what I have been doing is talking to constituents and talking to stakeholders across the State and hearing their concerns and trying to explain what we are doing here in Washington, how it would affect them and their families, and getting their input as to what we should do, but also I have been working with the White House, and HHS, FEMA, the FDA, Treasury, SBA, the Bureau of Prisons, the U.S. Trade Representative, State of Ohio, and others on corona-related matters to be able to help Ohio companies and help Ohio individuals. We have had some success in that. I am proud of that. In terms of constituents, we held seven tele-townhall meetings in the last 6 weeks where we hear directly from people, thousands of Ohioans. Again, there are a lot of heartbreaking stories and also a lot of really inspiring stories about people who stepped up and helped. One guy lost his job and decided to go volunteer at a food pantry. He wears the PPE, the mask and the gloves, and he delivers food to people who have never had to worry about food security before because they always had a job. Now, they don't have a job and are waiting to get their unemployment insurance, and they can't put food on the table. Some of them feel funny about going to a food pantry because they have never done that before. He makes them feel more at home, he said, and understanding and more welcomed. I talked to people who are delivering groceries to their neighbors who are seniors and who are more vulnerable. God bless them. I talked to people whoare making homemade masks at home. I brought some with me on my trip to Washington. They are doing it as volunteers, not asking for anything other than, if you take this mask, you have to agree you are also going to be helping your neighbor. The frontline workers, the hospital workers, are putting their healthcare on the line for us. They are risking their own healthcare and the possibility of getting this virus to help all of us and to help our grandparents and our parents. God bless them. I love when the healthcare workers are being held up by everybody. I think today is official Nurses Day. We should all be thanking our healthcare professionals and, specifically today, our nurses for what they do every day in every time period, but particularly during this crisis, where they have been working really long hours and doing everything they can to try to protect us. I appreciate the people who are doing everything else on the frontlines right now, whether working in a grocery store stacking shelves or whether you are driving a truck. I drove my pickup truck from Ohio to Washington on Sunday to be here for this week, and every time I went by a truck, I said thank you just for being out there and delivering the food and delivering the products. We thank those folks for what they are doing, all of them. One thing I tried to do is to help in terms of explaining what is going on in getting input. We talked to more than a dozen groups out there. I talked to the Farm Bureau today in Ohio, but I also talked to the hospitals, small business owners, food banks, the nonprofits, and many others to hear how we can support them during this tough time. This afternoon, we had a telephone call with some of the largest businesses in Ohio, a group called the Ohio Business Roundtable. They talked about some of the things they are doing to keep their employees safe because some of them are essential businesses. I encouraged them, as I always do, to get your best practices out to all your others business associates. Let them know how we can reopen safely. We are starting to open in Ohio. We want to know it is safe. The best advice will not be from a piece of paper--as important as that guidance is from the White House or the State of Ohio--it is going to be from other businesses who found out things you can do, like stagger the lunch break. That helps to spread people out. These things might not be obvious, such as do the temperature testing as people come in. Be sure that you are doing everything you can do to explain to people what they can do if they feel like they are getting sick, who they can go to and how they can be sure that they are not infecting others. I think there is an opportunity here to reopen and do it safely. One reason we are able to reopen in Ohio safely is we have a lot more testing now. Like many States, we didn't have enough testing until recently. Now, we are getting it. We had 3,700 tests per day, 2 weeks ago. Within 2 or 3 weeks from today, we will have 20,000 tests per day, a 600 percent increase. We had to work at it because we were having trouble getting some of the components for testing, particularly the reagent. The State of Ohio, to its credit, with Governor DeWine, reached an agreement with Thermo Fisher, a private sector company taking the lead in providing us a guaranteed supply chain of this reagent under their tests, which enables us to dramatically respond to increasing our testing. We are getting to a point where you can have a lot more drive-through testing at Kroger and Walmart and some of our drug stores. We are starting to get the testing much easier for people because you can drive through. You don't have to get out of your car, and you feel safer. The saliva test, as opposed to a test where they take a swab deep into your nasal cavities, is a lot less intrusive, and that is starting to be used more. We are beginning to have enough testing where we can more safely say: Look, we are going to reopen, but we are going to test people a lot. If we find a problem, we are going to do the contact tracing to figure out who that person has been with and quarantine those people. That is less hard than quarantining everybody else. For all of us, really, testing is where there is a problem. We will get to a point where we can test people who are asymptomatic. Even if you don't have symptoms, you could be a carrier. I think dramatically increasing the testing is the key thing. This is a diagnostic test. There are also the immunity tests coming up, which is also helpful, but nothing replaces the diagnostic test which says whether you have it or don't. We also have seen good news in Ohio and around the country on these antiviral medications. That is the reason we can reopen safely, too. If someone does get coronavirus, they have a chance to take something like Tamiflu, which you take for the common flu. Remdesivir is the most recent one the FDA has approved, which has a record of being very helpful. People want to know, if they get the virus, that they can take something for it. That is helpful. Finally, we are getting our hands around the PPE issue, the personal protective equipment, the masks and gloves and the gowns. This evening, after this talk, I am going to be working with an Ohio company that is interested in dramatically expanding the gown production. That would be great. We are working with the White House and others to try to ensure that can happen. We have a lot of great world-class businesses in Ohio. What I am talking about tonight is an example of that. There are others, too, in healthcare systems that have contributed to this coronavirus crisis all over the country. I have been working the last 6 weeks with them, making sure they have the opportunity to do that. One of those key contributions from Ohio has been from a company called Battelle. Battelle is a global research institution and happens to be headquartered in Columbus, OH. They do awesome work all over the world. They run some of our national labs for the Energy Department. We worked with the Trump administration and with Ohio Governor Mike DeWine to help them get approval for a really innovative technology where they can take an N95 mask--one like this, except even better because it is N95--and they can recycle that mask. They decontaminate it. These masks can be recycled up to 20 times. Think about that, 20 times. It is groundbreaking because they have enough machines to spread out around the country. They have 60 machines that they can recycle and decontaminate between 4 and 5 million masks a day. I worked with FEMA, HHS, and the White House to help Battelle secure a contract with the Federal Government to be able to take their technology and machines and spread them initially to hot spots around the country like New York, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, and now other places. I would tell people who might be listening that, if you are connected with a healthcare entity, a hospital, a nursing home, EMS, if you are a firefighter and you use these N95 masks, don't throw them away. When you are done with them, put them aside in a separate bin for recycling and get them picked up. We worked on a contract with the Federal Government to help with the pick-up and delivery, which is also available now. You can get them picked up and take them to Battelle. Hopefully, they have a cleaning station near you, and for free, you get a recycled mask back. The process takes about 8 hours. If you are close to one, you can get it overnight. We are not at full capacity on these machines. We should be. It is a great idea. Why spend the money to get some overpriced mask from China--because they are all overpriced now--when you can actually recycle what you have? It is a lot less medical waste, too. If you are interested in that, go to Battelle.org and learn more about it, or go to our website Portman.senate.gov, to find out more about it. Find out if there is a machine near you. Even if there is not, we can send them, and we can help you connect with companies, including Cardinal Health in Ohio, providing some of the logistics to get the masks back and forth. That is an example of some of the things we have been working on the past 6 weeks to help with this effort. I want to, again, as I have done before, commend the folks at Battelle for devoting their time and energy to thisproject. As soon as this coronavirus came up, they said to the engineers: Forget what you are doing, go work on this. They have also done a lot of testing with Ohio State, putting their folks against that, and now, they are working on other interesting technology that could be very helpful in detecting coronavirus. It is an example. We had another company, Cardinal Health, that I mentioned, that are helping in terms of the logistics. They did something else early on. They came to me and said: We have 2.3 million protective gowns in storage. We are not using them. They are the kind of gowns that can be used as isolation gowns. They are very effective. They are not qualified as surgical gowns, but they can be used as isolation gowns. They were willing to donate them to the National Stockpile. We worked with, again, FDA, HHS, and the White House to get through some of the red tape because it is tough to get things approved at times with the Federal Government. There are reasons for that. We want to be safe. We got approval for those gowns, and bingo, like that, they started to go out. They went to New York, they went to Detroit, they went to places where are there are hot spots. They are in the National Stockpile. They donated 2.3 million gowns. One company that has been very helpful to so many Americans is GoJo. It is a company that makes Purell. I see some up here on the desk. Purell is made in Ohio, outside of Akron. We are very proud of Purell. They have been going 24/7, producing all they can. It is tough to find it in the grocery store because, as soon as the shipment comes in, they take it and use it. It is particularly helpful now that they have Purell beginning to reopen. Reopening means doing things differently. It means wearing a mask when you are in proximity with somebody else. It means using Purell and washing your hands more often. It means being sure you are following the rules to be able to stay safe. Purell will continue to be needed. They had a problem because the Federal Government was assessing a 25-percent tariff on two critical items they had to have for the dispensers. At least one item had a patent in China. China had the patent on it. Things were coming in from China with a 25-percent tariff. We were able to go to a U.S. Trade Representative. I commend Bob Lighthizer, who is the Trade Rep, for working with us on this. For this period of time, they took that 25 percent off. They were having a tough time getting the supply and because it was increasing the costs by 25 percent. We were able to do that. Now. They are able to produce more of this Purell and more dispensers and do it less expensively By the way, this leads me to a comment on China. We need to pull back some of what we make in China and make it here. It is a pretty simple concept. It is harder to implement because our supply chains are global and they are complex. Who would have thought that, on a GoJo dispenser for Purell, there would be a Chinese patented product, but there is. Whether it is gowns,--most of which are made in China--or masks or other products like something essential that is in a hand sanitizer dispenser, we have to pull those products back. I think the way to do it isn't to beat up on China, but rather to provide the incentive--the carrot--to American companies and other companies and say, Make it here, make it in America. I think we can do that as a group, Republicans and Democrats alike. I think there is consensus now that we should do more to reshore, and in some cases, shore for the first time, products that have been moved overseas and particularly to China. We wouldn't have had to get that special permission on the 25-percent tariff if it was made here. We also worked with the FDA to get approval for a company called Second Breath in Cleveland, OH. It is another great example. There are so many in Ohio, but this is a company that didn't make ventilators at all. It is a consortium of several manufacturing companies that work together. But again, early on in this crisis, they said: We need ventilators. We can do that. We are manufacturers. We are Ohioans. We are inventors. They went out and made these ventilators on their own that were then tested at three different Ohio hospitals. The medical community loved them. They are relatively inexpensive, relatively simple, and very effective. Again, the FDA had to go through its process. My job is not to say to the FDA, You need to approve this. My job was to ask them to please expedite this process so, if it can be approved, we can get this out to people who are literally dying and need the ventilators. To the FDA's credit, Dr. Jeffrey Shuren, in particular, worked with us and got that product approved. They already made a bunch of them. They weren't going to send them out if they didn't get approval. They didn't care because they were willing to take a loss, with the opportunity to save people. Now, those ventilators have gone out to stockpiles and hospitals, including New York, when they needed them all over the country. It is an example of the kinds of things over the last 6 weeks we have been able to do in Ohio. The result is companies in Ohio are now making swabs, making masks, making face shields, making hand sanitizer. Proctor and Gamble converted some of their perfume-making factory to making hand sanitizer. It probably smells pretty good. I don't know if it actually has a particular odor to it. If it comes from a perfume factory, it might not just be effective, but smell pretty good, too. Thanks to Proctor and Gamble and all these companies that are willing to step up and do these things they have never done before and respond to these crisis--that is what Americans do. We get knocked down; we figure it out. We get back on our feet. Ultimately, I am optimistic. Think about what has happened in the last couple of weeks. There is substantially new testing. In my own State of Ohio, again, a 600-percent increase of tests from 2 weeks to 3 weeks from now. Increasingly, new antiviral medication has been approved. It is something people can rely on--more testing and antiviral medication is critical. There are more PPEs. Finally, we are figuring it out, like the recycling which we can do right here in America. We can recycle our own masks. There are the gowns we are trying to get produced more here in America right now. We are starting to catch up on things that, frankly, we were pretty far behind in. On the testing, I will tell you that, for the first few weeks of this crisis, you couldn't get a test in most parts of Ohio unless you were so severely ill that you had to be hospitalized. That was wrong. We just weren't prepared as a country. By the way, the last administration wouldn't have been any more prepared, nor would the previous administration, which I served, have been any more prepared. We were not expecting a pandemic like this. We should have been, of course. There were some warnings. The country now will be prepared. One thing we are doing is we are adding to that stockpile with the PPE, with the ventilators, and obviously with the antiviral medications for this virus and the vaccine for this virus. My hope is that vaccine, which the administration calls their process warp speed--and I appreciate that they are working around the clock. There are some scientists who have devoted their lives to this now. That is all they are doing. And God bless them, and there are a bunch of them. And, by the way, some of these vaccines will not work. People will have spent hundreds of millions of dollars--even billions of dollars--on stuff that is not going to work. But kind of like those ventilators were made even though they didn't know if they were going to get approval or not, we want to have that virus vaccine ready. If it does work and it gets approval, we want to have lots of doses of it already made. So there is going to be some money spent, including by the Federal taxpayer, but that is OK to ensure that we end up with something that really can be effective. On the testing, I will tell you that in my own hometown of Cincinnati, OH, those first few weeks we really couldn't get tested unless you were to be hospitalized. And we had an interesting issue there, again, showing how Washington sometimes can make things a little slower. The University of Cincinnati, which is our primary academicmedical center in southern Ohio, had ordered a testing machine back in February. They ordered it because they knew this was coming, and they wanted to get the best of the best. So it was a high-quality machine, with high accuracy, and it could do 1,000 tests a day. By the way, at the time, they were doing about 80 to 100 tests a day in their own little lab, but they needed this equipment, and they had a contract for it back in February. Well, come March they kept hearing next week, next week, next week, and they called me and I got involved. I got to the company and got to the University of Cincinnati and said: What is the real problem here? And they said: Well, we are being told by the Federal Government that we can't deliver it to Cincinnati. It needs to go somewhere else. I said: Well, they contracted for this back in February, and we are desperate for testing. We may not be a hotspot right now, but we are going to be unless we get some testing. So, again, we broke through the redtape and broke through what was some miscommunication. It turned out, with the help of the White House, that we got the approval to get the diagnostic tests there that had already been contracted for. It is called a cobas 6800 machine. It can process more than 1,000 diagnostic tests per day, and it is working. It is every day giving more people the sense of security that they know whether they have this or not, and they know whether the person that works in the store has it or not, and they know that we have more access to testing. Now, I am not saying we are getting there, but that would be key to getting us back to business but also reopening in a way that we don't have to stop if there is an outbreak because we will have the testing to be able to really throw at it and then the contact tracing and be able to ensure that we can stop the spread of the virus. So those are some of the things that we have worked on. We have worked with FEMA to unlock additional resources for Ohio, and that has happened around the country. USDA has now allowed the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services to operate the Disaster Household Distribution Program. We appreciate them. We worked with them on that so that we can officially get meals to food banks and families in Ohio. We worked with the Department of Veterans Affairs to ensure that veterans could get an extension on their filing of claims and appeals during this time period for veterans' compensation benefits and other benefits during a time when the VA offices have been closed. We helped stop the Federal Bureau of Prisons from sending more prisoners to one of our hotspots. It is a really sad case, the Elkton Federal prison in Ohio. We also helped them bring more healthcare to the Elkton prison. Frankly, I am discouraged that they aren't doing more testing there. I talk to them constantly, and they are providing more testing, but not enough--not enough. I think it is inexcusable I think, in a situation like a nursing home or a prison, we should be focused on getting the testing in there. These are what they call congregant living situations. In this case it is a low-security prison. So it is more like dormitory-type style living, and, unfortunately, if they were to test as much as they should, I believe they would find out, as we found out in other State prisons in Ohio, that more than half the prisoners there are carrying the virus, and you have got to separate those people out from those who don't have it and do much more treating and tracing. But we have made progress there, and we will continue to. The phase 3.5 rescue package we passed a few weeks ago does have funding for the PPP program, which is for small businesses, to be able to keep their employees and keep their doors open. It also has funding for healthcare. But the piece that hasn't gotten much attention and may be the most important aspect of the bill of all is $25 billion in the bill for more testing. Again, I am a broken record here on testing, but that money is so important, and we are using it in Ohio right now. About $43 million has come to Ohio recently, I am told, and that funding will be helpful not just to ensure that we have testing, but do we have enough testing so that we will get a sense of what is going on in terms of the healthcare crisis, and then, when there is a hotspot, address it again immediately and be able to stop the spread of the virus? It is so important to us reopening and getting people back to work, back to their churches and other places of worship, and back to school. We need to get back to a normal life, and we can, and we will. We will figure this out, but we do need the help of having the necessary testing capacity, diagnostic testing, and then it is also helpful to have the antibody test so you know whether you have developed an immunity or not. But those are both needed. You can't do it just with the antibody test. You have to also know through the diagnostic test whether someone has the disease or not to be able to pull that person out of a situation where he or she is with others and to find out whom they have been in touch with and do the contact tracing, and, again, quarantining those people, not quarantining everybody else. That is the effective way to do it. Congress has now passed four of these legislative measures in an overwhelming, bipartisan fashion. It is a lot of money. About $3 trillion have gone out the door from Federal taxpayers. I hope we can continue to be bipartisan. I hope we can work together to figure out how to move forward. In my view, moving forward means looking at what we have done carefully. Let's not start to legislate again and spend more money until we know how what we have already sent works. The money is just being distributed now. In fact, most of our money in Ohio that goes to the State and local governments has not been distributed yet. Let's get that money out. By the way, they need it. They need it badly. They need it to pay police and fire and EMS. Our cities in Ohio are really hurting because they depend so much on income taxes, on earnings taxes. Other cities in America don't because they can't, but about four of the top five cities in America that were most affected by the reduction in revenue from the coronavirus are in Ohio--Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Toledo. So they have a real problem on their hands. I strongly urge the Department of Treasury to loosen up their requirements to allow that State and local funding to be used more flexibly, specifically for payroll, for public safety. Based on Monday's guidance that we just got a couple of days ago here, they can now do that. That is just guidance. It is not legislation. I would love in whatever we do going forward to get that in legislation, to say: Let's provide flexibility to the States but also to these municipalities. I will tell you that in my home State of Ohio, again, at the municipal level, we are really hurting. Budgets are being slashed because the revenue is not coming in because it is based on the economy. Most cities rely heavily on property tax. We don't. Property tax has not been affected in the way that income tax has or sales tax. So we do need to pay attention to this, and people say: Well, we shouldn't send in more money to municipalities. Let's start with flexibility. Let them use the money they have more effectively for what they actually need. I don't want a situation where you have a 30-percent or 40-percent cut in police, which is what is happening in some of our municipalities, to affect the public safety of our communities at a time like this. Police officers need to be on the street doing their jobs. God bless them. They are out there. We need them. As for EMS personnel, if your grandmother needs to be rushed to the hospital, you want the EMS to come. You don't want to have a 40-percent cut in their services. So we do have to deal with this issue and be sure to provide flexibility is the first step. And let's codify that by statute and make sure it is clear, not just guidance that doesn't seem to be consistent with the underlying law, because the underlying law says it has to be directly related to the COVID-19, and some of this is not. You need police officers on the street whether you had COVID-19 or not. So let's be sure we codify that and then let's see what is needed. But I also think that in this next legislation we also have to be sure that we are not just looking at what has already passed but looking ahead. Andlooking ahead means the ability to reopen, and that means stimulating the economy and creating--whether it is tax relief or whether it is smart investment in infrastructure. Let's say the projects that are already on the books in my State and yours, projects that are already shovel-ready because they are ready to go, they have gone through the merit-based process in our States, but many of those projects will not be able to be funded this year by our States. Why? Because their revenues have collapsed, particularly their gas taxes have collapsed. So the State match, which is based on the amount of gas you buy, has gone down because people aren't driving nearly as much. What if we picked up some of that at the Federal level? These are good projects because they aren't bridges to nowhere. They have been through the merit-based process, and they are ready to go. That is an idea. Why? It is good jobs, one, which are needed right now, and good benefits, but also it is economic benefit. Those dollars will come back in terms of improved roads and bridges and ports and airports. Rural broadband would really help right now. As people are telelearning and teleworking more and more, they are finding out: Oh, my gosh, there are big parts of our country that don't have broadband access, can't get Wi-Fi, and if you can, it is way too slow. Again, talking to the Farm Bureau today, you would think they would be talking about the price of corn and soybeans, and they were, and the huge issues we have right now in the beef industry and the pork industry and poultry, but they were also talking about: I got my kids at home and we can't do the homework because we can't get broadband in a lot of parts of Ohio--probably in about a third of our State. Ohio is not viewed as a State that has huge, sparsely populated rural areas, but we have enough, and we have a real lack of access to broadband to be able even to do schoolwork, much less to start a small business. So this is another area where we can provide some help for that here, and it would come back in terms of increased dollars from having more economic development in some of these rural areas. So I think there are some things we need to do there as well. There has been a lot of discussion about this issue of liability protection. Let me tell you my perspective on this. It is very simple. This should not be a partisan issue. I mean, we should not want these hospitals and these schools and these small businesses and anybody to be able to be sued for something that was totally out of their control. This is not something anybody should be blamed for, certainly in this country. We know where it started, in Hubei Province, in Wuhan, China. But as for the fact that this has come over here and people are affected by it, let's not have a trial lawyer bonanza here because that will result in people not getting back to work. It will result in more costs for our universities. I understand some of them are being sued right now because they have students who are telelearning. Well, yes, it is not their fault. You can't bring students together right now in the dormitories. It is not safe. I know there is, again, kind of a partisan nature to this. It shouldn't be partisan at all. We should all want people to go back to work, to be able to go back to school, to be able to access the healthcare system. I also think that for my colleagues on my side of the aisle who might want to make this broader than the coronavirus, let's keep it to the coronavirus, and I think that is what people intend. Let's keep it to COVID-19, and let's provide the kind of protections--sensible protections--that are necessary to be able to allow people to get back to a normal life. People say: Well, things are going to be so different now in America. They will be different. We will be more cautious. You know, we will probably, therefore, have a less drastic flu season too because we will be more careful. With this pandemic, you know, we don't know if it is going to come back again like it did a couple of months ago. Will it come back again in the fall or the winter like that, but we have to be prepared for that. So life will not be exactly the same. There is no question about it. There will be some things that will be different, too. There will be more teleworking because it is has worked well. It is cost effective, and it is efficient. There will be more telemedicine because it has worked well. I have talked to a number of doctors who were actually very pleased with some of the things they have been able to do remotely. I hope we will have a Congress that works more remotely so when we are on our recesses, as we do every August, and as we do periodically, that we could have remote hearings on a more regular basis because it is great information. But, ultimately, I think our country will get back on track. Again, we, as Americans, when we get knocked down, we get back up on our feet, and that is what we will do. And we will have again not just the greatest economy on the face of the Earth, but we again will be that beacon of hope and opportunities for the rest of the world. People will again look at America and say: I want to be like that. And we will be able to show that and how we get back on our feet and how we get back to a more normal life, and, once again, the greatest country on the face of this Earth will be able to once again be able to show the world an ideal for everyone to aspire to.
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2020-01-06
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Mr. PORTMAN
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Senate
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CREC-2020-05-06-pt1-PgS2281
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formal
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the Fed
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antisemitic
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Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I am also here to talk today about the work that is being done to help my home State of Ohio to get through this coronavirus. It is a crisis in so many ways. It is a healthcare crisis, but it has also become an economic crisis and a family crisis. It is affecting everybody in ways that are truly heartbreaking for me to see in so many instances. I have talked to people who have been unemployed for the first time in their lives and have never had access to the unemployment insurance office. They have been fortunate. And now they have to. I have talked to people who started a small business and took a big risk to do that. They have five or six employees--it is a family-owned business--and they have been through the thick and thin over the years, but this one has really knocked them out. They have no income coming because they are in one of these businesses that by government order were shut down and cannot continue to serve the customers. I have talked to hospitals in a rural area of our State that cannot continue to operate. They have about a week left of cash reserves. Luckily, they are going to get some of this funding that Congress just provided with regard to the phase 3.5, as we are calling it, legislation of the CARES Act. But they are really hurting. They have had to lay off more than half of their hospital staff. They can't do elective surgery. They can't have the normal work they are used to because people aren't coming in to see the doctor. They aren't coming into the emergency room. The good news is, in Ohio and other States around the country, we are starting to open up and doing so safely. We are doing more testing and that is all good. It has been a tough time. Like so many Americans, I have been on the phone a lot. I have been on the phone pretty much all day, every day, into the night. A lot of what I have been doing is talking to constituents and talking to stakeholders across the State and hearing their concerns and trying to explain what we are doing here in Washington, how it would affect them and their families, and getting their input as to what we should do, but also I have been working with the White House, and HHS, FEMA, the FDA, Treasury, SBA, the Bureau of Prisons, the U.S. Trade Representative, State of Ohio, and others on corona-related matters to be able to help Ohio companies and help Ohio individuals. We have had some success in that. I am proud of that. In terms of constituents, we held seven tele-townhall meetings in the last 6 weeks where we hear directly from people, thousands of Ohioans. Again, there are a lot of heartbreaking stories and also a lot of really inspiring stories about people who stepped up and helped. One guy lost his job and decided to go volunteer at a food pantry. He wears the PPE, the mask and the gloves, and he delivers food to people who have never had to worry about food security before because they always had a job. Now, they don't have a job and are waiting to get their unemployment insurance, and they can't put food on the table. Some of them feel funny about going to a food pantry because they have never done that before. He makes them feel more at home, he said, and understanding and more welcomed. I talked to people who are delivering groceries to their neighbors who are seniors and who are more vulnerable. God bless them. I talked to people whoare making homemade masks at home. I brought some with me on my trip to Washington. They are doing it as volunteers, not asking for anything other than, if you take this mask, you have to agree you are also going to be helping your neighbor. The frontline workers, the hospital workers, are putting their healthcare on the line for us. They are risking their own healthcare and the possibility of getting this virus to help all of us and to help our grandparents and our parents. God bless them. I love when the healthcare workers are being held up by everybody. I think today is official Nurses Day. We should all be thanking our healthcare professionals and, specifically today, our nurses for what they do every day in every time period, but particularly during this crisis, where they have been working really long hours and doing everything they can to try to protect us. I appreciate the people who are doing everything else on the frontlines right now, whether working in a grocery store stacking shelves or whether you are driving a truck. I drove my pickup truck from Ohio to Washington on Sunday to be here for this week, and every time I went by a truck, I said thank you just for being out there and delivering the food and delivering the products. We thank those folks for what they are doing, all of them. One thing I tried to do is to help in terms of explaining what is going on in getting input. We talked to more than a dozen groups out there. I talked to the Farm Bureau today in Ohio, but I also talked to the hospitals, small business owners, food banks, the nonprofits, and many others to hear how we can support them during this tough time. This afternoon, we had a telephone call with some of the largest businesses in Ohio, a group called the Ohio Business Roundtable. They talked about some of the things they are doing to keep their employees safe because some of them are essential businesses. I encouraged them, as I always do, to get your best practices out to all your others business associates. Let them know how we can reopen safely. We are starting to open in Ohio. We want to know it is safe. The best advice will not be from a piece of paper--as important as that guidance is from the White House or the State of Ohio--it is going to be from other businesses who found out things you can do, like stagger the lunch break. That helps to spread people out. These things might not be obvious, such as do the temperature testing as people come in. Be sure that you are doing everything you can do to explain to people what they can do if they feel like they are getting sick, who they can go to and how they can be sure that they are not infecting others. I think there is an opportunity here to reopen and do it safely. One reason we are able to reopen in Ohio safely is we have a lot more testing now. Like many States, we didn't have enough testing until recently. Now, we are getting it. We had 3,700 tests per day, 2 weeks ago. Within 2 or 3 weeks from today, we will have 20,000 tests per day, a 600 percent increase. We had to work at it because we were having trouble getting some of the components for testing, particularly the reagent. The State of Ohio, to its credit, with Governor DeWine, reached an agreement with Thermo Fisher, a private sector company taking the lead in providing us a guaranteed supply chain of this reagent under their tests, which enables us to dramatically respond to increasing our testing. We are getting to a point where you can have a lot more drive-through testing at Kroger and Walmart and some of our drug stores. We are starting to get the testing much easier for people because you can drive through. You don't have to get out of your car, and you feel safer. The saliva test, as opposed to a test where they take a swab deep into your nasal cavities, is a lot less intrusive, and that is starting to be used more. We are beginning to have enough testing where we can more safely say: Look, we are going to reopen, but we are going to test people a lot. If we find a problem, we are going to do the contact tracing to figure out who that person has been with and quarantine those people. That is less hard than quarantining everybody else. For all of us, really, testing is where there is a problem. We will get to a point where we can test people who are asymptomatic. Even if you don't have symptoms, you could be a carrier. I think dramatically increasing the testing is the key thing. This is a diagnostic test. There are also the immunity tests coming up, which is also helpful, but nothing replaces the diagnostic test which says whether you have it or don't. We also have seen good news in Ohio and around the country on these antiviral medications. That is the reason we can reopen safely, too. If someone does get coronavirus, they have a chance to take something like Tamiflu, which you take for the common flu. Remdesivir is the most recent one the FDA has approved, which has a record of being very helpful. People want to know, if they get the virus, that they can take something for it. That is helpful. Finally, we are getting our hands around the PPE issue, the personal protective equipment, the masks and gloves and the gowns. This evening, after this talk, I am going to be working with an Ohio company that is interested in dramatically expanding the gown production. That would be great. We are working with the White House and others to try to ensure that can happen. We have a lot of great world-class businesses in Ohio. What I am talking about tonight is an example of that. There are others, too, in healthcare systems that have contributed to this coronavirus crisis all over the country. I have been working the last 6 weeks with them, making sure they have the opportunity to do that. One of those key contributions from Ohio has been from a company called Battelle. Battelle is a global research institution and happens to be headquartered in Columbus, OH. They do awesome work all over the world. They run some of our national labs for the Energy Department. We worked with the Trump administration and with Ohio Governor Mike DeWine to help them get approval for a really innovative technology where they can take an N95 mask--one like this, except even better because it is N95--and they can recycle that mask. They decontaminate it. These masks can be recycled up to 20 times. Think about that, 20 times. It is groundbreaking because they have enough machines to spread out around the country. They have 60 machines that they can recycle and decontaminate between 4 and 5 million masks a day. I worked with FEMA, HHS, and the White House to help Battelle secure a contract with the Federal Government to be able to take their technology and machines and spread them initially to hot spots around the country like New York, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, and now other places. I would tell people who might be listening that, if you are connected with a healthcare entity, a hospital, a nursing home, EMS, if you are a firefighter and you use these N95 masks, don't throw them away. When you are done with them, put them aside in a separate bin for recycling and get them picked up. We worked on a contract with the Federal Government to help with the pick-up and delivery, which is also available now. You can get them picked up and take them to Battelle. Hopefully, they have a cleaning station near you, and for free, you get a recycled mask back. The process takes about 8 hours. If you are close to one, you can get it overnight. We are not at full capacity on these machines. We should be. It is a great idea. Why spend the money to get some overpriced mask from China--because they are all overpriced now--when you can actually recycle what you have? It is a lot less medical waste, too. If you are interested in that, go to Battelle.org and learn more about it, or go to our website Portman.senate.gov, to find out more about it. Find out if there is a machine near you. Even if there is not, we can send them, and we can help you connect with companies, including Cardinal Health in Ohio, providing some of the logistics to get the masks back and forth. That is an example of some of the things we have been working on the past 6 weeks to help with this effort. I want to, again, as I have done before, commend the folks at Battelle for devoting their time and energy to thisproject. As soon as this coronavirus came up, they said to the engineers: Forget what you are doing, go work on this. They have also done a lot of testing with Ohio State, putting their folks against that, and now, they are working on other interesting technology that could be very helpful in detecting coronavirus. It is an example. We had another company, Cardinal Health, that I mentioned, that are helping in terms of the logistics. They did something else early on. They came to me and said: We have 2.3 million protective gowns in storage. We are not using them. They are the kind of gowns that can be used as isolation gowns. They are very effective. They are not qualified as surgical gowns, but they can be used as isolation gowns. They were willing to donate them to the National Stockpile. We worked with, again, FDA, HHS, and the White House to get through some of the red tape because it is tough to get things approved at times with the Federal Government. There are reasons for that. We want to be safe. We got approval for those gowns, and bingo, like that, they started to go out. They went to New York, they went to Detroit, they went to places where are there are hot spots. They are in the National Stockpile. They donated 2.3 million gowns. One company that has been very helpful to so many Americans is GoJo. It is a company that makes Purell. I see some up here on the desk. Purell is made in Ohio, outside of Akron. We are very proud of Purell. They have been going 24/7, producing all they can. It is tough to find it in the grocery store because, as soon as the shipment comes in, they take it and use it. It is particularly helpful now that they have Purell beginning to reopen. Reopening means doing things differently. It means wearing a mask when you are in proximity with somebody else. It means using Purell and washing your hands more often. It means being sure you are following the rules to be able to stay safe. Purell will continue to be needed. They had a problem because the Federal Government was assessing a 25-percent tariff on two critical items they had to have for the dispensers. At least one item had a patent in China. China had the patent on it. Things were coming in from China with a 25-percent tariff. We were able to go to a U.S. Trade Representative. I commend Bob Lighthizer, who is the Trade Rep, for working with us on this. For this period of time, they took that 25 percent off. They were having a tough time getting the supply and because it was increasing the costs by 25 percent. We were able to do that. Now. They are able to produce more of this Purell and more dispensers and do it less expensively By the way, this leads me to a comment on China. We need to pull back some of what we make in China and make it here. It is a pretty simple concept. It is harder to implement because our supply chains are global and they are complex. Who would have thought that, on a GoJo dispenser for Purell, there would be a Chinese patented product, but there is. Whether it is gowns,--most of which are made in China--or masks or other products like something essential that is in a hand sanitizer dispenser, we have to pull those products back. I think the way to do it isn't to beat up on China, but rather to provide the incentive--the carrot--to American companies and other companies and say, Make it here, make it in America. I think we can do that as a group, Republicans and Democrats alike. I think there is consensus now that we should do more to reshore, and in some cases, shore for the first time, products that have been moved overseas and particularly to China. We wouldn't have had to get that special permission on the 25-percent tariff if it was made here. We also worked with the FDA to get approval for a company called Second Breath in Cleveland, OH. It is another great example. There are so many in Ohio, but this is a company that didn't make ventilators at all. It is a consortium of several manufacturing companies that work together. But again, early on in this crisis, they said: We need ventilators. We can do that. We are manufacturers. We are Ohioans. We are inventors. They went out and made these ventilators on their own that were then tested at three different Ohio hospitals. The medical community loved them. They are relatively inexpensive, relatively simple, and very effective. Again, the FDA had to go through its process. My job is not to say to the FDA, You need to approve this. My job was to ask them to please expedite this process so, if it can be approved, we can get this out to people who are literally dying and need the ventilators. To the FDA's credit, Dr. Jeffrey Shuren, in particular, worked with us and got that product approved. They already made a bunch of them. They weren't going to send them out if they didn't get approval. They didn't care because they were willing to take a loss, with the opportunity to save people. Now, those ventilators have gone out to stockpiles and hospitals, including New York, when they needed them all over the country. It is an example of the kinds of things over the last 6 weeks we have been able to do in Ohio. The result is companies in Ohio are now making swabs, making masks, making face shields, making hand sanitizer. Proctor and Gamble converted some of their perfume-making factory to making hand sanitizer. It probably smells pretty good. I don't know if it actually has a particular odor to it. If it comes from a perfume factory, it might not just be effective, but smell pretty good, too. Thanks to Proctor and Gamble and all these companies that are willing to step up and do these things they have never done before and respond to these crisis--that is what Americans do. We get knocked down; we figure it out. We get back on our feet. Ultimately, I am optimistic. Think about what has happened in the last couple of weeks. There is substantially new testing. In my own State of Ohio, again, a 600-percent increase of tests from 2 weeks to 3 weeks from now. Increasingly, new antiviral medication has been approved. It is something people can rely on--more testing and antiviral medication is critical. There are more PPEs. Finally, we are figuring it out, like the recycling which we can do right here in America. We can recycle our own masks. There are the gowns we are trying to get produced more here in America right now. We are starting to catch up on things that, frankly, we were pretty far behind in. On the testing, I will tell you that, for the first few weeks of this crisis, you couldn't get a test in most parts of Ohio unless you were so severely ill that you had to be hospitalized. That was wrong. We just weren't prepared as a country. By the way, the last administration wouldn't have been any more prepared, nor would the previous administration, which I served, have been any more prepared. We were not expecting a pandemic like this. We should have been, of course. There were some warnings. The country now will be prepared. One thing we are doing is we are adding to that stockpile with the PPE, with the ventilators, and obviously with the antiviral medications for this virus and the vaccine for this virus. My hope is that vaccine, which the administration calls their process warp speed--and I appreciate that they are working around the clock. There are some scientists who have devoted their lives to this now. That is all they are doing. And God bless them, and there are a bunch of them. And, by the way, some of these vaccines will not work. People will have spent hundreds of millions of dollars--even billions of dollars--on stuff that is not going to work. But kind of like those ventilators were made even though they didn't know if they were going to get approval or not, we want to have that virus vaccine ready. If it does work and it gets approval, we want to have lots of doses of it already made. So there is going to be some money spent, including by the Federal taxpayer, but that is OK to ensure that we end up with something that really can be effective. On the testing, I will tell you that in my own hometown of Cincinnati, OH, those first few weeks we really couldn't get tested unless you were to be hospitalized. And we had an interesting issue there, again, showing how Washington sometimes can make things a little slower. The University of Cincinnati, which is our primary academicmedical center in southern Ohio, had ordered a testing machine back in February. They ordered it because they knew this was coming, and they wanted to get the best of the best. So it was a high-quality machine, with high accuracy, and it could do 1,000 tests a day. By the way, at the time, they were doing about 80 to 100 tests a day in their own little lab, but they needed this equipment, and they had a contract for it back in February. Well, come March they kept hearing next week, next week, next week, and they called me and I got involved. I got to the company and got to the University of Cincinnati and said: What is the real problem here? And they said: Well, we are being told by the Federal Government that we can't deliver it to Cincinnati. It needs to go somewhere else. I said: Well, they contracted for this back in February, and we are desperate for testing. We may not be a hotspot right now, but we are going to be unless we get some testing. So, again, we broke through the redtape and broke through what was some miscommunication. It turned out, with the help of the White House, that we got the approval to get the diagnostic tests there that had already been contracted for. It is called a cobas 6800 machine. It can process more than 1,000 diagnostic tests per day, and it is working. It is every day giving more people the sense of security that they know whether they have this or not, and they know whether the person that works in the store has it or not, and they know that we have more access to testing. Now, I am not saying we are getting there, but that would be key to getting us back to business but also reopening in a way that we don't have to stop if there is an outbreak because we will have the testing to be able to really throw at it and then the contact tracing and be able to ensure that we can stop the spread of the virus. So those are some of the things that we have worked on. We have worked with FEMA to unlock additional resources for Ohio, and that has happened around the country. USDA has now allowed the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services to operate the Disaster Household Distribution Program. We appreciate them. We worked with them on that so that we can officially get meals to food banks and families in Ohio. We worked with the Department of Veterans Affairs to ensure that veterans could get an extension on their filing of claims and appeals during this time period for veterans' compensation benefits and other benefits during a time when the VA offices have been closed. We helped stop the Federal Bureau of Prisons from sending more prisoners to one of our hotspots. It is a really sad case, the Elkton Federal prison in Ohio. We also helped them bring more healthcare to the Elkton prison. Frankly, I am discouraged that they aren't doing more testing there. I talk to them constantly, and they are providing more testing, but not enough--not enough. I think it is inexcusable I think, in a situation like a nursing home or a prison, we should be focused on getting the testing in there. These are what they call congregant living situations. In this case it is a low-security prison. So it is more like dormitory-type style living, and, unfortunately, if they were to test as much as they should, I believe they would find out, as we found out in other State prisons in Ohio, that more than half the prisoners there are carrying the virus, and you have got to separate those people out from those who don't have it and do much more treating and tracing. But we have made progress there, and we will continue to. The phase 3.5 rescue package we passed a few weeks ago does have funding for the PPP program, which is for small businesses, to be able to keep their employees and keep their doors open. It also has funding for healthcare. But the piece that hasn't gotten much attention and may be the most important aspect of the bill of all is $25 billion in the bill for more testing. Again, I am a broken record here on testing, but that money is so important, and we are using it in Ohio right now. About $43 million has come to Ohio recently, I am told, and that funding will be helpful not just to ensure that we have testing, but do we have enough testing so that we will get a sense of what is going on in terms of the healthcare crisis, and then, when there is a hotspot, address it again immediately and be able to stop the spread of the virus? It is so important to us reopening and getting people back to work, back to their churches and other places of worship, and back to school. We need to get back to a normal life, and we can, and we will. We will figure this out, but we do need the help of having the necessary testing capacity, diagnostic testing, and then it is also helpful to have the antibody test so you know whether you have developed an immunity or not. But those are both needed. You can't do it just with the antibody test. You have to also know through the diagnostic test whether someone has the disease or not to be able to pull that person out of a situation where he or she is with others and to find out whom they have been in touch with and do the contact tracing, and, again, quarantining those people, not quarantining everybody else. That is the effective way to do it. Congress has now passed four of these legislative measures in an overwhelming, bipartisan fashion. It is a lot of money. About $3 trillion have gone out the door from Federal taxpayers. I hope we can continue to be bipartisan. I hope we can work together to figure out how to move forward. In my view, moving forward means looking at what we have done carefully. Let's not start to legislate again and spend more money until we know how what we have already sent works. The money is just being distributed now. In fact, most of our money in Ohio that goes to the State and local governments has not been distributed yet. Let's get that money out. By the way, they need it. They need it badly. They need it to pay police and fire and EMS. Our cities in Ohio are really hurting because they depend so much on income taxes, on earnings taxes. Other cities in America don't because they can't, but about four of the top five cities in America that were most affected by the reduction in revenue from the coronavirus are in Ohio--Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Toledo. So they have a real problem on their hands. I strongly urge the Department of Treasury to loosen up their requirements to allow that State and local funding to be used more flexibly, specifically for payroll, for public safety. Based on Monday's guidance that we just got a couple of days ago here, they can now do that. That is just guidance. It is not legislation. I would love in whatever we do going forward to get that in legislation, to say: Let's provide flexibility to the States but also to these municipalities. I will tell you that in my home State of Ohio, again, at the municipal level, we are really hurting. Budgets are being slashed because the revenue is not coming in because it is based on the economy. Most cities rely heavily on property tax. We don't. Property tax has not been affected in the way that income tax has or sales tax. So we do need to pay attention to this, and people say: Well, we shouldn't send in more money to municipalities. Let's start with flexibility. Let them use the money they have more effectively for what they actually need. I don't want a situation where you have a 30-percent or 40-percent cut in police, which is what is happening in some of our municipalities, to affect the public safety of our communities at a time like this. Police officers need to be on the street doing their jobs. God bless them. They are out there. We need them. As for EMS personnel, if your grandmother needs to be rushed to the hospital, you want the EMS to come. You don't want to have a 40-percent cut in their services. So we do have to deal with this issue and be sure to provide flexibility is the first step. And let's codify that by statute and make sure it is clear, not just guidance that doesn't seem to be consistent with the underlying law, because the underlying law says it has to be directly related to the COVID-19, and some of this is not. You need police officers on the street whether you had COVID-19 or not. So let's be sure we codify that and then let's see what is needed. But I also think that in this next legislation we also have to be sure that we are not just looking at what has already passed but looking ahead. Andlooking ahead means the ability to reopen, and that means stimulating the economy and creating--whether it is tax relief or whether it is smart investment in infrastructure. Let's say the projects that are already on the books in my State and yours, projects that are already shovel-ready because they are ready to go, they have gone through the merit-based process in our States, but many of those projects will not be able to be funded this year by our States. Why? Because their revenues have collapsed, particularly their gas taxes have collapsed. So the State match, which is based on the amount of gas you buy, has gone down because people aren't driving nearly as much. What if we picked up some of that at the Federal level? These are good projects because they aren't bridges to nowhere. They have been through the merit-based process, and they are ready to go. That is an idea. Why? It is good jobs, one, which are needed right now, and good benefits, but also it is economic benefit. Those dollars will come back in terms of improved roads and bridges and ports and airports. Rural broadband would really help right now. As people are telelearning and teleworking more and more, they are finding out: Oh, my gosh, there are big parts of our country that don't have broadband access, can't get Wi-Fi, and if you can, it is way too slow. Again, talking to the Farm Bureau today, you would think they would be talking about the price of corn and soybeans, and they were, and the huge issues we have right now in the beef industry and the pork industry and poultry, but they were also talking about: I got my kids at home and we can't do the homework because we can't get broadband in a lot of parts of Ohio--probably in about a third of our State. Ohio is not viewed as a State that has huge, sparsely populated rural areas, but we have enough, and we have a real lack of access to broadband to be able even to do schoolwork, much less to start a small business. So this is another area where we can provide some help for that here, and it would come back in terms of increased dollars from having more economic development in some of these rural areas. So I think there are some things we need to do there as well. There has been a lot of discussion about this issue of liability protection. Let me tell you my perspective on this. It is very simple. This should not be a partisan issue. I mean, we should not want these hospitals and these schools and these small businesses and anybody to be able to be sued for something that was totally out of their control. This is not something anybody should be blamed for, certainly in this country. We know where it started, in Hubei Province, in Wuhan, China. But as for the fact that this has come over here and people are affected by it, let's not have a trial lawyer bonanza here because that will result in people not getting back to work. It will result in more costs for our universities. I understand some of them are being sued right now because they have students who are telelearning. Well, yes, it is not their fault. You can't bring students together right now in the dormitories. It is not safe. I know there is, again, kind of a partisan nature to this. It shouldn't be partisan at all. We should all want people to go back to work, to be able to go back to school, to be able to access the healthcare system. I also think that for my colleagues on my side of the aisle who might want to make this broader than the coronavirus, let's keep it to the coronavirus, and I think that is what people intend. Let's keep it to COVID-19, and let's provide the kind of protections--sensible protections--that are necessary to be able to allow people to get back to a normal life. People say: Well, things are going to be so different now in America. They will be different. We will be more cautious. You know, we will probably, therefore, have a less drastic flu season too because we will be more careful. With this pandemic, you know, we don't know if it is going to come back again like it did a couple of months ago. Will it come back again in the fall or the winter like that, but we have to be prepared for that. So life will not be exactly the same. There is no question about it. There will be some things that will be different, too. There will be more teleworking because it is has worked well. It is cost effective, and it is efficient. There will be more telemedicine because it has worked well. I have talked to a number of doctors who were actually very pleased with some of the things they have been able to do remotely. I hope we will have a Congress that works more remotely so when we are on our recesses, as we do every August, and as we do periodically, that we could have remote hearings on a more regular basis because it is great information. But, ultimately, I think our country will get back on track. Again, we, as Americans, when we get knocked down, we get back up on our feet, and that is what we will do. And we will have again not just the greatest economy on the face of the Earth, but we again will be that beacon of hope and opportunities for the rest of the world. People will again look at America and say: I want to be like that. And we will be able to show that and how we get back on our feet and how we get back to a more normal life, and, once again, the greatest country on the face of this Earth will be able to once again be able to show the world an ideal for everyone to aspire to.
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2020-01-06
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Mr. PORTMAN
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Senate
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CREC-2020-05-06-pt1-PgS2281
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formal
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Chicago
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racist
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Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I am also here to talk today about the work that is being done to help my home State of Ohio to get through this coronavirus. It is a crisis in so many ways. It is a healthcare crisis, but it has also become an economic crisis and a family crisis. It is affecting everybody in ways that are truly heartbreaking for me to see in so many instances. I have talked to people who have been unemployed for the first time in their lives and have never had access to the unemployment insurance office. They have been fortunate. And now they have to. I have talked to people who started a small business and took a big risk to do that. They have five or six employees--it is a family-owned business--and they have been through the thick and thin over the years, but this one has really knocked them out. They have no income coming because they are in one of these businesses that by government order were shut down and cannot continue to serve the customers. I have talked to hospitals in a rural area of our State that cannot continue to operate. They have about a week left of cash reserves. Luckily, they are going to get some of this funding that Congress just provided with regard to the phase 3.5, as we are calling it, legislation of the CARES Act. But they are really hurting. They have had to lay off more than half of their hospital staff. They can't do elective surgery. They can't have the normal work they are used to because people aren't coming in to see the doctor. They aren't coming into the emergency room. The good news is, in Ohio and other States around the country, we are starting to open up and doing so safely. We are doing more testing and that is all good. It has been a tough time. Like so many Americans, I have been on the phone a lot. I have been on the phone pretty much all day, every day, into the night. A lot of what I have been doing is talking to constituents and talking to stakeholders across the State and hearing their concerns and trying to explain what we are doing here in Washington, how it would affect them and their families, and getting their input as to what we should do, but also I have been working with the White House, and HHS, FEMA, the FDA, Treasury, SBA, the Bureau of Prisons, the U.S. Trade Representative, State of Ohio, and others on corona-related matters to be able to help Ohio companies and help Ohio individuals. We have had some success in that. I am proud of that. In terms of constituents, we held seven tele-townhall meetings in the last 6 weeks where we hear directly from people, thousands of Ohioans. Again, there are a lot of heartbreaking stories and also a lot of really inspiring stories about people who stepped up and helped. One guy lost his job and decided to go volunteer at a food pantry. He wears the PPE, the mask and the gloves, and he delivers food to people who have never had to worry about food security before because they always had a job. Now, they don't have a job and are waiting to get their unemployment insurance, and they can't put food on the table. Some of them feel funny about going to a food pantry because they have never done that before. He makes them feel more at home, he said, and understanding and more welcomed. I talked to people who are delivering groceries to their neighbors who are seniors and who are more vulnerable. God bless them. I talked to people whoare making homemade masks at home. I brought some with me on my trip to Washington. They are doing it as volunteers, not asking for anything other than, if you take this mask, you have to agree you are also going to be helping your neighbor. The frontline workers, the hospital workers, are putting their healthcare on the line for us. They are risking their own healthcare and the possibility of getting this virus to help all of us and to help our grandparents and our parents. God bless them. I love when the healthcare workers are being held up by everybody. I think today is official Nurses Day. We should all be thanking our healthcare professionals and, specifically today, our nurses for what they do every day in every time period, but particularly during this crisis, where they have been working really long hours and doing everything they can to try to protect us. I appreciate the people who are doing everything else on the frontlines right now, whether working in a grocery store stacking shelves or whether you are driving a truck. I drove my pickup truck from Ohio to Washington on Sunday to be here for this week, and every time I went by a truck, I said thank you just for being out there and delivering the food and delivering the products. We thank those folks for what they are doing, all of them. One thing I tried to do is to help in terms of explaining what is going on in getting input. We talked to more than a dozen groups out there. I talked to the Farm Bureau today in Ohio, but I also talked to the hospitals, small business owners, food banks, the nonprofits, and many others to hear how we can support them during this tough time. This afternoon, we had a telephone call with some of the largest businesses in Ohio, a group called the Ohio Business Roundtable. They talked about some of the things they are doing to keep their employees safe because some of them are essential businesses. I encouraged them, as I always do, to get your best practices out to all your others business associates. Let them know how we can reopen safely. We are starting to open in Ohio. We want to know it is safe. The best advice will not be from a piece of paper--as important as that guidance is from the White House or the State of Ohio--it is going to be from other businesses who found out things you can do, like stagger the lunch break. That helps to spread people out. These things might not be obvious, such as do the temperature testing as people come in. Be sure that you are doing everything you can do to explain to people what they can do if they feel like they are getting sick, who they can go to and how they can be sure that they are not infecting others. I think there is an opportunity here to reopen and do it safely. One reason we are able to reopen in Ohio safely is we have a lot more testing now. Like many States, we didn't have enough testing until recently. Now, we are getting it. We had 3,700 tests per day, 2 weeks ago. Within 2 or 3 weeks from today, we will have 20,000 tests per day, a 600 percent increase. We had to work at it because we were having trouble getting some of the components for testing, particularly the reagent. The State of Ohio, to its credit, with Governor DeWine, reached an agreement with Thermo Fisher, a private sector company taking the lead in providing us a guaranteed supply chain of this reagent under their tests, which enables us to dramatically respond to increasing our testing. We are getting to a point where you can have a lot more drive-through testing at Kroger and Walmart and some of our drug stores. We are starting to get the testing much easier for people because you can drive through. You don't have to get out of your car, and you feel safer. The saliva test, as opposed to a test where they take a swab deep into your nasal cavities, is a lot less intrusive, and that is starting to be used more. We are beginning to have enough testing where we can more safely say: Look, we are going to reopen, but we are going to test people a lot. If we find a problem, we are going to do the contact tracing to figure out who that person has been with and quarantine those people. That is less hard than quarantining everybody else. For all of us, really, testing is where there is a problem. We will get to a point where we can test people who are asymptomatic. Even if you don't have symptoms, you could be a carrier. I think dramatically increasing the testing is the key thing. This is a diagnostic test. There are also the immunity tests coming up, which is also helpful, but nothing replaces the diagnostic test which says whether you have it or don't. We also have seen good news in Ohio and around the country on these antiviral medications. That is the reason we can reopen safely, too. If someone does get coronavirus, they have a chance to take something like Tamiflu, which you take for the common flu. Remdesivir is the most recent one the FDA has approved, which has a record of being very helpful. People want to know, if they get the virus, that they can take something for it. That is helpful. Finally, we are getting our hands around the PPE issue, the personal protective equipment, the masks and gloves and the gowns. This evening, after this talk, I am going to be working with an Ohio company that is interested in dramatically expanding the gown production. That would be great. We are working with the White House and others to try to ensure that can happen. We have a lot of great world-class businesses in Ohio. What I am talking about tonight is an example of that. There are others, too, in healthcare systems that have contributed to this coronavirus crisis all over the country. I have been working the last 6 weeks with them, making sure they have the opportunity to do that. One of those key contributions from Ohio has been from a company called Battelle. Battelle is a global research institution and happens to be headquartered in Columbus, OH. They do awesome work all over the world. They run some of our national labs for the Energy Department. We worked with the Trump administration and with Ohio Governor Mike DeWine to help them get approval for a really innovative technology where they can take an N95 mask--one like this, except even better because it is N95--and they can recycle that mask. They decontaminate it. These masks can be recycled up to 20 times. Think about that, 20 times. It is groundbreaking because they have enough machines to spread out around the country. They have 60 machines that they can recycle and decontaminate between 4 and 5 million masks a day. I worked with FEMA, HHS, and the White House to help Battelle secure a contract with the Federal Government to be able to take their technology and machines and spread them initially to hot spots around the country like New York, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, and now other places. I would tell people who might be listening that, if you are connected with a healthcare entity, a hospital, a nursing home, EMS, if you are a firefighter and you use these N95 masks, don't throw them away. When you are done with them, put them aside in a separate bin for recycling and get them picked up. We worked on a contract with the Federal Government to help with the pick-up and delivery, which is also available now. You can get them picked up and take them to Battelle. Hopefully, they have a cleaning station near you, and for free, you get a recycled mask back. The process takes about 8 hours. If you are close to one, you can get it overnight. We are not at full capacity on these machines. We should be. It is a great idea. Why spend the money to get some overpriced mask from China--because they are all overpriced now--when you can actually recycle what you have? It is a lot less medical waste, too. If you are interested in that, go to Battelle.org and learn more about it, or go to our website Portman.senate.gov, to find out more about it. Find out if there is a machine near you. Even if there is not, we can send them, and we can help you connect with companies, including Cardinal Health in Ohio, providing some of the logistics to get the masks back and forth. That is an example of some of the things we have been working on the past 6 weeks to help with this effort. I want to, again, as I have done before, commend the folks at Battelle for devoting their time and energy to thisproject. As soon as this coronavirus came up, they said to the engineers: Forget what you are doing, go work on this. They have also done a lot of testing with Ohio State, putting their folks against that, and now, they are working on other interesting technology that could be very helpful in detecting coronavirus. It is an example. We had another company, Cardinal Health, that I mentioned, that are helping in terms of the logistics. They did something else early on. They came to me and said: We have 2.3 million protective gowns in storage. We are not using them. They are the kind of gowns that can be used as isolation gowns. They are very effective. They are not qualified as surgical gowns, but they can be used as isolation gowns. They were willing to donate them to the National Stockpile. We worked with, again, FDA, HHS, and the White House to get through some of the red tape because it is tough to get things approved at times with the Federal Government. There are reasons for that. We want to be safe. We got approval for those gowns, and bingo, like that, they started to go out. They went to New York, they went to Detroit, they went to places where are there are hot spots. They are in the National Stockpile. They donated 2.3 million gowns. One company that has been very helpful to so many Americans is GoJo. It is a company that makes Purell. I see some up here on the desk. Purell is made in Ohio, outside of Akron. We are very proud of Purell. They have been going 24/7, producing all they can. It is tough to find it in the grocery store because, as soon as the shipment comes in, they take it and use it. It is particularly helpful now that they have Purell beginning to reopen. Reopening means doing things differently. It means wearing a mask when you are in proximity with somebody else. It means using Purell and washing your hands more often. It means being sure you are following the rules to be able to stay safe. Purell will continue to be needed. They had a problem because the Federal Government was assessing a 25-percent tariff on two critical items they had to have for the dispensers. At least one item had a patent in China. China had the patent on it. Things were coming in from China with a 25-percent tariff. We were able to go to a U.S. Trade Representative. I commend Bob Lighthizer, who is the Trade Rep, for working with us on this. For this period of time, they took that 25 percent off. They were having a tough time getting the supply and because it was increasing the costs by 25 percent. We were able to do that. Now. They are able to produce more of this Purell and more dispensers and do it less expensively By the way, this leads me to a comment on China. We need to pull back some of what we make in China and make it here. It is a pretty simple concept. It is harder to implement because our supply chains are global and they are complex. Who would have thought that, on a GoJo dispenser for Purell, there would be a Chinese patented product, but there is. Whether it is gowns,--most of which are made in China--or masks or other products like something essential that is in a hand sanitizer dispenser, we have to pull those products back. I think the way to do it isn't to beat up on China, but rather to provide the incentive--the carrot--to American companies and other companies and say, Make it here, make it in America. I think we can do that as a group, Republicans and Democrats alike. I think there is consensus now that we should do more to reshore, and in some cases, shore for the first time, products that have been moved overseas and particularly to China. We wouldn't have had to get that special permission on the 25-percent tariff if it was made here. We also worked with the FDA to get approval for a company called Second Breath in Cleveland, OH. It is another great example. There are so many in Ohio, but this is a company that didn't make ventilators at all. It is a consortium of several manufacturing companies that work together. But again, early on in this crisis, they said: We need ventilators. We can do that. We are manufacturers. We are Ohioans. We are inventors. They went out and made these ventilators on their own that were then tested at three different Ohio hospitals. The medical community loved them. They are relatively inexpensive, relatively simple, and very effective. Again, the FDA had to go through its process. My job is not to say to the FDA, You need to approve this. My job was to ask them to please expedite this process so, if it can be approved, we can get this out to people who are literally dying and need the ventilators. To the FDA's credit, Dr. Jeffrey Shuren, in particular, worked with us and got that product approved. They already made a bunch of them. They weren't going to send them out if they didn't get approval. They didn't care because they were willing to take a loss, with the opportunity to save people. Now, those ventilators have gone out to stockpiles and hospitals, including New York, when they needed them all over the country. It is an example of the kinds of things over the last 6 weeks we have been able to do in Ohio. The result is companies in Ohio are now making swabs, making masks, making face shields, making hand sanitizer. Proctor and Gamble converted some of their perfume-making factory to making hand sanitizer. It probably smells pretty good. I don't know if it actually has a particular odor to it. If it comes from a perfume factory, it might not just be effective, but smell pretty good, too. Thanks to Proctor and Gamble and all these companies that are willing to step up and do these things they have never done before and respond to these crisis--that is what Americans do. We get knocked down; we figure it out. We get back on our feet. Ultimately, I am optimistic. Think about what has happened in the last couple of weeks. There is substantially new testing. In my own State of Ohio, again, a 600-percent increase of tests from 2 weeks to 3 weeks from now. Increasingly, new antiviral medication has been approved. It is something people can rely on--more testing and antiviral medication is critical. There are more PPEs. Finally, we are figuring it out, like the recycling which we can do right here in America. We can recycle our own masks. There are the gowns we are trying to get produced more here in America right now. We are starting to catch up on things that, frankly, we were pretty far behind in. On the testing, I will tell you that, for the first few weeks of this crisis, you couldn't get a test in most parts of Ohio unless you were so severely ill that you had to be hospitalized. That was wrong. We just weren't prepared as a country. By the way, the last administration wouldn't have been any more prepared, nor would the previous administration, which I served, have been any more prepared. We were not expecting a pandemic like this. We should have been, of course. There were some warnings. The country now will be prepared. One thing we are doing is we are adding to that stockpile with the PPE, with the ventilators, and obviously with the antiviral medications for this virus and the vaccine for this virus. My hope is that vaccine, which the administration calls their process warp speed--and I appreciate that they are working around the clock. There are some scientists who have devoted their lives to this now. That is all they are doing. And God bless them, and there are a bunch of them. And, by the way, some of these vaccines will not work. People will have spent hundreds of millions of dollars--even billions of dollars--on stuff that is not going to work. But kind of like those ventilators were made even though they didn't know if they were going to get approval or not, we want to have that virus vaccine ready. If it does work and it gets approval, we want to have lots of doses of it already made. So there is going to be some money spent, including by the Federal taxpayer, but that is OK to ensure that we end up with something that really can be effective. On the testing, I will tell you that in my own hometown of Cincinnati, OH, those first few weeks we really couldn't get tested unless you were to be hospitalized. And we had an interesting issue there, again, showing how Washington sometimes can make things a little slower. The University of Cincinnati, which is our primary academicmedical center in southern Ohio, had ordered a testing machine back in February. They ordered it because they knew this was coming, and they wanted to get the best of the best. So it was a high-quality machine, with high accuracy, and it could do 1,000 tests a day. By the way, at the time, they were doing about 80 to 100 tests a day in their own little lab, but they needed this equipment, and they had a contract for it back in February. Well, come March they kept hearing next week, next week, next week, and they called me and I got involved. I got to the company and got to the University of Cincinnati and said: What is the real problem here? And they said: Well, we are being told by the Federal Government that we can't deliver it to Cincinnati. It needs to go somewhere else. I said: Well, they contracted for this back in February, and we are desperate for testing. We may not be a hotspot right now, but we are going to be unless we get some testing. So, again, we broke through the redtape and broke through what was some miscommunication. It turned out, with the help of the White House, that we got the approval to get the diagnostic tests there that had already been contracted for. It is called a cobas 6800 machine. It can process more than 1,000 diagnostic tests per day, and it is working. It is every day giving more people the sense of security that they know whether they have this or not, and they know whether the person that works in the store has it or not, and they know that we have more access to testing. Now, I am not saying we are getting there, but that would be key to getting us back to business but also reopening in a way that we don't have to stop if there is an outbreak because we will have the testing to be able to really throw at it and then the contact tracing and be able to ensure that we can stop the spread of the virus. So those are some of the things that we have worked on. We have worked with FEMA to unlock additional resources for Ohio, and that has happened around the country. USDA has now allowed the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services to operate the Disaster Household Distribution Program. We appreciate them. We worked with them on that so that we can officially get meals to food banks and families in Ohio. We worked with the Department of Veterans Affairs to ensure that veterans could get an extension on their filing of claims and appeals during this time period for veterans' compensation benefits and other benefits during a time when the VA offices have been closed. We helped stop the Federal Bureau of Prisons from sending more prisoners to one of our hotspots. It is a really sad case, the Elkton Federal prison in Ohio. We also helped them bring more healthcare to the Elkton prison. Frankly, I am discouraged that they aren't doing more testing there. I talk to them constantly, and they are providing more testing, but not enough--not enough. I think it is inexcusable I think, in a situation like a nursing home or a prison, we should be focused on getting the testing in there. These are what they call congregant living situations. In this case it is a low-security prison. So it is more like dormitory-type style living, and, unfortunately, if they were to test as much as they should, I believe they would find out, as we found out in other State prisons in Ohio, that more than half the prisoners there are carrying the virus, and you have got to separate those people out from those who don't have it and do much more treating and tracing. But we have made progress there, and we will continue to. The phase 3.5 rescue package we passed a few weeks ago does have funding for the PPP program, which is for small businesses, to be able to keep their employees and keep their doors open. It also has funding for healthcare. But the piece that hasn't gotten much attention and may be the most important aspect of the bill of all is $25 billion in the bill for more testing. Again, I am a broken record here on testing, but that money is so important, and we are using it in Ohio right now. About $43 million has come to Ohio recently, I am told, and that funding will be helpful not just to ensure that we have testing, but do we have enough testing so that we will get a sense of what is going on in terms of the healthcare crisis, and then, when there is a hotspot, address it again immediately and be able to stop the spread of the virus? It is so important to us reopening and getting people back to work, back to their churches and other places of worship, and back to school. We need to get back to a normal life, and we can, and we will. We will figure this out, but we do need the help of having the necessary testing capacity, diagnostic testing, and then it is also helpful to have the antibody test so you know whether you have developed an immunity or not. But those are both needed. You can't do it just with the antibody test. You have to also know through the diagnostic test whether someone has the disease or not to be able to pull that person out of a situation where he or she is with others and to find out whom they have been in touch with and do the contact tracing, and, again, quarantining those people, not quarantining everybody else. That is the effective way to do it. Congress has now passed four of these legislative measures in an overwhelming, bipartisan fashion. It is a lot of money. About $3 trillion have gone out the door from Federal taxpayers. I hope we can continue to be bipartisan. I hope we can work together to figure out how to move forward. In my view, moving forward means looking at what we have done carefully. Let's not start to legislate again and spend more money until we know how what we have already sent works. The money is just being distributed now. In fact, most of our money in Ohio that goes to the State and local governments has not been distributed yet. Let's get that money out. By the way, they need it. They need it badly. They need it to pay police and fire and EMS. Our cities in Ohio are really hurting because they depend so much on income taxes, on earnings taxes. Other cities in America don't because they can't, but about four of the top five cities in America that were most affected by the reduction in revenue from the coronavirus are in Ohio--Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Toledo. So they have a real problem on their hands. I strongly urge the Department of Treasury to loosen up their requirements to allow that State and local funding to be used more flexibly, specifically for payroll, for public safety. Based on Monday's guidance that we just got a couple of days ago here, they can now do that. That is just guidance. It is not legislation. I would love in whatever we do going forward to get that in legislation, to say: Let's provide flexibility to the States but also to these municipalities. I will tell you that in my home State of Ohio, again, at the municipal level, we are really hurting. Budgets are being slashed because the revenue is not coming in because it is based on the economy. Most cities rely heavily on property tax. We don't. Property tax has not been affected in the way that income tax has or sales tax. So we do need to pay attention to this, and people say: Well, we shouldn't send in more money to municipalities. Let's start with flexibility. Let them use the money they have more effectively for what they actually need. I don't want a situation where you have a 30-percent or 40-percent cut in police, which is what is happening in some of our municipalities, to affect the public safety of our communities at a time like this. Police officers need to be on the street doing their jobs. God bless them. They are out there. We need them. As for EMS personnel, if your grandmother needs to be rushed to the hospital, you want the EMS to come. You don't want to have a 40-percent cut in their services. So we do have to deal with this issue and be sure to provide flexibility is the first step. And let's codify that by statute and make sure it is clear, not just guidance that doesn't seem to be consistent with the underlying law, because the underlying law says it has to be directly related to the COVID-19, and some of this is not. You need police officers on the street whether you had COVID-19 or not. So let's be sure we codify that and then let's see what is needed. But I also think that in this next legislation we also have to be sure that we are not just looking at what has already passed but looking ahead. Andlooking ahead means the ability to reopen, and that means stimulating the economy and creating--whether it is tax relief or whether it is smart investment in infrastructure. Let's say the projects that are already on the books in my State and yours, projects that are already shovel-ready because they are ready to go, they have gone through the merit-based process in our States, but many of those projects will not be able to be funded this year by our States. Why? Because their revenues have collapsed, particularly their gas taxes have collapsed. So the State match, which is based on the amount of gas you buy, has gone down because people aren't driving nearly as much. What if we picked up some of that at the Federal level? These are good projects because they aren't bridges to nowhere. They have been through the merit-based process, and they are ready to go. That is an idea. Why? It is good jobs, one, which are needed right now, and good benefits, but also it is economic benefit. Those dollars will come back in terms of improved roads and bridges and ports and airports. Rural broadband would really help right now. As people are telelearning and teleworking more and more, they are finding out: Oh, my gosh, there are big parts of our country that don't have broadband access, can't get Wi-Fi, and if you can, it is way too slow. Again, talking to the Farm Bureau today, you would think they would be talking about the price of corn and soybeans, and they were, and the huge issues we have right now in the beef industry and the pork industry and poultry, but they were also talking about: I got my kids at home and we can't do the homework because we can't get broadband in a lot of parts of Ohio--probably in about a third of our State. Ohio is not viewed as a State that has huge, sparsely populated rural areas, but we have enough, and we have a real lack of access to broadband to be able even to do schoolwork, much less to start a small business. So this is another area where we can provide some help for that here, and it would come back in terms of increased dollars from having more economic development in some of these rural areas. So I think there are some things we need to do there as well. There has been a lot of discussion about this issue of liability protection. Let me tell you my perspective on this. It is very simple. This should not be a partisan issue. I mean, we should not want these hospitals and these schools and these small businesses and anybody to be able to be sued for something that was totally out of their control. This is not something anybody should be blamed for, certainly in this country. We know where it started, in Hubei Province, in Wuhan, China. But as for the fact that this has come over here and people are affected by it, let's not have a trial lawyer bonanza here because that will result in people not getting back to work. It will result in more costs for our universities. I understand some of them are being sued right now because they have students who are telelearning. Well, yes, it is not their fault. You can't bring students together right now in the dormitories. It is not safe. I know there is, again, kind of a partisan nature to this. It shouldn't be partisan at all. We should all want people to go back to work, to be able to go back to school, to be able to access the healthcare system. I also think that for my colleagues on my side of the aisle who might want to make this broader than the coronavirus, let's keep it to the coronavirus, and I think that is what people intend. Let's keep it to COVID-19, and let's provide the kind of protections--sensible protections--that are necessary to be able to allow people to get back to a normal life. People say: Well, things are going to be so different now in America. They will be different. We will be more cautious. You know, we will probably, therefore, have a less drastic flu season too because we will be more careful. With this pandemic, you know, we don't know if it is going to come back again like it did a couple of months ago. Will it come back again in the fall or the winter like that, but we have to be prepared for that. So life will not be exactly the same. There is no question about it. There will be some things that will be different, too. There will be more teleworking because it is has worked well. It is cost effective, and it is efficient. There will be more telemedicine because it has worked well. I have talked to a number of doctors who were actually very pleased with some of the things they have been able to do remotely. I hope we will have a Congress that works more remotely so when we are on our recesses, as we do every August, and as we do periodically, that we could have remote hearings on a more regular basis because it is great information. But, ultimately, I think our country will get back on track. Again, we, as Americans, when we get knocked down, we get back up on our feet, and that is what we will do. And we will have again not just the greatest economy on the face of the Earth, but we again will be that beacon of hope and opportunities for the rest of the world. People will again look at America and say: I want to be like that. And we will be able to show that and how we get back on our feet and how we get back to a more normal life, and, once again, the greatest country on the face of this Earth will be able to once again be able to show the world an ideal for everyone to aspire to.
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2020-01-06
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Mr. PORTMAN
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Senate
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CREC-2020-05-06-pt1-PgS2281
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formal
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Detroit
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racist
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Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I am also here to talk today about the work that is being done to help my home State of Ohio to get through this coronavirus. It is a crisis in so many ways. It is a healthcare crisis, but it has also become an economic crisis and a family crisis. It is affecting everybody in ways that are truly heartbreaking for me to see in so many instances. I have talked to people who have been unemployed for the first time in their lives and have never had access to the unemployment insurance office. They have been fortunate. And now they have to. I have talked to people who started a small business and took a big risk to do that. They have five or six employees--it is a family-owned business--and they have been through the thick and thin over the years, but this one has really knocked them out. They have no income coming because they are in one of these businesses that by government order were shut down and cannot continue to serve the customers. I have talked to hospitals in a rural area of our State that cannot continue to operate. They have about a week left of cash reserves. Luckily, they are going to get some of this funding that Congress just provided with regard to the phase 3.5, as we are calling it, legislation of the CARES Act. But they are really hurting. They have had to lay off more than half of their hospital staff. They can't do elective surgery. They can't have the normal work they are used to because people aren't coming in to see the doctor. They aren't coming into the emergency room. The good news is, in Ohio and other States around the country, we are starting to open up and doing so safely. We are doing more testing and that is all good. It has been a tough time. Like so many Americans, I have been on the phone a lot. I have been on the phone pretty much all day, every day, into the night. A lot of what I have been doing is talking to constituents and talking to stakeholders across the State and hearing their concerns and trying to explain what we are doing here in Washington, how it would affect them and their families, and getting their input as to what we should do, but also I have been working with the White House, and HHS, FEMA, the FDA, Treasury, SBA, the Bureau of Prisons, the U.S. Trade Representative, State of Ohio, and others on corona-related matters to be able to help Ohio companies and help Ohio individuals. We have had some success in that. I am proud of that. In terms of constituents, we held seven tele-townhall meetings in the last 6 weeks where we hear directly from people, thousands of Ohioans. Again, there are a lot of heartbreaking stories and also a lot of really inspiring stories about people who stepped up and helped. One guy lost his job and decided to go volunteer at a food pantry. He wears the PPE, the mask and the gloves, and he delivers food to people who have never had to worry about food security before because they always had a job. Now, they don't have a job and are waiting to get their unemployment insurance, and they can't put food on the table. Some of them feel funny about going to a food pantry because they have never done that before. He makes them feel more at home, he said, and understanding and more welcomed. I talked to people who are delivering groceries to their neighbors who are seniors and who are more vulnerable. God bless them. I talked to people whoare making homemade masks at home. I brought some with me on my trip to Washington. They are doing it as volunteers, not asking for anything other than, if you take this mask, you have to agree you are also going to be helping your neighbor. The frontline workers, the hospital workers, are putting their healthcare on the line for us. They are risking their own healthcare and the possibility of getting this virus to help all of us and to help our grandparents and our parents. God bless them. I love when the healthcare workers are being held up by everybody. I think today is official Nurses Day. We should all be thanking our healthcare professionals and, specifically today, our nurses for what they do every day in every time period, but particularly during this crisis, where they have been working really long hours and doing everything they can to try to protect us. I appreciate the people who are doing everything else on the frontlines right now, whether working in a grocery store stacking shelves or whether you are driving a truck. I drove my pickup truck from Ohio to Washington on Sunday to be here for this week, and every time I went by a truck, I said thank you just for being out there and delivering the food and delivering the products. We thank those folks for what they are doing, all of them. One thing I tried to do is to help in terms of explaining what is going on in getting input. We talked to more than a dozen groups out there. I talked to the Farm Bureau today in Ohio, but I also talked to the hospitals, small business owners, food banks, the nonprofits, and many others to hear how we can support them during this tough time. This afternoon, we had a telephone call with some of the largest businesses in Ohio, a group called the Ohio Business Roundtable. They talked about some of the things they are doing to keep their employees safe because some of them are essential businesses. I encouraged them, as I always do, to get your best practices out to all your others business associates. Let them know how we can reopen safely. We are starting to open in Ohio. We want to know it is safe. The best advice will not be from a piece of paper--as important as that guidance is from the White House or the State of Ohio--it is going to be from other businesses who found out things you can do, like stagger the lunch break. That helps to spread people out. These things might not be obvious, such as do the temperature testing as people come in. Be sure that you are doing everything you can do to explain to people what they can do if they feel like they are getting sick, who they can go to and how they can be sure that they are not infecting others. I think there is an opportunity here to reopen and do it safely. One reason we are able to reopen in Ohio safely is we have a lot more testing now. Like many States, we didn't have enough testing until recently. Now, we are getting it. We had 3,700 tests per day, 2 weeks ago. Within 2 or 3 weeks from today, we will have 20,000 tests per day, a 600 percent increase. We had to work at it because we were having trouble getting some of the components for testing, particularly the reagent. The State of Ohio, to its credit, with Governor DeWine, reached an agreement with Thermo Fisher, a private sector company taking the lead in providing us a guaranteed supply chain of this reagent under their tests, which enables us to dramatically respond to increasing our testing. We are getting to a point where you can have a lot more drive-through testing at Kroger and Walmart and some of our drug stores. We are starting to get the testing much easier for people because you can drive through. You don't have to get out of your car, and you feel safer. The saliva test, as opposed to a test where they take a swab deep into your nasal cavities, is a lot less intrusive, and that is starting to be used more. We are beginning to have enough testing where we can more safely say: Look, we are going to reopen, but we are going to test people a lot. If we find a problem, we are going to do the contact tracing to figure out who that person has been with and quarantine those people. That is less hard than quarantining everybody else. For all of us, really, testing is where there is a problem. We will get to a point where we can test people who are asymptomatic. Even if you don't have symptoms, you could be a carrier. I think dramatically increasing the testing is the key thing. This is a diagnostic test. There are also the immunity tests coming up, which is also helpful, but nothing replaces the diagnostic test which says whether you have it or don't. We also have seen good news in Ohio and around the country on these antiviral medications. That is the reason we can reopen safely, too. If someone does get coronavirus, they have a chance to take something like Tamiflu, which you take for the common flu. Remdesivir is the most recent one the FDA has approved, which has a record of being very helpful. People want to know, if they get the virus, that they can take something for it. That is helpful. Finally, we are getting our hands around the PPE issue, the personal protective equipment, the masks and gloves and the gowns. This evening, after this talk, I am going to be working with an Ohio company that is interested in dramatically expanding the gown production. That would be great. We are working with the White House and others to try to ensure that can happen. We have a lot of great world-class businesses in Ohio. What I am talking about tonight is an example of that. There are others, too, in healthcare systems that have contributed to this coronavirus crisis all over the country. I have been working the last 6 weeks with them, making sure they have the opportunity to do that. One of those key contributions from Ohio has been from a company called Battelle. Battelle is a global research institution and happens to be headquartered in Columbus, OH. They do awesome work all over the world. They run some of our national labs for the Energy Department. We worked with the Trump administration and with Ohio Governor Mike DeWine to help them get approval for a really innovative technology where they can take an N95 mask--one like this, except even better because it is N95--and they can recycle that mask. They decontaminate it. These masks can be recycled up to 20 times. Think about that, 20 times. It is groundbreaking because they have enough machines to spread out around the country. They have 60 machines that they can recycle and decontaminate between 4 and 5 million masks a day. I worked with FEMA, HHS, and the White House to help Battelle secure a contract with the Federal Government to be able to take their technology and machines and spread them initially to hot spots around the country like New York, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, and now other places. I would tell people who might be listening that, if you are connected with a healthcare entity, a hospital, a nursing home, EMS, if you are a firefighter and you use these N95 masks, don't throw them away. When you are done with them, put them aside in a separate bin for recycling and get them picked up. We worked on a contract with the Federal Government to help with the pick-up and delivery, which is also available now. You can get them picked up and take them to Battelle. Hopefully, they have a cleaning station near you, and for free, you get a recycled mask back. The process takes about 8 hours. If you are close to one, you can get it overnight. We are not at full capacity on these machines. We should be. It is a great idea. Why spend the money to get some overpriced mask from China--because they are all overpriced now--when you can actually recycle what you have? It is a lot less medical waste, too. If you are interested in that, go to Battelle.org and learn more about it, or go to our website Portman.senate.gov, to find out more about it. Find out if there is a machine near you. Even if there is not, we can send them, and we can help you connect with companies, including Cardinal Health in Ohio, providing some of the logistics to get the masks back and forth. That is an example of some of the things we have been working on the past 6 weeks to help with this effort. I want to, again, as I have done before, commend the folks at Battelle for devoting their time and energy to thisproject. As soon as this coronavirus came up, they said to the engineers: Forget what you are doing, go work on this. They have also done a lot of testing with Ohio State, putting their folks against that, and now, they are working on other interesting technology that could be very helpful in detecting coronavirus. It is an example. We had another company, Cardinal Health, that I mentioned, that are helping in terms of the logistics. They did something else early on. They came to me and said: We have 2.3 million protective gowns in storage. We are not using them. They are the kind of gowns that can be used as isolation gowns. They are very effective. They are not qualified as surgical gowns, but they can be used as isolation gowns. They were willing to donate them to the National Stockpile. We worked with, again, FDA, HHS, and the White House to get through some of the red tape because it is tough to get things approved at times with the Federal Government. There are reasons for that. We want to be safe. We got approval for those gowns, and bingo, like that, they started to go out. They went to New York, they went to Detroit, they went to places where are there are hot spots. They are in the National Stockpile. They donated 2.3 million gowns. One company that has been very helpful to so many Americans is GoJo. It is a company that makes Purell. I see some up here on the desk. Purell is made in Ohio, outside of Akron. We are very proud of Purell. They have been going 24/7, producing all they can. It is tough to find it in the grocery store because, as soon as the shipment comes in, they take it and use it. It is particularly helpful now that they have Purell beginning to reopen. Reopening means doing things differently. It means wearing a mask when you are in proximity with somebody else. It means using Purell and washing your hands more often. It means being sure you are following the rules to be able to stay safe. Purell will continue to be needed. They had a problem because the Federal Government was assessing a 25-percent tariff on two critical items they had to have for the dispensers. At least one item had a patent in China. China had the patent on it. Things were coming in from China with a 25-percent tariff. We were able to go to a U.S. Trade Representative. I commend Bob Lighthizer, who is the Trade Rep, for working with us on this. For this period of time, they took that 25 percent off. They were having a tough time getting the supply and because it was increasing the costs by 25 percent. We were able to do that. Now. They are able to produce more of this Purell and more dispensers and do it less expensively By the way, this leads me to a comment on China. We need to pull back some of what we make in China and make it here. It is a pretty simple concept. It is harder to implement because our supply chains are global and they are complex. Who would have thought that, on a GoJo dispenser for Purell, there would be a Chinese patented product, but there is. Whether it is gowns,--most of which are made in China--or masks or other products like something essential that is in a hand sanitizer dispenser, we have to pull those products back. I think the way to do it isn't to beat up on China, but rather to provide the incentive--the carrot--to American companies and other companies and say, Make it here, make it in America. I think we can do that as a group, Republicans and Democrats alike. I think there is consensus now that we should do more to reshore, and in some cases, shore for the first time, products that have been moved overseas and particularly to China. We wouldn't have had to get that special permission on the 25-percent tariff if it was made here. We also worked with the FDA to get approval for a company called Second Breath in Cleveland, OH. It is another great example. There are so many in Ohio, but this is a company that didn't make ventilators at all. It is a consortium of several manufacturing companies that work together. But again, early on in this crisis, they said: We need ventilators. We can do that. We are manufacturers. We are Ohioans. We are inventors. They went out and made these ventilators on their own that were then tested at three different Ohio hospitals. The medical community loved them. They are relatively inexpensive, relatively simple, and very effective. Again, the FDA had to go through its process. My job is not to say to the FDA, You need to approve this. My job was to ask them to please expedite this process so, if it can be approved, we can get this out to people who are literally dying and need the ventilators. To the FDA's credit, Dr. Jeffrey Shuren, in particular, worked with us and got that product approved. They already made a bunch of them. They weren't going to send them out if they didn't get approval. They didn't care because they were willing to take a loss, with the opportunity to save people. Now, those ventilators have gone out to stockpiles and hospitals, including New York, when they needed them all over the country. It is an example of the kinds of things over the last 6 weeks we have been able to do in Ohio. The result is companies in Ohio are now making swabs, making masks, making face shields, making hand sanitizer. Proctor and Gamble converted some of their perfume-making factory to making hand sanitizer. It probably smells pretty good. I don't know if it actually has a particular odor to it. If it comes from a perfume factory, it might not just be effective, but smell pretty good, too. Thanks to Proctor and Gamble and all these companies that are willing to step up and do these things they have never done before and respond to these crisis--that is what Americans do. We get knocked down; we figure it out. We get back on our feet. Ultimately, I am optimistic. Think about what has happened in the last couple of weeks. There is substantially new testing. In my own State of Ohio, again, a 600-percent increase of tests from 2 weeks to 3 weeks from now. Increasingly, new antiviral medication has been approved. It is something people can rely on--more testing and antiviral medication is critical. There are more PPEs. Finally, we are figuring it out, like the recycling which we can do right here in America. We can recycle our own masks. There are the gowns we are trying to get produced more here in America right now. We are starting to catch up on things that, frankly, we were pretty far behind in. On the testing, I will tell you that, for the first few weeks of this crisis, you couldn't get a test in most parts of Ohio unless you were so severely ill that you had to be hospitalized. That was wrong. We just weren't prepared as a country. By the way, the last administration wouldn't have been any more prepared, nor would the previous administration, which I served, have been any more prepared. We were not expecting a pandemic like this. We should have been, of course. There were some warnings. The country now will be prepared. One thing we are doing is we are adding to that stockpile with the PPE, with the ventilators, and obviously with the antiviral medications for this virus and the vaccine for this virus. My hope is that vaccine, which the administration calls their process warp speed--and I appreciate that they are working around the clock. There are some scientists who have devoted their lives to this now. That is all they are doing. And God bless them, and there are a bunch of them. And, by the way, some of these vaccines will not work. People will have spent hundreds of millions of dollars--even billions of dollars--on stuff that is not going to work. But kind of like those ventilators were made even though they didn't know if they were going to get approval or not, we want to have that virus vaccine ready. If it does work and it gets approval, we want to have lots of doses of it already made. So there is going to be some money spent, including by the Federal taxpayer, but that is OK to ensure that we end up with something that really can be effective. On the testing, I will tell you that in my own hometown of Cincinnati, OH, those first few weeks we really couldn't get tested unless you were to be hospitalized. And we had an interesting issue there, again, showing how Washington sometimes can make things a little slower. The University of Cincinnati, which is our primary academicmedical center in southern Ohio, had ordered a testing machine back in February. They ordered it because they knew this was coming, and they wanted to get the best of the best. So it was a high-quality machine, with high accuracy, and it could do 1,000 tests a day. By the way, at the time, they were doing about 80 to 100 tests a day in their own little lab, but they needed this equipment, and they had a contract for it back in February. Well, come March they kept hearing next week, next week, next week, and they called me and I got involved. I got to the company and got to the University of Cincinnati and said: What is the real problem here? And they said: Well, we are being told by the Federal Government that we can't deliver it to Cincinnati. It needs to go somewhere else. I said: Well, they contracted for this back in February, and we are desperate for testing. We may not be a hotspot right now, but we are going to be unless we get some testing. So, again, we broke through the redtape and broke through what was some miscommunication. It turned out, with the help of the White House, that we got the approval to get the diagnostic tests there that had already been contracted for. It is called a cobas 6800 machine. It can process more than 1,000 diagnostic tests per day, and it is working. It is every day giving more people the sense of security that they know whether they have this or not, and they know whether the person that works in the store has it or not, and they know that we have more access to testing. Now, I am not saying we are getting there, but that would be key to getting us back to business but also reopening in a way that we don't have to stop if there is an outbreak because we will have the testing to be able to really throw at it and then the contact tracing and be able to ensure that we can stop the spread of the virus. So those are some of the things that we have worked on. We have worked with FEMA to unlock additional resources for Ohio, and that has happened around the country. USDA has now allowed the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services to operate the Disaster Household Distribution Program. We appreciate them. We worked with them on that so that we can officially get meals to food banks and families in Ohio. We worked with the Department of Veterans Affairs to ensure that veterans could get an extension on their filing of claims and appeals during this time period for veterans' compensation benefits and other benefits during a time when the VA offices have been closed. We helped stop the Federal Bureau of Prisons from sending more prisoners to one of our hotspots. It is a really sad case, the Elkton Federal prison in Ohio. We also helped them bring more healthcare to the Elkton prison. Frankly, I am discouraged that they aren't doing more testing there. I talk to them constantly, and they are providing more testing, but not enough--not enough. I think it is inexcusable I think, in a situation like a nursing home or a prison, we should be focused on getting the testing in there. These are what they call congregant living situations. In this case it is a low-security prison. So it is more like dormitory-type style living, and, unfortunately, if they were to test as much as they should, I believe they would find out, as we found out in other State prisons in Ohio, that more than half the prisoners there are carrying the virus, and you have got to separate those people out from those who don't have it and do much more treating and tracing. But we have made progress there, and we will continue to. The phase 3.5 rescue package we passed a few weeks ago does have funding for the PPP program, which is for small businesses, to be able to keep their employees and keep their doors open. It also has funding for healthcare. But the piece that hasn't gotten much attention and may be the most important aspect of the bill of all is $25 billion in the bill for more testing. Again, I am a broken record here on testing, but that money is so important, and we are using it in Ohio right now. About $43 million has come to Ohio recently, I am told, and that funding will be helpful not just to ensure that we have testing, but do we have enough testing so that we will get a sense of what is going on in terms of the healthcare crisis, and then, when there is a hotspot, address it again immediately and be able to stop the spread of the virus? It is so important to us reopening and getting people back to work, back to their churches and other places of worship, and back to school. We need to get back to a normal life, and we can, and we will. We will figure this out, but we do need the help of having the necessary testing capacity, diagnostic testing, and then it is also helpful to have the antibody test so you know whether you have developed an immunity or not. But those are both needed. You can't do it just with the antibody test. You have to also know through the diagnostic test whether someone has the disease or not to be able to pull that person out of a situation where he or she is with others and to find out whom they have been in touch with and do the contact tracing, and, again, quarantining those people, not quarantining everybody else. That is the effective way to do it. Congress has now passed four of these legislative measures in an overwhelming, bipartisan fashion. It is a lot of money. About $3 trillion have gone out the door from Federal taxpayers. I hope we can continue to be bipartisan. I hope we can work together to figure out how to move forward. In my view, moving forward means looking at what we have done carefully. Let's not start to legislate again and spend more money until we know how what we have already sent works. The money is just being distributed now. In fact, most of our money in Ohio that goes to the State and local governments has not been distributed yet. Let's get that money out. By the way, they need it. They need it badly. They need it to pay police and fire and EMS. Our cities in Ohio are really hurting because they depend so much on income taxes, on earnings taxes. Other cities in America don't because they can't, but about four of the top five cities in America that were most affected by the reduction in revenue from the coronavirus are in Ohio--Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Toledo. So they have a real problem on their hands. I strongly urge the Department of Treasury to loosen up their requirements to allow that State and local funding to be used more flexibly, specifically for payroll, for public safety. Based on Monday's guidance that we just got a couple of days ago here, they can now do that. That is just guidance. It is not legislation. I would love in whatever we do going forward to get that in legislation, to say: Let's provide flexibility to the States but also to these municipalities. I will tell you that in my home State of Ohio, again, at the municipal level, we are really hurting. Budgets are being slashed because the revenue is not coming in because it is based on the economy. Most cities rely heavily on property tax. We don't. Property tax has not been affected in the way that income tax has or sales tax. So we do need to pay attention to this, and people say: Well, we shouldn't send in more money to municipalities. Let's start with flexibility. Let them use the money they have more effectively for what they actually need. I don't want a situation where you have a 30-percent or 40-percent cut in police, which is what is happening in some of our municipalities, to affect the public safety of our communities at a time like this. Police officers need to be on the street doing their jobs. God bless them. They are out there. We need them. As for EMS personnel, if your grandmother needs to be rushed to the hospital, you want the EMS to come. You don't want to have a 40-percent cut in their services. So we do have to deal with this issue and be sure to provide flexibility is the first step. And let's codify that by statute and make sure it is clear, not just guidance that doesn't seem to be consistent with the underlying law, because the underlying law says it has to be directly related to the COVID-19, and some of this is not. You need police officers on the street whether you had COVID-19 or not. So let's be sure we codify that and then let's see what is needed. But I also think that in this next legislation we also have to be sure that we are not just looking at what has already passed but looking ahead. Andlooking ahead means the ability to reopen, and that means stimulating the economy and creating--whether it is tax relief or whether it is smart investment in infrastructure. Let's say the projects that are already on the books in my State and yours, projects that are already shovel-ready because they are ready to go, they have gone through the merit-based process in our States, but many of those projects will not be able to be funded this year by our States. Why? Because their revenues have collapsed, particularly their gas taxes have collapsed. So the State match, which is based on the amount of gas you buy, has gone down because people aren't driving nearly as much. What if we picked up some of that at the Federal level? These are good projects because they aren't bridges to nowhere. They have been through the merit-based process, and they are ready to go. That is an idea. Why? It is good jobs, one, which are needed right now, and good benefits, but also it is economic benefit. Those dollars will come back in terms of improved roads and bridges and ports and airports. Rural broadband would really help right now. As people are telelearning and teleworking more and more, they are finding out: Oh, my gosh, there are big parts of our country that don't have broadband access, can't get Wi-Fi, and if you can, it is way too slow. Again, talking to the Farm Bureau today, you would think they would be talking about the price of corn and soybeans, and they were, and the huge issues we have right now in the beef industry and the pork industry and poultry, but they were also talking about: I got my kids at home and we can't do the homework because we can't get broadband in a lot of parts of Ohio--probably in about a third of our State. Ohio is not viewed as a State that has huge, sparsely populated rural areas, but we have enough, and we have a real lack of access to broadband to be able even to do schoolwork, much less to start a small business. So this is another area where we can provide some help for that here, and it would come back in terms of increased dollars from having more economic development in some of these rural areas. So I think there are some things we need to do there as well. There has been a lot of discussion about this issue of liability protection. Let me tell you my perspective on this. It is very simple. This should not be a partisan issue. I mean, we should not want these hospitals and these schools and these small businesses and anybody to be able to be sued for something that was totally out of their control. This is not something anybody should be blamed for, certainly in this country. We know where it started, in Hubei Province, in Wuhan, China. But as for the fact that this has come over here and people are affected by it, let's not have a trial lawyer bonanza here because that will result in people not getting back to work. It will result in more costs for our universities. I understand some of them are being sued right now because they have students who are telelearning. Well, yes, it is not their fault. You can't bring students together right now in the dormitories. It is not safe. I know there is, again, kind of a partisan nature to this. It shouldn't be partisan at all. We should all want people to go back to work, to be able to go back to school, to be able to access the healthcare system. I also think that for my colleagues on my side of the aisle who might want to make this broader than the coronavirus, let's keep it to the coronavirus, and I think that is what people intend. Let's keep it to COVID-19, and let's provide the kind of protections--sensible protections--that are necessary to be able to allow people to get back to a normal life. People say: Well, things are going to be so different now in America. They will be different. We will be more cautious. You know, we will probably, therefore, have a less drastic flu season too because we will be more careful. With this pandemic, you know, we don't know if it is going to come back again like it did a couple of months ago. Will it come back again in the fall or the winter like that, but we have to be prepared for that. So life will not be exactly the same. There is no question about it. There will be some things that will be different, too. There will be more teleworking because it is has worked well. It is cost effective, and it is efficient. There will be more telemedicine because it has worked well. I have talked to a number of doctors who were actually very pleased with some of the things they have been able to do remotely. I hope we will have a Congress that works more remotely so when we are on our recesses, as we do every August, and as we do periodically, that we could have remote hearings on a more regular basis because it is great information. But, ultimately, I think our country will get back on track. Again, we, as Americans, when we get knocked down, we get back up on our feet, and that is what we will do. And we will have again not just the greatest economy on the face of the Earth, but we again will be that beacon of hope and opportunities for the rest of the world. People will again look at America and say: I want to be like that. And we will be able to show that and how we get back on our feet and how we get back to a more normal life, and, once again, the greatest country on the face of this Earth will be able to once again be able to show the world an ideal for everyone to aspire to.
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2020-01-06
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Mr. PORTMAN
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Senate
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CREC-2020-05-06-pt1-PgS2281
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formal
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Cleveland
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racist
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Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I am also here to talk today about the work that is being done to help my home State of Ohio to get through this coronavirus. It is a crisis in so many ways. It is a healthcare crisis, but it has also become an economic crisis and a family crisis. It is affecting everybody in ways that are truly heartbreaking for me to see in so many instances. I have talked to people who have been unemployed for the first time in their lives and have never had access to the unemployment insurance office. They have been fortunate. And now they have to. I have talked to people who started a small business and took a big risk to do that. They have five or six employees--it is a family-owned business--and they have been through the thick and thin over the years, but this one has really knocked them out. They have no income coming because they are in one of these businesses that by government order were shut down and cannot continue to serve the customers. I have talked to hospitals in a rural area of our State that cannot continue to operate. They have about a week left of cash reserves. Luckily, they are going to get some of this funding that Congress just provided with regard to the phase 3.5, as we are calling it, legislation of the CARES Act. But they are really hurting. They have had to lay off more than half of their hospital staff. They can't do elective surgery. They can't have the normal work they are used to because people aren't coming in to see the doctor. They aren't coming into the emergency room. The good news is, in Ohio and other States around the country, we are starting to open up and doing so safely. We are doing more testing and that is all good. It has been a tough time. Like so many Americans, I have been on the phone a lot. I have been on the phone pretty much all day, every day, into the night. A lot of what I have been doing is talking to constituents and talking to stakeholders across the State and hearing their concerns and trying to explain what we are doing here in Washington, how it would affect them and their families, and getting their input as to what we should do, but also I have been working with the White House, and HHS, FEMA, the FDA, Treasury, SBA, the Bureau of Prisons, the U.S. Trade Representative, State of Ohio, and others on corona-related matters to be able to help Ohio companies and help Ohio individuals. We have had some success in that. I am proud of that. In terms of constituents, we held seven tele-townhall meetings in the last 6 weeks where we hear directly from people, thousands of Ohioans. Again, there are a lot of heartbreaking stories and also a lot of really inspiring stories about people who stepped up and helped. One guy lost his job and decided to go volunteer at a food pantry. He wears the PPE, the mask and the gloves, and he delivers food to people who have never had to worry about food security before because they always had a job. Now, they don't have a job and are waiting to get their unemployment insurance, and they can't put food on the table. Some of them feel funny about going to a food pantry because they have never done that before. He makes them feel more at home, he said, and understanding and more welcomed. I talked to people who are delivering groceries to their neighbors who are seniors and who are more vulnerable. God bless them. I talked to people whoare making homemade masks at home. I brought some with me on my trip to Washington. They are doing it as volunteers, not asking for anything other than, if you take this mask, you have to agree you are also going to be helping your neighbor. The frontline workers, the hospital workers, are putting their healthcare on the line for us. They are risking their own healthcare and the possibility of getting this virus to help all of us and to help our grandparents and our parents. God bless them. I love when the healthcare workers are being held up by everybody. I think today is official Nurses Day. We should all be thanking our healthcare professionals and, specifically today, our nurses for what they do every day in every time period, but particularly during this crisis, where they have been working really long hours and doing everything they can to try to protect us. I appreciate the people who are doing everything else on the frontlines right now, whether working in a grocery store stacking shelves or whether you are driving a truck. I drove my pickup truck from Ohio to Washington on Sunday to be here for this week, and every time I went by a truck, I said thank you just for being out there and delivering the food and delivering the products. We thank those folks for what they are doing, all of them. One thing I tried to do is to help in terms of explaining what is going on in getting input. We talked to more than a dozen groups out there. I talked to the Farm Bureau today in Ohio, but I also talked to the hospitals, small business owners, food banks, the nonprofits, and many others to hear how we can support them during this tough time. This afternoon, we had a telephone call with some of the largest businesses in Ohio, a group called the Ohio Business Roundtable. They talked about some of the things they are doing to keep their employees safe because some of them are essential businesses. I encouraged them, as I always do, to get your best practices out to all your others business associates. Let them know how we can reopen safely. We are starting to open in Ohio. We want to know it is safe. The best advice will not be from a piece of paper--as important as that guidance is from the White House or the State of Ohio--it is going to be from other businesses who found out things you can do, like stagger the lunch break. That helps to spread people out. These things might not be obvious, such as do the temperature testing as people come in. Be sure that you are doing everything you can do to explain to people what they can do if they feel like they are getting sick, who they can go to and how they can be sure that they are not infecting others. I think there is an opportunity here to reopen and do it safely. One reason we are able to reopen in Ohio safely is we have a lot more testing now. Like many States, we didn't have enough testing until recently. Now, we are getting it. We had 3,700 tests per day, 2 weeks ago. Within 2 or 3 weeks from today, we will have 20,000 tests per day, a 600 percent increase. We had to work at it because we were having trouble getting some of the components for testing, particularly the reagent. The State of Ohio, to its credit, with Governor DeWine, reached an agreement with Thermo Fisher, a private sector company taking the lead in providing us a guaranteed supply chain of this reagent under their tests, which enables us to dramatically respond to increasing our testing. We are getting to a point where you can have a lot more drive-through testing at Kroger and Walmart and some of our drug stores. We are starting to get the testing much easier for people because you can drive through. You don't have to get out of your car, and you feel safer. The saliva test, as opposed to a test where they take a swab deep into your nasal cavities, is a lot less intrusive, and that is starting to be used more. We are beginning to have enough testing where we can more safely say: Look, we are going to reopen, but we are going to test people a lot. If we find a problem, we are going to do the contact tracing to figure out who that person has been with and quarantine those people. That is less hard than quarantining everybody else. For all of us, really, testing is where there is a problem. We will get to a point where we can test people who are asymptomatic. Even if you don't have symptoms, you could be a carrier. I think dramatically increasing the testing is the key thing. This is a diagnostic test. There are also the immunity tests coming up, which is also helpful, but nothing replaces the diagnostic test which says whether you have it or don't. We also have seen good news in Ohio and around the country on these antiviral medications. That is the reason we can reopen safely, too. If someone does get coronavirus, they have a chance to take something like Tamiflu, which you take for the common flu. Remdesivir is the most recent one the FDA has approved, which has a record of being very helpful. People want to know, if they get the virus, that they can take something for it. That is helpful. Finally, we are getting our hands around the PPE issue, the personal protective equipment, the masks and gloves and the gowns. This evening, after this talk, I am going to be working with an Ohio company that is interested in dramatically expanding the gown production. That would be great. We are working with the White House and others to try to ensure that can happen. We have a lot of great world-class businesses in Ohio. What I am talking about tonight is an example of that. There are others, too, in healthcare systems that have contributed to this coronavirus crisis all over the country. I have been working the last 6 weeks with them, making sure they have the opportunity to do that. One of those key contributions from Ohio has been from a company called Battelle. Battelle is a global research institution and happens to be headquartered in Columbus, OH. They do awesome work all over the world. They run some of our national labs for the Energy Department. We worked with the Trump administration and with Ohio Governor Mike DeWine to help them get approval for a really innovative technology where they can take an N95 mask--one like this, except even better because it is N95--and they can recycle that mask. They decontaminate it. These masks can be recycled up to 20 times. Think about that, 20 times. It is groundbreaking because they have enough machines to spread out around the country. They have 60 machines that they can recycle and decontaminate between 4 and 5 million masks a day. I worked with FEMA, HHS, and the White House to help Battelle secure a contract with the Federal Government to be able to take their technology and machines and spread them initially to hot spots around the country like New York, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, and now other places. I would tell people who might be listening that, if you are connected with a healthcare entity, a hospital, a nursing home, EMS, if you are a firefighter and you use these N95 masks, don't throw them away. When you are done with them, put them aside in a separate bin for recycling and get them picked up. We worked on a contract with the Federal Government to help with the pick-up and delivery, which is also available now. You can get them picked up and take them to Battelle. Hopefully, they have a cleaning station near you, and for free, you get a recycled mask back. The process takes about 8 hours. If you are close to one, you can get it overnight. We are not at full capacity on these machines. We should be. It is a great idea. Why spend the money to get some overpriced mask from China--because they are all overpriced now--when you can actually recycle what you have? It is a lot less medical waste, too. If you are interested in that, go to Battelle.org and learn more about it, or go to our website Portman.senate.gov, to find out more about it. Find out if there is a machine near you. Even if there is not, we can send them, and we can help you connect with companies, including Cardinal Health in Ohio, providing some of the logistics to get the masks back and forth. That is an example of some of the things we have been working on the past 6 weeks to help with this effort. I want to, again, as I have done before, commend the folks at Battelle for devoting their time and energy to thisproject. As soon as this coronavirus came up, they said to the engineers: Forget what you are doing, go work on this. They have also done a lot of testing with Ohio State, putting their folks against that, and now, they are working on other interesting technology that could be very helpful in detecting coronavirus. It is an example. We had another company, Cardinal Health, that I mentioned, that are helping in terms of the logistics. They did something else early on. They came to me and said: We have 2.3 million protective gowns in storage. We are not using them. They are the kind of gowns that can be used as isolation gowns. They are very effective. They are not qualified as surgical gowns, but they can be used as isolation gowns. They were willing to donate them to the National Stockpile. We worked with, again, FDA, HHS, and the White House to get through some of the red tape because it is tough to get things approved at times with the Federal Government. There are reasons for that. We want to be safe. We got approval for those gowns, and bingo, like that, they started to go out. They went to New York, they went to Detroit, they went to places where are there are hot spots. They are in the National Stockpile. They donated 2.3 million gowns. One company that has been very helpful to so many Americans is GoJo. It is a company that makes Purell. I see some up here on the desk. Purell is made in Ohio, outside of Akron. We are very proud of Purell. They have been going 24/7, producing all they can. It is tough to find it in the grocery store because, as soon as the shipment comes in, they take it and use it. It is particularly helpful now that they have Purell beginning to reopen. Reopening means doing things differently. It means wearing a mask when you are in proximity with somebody else. It means using Purell and washing your hands more often. It means being sure you are following the rules to be able to stay safe. Purell will continue to be needed. They had a problem because the Federal Government was assessing a 25-percent tariff on two critical items they had to have for the dispensers. At least one item had a patent in China. China had the patent on it. Things were coming in from China with a 25-percent tariff. We were able to go to a U.S. Trade Representative. I commend Bob Lighthizer, who is the Trade Rep, for working with us on this. For this period of time, they took that 25 percent off. They were having a tough time getting the supply and because it was increasing the costs by 25 percent. We were able to do that. Now. They are able to produce more of this Purell and more dispensers and do it less expensively By the way, this leads me to a comment on China. We need to pull back some of what we make in China and make it here. It is a pretty simple concept. It is harder to implement because our supply chains are global and they are complex. Who would have thought that, on a GoJo dispenser for Purell, there would be a Chinese patented product, but there is. Whether it is gowns,--most of which are made in China--or masks or other products like something essential that is in a hand sanitizer dispenser, we have to pull those products back. I think the way to do it isn't to beat up on China, but rather to provide the incentive--the carrot--to American companies and other companies and say, Make it here, make it in America. I think we can do that as a group, Republicans and Democrats alike. I think there is consensus now that we should do more to reshore, and in some cases, shore for the first time, products that have been moved overseas and particularly to China. We wouldn't have had to get that special permission on the 25-percent tariff if it was made here. We also worked with the FDA to get approval for a company called Second Breath in Cleveland, OH. It is another great example. There are so many in Ohio, but this is a company that didn't make ventilators at all. It is a consortium of several manufacturing companies that work together. But again, early on in this crisis, they said: We need ventilators. We can do that. We are manufacturers. We are Ohioans. We are inventors. They went out and made these ventilators on their own that were then tested at three different Ohio hospitals. The medical community loved them. They are relatively inexpensive, relatively simple, and very effective. Again, the FDA had to go through its process. My job is not to say to the FDA, You need to approve this. My job was to ask them to please expedite this process so, if it can be approved, we can get this out to people who are literally dying and need the ventilators. To the FDA's credit, Dr. Jeffrey Shuren, in particular, worked with us and got that product approved. They already made a bunch of them. They weren't going to send them out if they didn't get approval. They didn't care because they were willing to take a loss, with the opportunity to save people. Now, those ventilators have gone out to stockpiles and hospitals, including New York, when they needed them all over the country. It is an example of the kinds of things over the last 6 weeks we have been able to do in Ohio. The result is companies in Ohio are now making swabs, making masks, making face shields, making hand sanitizer. Proctor and Gamble converted some of their perfume-making factory to making hand sanitizer. It probably smells pretty good. I don't know if it actually has a particular odor to it. If it comes from a perfume factory, it might not just be effective, but smell pretty good, too. Thanks to Proctor and Gamble and all these companies that are willing to step up and do these things they have never done before and respond to these crisis--that is what Americans do. We get knocked down; we figure it out. We get back on our feet. Ultimately, I am optimistic. Think about what has happened in the last couple of weeks. There is substantially new testing. In my own State of Ohio, again, a 600-percent increase of tests from 2 weeks to 3 weeks from now. Increasingly, new antiviral medication has been approved. It is something people can rely on--more testing and antiviral medication is critical. There are more PPEs. Finally, we are figuring it out, like the recycling which we can do right here in America. We can recycle our own masks. There are the gowns we are trying to get produced more here in America right now. We are starting to catch up on things that, frankly, we were pretty far behind in. On the testing, I will tell you that, for the first few weeks of this crisis, you couldn't get a test in most parts of Ohio unless you were so severely ill that you had to be hospitalized. That was wrong. We just weren't prepared as a country. By the way, the last administration wouldn't have been any more prepared, nor would the previous administration, which I served, have been any more prepared. We were not expecting a pandemic like this. We should have been, of course. There were some warnings. The country now will be prepared. One thing we are doing is we are adding to that stockpile with the PPE, with the ventilators, and obviously with the antiviral medications for this virus and the vaccine for this virus. My hope is that vaccine, which the administration calls their process warp speed--and I appreciate that they are working around the clock. There are some scientists who have devoted their lives to this now. That is all they are doing. And God bless them, and there are a bunch of them. And, by the way, some of these vaccines will not work. People will have spent hundreds of millions of dollars--even billions of dollars--on stuff that is not going to work. But kind of like those ventilators were made even though they didn't know if they were going to get approval or not, we want to have that virus vaccine ready. If it does work and it gets approval, we want to have lots of doses of it already made. So there is going to be some money spent, including by the Federal taxpayer, but that is OK to ensure that we end up with something that really can be effective. On the testing, I will tell you that in my own hometown of Cincinnati, OH, those first few weeks we really couldn't get tested unless you were to be hospitalized. And we had an interesting issue there, again, showing how Washington sometimes can make things a little slower. The University of Cincinnati, which is our primary academicmedical center in southern Ohio, had ordered a testing machine back in February. They ordered it because they knew this was coming, and they wanted to get the best of the best. So it was a high-quality machine, with high accuracy, and it could do 1,000 tests a day. By the way, at the time, they were doing about 80 to 100 tests a day in their own little lab, but they needed this equipment, and they had a contract for it back in February. Well, come March they kept hearing next week, next week, next week, and they called me and I got involved. I got to the company and got to the University of Cincinnati and said: What is the real problem here? And they said: Well, we are being told by the Federal Government that we can't deliver it to Cincinnati. It needs to go somewhere else. I said: Well, they contracted for this back in February, and we are desperate for testing. We may not be a hotspot right now, but we are going to be unless we get some testing. So, again, we broke through the redtape and broke through what was some miscommunication. It turned out, with the help of the White House, that we got the approval to get the diagnostic tests there that had already been contracted for. It is called a cobas 6800 machine. It can process more than 1,000 diagnostic tests per day, and it is working. It is every day giving more people the sense of security that they know whether they have this or not, and they know whether the person that works in the store has it or not, and they know that we have more access to testing. Now, I am not saying we are getting there, but that would be key to getting us back to business but also reopening in a way that we don't have to stop if there is an outbreak because we will have the testing to be able to really throw at it and then the contact tracing and be able to ensure that we can stop the spread of the virus. So those are some of the things that we have worked on. We have worked with FEMA to unlock additional resources for Ohio, and that has happened around the country. USDA has now allowed the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services to operate the Disaster Household Distribution Program. We appreciate them. We worked with them on that so that we can officially get meals to food banks and families in Ohio. We worked with the Department of Veterans Affairs to ensure that veterans could get an extension on their filing of claims and appeals during this time period for veterans' compensation benefits and other benefits during a time when the VA offices have been closed. We helped stop the Federal Bureau of Prisons from sending more prisoners to one of our hotspots. It is a really sad case, the Elkton Federal prison in Ohio. We also helped them bring more healthcare to the Elkton prison. Frankly, I am discouraged that they aren't doing more testing there. I talk to them constantly, and they are providing more testing, but not enough--not enough. I think it is inexcusable I think, in a situation like a nursing home or a prison, we should be focused on getting the testing in there. These are what they call congregant living situations. In this case it is a low-security prison. So it is more like dormitory-type style living, and, unfortunately, if they were to test as much as they should, I believe they would find out, as we found out in other State prisons in Ohio, that more than half the prisoners there are carrying the virus, and you have got to separate those people out from those who don't have it and do much more treating and tracing. But we have made progress there, and we will continue to. The phase 3.5 rescue package we passed a few weeks ago does have funding for the PPP program, which is for small businesses, to be able to keep their employees and keep their doors open. It also has funding for healthcare. But the piece that hasn't gotten much attention and may be the most important aspect of the bill of all is $25 billion in the bill for more testing. Again, I am a broken record here on testing, but that money is so important, and we are using it in Ohio right now. About $43 million has come to Ohio recently, I am told, and that funding will be helpful not just to ensure that we have testing, but do we have enough testing so that we will get a sense of what is going on in terms of the healthcare crisis, and then, when there is a hotspot, address it again immediately and be able to stop the spread of the virus? It is so important to us reopening and getting people back to work, back to their churches and other places of worship, and back to school. We need to get back to a normal life, and we can, and we will. We will figure this out, but we do need the help of having the necessary testing capacity, diagnostic testing, and then it is also helpful to have the antibody test so you know whether you have developed an immunity or not. But those are both needed. You can't do it just with the antibody test. You have to also know through the diagnostic test whether someone has the disease or not to be able to pull that person out of a situation where he or she is with others and to find out whom they have been in touch with and do the contact tracing, and, again, quarantining those people, not quarantining everybody else. That is the effective way to do it. Congress has now passed four of these legislative measures in an overwhelming, bipartisan fashion. It is a lot of money. About $3 trillion have gone out the door from Federal taxpayers. I hope we can continue to be bipartisan. I hope we can work together to figure out how to move forward. In my view, moving forward means looking at what we have done carefully. Let's not start to legislate again and spend more money until we know how what we have already sent works. The money is just being distributed now. In fact, most of our money in Ohio that goes to the State and local governments has not been distributed yet. Let's get that money out. By the way, they need it. They need it badly. They need it to pay police and fire and EMS. Our cities in Ohio are really hurting because they depend so much on income taxes, on earnings taxes. Other cities in America don't because they can't, but about four of the top five cities in America that were most affected by the reduction in revenue from the coronavirus are in Ohio--Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Toledo. So they have a real problem on their hands. I strongly urge the Department of Treasury to loosen up their requirements to allow that State and local funding to be used more flexibly, specifically for payroll, for public safety. Based on Monday's guidance that we just got a couple of days ago here, they can now do that. That is just guidance. It is not legislation. I would love in whatever we do going forward to get that in legislation, to say: Let's provide flexibility to the States but also to these municipalities. I will tell you that in my home State of Ohio, again, at the municipal level, we are really hurting. Budgets are being slashed because the revenue is not coming in because it is based on the economy. Most cities rely heavily on property tax. We don't. Property tax has not been affected in the way that income tax has or sales tax. So we do need to pay attention to this, and people say: Well, we shouldn't send in more money to municipalities. Let's start with flexibility. Let them use the money they have more effectively for what they actually need. I don't want a situation where you have a 30-percent or 40-percent cut in police, which is what is happening in some of our municipalities, to affect the public safety of our communities at a time like this. Police officers need to be on the street doing their jobs. God bless them. They are out there. We need them. As for EMS personnel, if your grandmother needs to be rushed to the hospital, you want the EMS to come. You don't want to have a 40-percent cut in their services. So we do have to deal with this issue and be sure to provide flexibility is the first step. And let's codify that by statute and make sure it is clear, not just guidance that doesn't seem to be consistent with the underlying law, because the underlying law says it has to be directly related to the COVID-19, and some of this is not. You need police officers on the street whether you had COVID-19 or not. So let's be sure we codify that and then let's see what is needed. But I also think that in this next legislation we also have to be sure that we are not just looking at what has already passed but looking ahead. Andlooking ahead means the ability to reopen, and that means stimulating the economy and creating--whether it is tax relief or whether it is smart investment in infrastructure. Let's say the projects that are already on the books in my State and yours, projects that are already shovel-ready because they are ready to go, they have gone through the merit-based process in our States, but many of those projects will not be able to be funded this year by our States. Why? Because their revenues have collapsed, particularly their gas taxes have collapsed. So the State match, which is based on the amount of gas you buy, has gone down because people aren't driving nearly as much. What if we picked up some of that at the Federal level? These are good projects because they aren't bridges to nowhere. They have been through the merit-based process, and they are ready to go. That is an idea. Why? It is good jobs, one, which are needed right now, and good benefits, but also it is economic benefit. Those dollars will come back in terms of improved roads and bridges and ports and airports. Rural broadband would really help right now. As people are telelearning and teleworking more and more, they are finding out: Oh, my gosh, there are big parts of our country that don't have broadband access, can't get Wi-Fi, and if you can, it is way too slow. Again, talking to the Farm Bureau today, you would think they would be talking about the price of corn and soybeans, and they were, and the huge issues we have right now in the beef industry and the pork industry and poultry, but they were also talking about: I got my kids at home and we can't do the homework because we can't get broadband in a lot of parts of Ohio--probably in about a third of our State. Ohio is not viewed as a State that has huge, sparsely populated rural areas, but we have enough, and we have a real lack of access to broadband to be able even to do schoolwork, much less to start a small business. So this is another area where we can provide some help for that here, and it would come back in terms of increased dollars from having more economic development in some of these rural areas. So I think there are some things we need to do there as well. There has been a lot of discussion about this issue of liability protection. Let me tell you my perspective on this. It is very simple. This should not be a partisan issue. I mean, we should not want these hospitals and these schools and these small businesses and anybody to be able to be sued for something that was totally out of their control. This is not something anybody should be blamed for, certainly in this country. We know where it started, in Hubei Province, in Wuhan, China. But as for the fact that this has come over here and people are affected by it, let's not have a trial lawyer bonanza here because that will result in people not getting back to work. It will result in more costs for our universities. I understand some of them are being sued right now because they have students who are telelearning. Well, yes, it is not their fault. You can't bring students together right now in the dormitories. It is not safe. I know there is, again, kind of a partisan nature to this. It shouldn't be partisan at all. We should all want people to go back to work, to be able to go back to school, to be able to access the healthcare system. I also think that for my colleagues on my side of the aisle who might want to make this broader than the coronavirus, let's keep it to the coronavirus, and I think that is what people intend. Let's keep it to COVID-19, and let's provide the kind of protections--sensible protections--that are necessary to be able to allow people to get back to a normal life. People say: Well, things are going to be so different now in America. They will be different. We will be more cautious. You know, we will probably, therefore, have a less drastic flu season too because we will be more careful. With this pandemic, you know, we don't know if it is going to come back again like it did a couple of months ago. Will it come back again in the fall or the winter like that, but we have to be prepared for that. So life will not be exactly the same. There is no question about it. There will be some things that will be different, too. There will be more teleworking because it is has worked well. It is cost effective, and it is efficient. There will be more telemedicine because it has worked well. I have talked to a number of doctors who were actually very pleased with some of the things they have been able to do remotely. I hope we will have a Congress that works more remotely so when we are on our recesses, as we do every August, and as we do periodically, that we could have remote hearings on a more regular basis because it is great information. But, ultimately, I think our country will get back on track. Again, we, as Americans, when we get knocked down, we get back up on our feet, and that is what we will do. And we will have again not just the greatest economy on the face of the Earth, but we again will be that beacon of hope and opportunities for the rest of the world. People will again look at America and say: I want to be like that. And we will be able to show that and how we get back on our feet and how we get back to a more normal life, and, once again, the greatest country on the face of this Earth will be able to once again be able to show the world an ideal for everyone to aspire to.
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2020-01-06
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Mr. PORTMAN
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Senate
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CREC-2020-05-06-pt1-PgS2281
| null | 578
|
formal
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single
| null |
homophobic
|
Mr. RISCH. Mr. President, I rise today to honor an outstanding business leader from the great State of Idaho--Idaho Power CEO Darrel Anderson. There are many ways to define an effective leader: by their vision, their passion, or their courage to do something bold. Mr. Anderson possesses all the necessary qualifications and more. His impeccable character, his authenticity, and his humility define his success not only as CEO but also as an upstanding Idaho citizen, family man and friend. Mr. Anderson's tenure as president and CEO has been one for the records. He led Idaho Power's parent company, IDACORP, to a historic 12 consecutive years of earnings growth--an unprecedented achievement among investor-owned utilities in the United States. In 2019, the company saw the best employee safety results ever recorded in its history, something Mr. Anderson cares deeply about. Under his leadership, Idaho Power also experienced the highest customer satisfaction scores ever achieved. Business results like these deserve recognition. But if you ask any one of Idaho Power's nearly 2,000 employees, they will tell you Mr. Anderson's legacy will not be the company's impressive numbers; it will be that he knew their name, showed up for them in good times and bad and encouraged them to make a commitment to one another every single day. Mr. Anderson made employees feel valued and respected. He acknowledged individual contributions and inspired employees to do the same. On June 1, after nearly 24 years with the company and serving at its helm since 2014, Darrel Anderson is retiring. I send my sincerest congratulations to my friend and wish him all the best on his well-deserved retirement. Idaho Power's reliable, affordable and clean energy helps make our great State the ideal place to live, and I am grateful for his exceptional leadership of this outstanding company.
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2020-01-06
|
Mr. RISCH
|
Senate
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CREC-2020-05-06-pt1-PgS2286
| null | 579
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formal
|
Federal Reserve
| null |
antisemitic
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The following communications were laid before the Senate, together with accompanying papers, reports, and documents, and were referred as indicated: EC-4405. A communication from the Secretary of Agriculture, transmitting, pursuant to law, a report relative to a violation of the Antideficiency Act; to the Committee on Appropriations. EC-4406. A communication from the Federal Register Liaison Officer, Office of the Secretary, Department of Defense, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Disposition of Proceeds from Sales of Surplus Personal Property'' (RIN0790-AK30) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Armed Services. EC-4407. A communication from the Secretary of Defense, transmitting a report on the approved retirement of Lieutenant General John N. T. Shanahan, United States Air Force, and his advancement to the grade of lieutenant general on the retired list; to the Committee on Armed Services. EC-4408. A communication from the Secretary of Defense, transmitting a report on the approved retirement of General Gustave F. Perna, United States Army, and his advancement to the grade of general on the retired list; to the Committee on Armed Services. EC-4409. A communication from the Under Secretary of Defense (Acquisition and Sustainment), transmitting, pursuant to law, a report entitled ``Report on Realignment of the Defense Acquisition System to Implement Acquisition Reforms''; to the Committee on Armed Services. EC-4410. A communication from the Federal Register Liaison Officer , Office of the Secretary, Department of Defense, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Victim and Witness Assistance'' (RIN0790-AJ31) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Armed Services. EC-4411. A communication from the President of the United States, transmitting, pursuant to law, a report relative to authorizing the Secretary of Defense to order units and individual members of the Selected Reserve, to active duty, to augment the active forces for the effective conduct of enhanced Department of Defense Counternarcotic Operation in the Western Hemisphere, received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on April 30, 2020; to the Committee on Armed Services. EC-4412. A communication from the Secretary of Defense, transmitting a report on the approved retirement of Lieutenant General Darsie D. Rogers, United States Army, and his advancement to the grade of lieutenant general on the retired list; to the Committee on Armed Services. EC-4413. A communication from the Chief Counsel, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Department of Homeland Security, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Suspension of Community Eligibility, Internal Docket ID FEMA-8623'' ((44 CFR Part 64) (Docket No. FEMA-2020-0005)) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. EC-4414. A communication from the Chief Counsel, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Department of Homeland Security, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Suspension of Community Eligibility, Internal Docket ID FEMA-8623'' ((44 CFR Part 64) (Docket No. FEMA-2020-0005)) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. EC-4415. A communication from the Chief Counsel, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Department of Homeland Security, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Final Flood Elevation Determination'' ((44 CFR Part 67) (Docket No. FEMA-2020-0002)) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. EC-4416. A communication from the Director, Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Treatment of Pandemic Relief Payments Under Regulation E and Application of the Compulsory Use Prohibition'' (12 CFR Part 1005) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. EC-4417. A communication from the Executive Director, Comptroller of the Currency, Department of the Treasury, transmitting, pursuant to law, the Office of the Comptroller's 2019 Office of Minority and Women Inclusion Annual Report to Congress; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. EC-4418. A communication from the Senior Legal Advisor for Regulatory Affairs, Department of the Treasury, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Assessment of Fees on Certain Bank Holding Companies and Nonbank Financial Companies Supervised by the Federal Reserve Board To Cover the Expenses of the Financial Research Fund'' ((RIN1505-AC59) (31 CFR Part 150)) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. EC-4419. A communication from the Director of Legislative Affairs, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Interim Final Rule - Regulatory Capital Rule: Paycheck Protection Program Lending Facility and Paycheck Protection Program Loans'' (RIN3064-AF49) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. EC-4420. A communication from the Director of Legislative Affairs, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Interim Final Rule - Regulatory Capital Rule: Eligible Retained Income'' (RIN3064-AF40) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. EC-4421. A communication from the Director of Legislative Affairs, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Interim Final Rule - Regulatory Capital Rule: Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility'' (RIN3064-AF41) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. EC-4422. A communication from the Director of Legislative Affairs, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Interim Final Rule - Regulatory Capital Rule: Revised Transition of the Current Expected Credit Losses'' (RIN3064-AF42) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. EC-4423. A communication from the Director of Legislative Affairs, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Interim Final Rule - Regulatory Capital Rule: Paycheck Protection Program Lending Facility and Paycheck Protection Program Loans; Correction'' (RIN3064-AF49) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. EC-4424. A communication from the Vice President of Environment, Tennessee Valley Authority, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Implementation of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969'' (18 CFR Part 1318), received in the office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works. EC-4425. A communication from the Deputy Counsel, Environmental Protection Agency, transmitting, pursuant to law, a report relative to a vacancy in the position of Inspector General, Environmental Protection Agency, received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works. EC-4426. A communication from the Director of Congressional Affairs, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Regulatory Guide (RG) 8.39, Rev 1, `Release of Patients Administered Radioactive Material' '' received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works. EC-4427. A communication from the Director of Congressional Affairs, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Regulatory Guide (RG) 1.199, `Anchoring Components and Structural Supports in Concrete' Revision 1'' received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works. EC-4428. A communication from the Director of Congressional Affairs, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Regulatory Guide (RG) 1.151, Revision 2, `Instrument Sensing Lines' '' received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works. EC-4429. A communication from the Director of Congressional Affairs, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Regulatory Guide (RG) 1.188, Rev 2, `Standard Format and Content for Applications to Renew Nuclear Power Plant Operating Licenses' '' received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works. EC-4430. A communication from the Director of Congressional Affairs, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Regulatory Guide (RG) 1.180, Revision 2, `Guidelines for Evaluating Electromagnetic and Radio Frequency Interference in Safety- Related Instrumentation and Control Systems' '' received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works. EC-4431. A communication from the Director of Congressional Affairs, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Regulatory Guide (RG) 8.39, Rev 1, `Release of Patients Administered Radioactive Material' '' received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works. EC-4432. A communication from the Director of Congressional Affairs, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Issuance of a Revision to the Guidance Document for Alternative Disposal Requests'' received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works. EC-4433. A communication from the Director of Congressional Affairs, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Enforcement Guidance Memorandum 20-002 - Attachment 1, dispositioning violations of NRC requirements for completion periodicities associated with security training and requalification requirements during the COVID-19 public health emergency'' received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works. EC-4434. A communication from the Director of Congressional Affairs, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Enforcement Guidance Memorandum 20-002, Dispositioning violations of NRC requirements during Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)'' received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works. EC-4435. A communication from the Secretary of the Senate, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of the receipts and expenditures of the Senate for the period from October 1, 2019 through April 30, 2020, received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 6, 2020; ordered to lie on the table. EC-4436. A communication from the Chief of the Publications and Regulations Branch, Internal Revenue Service, Department of the Treasury, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Extension of Time to File Application for Tentative Carryback Adjustment'' (Notice 2020-26) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4 , 2020; to the Committee on Finance. EC-4437. A communication from the Chief of the Publications and Regulations Branch, Internal Revenue Service, Department of the Treasury, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Notice: Update to Notice 2020-18, Relief for Taxpayers Affected by Ongoing Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic, Related to Gift and Generation-Skipping Transfer Tax Filing and Payment Deadlines'' (Notice 2020-20) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4 , 2020; to the Committee on Finance. EC-4438. A communication from the Chief of the Publications and Regulations Branch, Internal Revenue Service, Department of the Treasury, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Notice: Relief for Taxpayers Affected by Ongoing Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic'' (Notice 2020-18) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Finance. EC-4439. A communication from the Chief of the Publications and Regulations Branch, Internal Revenue Service, Department of the Treasury, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Effective Date for Employment Tax Credits Under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act'' (Notice 2020-21) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Finance. EC-4440. A communication from the Chief of the Publications and Regulations Branch, Internal Revenue Service, Department of the Treasury, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Revenue Procedure 2020-14'' (RP-103465-20) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Finance. EC-4441. A communication from the Chief of the Publications and Regulations Branch, Internal Revenue Service, Department of the Treasury, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Treasury Decision (TD): Rules Regarding Certain Hybrid Arrangements'' ((RIN1545-BO53) (TD 9896)) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Finance. EC-4442. A communication from the Chief of the Publications and Regulations Branch, Internal Revenue Service, Department of the Treasury, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Covered Asset Acquisitions'' ((RIN1545- BM36) (TD 9895)) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Finance. EC-4443. A communication from the Chief of the Publications and Regulations Branch, Internal Revenue Service, Department of the Treasury, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Announcement and Report Concerning Advance Pricing Agreements'' (ANN 2020-2) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Finance. EC-4444. A communication from the Deputy Assistant General Counsel for Regulatory Affairs, Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Benefits Payable in Terminated Single- Employer Plans; Interest Assumptions for Paying Benefits'' (29 CFR Part 4022) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. EC-4445. A communication from the Acting Director of the Office of Standards, Regulations, and Variances, Mine Safety and Health Administration, Department of Labor, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Electronic Detonators'' (RIN1219-AB88) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. EC-4446. A communication from the Executive Secretary, National Labor Relations Board, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Representation-Case Procedures: Election Bars; Proof of Majority Support in Construction-Industry Collective-Bargaining Relationships'' (RIN3142-AA16) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. EC-4447. A communication from the Director of Regulations and Policy Management Staff, Food and Drug Administration, Department of Health and Human Services, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Medical Devices; Technical Amendment'' (Docket No. FDA-2012-N-0011) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. EC-4448. A communication from the Director of Regulations and Policy Management Staff, Food and Drug Administration, Department of Health and Human Services, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Medical Devices; Technical Amendment'' (Docket No. FDA-2020-N-0011) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. EC-4449. A communication from the Director of Regulations and Policy Management Staff, Food and Drug Administration, Department of Health and Human Services, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Office of Regulatory Affairs Division Director; Technical Amendments'' (Docket No. FDA-2019-N-0011) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. EC-4450. A communication from the Director of Regulations and Policy Management Staff, Food and Drug Administration, Department of Health and Human Services, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Tobacco Products; Required Warnings for Cigarette Packages and Advertisements'' (RIN0910-AI39) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. EC-4451. A communication from the Executive Director, Office of General Counsel, Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, transmitting , pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Cost-of-living Adjustments and Identity Verification'' (5 CFR Part 1650) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
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2020-01-06
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Unknown
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Senate
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CREC-2020-05-06-pt1-PgS2287
| null | 580
|
formal
|
the Fed
| null |
antisemitic
|
The following communications were laid before the Senate, together with accompanying papers, reports, and documents, and were referred as indicated: EC-4405. A communication from the Secretary of Agriculture, transmitting, pursuant to law, a report relative to a violation of the Antideficiency Act; to the Committee on Appropriations. EC-4406. A communication from the Federal Register Liaison Officer, Office of the Secretary, Department of Defense, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Disposition of Proceeds from Sales of Surplus Personal Property'' (RIN0790-AK30) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Armed Services. EC-4407. A communication from the Secretary of Defense, transmitting a report on the approved retirement of Lieutenant General John N. T. Shanahan, United States Air Force, and his advancement to the grade of lieutenant general on the retired list; to the Committee on Armed Services. EC-4408. A communication from the Secretary of Defense, transmitting a report on the approved retirement of General Gustave F. Perna, United States Army, and his advancement to the grade of general on the retired list; to the Committee on Armed Services. EC-4409. A communication from the Under Secretary of Defense (Acquisition and Sustainment), transmitting, pursuant to law, a report entitled ``Report on Realignment of the Defense Acquisition System to Implement Acquisition Reforms''; to the Committee on Armed Services. EC-4410. A communication from the Federal Register Liaison Officer , Office of the Secretary, Department of Defense, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Victim and Witness Assistance'' (RIN0790-AJ31) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Armed Services. EC-4411. A communication from the President of the United States, transmitting, pursuant to law, a report relative to authorizing the Secretary of Defense to order units and individual members of the Selected Reserve, to active duty, to augment the active forces for the effective conduct of enhanced Department of Defense Counternarcotic Operation in the Western Hemisphere, received during adjournment of the Senate in the Office of the President of the Senate on April 30, 2020; to the Committee on Armed Services. EC-4412. A communication from the Secretary of Defense, transmitting a report on the approved retirement of Lieutenant General Darsie D. Rogers, United States Army, and his advancement to the grade of lieutenant general on the retired list; to the Committee on Armed Services. EC-4413. A communication from the Chief Counsel, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Department of Homeland Security, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Suspension of Community Eligibility, Internal Docket ID FEMA-8623'' ((44 CFR Part 64) (Docket No. FEMA-2020-0005)) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. EC-4414. A communication from the Chief Counsel, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Department of Homeland Security, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Suspension of Community Eligibility, Internal Docket ID FEMA-8623'' ((44 CFR Part 64) (Docket No. FEMA-2020-0005)) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. EC-4415. A communication from the Chief Counsel, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Department of Homeland Security, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Final Flood Elevation Determination'' ((44 CFR Part 67) (Docket No. FEMA-2020-0002)) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. EC-4416. A communication from the Director, Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Treatment of Pandemic Relief Payments Under Regulation E and Application of the Compulsory Use Prohibition'' (12 CFR Part 1005) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. EC-4417. A communication from the Executive Director, Comptroller of the Currency, Department of the Treasury, transmitting, pursuant to law, the Office of the Comptroller's 2019 Office of Minority and Women Inclusion Annual Report to Congress; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. EC-4418. A communication from the Senior Legal Advisor for Regulatory Affairs, Department of the Treasury, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Assessment of Fees on Certain Bank Holding Companies and Nonbank Financial Companies Supervised by the Federal Reserve Board To Cover the Expenses of the Financial Research Fund'' ((RIN1505-AC59) (31 CFR Part 150)) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. EC-4419. A communication from the Director of Legislative Affairs, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Interim Final Rule - Regulatory Capital Rule: Paycheck Protection Program Lending Facility and Paycheck Protection Program Loans'' (RIN3064-AF49) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. EC-4420. A communication from the Director of Legislative Affairs, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Interim Final Rule - Regulatory Capital Rule: Eligible Retained Income'' (RIN3064-AF40) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. EC-4421. A communication from the Director of Legislative Affairs, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Interim Final Rule - Regulatory Capital Rule: Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility'' (RIN3064-AF41) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. EC-4422. A communication from the Director of Legislative Affairs, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Interim Final Rule - Regulatory Capital Rule: Revised Transition of the Current Expected Credit Losses'' (RIN3064-AF42) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. EC-4423. A communication from the Director of Legislative Affairs, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Interim Final Rule - Regulatory Capital Rule: Paycheck Protection Program Lending Facility and Paycheck Protection Program Loans; Correction'' (RIN3064-AF49) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. EC-4424. A communication from the Vice President of Environment, Tennessee Valley Authority, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Implementation of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969'' (18 CFR Part 1318), received in the office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works. EC-4425. A communication from the Deputy Counsel, Environmental Protection Agency, transmitting, pursuant to law, a report relative to a vacancy in the position of Inspector General, Environmental Protection Agency, received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works. EC-4426. A communication from the Director of Congressional Affairs, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Regulatory Guide (RG) 8.39, Rev 1, `Release of Patients Administered Radioactive Material' '' received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works. EC-4427. A communication from the Director of Congressional Affairs, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Regulatory Guide (RG) 1.199, `Anchoring Components and Structural Supports in Concrete' Revision 1'' received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works. EC-4428. A communication from the Director of Congressional Affairs, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Regulatory Guide (RG) 1.151, Revision 2, `Instrument Sensing Lines' '' received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works. EC-4429. A communication from the Director of Congressional Affairs, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Regulatory Guide (RG) 1.188, Rev 2, `Standard Format and Content for Applications to Renew Nuclear Power Plant Operating Licenses' '' received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works. EC-4430. A communication from the Director of Congressional Affairs, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Regulatory Guide (RG) 1.180, Revision 2, `Guidelines for Evaluating Electromagnetic and Radio Frequency Interference in Safety- Related Instrumentation and Control Systems' '' received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works. EC-4431. A communication from the Director of Congressional Affairs, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Regulatory Guide (RG) 8.39, Rev 1, `Release of Patients Administered Radioactive Material' '' received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works. EC-4432. A communication from the Director of Congressional Affairs, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Issuance of a Revision to the Guidance Document for Alternative Disposal Requests'' received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works. EC-4433. A communication from the Director of Congressional Affairs, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Enforcement Guidance Memorandum 20-002 - Attachment 1, dispositioning violations of NRC requirements for completion periodicities associated with security training and requalification requirements during the COVID-19 public health emergency'' received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works. EC-4434. A communication from the Director of Congressional Affairs, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Enforcement Guidance Memorandum 20-002, Dispositioning violations of NRC requirements during Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)'' received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works. EC-4435. A communication from the Secretary of the Senate, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of the receipts and expenditures of the Senate for the period from October 1, 2019 through April 30, 2020, received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 6, 2020; ordered to lie on the table. EC-4436. A communication from the Chief of the Publications and Regulations Branch, Internal Revenue Service, Department of the Treasury, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Extension of Time to File Application for Tentative Carryback Adjustment'' (Notice 2020-26) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4 , 2020; to the Committee on Finance. EC-4437. A communication from the Chief of the Publications and Regulations Branch, Internal Revenue Service, Department of the Treasury, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Notice: Update to Notice 2020-18, Relief for Taxpayers Affected by Ongoing Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic, Related to Gift and Generation-Skipping Transfer Tax Filing and Payment Deadlines'' (Notice 2020-20) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4 , 2020; to the Committee on Finance. EC-4438. A communication from the Chief of the Publications and Regulations Branch, Internal Revenue Service, Department of the Treasury, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Notice: Relief for Taxpayers Affected by Ongoing Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic'' (Notice 2020-18) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Finance. EC-4439. A communication from the Chief of the Publications and Regulations Branch, Internal Revenue Service, Department of the Treasury, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Effective Date for Employment Tax Credits Under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act'' (Notice 2020-21) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Finance. EC-4440. A communication from the Chief of the Publications and Regulations Branch, Internal Revenue Service, Department of the Treasury, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Revenue Procedure 2020-14'' (RP-103465-20) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Finance. EC-4441. A communication from the Chief of the Publications and Regulations Branch, Internal Revenue Service, Department of the Treasury, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Treasury Decision (TD): Rules Regarding Certain Hybrid Arrangements'' ((RIN1545-BO53) (TD 9896)) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Finance. EC-4442. A communication from the Chief of the Publications and Regulations Branch, Internal Revenue Service, Department of the Treasury, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Covered Asset Acquisitions'' ((RIN1545- BM36) (TD 9895)) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Finance. EC-4443. A communication from the Chief of the Publications and Regulations Branch, Internal Revenue Service, Department of the Treasury, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Announcement and Report Concerning Advance Pricing Agreements'' (ANN 2020-2) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Finance. EC-4444. A communication from the Deputy Assistant General Counsel for Regulatory Affairs, Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Benefits Payable in Terminated Single- Employer Plans; Interest Assumptions for Paying Benefits'' (29 CFR Part 4022) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. EC-4445. A communication from the Acting Director of the Office of Standards, Regulations, and Variances, Mine Safety and Health Administration, Department of Labor, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Electronic Detonators'' (RIN1219-AB88) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. EC-4446. A communication from the Executive Secretary, National Labor Relations Board, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Representation-Case Procedures: Election Bars; Proof of Majority Support in Construction-Industry Collective-Bargaining Relationships'' (RIN3142-AA16) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. EC-4447. A communication from the Director of Regulations and Policy Management Staff, Food and Drug Administration, Department of Health and Human Services, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Medical Devices; Technical Amendment'' (Docket No. FDA-2012-N-0011) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. EC-4448. A communication from the Director of Regulations and Policy Management Staff, Food and Drug Administration, Department of Health and Human Services, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Medical Devices; Technical Amendment'' (Docket No. FDA-2020-N-0011) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. EC-4449. A communication from the Director of Regulations and Policy Management Staff, Food and Drug Administration, Department of Health and Human Services, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Office of Regulatory Affairs Division Director; Technical Amendments'' (Docket No. FDA-2019-N-0011) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. EC-4450. A communication from the Director of Regulations and Policy Management Staff, Food and Drug Administration, Department of Health and Human Services, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Tobacco Products; Required Warnings for Cigarette Packages and Advertisements'' (RIN0910-AI39) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. EC-4451. A communication from the Executive Director, Office of General Counsel, Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, transmitting , pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled ``Cost-of-living Adjustments and Identity Verification'' (5 CFR Part 1650) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on May 4, 2020; to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
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2020-01-06
|
Unknown
|
Senate
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CREC-2020-05-06-pt1-PgS2287
| null | 581
|
formal
|
Reagan
| null |
white supremacist
|
Mrs. FEINSTEIN (for herself, Ms. Murkowski, Ms. Hirono, Ms. Cortez Masto, Mr. Markey, Ms. Cantwell, Mr. Casey, Mr. Coons, Mr. Booker, Ms. Stabenow, Mr. Blumenthal, Mr. Kaine, Ms. Warren, Mrs. Shaheen, Mr. Van Hollen, Mr. Peters, Mr. Carper, Mr. Cardin, Ms. Klobuchar, Mr. Brown, Mr. King, Mr. Jones, Mr.Menendez, Ms. Harris, Mr. Reed, Mr. Merkley, Ms. Baldwin, Ms. Rosen, Mrs. Murray, Mr. Wyden, Ms. Collins, Mrs. Hyde-Smith, Mrs. Blackburn, Mrs. Loeffler, Mr. Durbin, and Ms. Ernst) submitted the following resolution; which was considered and agreed to: S. Res. 563 Whereas National Women's History Month recognizes and spreads awareness of the importance of women in the history of the United States; Whereas, throughout the history of the United States, whether in their homes, in their workplaces, in schools, in the courts, or during wartime, women have fought for themselves, their families, and all people of the United States; Whereas, in 1987, President Ronald Reagan issued a Presidential proclamation proclaiming March 1987 as ``Women's History Month''; and Whereas, despite the advancements of women in the United States, much remains to be done to ensure that women realize their full potential as equal members of society in the United States: Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That the Senate-- (1) designates March 2020 as ``National Women's History Month''; (2) recognizes the celebration of National Women's History Month as a time to reflect on the many notable contributions that women have made to the United States; and (3) urges the people of the United States to observe National Women's History Month with appropriate programs and activities.
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2020-01-06
|
Unknown
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Senate
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CREC-2020-05-06-pt1-PgS2294-3
| null | 582
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formal
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based
| null |
white supremacist
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Mr. MERKLEY (for himself, Mr. Wicker, Mr. Udall, Mr. Inhofe, Mr. Wyden, Mr. Cramer, Mr. Blumenthal, Mr. Cotton, Ms. Sinema, Mr. Burr, Mr. Peters, Mrs. Hyde-Smith, Mr. Manchin, Mr. Boozman, Ms. Cortez Masto, Mr. Hoeven, Ms. Harris, Mrs. Capito, Mr. Leahy, Ms. McSally, Ms. Rosen, Mr. Daines, and Mrs. Shaheen) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions: S. Res. 561 Whereas, beginning in 1991, National Nurses Week is celebrated annually from May 6, also known as ``National Recognition Day for Nurses'', through May 12, the birthday of Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing; Whereas, in 2020, National Nurses Week falls within the International Year of the Nurse and the Midwife, as designated by the World Health Organization; Whereas National Nurses Week is a time of year to reflect on the important contributions that nurses make to provide safe, high-quality health care; Whereas nurses serve on the front lines, risking their lives treating the injured and sick during wartime, natural disasters, and pandemics, including the COVID-19 pandemic; Whereas nurses are known to be patient advocates, acting to protect the lives of individuals under their care; Whereas nurses represent the largest single component of the health care professions, with an estimated population of more than 4,000,000 registered nurses in the United States; Whereas nurses are leading in the delivery of quality care in a transformed health care system that improves patient outcomes and safety; Whereas the Future of Nursing report of the Institute of Medicine has called for the nursing profession to meet the call for leadership in a team-based delivery model; Whereas, when nurse staffing levels increase, the risk of patient complications and lengthy hospital stays decreases, resulting in cost savings; Whereas nurses are experienced researchers, and the work of nurses encompasses a wide scope of scientific inquiry, including clinical research, health systems and outcomes research, and nursing education research; Whereas nurses provide care that is sensitive to the cultures and customs of individuals across the United States; Whereas nurses are well-positioned to provide leadership to eliminate health care disparities that exist in the United States; Whereas nurses are the cornerstone of the public health infrastructure, promoting healthy lifestyles and educating communities on disease prevention and health promotion; Whereas nurses help inform and educate, and work closely with, legislators to improve-- (1) the education, retention, recruitment, and practice of all nurses; and (2) the health and safety of the patients for whom the nurses care; Whereas there is a need-- (1) to strengthen nursing workforce development programs at all levels, including the number of doctorally prepared faculty members; and (2) to provide education to the nurse research scientists who can develop new nursing care models to improve the health status of the diverse population of the United States; Whereas nurses touch the lives of the people of the United States through every stage of life; and Whereas nursing has been voted the most honest and ethical profession in the United States: Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That the Senate-- (1) supports the goals and ideals of National Nurses Week, as founded by the American Nurses Association; (2) recognizes the significant contributions of nurses to the health care system in the United States; and (3) encourages the people of the United States to observe National Nurses Week with appropriate recognition, ceremonies, activities, and programs to demonstrate the importance of nurses to the everyday lives of patients.
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2020-01-06
|
Unknown
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-05-06-pt1-PgS2294
| null | 583
|
formal
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single
| null |
homophobic
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Mr. MERKLEY (for himself, Mr. Wicker, Mr. Udall, Mr. Inhofe, Mr. Wyden, Mr. Cramer, Mr. Blumenthal, Mr. Cotton, Ms. Sinema, Mr. Burr, Mr. Peters, Mrs. Hyde-Smith, Mr. Manchin, Mr. Boozman, Ms. Cortez Masto, Mr. Hoeven, Ms. Harris, Mrs. Capito, Mr. Leahy, Ms. McSally, Ms. Rosen, Mr. Daines, and Mrs. Shaheen) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions: S. Res. 561 Whereas, beginning in 1991, National Nurses Week is celebrated annually from May 6, also known as ``National Recognition Day for Nurses'', through May 12, the birthday of Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing; Whereas, in 2020, National Nurses Week falls within the International Year of the Nurse and the Midwife, as designated by the World Health Organization; Whereas National Nurses Week is a time of year to reflect on the important contributions that nurses make to provide safe, high-quality health care; Whereas nurses serve on the front lines, risking their lives treating the injured and sick during wartime, natural disasters, and pandemics, including the COVID-19 pandemic; Whereas nurses are known to be patient advocates, acting to protect the lives of individuals under their care; Whereas nurses represent the largest single component of the health care professions, with an estimated population of more than 4,000,000 registered nurses in the United States; Whereas nurses are leading in the delivery of quality care in a transformed health care system that improves patient outcomes and safety; Whereas the Future of Nursing report of the Institute of Medicine has called for the nursing profession to meet the call for leadership in a team-based delivery model; Whereas, when nurse staffing levels increase, the risk of patient complications and lengthy hospital stays decreases, resulting in cost savings; Whereas nurses are experienced researchers, and the work of nurses encompasses a wide scope of scientific inquiry, including clinical research, health systems and outcomes research, and nursing education research; Whereas nurses provide care that is sensitive to the cultures and customs of individuals across the United States; Whereas nurses are well-positioned to provide leadership to eliminate health care disparities that exist in the United States; Whereas nurses are the cornerstone of the public health infrastructure, promoting healthy lifestyles and educating communities on disease prevention and health promotion; Whereas nurses help inform and educate, and work closely with, legislators to improve-- (1) the education, retention, recruitment, and practice of all nurses; and (2) the health and safety of the patients for whom the nurses care; Whereas there is a need-- (1) to strengthen nursing workforce development programs at all levels, including the number of doctorally prepared faculty members; and (2) to provide education to the nurse research scientists who can develop new nursing care models to improve the health status of the diverse population of the United States; Whereas nurses touch the lives of the people of the United States through every stage of life; and Whereas nursing has been voted the most honest and ethical profession in the United States: Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That the Senate-- (1) supports the goals and ideals of National Nurses Week, as founded by the American Nurses Association; (2) recognizes the significant contributions of nurses to the health care system in the United States; and (3) encourages the people of the United States to observe National Nurses Week with appropriate recognition, ceremonies, activities, and programs to demonstrate the importance of nurses to the everyday lives of patients.
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2020-01-06
|
Unknown
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-05-06-pt1-PgS2294
| null | 584
|
formal
|
Baltimore
| null |
racist
|
Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I rise today to highlight the heroes of my home State of Maryland who are working on the frontlines to fight COVID-19. On January 21, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the United States. Since then, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States has ballooned to over 1.2 million cases and over 72,000 Americans have died. The CDC has designated the Baltimore-Washington corridor as a hotspot, as cases continue to rise in the region. As of May 6, there have been 28,163 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 1,290 confirmed deaths in the State of Maryland. These are trying, unprecedented times for all communities in America, and Maryland is no different in this regard. Fred Rogers once said that in times of crisis, times like these, we should ``look for the helpers.'' I would like to take this time to recognize some of the heroes who are helping communities in Maryland. I am very proud of our State's hospitals, distilleries, manufacturers, and biomedical and pharmaceutical companies that have come together to perform their own testing, manufactured personal protective equipment and hand sanitizers, and are at the forefront of developing a vaccine. Maryland is home to some of the world's premier academic medical systems, including the University of Maryland Medical System and Johns Hopkins University, which have been critical in preparing our State for the pandemic. I am particularly proud of Johns Hopkins' coronavirus tracking system, which public health officials worldwide have come to rely on for up-to-date, accurate information. I applaud JohnsHopkins officials and staff creating the vital public health tool, which has already proven itself critical to fighting this disease. Lord Kelvin stated so long ago: When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind. In the early days of the pandemic in Maryland, our State officials, like officials in most States, were desperately searching for ways to increase testing capacity. Johns Hopkins developed its own coronavirus test to help meet demand. The university has been especially helpful in Maryland's effort to combat the virus in nursing homes. Johns Hopkins has closely collaborated with local nursing homes to train their employees and test residents to protect our most vulnerable populations. I commend Johns Hopkins' ingenuity, which has been critical to efforts to identify those afflicted with COVID-19 and to prevent the spread of the virus. The University of Maryland Medical System has stepped up to lead efforts to address the devastating impact of COVID-19 in our State's minority communities, which is likely due to the underlying healthcare disparities. The university has assembled a team of public health experts to execute the proposed Maryland Health Equity COVID-19 Consortium. The consortium will be critical to the developing of strategies that inform our State's response efforts to protect our communities of color, who are more susceptible to COVID-19. Despite the immense burden Maryland's small businesses are facing, they have stepped up to help local hospitals, nursing homes, and other frontline workers. Sagamore Spirits Distillery in Baltimore is one such small business. Sagamore has completely converted its operation to distill corn ethanol to produce hand sanitizers. The distillery is sourcing its corn from Maryland farmers. Hardwire, an armor company on the Eastern Shore in Pocomoke City, now produces sustainable face shields that can last up to 6 months. By the end of this week, Hardwire will have shipped out 1 million face shields to healthcare workers, first responders, and others on the frontline in the fight against COVID-19. The demand for Hardwire's face shield is so great that it has hired 115 new employees, providing much needed economic relief to communities on the Eastern Shore. In addition, Maryland's world-leading biomedical and pharmaceutical companies are working tirelessly to find a vaccine for COVID-19. AstraZeneca, a pharmaceutical and life sciences company with research and development facilities in Gaithersburg and Frederick, has partnered with the University of Oxford on a potential vaccine that has already entered phase 1 clinical trials. Emergent BioSolutions in Rockville is collaborating with Johnson & Johnson on its lead COVID-19 vaccine candidate. Emergent BioSolutions will be providing contract development and manufacturing services in Maryland to support Johnson & Johnson's recently announced commitment to supply 1 billion vaccines worldwide. I would be remiss if I did not also thank Maryland's frontline healthcare workers who risk their lives every day to care for those with COVID-19. These physicians, physician assistants, nurses, lab technicians, EMT personnel, and many others go to work day after day facing the unimaginable strain of caring for patients who are fighting this deadly virus and comforting their families. These examples are by no means exhaustive. There are countless other healthcare providers, law enforcement agencies, nonprofits, small businesses, higher education institutions, and individual Marylanders pitching in to defeat COVID-19. Marylanders are stocking grocery shelves, driving buses, delivering groceries to elderly neighbors, hosting virtual events to keep families and young children entertained as they continue to practice social distancing, and they are making homemade face coverings for those who need them. I have seen my neighbors come together to make lunch packs for families in need. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said, ``Everybody can be great because anybody can serve.'' The COVID-19 pandemic is not testing our character; it is revealing it. I am so proud to represent all the great Marylanders who are serving on the frontlines, and I will continue working as hard as I can to ensure that we in Congress are doing everything we can to support them as they lead the fight against COVID-19 I yield the floor.
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2020-01-06
|
Mr. CARDIN
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-05-07-pt1-PgS2313-8
| null | 585
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formal
|
the Fed
| null |
antisemitic
|
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, $3 trillion. As best I can tell, that is how much money the Congress has appropriated--let me amend that. That is how much taxpayer money Congress has appropriated to fight the coronavirus and its aftermath--$3 trillion. That is 12 zeros. Three trillion dollars is 3,000 billion dollars. These numbers take my breath away. We spent this money even though we don't have it. We don't even have 5 percent of it. We borrowed every penny. Our national debt will now be approximating, maybe exceeding $25 trillion. The last coronavirus bill that we passed, as you know, was the CARES Act, but it was not the only bill. We have passed a number of pieces of legislation to try to fight this virus and the COVID-19 that it causes, and those bills were very hard for me to vote for, not because I don't care about the American people--I do, of course; we all do--but because of the fact that this is such a staggering amount of money. I have spent my career in government--more at the State government level than the Federal Government level--I have spent my career in government being cheap when it comes to taxpayer money, and it bothers me, as it should bother all of us, that we spent money we don't have. I have driven all over Washington, DC, and I can't find the money tree. These are taxpayer dollars. But I voted for the bills, including but not limited to the CARES Act, because it was clear we had to do something. We had to appropriate money to fight the virus. We had to appropriate money to help people and their businesses to recover economically from the impact of the virus. We don't know what works in the CARES Act and what doesn't work, and we won't know for a while. I suspect we will look back and say: Well, this measure was a pretty smart thing to do--and with hindsight, but this measure fell a little bit short. But already many of my colleagues, and I say this with respect, have other bills to spend even more money, primarily to help State and local government. It is like a Labor Day mattress sale around here, the number of bills flying around. Someone wants to spend another $250 billion. Somebody else wants to spend $500 billion and give it to State and local government. Speaker Pelosi wants to spend $1 trillion. I think all that is premature. I suggest that we pause once again, we see what works, we see what has worked, and see what hasn't worked. Also, it would seem to me that any fair-minded person would have to conclude that we should open up. Once we open up government and see the economic impact, we will have additional information. And make no mistake about it--we are going to have to open up the economy again. I don't see any reason why we can't both save lives and save jobs. But I want to make it clear that every single one of these 3 trillion dollars, as far as I am concerned, is a precious commodity because they come from taxpayers. The discussion that many of my colleagues have been having about spending additional money on top of the $3 trillion specifically for State and local government seems to forget that we have already appropriated an enormous amount of money to State and local government. In my State, for example--I will just take Louisiana--I think, as a result of the CARES Act, we are going to receive about $3\1/2\ billion, and I am very grateful for every single penny. This Congress appropriated $287 million for public schools in Louisiana, $190 million for universities, $623 million forhospitals. We have received extra Medicaid payments. Additionally, Louisianans have received $1.803 billion for State and local government. You add it all up, and that is about $3\1/2\ billion that has already been appropriated just to Louisiana. Some States got more; some States got less. So the point I am trying to make is that we need to recognize the fact that we have already done a lot for State government, and we have already done a lot for our cities. And I happily voted for the bill. I had some reluctance for reasons I have explained--just the breathtaking amount of money. This doesn't mean that our State and local governments are not going to have to sacrifice. We have certainly asked the American people to sacrifice, and we have certainly asked the American business community to sacrifice, and I think State government and local government are going to have to share in that sacrifice. They are going to have to scrub their budgets, and that is just a fact. As far as I am concerned, the Federal Government needs to do the same thing. There is not a single Member of this body who believes every single penny we spend in the Federal budget is absolutely necessary. I have a bill that I think may well make it unnecessary to appropriate new money for our State and local governments. I have a bill that I think may well moot the entire issue. We made one mistake--we probably made others, but in my judgment, I know we made one in the CARES Act when we put restrictions on the amount of money we gave to State and local government. Now, I understand why we did it, and at the time, I supported it. We do not want to bail out States, for example, that have been mismanaged. If a State decides to give generous retirement benefits at an early retirement age to its State employees, as far as I am concerned, that is that State's business, but also, as far as I am concerned, the people of Louisiana shouldn't have to pay for that--what, in my opinion, is mismanagement--and I think a number of my colleagues in the Senate share that sentiment. But in hindsight--I will take Louisiana as an example. We received $1.8 billion. There is a requirement in the legislation that says that $1.8 billion can only be used to defray the expenses of coronavirus expended by the State of Louisiana and by our cities. That is what the statute says. It is the statute passed by Congress that controls. I am not sure what the Treasury Department issued, but they issued something--they didn't go through the APA--that says: Well, the States--Louisiana, for example, has great flexibility to spend that $1.8 billion that we received in Louisiana that went to State and local government. They can spend it on first responders and policemen and school teachers. I appreciate the Department of Treasury issuing whatever it was they issued. I think they called it a directive. There is just one problem: The statute doesn't say that, and the U.S. Treasury does not have the authority--nor should it--to change a bill passed by the Congress. So I am grateful to Secretary Mnuchin for trying to help here, but I don't believe what he is doing is legal, and it gives me great pause that State government and our cities might act on a directive from the Treasury that could change 2 weeks from now. I think the only way to address this issue is through a statute passed by Congress. Here is what my bill would do. My bill would not appropriate any new money. Let me say that again. My bill would not appropriate any new money. My bill would say that, with respect to the $150 billion that this Congress--unanimously, in the Senate--has already appropriated to help State governments and local governments, which is the $1.8 billion that I am referring to that Louisiana received, they can use that money for operating expenses. They can't use it--my bill would specifically prohibit it--to bail out mismanaged retirement systems. They can't use it to bail out any retirement systems, mismanaged or otherwise, but they can use that money, with this small change to the CARES Act, to fill the holes in their budget as a result of any revenue shortfalls. In my State, for example, we are very heavily reliant on the sales tax and on the personal income tax. I think this measure may well moot the issue of having to appropriate brand new money for States and local governments. The Governors I talked to tell me: Kennedy, look, we really appreciate the money you sent State and local governments. There is just one problem. Our hands are tied. Our problem today is not enough money to fight the virus. Our problem today is, How do we fill a hole as a result of the shortfalls in our sales tax? That is what my bill would do. For that reason, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Appropriations be discharged from further consideration of S. 3608--that is my bill--and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration. I further ask that the Kennedy substitute amendment at the desk be considered and agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read for a third time and passed; and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. KENNEDY
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-05-07-pt1-PgS2314
| null | 586
|
formal
|
single
| null |
homophobic
|
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, $3 trillion. As best I can tell, that is how much money the Congress has appropriated--let me amend that. That is how much taxpayer money Congress has appropriated to fight the coronavirus and its aftermath--$3 trillion. That is 12 zeros. Three trillion dollars is 3,000 billion dollars. These numbers take my breath away. We spent this money even though we don't have it. We don't even have 5 percent of it. We borrowed every penny. Our national debt will now be approximating, maybe exceeding $25 trillion. The last coronavirus bill that we passed, as you know, was the CARES Act, but it was not the only bill. We have passed a number of pieces of legislation to try to fight this virus and the COVID-19 that it causes, and those bills were very hard for me to vote for, not because I don't care about the American people--I do, of course; we all do--but because of the fact that this is such a staggering amount of money. I have spent my career in government--more at the State government level than the Federal Government level--I have spent my career in government being cheap when it comes to taxpayer money, and it bothers me, as it should bother all of us, that we spent money we don't have. I have driven all over Washington, DC, and I can't find the money tree. These are taxpayer dollars. But I voted for the bills, including but not limited to the CARES Act, because it was clear we had to do something. We had to appropriate money to fight the virus. We had to appropriate money to help people and their businesses to recover economically from the impact of the virus. We don't know what works in the CARES Act and what doesn't work, and we won't know for a while. I suspect we will look back and say: Well, this measure was a pretty smart thing to do--and with hindsight, but this measure fell a little bit short. But already many of my colleagues, and I say this with respect, have other bills to spend even more money, primarily to help State and local government. It is like a Labor Day mattress sale around here, the number of bills flying around. Someone wants to spend another $250 billion. Somebody else wants to spend $500 billion and give it to State and local government. Speaker Pelosi wants to spend $1 trillion. I think all that is premature. I suggest that we pause once again, we see what works, we see what has worked, and see what hasn't worked. Also, it would seem to me that any fair-minded person would have to conclude that we should open up. Once we open up government and see the economic impact, we will have additional information. And make no mistake about it--we are going to have to open up the economy again. I don't see any reason why we can't both save lives and save jobs. But I want to make it clear that every single one of these 3 trillion dollars, as far as I am concerned, is a precious commodity because they come from taxpayers. The discussion that many of my colleagues have been having about spending additional money on top of the $3 trillion specifically for State and local government seems to forget that we have already appropriated an enormous amount of money to State and local government. In my State, for example--I will just take Louisiana--I think, as a result of the CARES Act, we are going to receive about $3\1/2\ billion, and I am very grateful for every single penny. This Congress appropriated $287 million for public schools in Louisiana, $190 million for universities, $623 million forhospitals. We have received extra Medicaid payments. Additionally, Louisianans have received $1.803 billion for State and local government. You add it all up, and that is about $3\1/2\ billion that has already been appropriated just to Louisiana. Some States got more; some States got less. So the point I am trying to make is that we need to recognize the fact that we have already done a lot for State government, and we have already done a lot for our cities. And I happily voted for the bill. I had some reluctance for reasons I have explained--just the breathtaking amount of money. This doesn't mean that our State and local governments are not going to have to sacrifice. We have certainly asked the American people to sacrifice, and we have certainly asked the American business community to sacrifice, and I think State government and local government are going to have to share in that sacrifice. They are going to have to scrub their budgets, and that is just a fact. As far as I am concerned, the Federal Government needs to do the same thing. There is not a single Member of this body who believes every single penny we spend in the Federal budget is absolutely necessary. I have a bill that I think may well make it unnecessary to appropriate new money for our State and local governments. I have a bill that I think may well moot the entire issue. We made one mistake--we probably made others, but in my judgment, I know we made one in the CARES Act when we put restrictions on the amount of money we gave to State and local government. Now, I understand why we did it, and at the time, I supported it. We do not want to bail out States, for example, that have been mismanaged. If a State decides to give generous retirement benefits at an early retirement age to its State employees, as far as I am concerned, that is that State's business, but also, as far as I am concerned, the people of Louisiana shouldn't have to pay for that--what, in my opinion, is mismanagement--and I think a number of my colleagues in the Senate share that sentiment. But in hindsight--I will take Louisiana as an example. We received $1.8 billion. There is a requirement in the legislation that says that $1.8 billion can only be used to defray the expenses of coronavirus expended by the State of Louisiana and by our cities. That is what the statute says. It is the statute passed by Congress that controls. I am not sure what the Treasury Department issued, but they issued something--they didn't go through the APA--that says: Well, the States--Louisiana, for example, has great flexibility to spend that $1.8 billion that we received in Louisiana that went to State and local government. They can spend it on first responders and policemen and school teachers. I appreciate the Department of Treasury issuing whatever it was they issued. I think they called it a directive. There is just one problem: The statute doesn't say that, and the U.S. Treasury does not have the authority--nor should it--to change a bill passed by the Congress. So I am grateful to Secretary Mnuchin for trying to help here, but I don't believe what he is doing is legal, and it gives me great pause that State government and our cities might act on a directive from the Treasury that could change 2 weeks from now. I think the only way to address this issue is through a statute passed by Congress. Here is what my bill would do. My bill would not appropriate any new money. Let me say that again. My bill would not appropriate any new money. My bill would say that, with respect to the $150 billion that this Congress--unanimously, in the Senate--has already appropriated to help State governments and local governments, which is the $1.8 billion that I am referring to that Louisiana received, they can use that money for operating expenses. They can't use it--my bill would specifically prohibit it--to bail out mismanaged retirement systems. They can't use it to bail out any retirement systems, mismanaged or otherwise, but they can use that money, with this small change to the CARES Act, to fill the holes in their budget as a result of any revenue shortfalls. In my State, for example, we are very heavily reliant on the sales tax and on the personal income tax. I think this measure may well moot the issue of having to appropriate brand new money for States and local governments. The Governors I talked to tell me: Kennedy, look, we really appreciate the money you sent State and local governments. There is just one problem. Our hands are tied. Our problem today is not enough money to fight the virus. Our problem today is, How do we fill a hole as a result of the shortfalls in our sales tax? That is what my bill would do. For that reason, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Appropriations be discharged from further consideration of S. 3608--that is my bill--and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration. I further ask that the Kennedy substitute amendment at the desk be considered and agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read for a third time and passed; and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. KENNEDY
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-05-07-pt1-PgS2314
| null | 587
|
formal
|
public school
| null |
racist
|
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, $3 trillion. As best I can tell, that is how much money the Congress has appropriated--let me amend that. That is how much taxpayer money Congress has appropriated to fight the coronavirus and its aftermath--$3 trillion. That is 12 zeros. Three trillion dollars is 3,000 billion dollars. These numbers take my breath away. We spent this money even though we don't have it. We don't even have 5 percent of it. We borrowed every penny. Our national debt will now be approximating, maybe exceeding $25 trillion. The last coronavirus bill that we passed, as you know, was the CARES Act, but it was not the only bill. We have passed a number of pieces of legislation to try to fight this virus and the COVID-19 that it causes, and those bills were very hard for me to vote for, not because I don't care about the American people--I do, of course; we all do--but because of the fact that this is such a staggering amount of money. I have spent my career in government--more at the State government level than the Federal Government level--I have spent my career in government being cheap when it comes to taxpayer money, and it bothers me, as it should bother all of us, that we spent money we don't have. I have driven all over Washington, DC, and I can't find the money tree. These are taxpayer dollars. But I voted for the bills, including but not limited to the CARES Act, because it was clear we had to do something. We had to appropriate money to fight the virus. We had to appropriate money to help people and their businesses to recover economically from the impact of the virus. We don't know what works in the CARES Act and what doesn't work, and we won't know for a while. I suspect we will look back and say: Well, this measure was a pretty smart thing to do--and with hindsight, but this measure fell a little bit short. But already many of my colleagues, and I say this with respect, have other bills to spend even more money, primarily to help State and local government. It is like a Labor Day mattress sale around here, the number of bills flying around. Someone wants to spend another $250 billion. Somebody else wants to spend $500 billion and give it to State and local government. Speaker Pelosi wants to spend $1 trillion. I think all that is premature. I suggest that we pause once again, we see what works, we see what has worked, and see what hasn't worked. Also, it would seem to me that any fair-minded person would have to conclude that we should open up. Once we open up government and see the economic impact, we will have additional information. And make no mistake about it--we are going to have to open up the economy again. I don't see any reason why we can't both save lives and save jobs. But I want to make it clear that every single one of these 3 trillion dollars, as far as I am concerned, is a precious commodity because they come from taxpayers. The discussion that many of my colleagues have been having about spending additional money on top of the $3 trillion specifically for State and local government seems to forget that we have already appropriated an enormous amount of money to State and local government. In my State, for example--I will just take Louisiana--I think, as a result of the CARES Act, we are going to receive about $3\1/2\ billion, and I am very grateful for every single penny. This Congress appropriated $287 million for public schools in Louisiana, $190 million for universities, $623 million forhospitals. We have received extra Medicaid payments. Additionally, Louisianans have received $1.803 billion for State and local government. You add it all up, and that is about $3\1/2\ billion that has already been appropriated just to Louisiana. Some States got more; some States got less. So the point I am trying to make is that we need to recognize the fact that we have already done a lot for State government, and we have already done a lot for our cities. And I happily voted for the bill. I had some reluctance for reasons I have explained--just the breathtaking amount of money. This doesn't mean that our State and local governments are not going to have to sacrifice. We have certainly asked the American people to sacrifice, and we have certainly asked the American business community to sacrifice, and I think State government and local government are going to have to share in that sacrifice. They are going to have to scrub their budgets, and that is just a fact. As far as I am concerned, the Federal Government needs to do the same thing. There is not a single Member of this body who believes every single penny we spend in the Federal budget is absolutely necessary. I have a bill that I think may well make it unnecessary to appropriate new money for our State and local governments. I have a bill that I think may well moot the entire issue. We made one mistake--we probably made others, but in my judgment, I know we made one in the CARES Act when we put restrictions on the amount of money we gave to State and local government. Now, I understand why we did it, and at the time, I supported it. We do not want to bail out States, for example, that have been mismanaged. If a State decides to give generous retirement benefits at an early retirement age to its State employees, as far as I am concerned, that is that State's business, but also, as far as I am concerned, the people of Louisiana shouldn't have to pay for that--what, in my opinion, is mismanagement--and I think a number of my colleagues in the Senate share that sentiment. But in hindsight--I will take Louisiana as an example. We received $1.8 billion. There is a requirement in the legislation that says that $1.8 billion can only be used to defray the expenses of coronavirus expended by the State of Louisiana and by our cities. That is what the statute says. It is the statute passed by Congress that controls. I am not sure what the Treasury Department issued, but they issued something--they didn't go through the APA--that says: Well, the States--Louisiana, for example, has great flexibility to spend that $1.8 billion that we received in Louisiana that went to State and local government. They can spend it on first responders and policemen and school teachers. I appreciate the Department of Treasury issuing whatever it was they issued. I think they called it a directive. There is just one problem: The statute doesn't say that, and the U.S. Treasury does not have the authority--nor should it--to change a bill passed by the Congress. So I am grateful to Secretary Mnuchin for trying to help here, but I don't believe what he is doing is legal, and it gives me great pause that State government and our cities might act on a directive from the Treasury that could change 2 weeks from now. I think the only way to address this issue is through a statute passed by Congress. Here is what my bill would do. My bill would not appropriate any new money. Let me say that again. My bill would not appropriate any new money. My bill would say that, with respect to the $150 billion that this Congress--unanimously, in the Senate--has already appropriated to help State governments and local governments, which is the $1.8 billion that I am referring to that Louisiana received, they can use that money for operating expenses. They can't use it--my bill would specifically prohibit it--to bail out mismanaged retirement systems. They can't use it to bail out any retirement systems, mismanaged or otherwise, but they can use that money, with this small change to the CARES Act, to fill the holes in their budget as a result of any revenue shortfalls. In my State, for example, we are very heavily reliant on the sales tax and on the personal income tax. I think this measure may well moot the issue of having to appropriate brand new money for States and local governments. The Governors I talked to tell me: Kennedy, look, we really appreciate the money you sent State and local governments. There is just one problem. Our hands are tied. Our problem today is not enough money to fight the virus. Our problem today is, How do we fill a hole as a result of the shortfalls in our sales tax? That is what my bill would do. For that reason, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Appropriations be discharged from further consideration of S. 3608--that is my bill--and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration. I further ask that the Kennedy substitute amendment at the desk be considered and agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read for a third time and passed; and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. KENNEDY
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-05-07-pt1-PgS2314
| null | 588
|
formal
|
public schools
| null |
racist
|
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, $3 trillion. As best I can tell, that is how much money the Congress has appropriated--let me amend that. That is how much taxpayer money Congress has appropriated to fight the coronavirus and its aftermath--$3 trillion. That is 12 zeros. Three trillion dollars is 3,000 billion dollars. These numbers take my breath away. We spent this money even though we don't have it. We don't even have 5 percent of it. We borrowed every penny. Our national debt will now be approximating, maybe exceeding $25 trillion. The last coronavirus bill that we passed, as you know, was the CARES Act, but it was not the only bill. We have passed a number of pieces of legislation to try to fight this virus and the COVID-19 that it causes, and those bills were very hard for me to vote for, not because I don't care about the American people--I do, of course; we all do--but because of the fact that this is such a staggering amount of money. I have spent my career in government--more at the State government level than the Federal Government level--I have spent my career in government being cheap when it comes to taxpayer money, and it bothers me, as it should bother all of us, that we spent money we don't have. I have driven all over Washington, DC, and I can't find the money tree. These are taxpayer dollars. But I voted for the bills, including but not limited to the CARES Act, because it was clear we had to do something. We had to appropriate money to fight the virus. We had to appropriate money to help people and their businesses to recover economically from the impact of the virus. We don't know what works in the CARES Act and what doesn't work, and we won't know for a while. I suspect we will look back and say: Well, this measure was a pretty smart thing to do--and with hindsight, but this measure fell a little bit short. But already many of my colleagues, and I say this with respect, have other bills to spend even more money, primarily to help State and local government. It is like a Labor Day mattress sale around here, the number of bills flying around. Someone wants to spend another $250 billion. Somebody else wants to spend $500 billion and give it to State and local government. Speaker Pelosi wants to spend $1 trillion. I think all that is premature. I suggest that we pause once again, we see what works, we see what has worked, and see what hasn't worked. Also, it would seem to me that any fair-minded person would have to conclude that we should open up. Once we open up government and see the economic impact, we will have additional information. And make no mistake about it--we are going to have to open up the economy again. I don't see any reason why we can't both save lives and save jobs. But I want to make it clear that every single one of these 3 trillion dollars, as far as I am concerned, is a precious commodity because they come from taxpayers. The discussion that many of my colleagues have been having about spending additional money on top of the $3 trillion specifically for State and local government seems to forget that we have already appropriated an enormous amount of money to State and local government. In my State, for example--I will just take Louisiana--I think, as a result of the CARES Act, we are going to receive about $3\1/2\ billion, and I am very grateful for every single penny. This Congress appropriated $287 million for public schools in Louisiana, $190 million for universities, $623 million forhospitals. We have received extra Medicaid payments. Additionally, Louisianans have received $1.803 billion for State and local government. You add it all up, and that is about $3\1/2\ billion that has already been appropriated just to Louisiana. Some States got more; some States got less. So the point I am trying to make is that we need to recognize the fact that we have already done a lot for State government, and we have already done a lot for our cities. And I happily voted for the bill. I had some reluctance for reasons I have explained--just the breathtaking amount of money. This doesn't mean that our State and local governments are not going to have to sacrifice. We have certainly asked the American people to sacrifice, and we have certainly asked the American business community to sacrifice, and I think State government and local government are going to have to share in that sacrifice. They are going to have to scrub their budgets, and that is just a fact. As far as I am concerned, the Federal Government needs to do the same thing. There is not a single Member of this body who believes every single penny we spend in the Federal budget is absolutely necessary. I have a bill that I think may well make it unnecessary to appropriate new money for our State and local governments. I have a bill that I think may well moot the entire issue. We made one mistake--we probably made others, but in my judgment, I know we made one in the CARES Act when we put restrictions on the amount of money we gave to State and local government. Now, I understand why we did it, and at the time, I supported it. We do not want to bail out States, for example, that have been mismanaged. If a State decides to give generous retirement benefits at an early retirement age to its State employees, as far as I am concerned, that is that State's business, but also, as far as I am concerned, the people of Louisiana shouldn't have to pay for that--what, in my opinion, is mismanagement--and I think a number of my colleagues in the Senate share that sentiment. But in hindsight--I will take Louisiana as an example. We received $1.8 billion. There is a requirement in the legislation that says that $1.8 billion can only be used to defray the expenses of coronavirus expended by the State of Louisiana and by our cities. That is what the statute says. It is the statute passed by Congress that controls. I am not sure what the Treasury Department issued, but they issued something--they didn't go through the APA--that says: Well, the States--Louisiana, for example, has great flexibility to spend that $1.8 billion that we received in Louisiana that went to State and local government. They can spend it on first responders and policemen and school teachers. I appreciate the Department of Treasury issuing whatever it was they issued. I think they called it a directive. There is just one problem: The statute doesn't say that, and the U.S. Treasury does not have the authority--nor should it--to change a bill passed by the Congress. So I am grateful to Secretary Mnuchin for trying to help here, but I don't believe what he is doing is legal, and it gives me great pause that State government and our cities might act on a directive from the Treasury that could change 2 weeks from now. I think the only way to address this issue is through a statute passed by Congress. Here is what my bill would do. My bill would not appropriate any new money. Let me say that again. My bill would not appropriate any new money. My bill would say that, with respect to the $150 billion that this Congress--unanimously, in the Senate--has already appropriated to help State governments and local governments, which is the $1.8 billion that I am referring to that Louisiana received, they can use that money for operating expenses. They can't use it--my bill would specifically prohibit it--to bail out mismanaged retirement systems. They can't use it to bail out any retirement systems, mismanaged or otherwise, but they can use that money, with this small change to the CARES Act, to fill the holes in their budget as a result of any revenue shortfalls. In my State, for example, we are very heavily reliant on the sales tax and on the personal income tax. I think this measure may well moot the issue of having to appropriate brand new money for States and local governments. The Governors I talked to tell me: Kennedy, look, we really appreciate the money you sent State and local governments. There is just one problem. Our hands are tied. Our problem today is not enough money to fight the virus. Our problem today is, How do we fill a hole as a result of the shortfalls in our sales tax? That is what my bill would do. For that reason, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Appropriations be discharged from further consideration of S. 3608--that is my bill--and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration. I further ask that the Kennedy substitute amendment at the desk be considered and agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read for a third time and passed; and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. KENNEDY
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-05-07-pt1-PgS2314
| null | 589
|
formal
|
the Fed
| null |
antisemitic
|
Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, as we all know, it has been an extraordinarily challenging time for our great Nation, a time that has been painful for so many of our fellow Americans. It has also been a time when people across the country have given so much to their communities, to their States, and to their neighbors. And, as you know, we are a great nation. We are a kind nation. We are a proud nation, and we are a resilient Nation. This pandemic has been testing the character of our country, and I believe that we are passing the test as Americans. I believe that because I see it everywhere. I certainly see it in my State, the great State of Alaska. People are passing out food, doing what they can for the elderly, tending to those in need. We are seeing this all across our Nation. We see millions of our fellow citizens--people whom we all have the privilege of representing here in the Senate--stepping up with purpose and resolve. We see a greater appreciation for the dignity and the value of our workers who are on the frontlines of helping us get through this pandemic. I was recently home in my State. The rule in Alaska is if you travel from the outside, when you get to Alaska, you have a very strict 14-day quarantine. I was quarantined with my wife and three daughters, hunkered down in Anchorage. Yet I was also able to still appreciate what was happening with so many of our fellow citizens, especially frontline workers who are helping Alaska power through this crisis. So many of them are working day in and day out to ensure that our grocery stores are stocked, that the goods are transported, that buildings are maintained, that our telecommunication systems are running, that our airplanes are flying, that our hospitals are open, that our healthcare workers can give care, and that our extraordinary teachers are finding creative ways to teach our kids. The list goes on and on. It is happening in every State across the Nation. Last week, I decided to give an impromptu Alaskan of the Week speech in my backyard. It wasn't here on the Senate floor the way we usually do it and the way we are doing it today. I was highlighting these workers. Many of them are part of the Teamsters Local 959, led by third-generation teamster Gary Dixon. I want to say thank you to them again. We talk a lot about people who are telecommuting. That is great. It is important to get us through this pandemic, but we also know there are a lot of people who can't do that. They are really our national heroes right now--essential workers on the frontlines, keeping our economies and our supply lines open, moving, robust. Now that I am back in DC and the Senate is open again--finally, open again--and the business of the Senate is continuing, so does our Alaskan of the Week series from the floor of the Senate. It is one of my favorite times of the week, when I get to focus on a special Alaskan or a group of Alaskans who made Alaska such a great and unique place. I think the Presiding Officer likes it a lot, too. I had intended, as I mentioned, on my Alaskan of the Week speech here coming back, to focus on more of these frontline workers who are doing so much in our States and so much in our country to get us through this pandemic. However, some really interesting and, I think, exciting news, broke on Monday in our State, as big news born of a tragic situation. And for that reason, I thought we would have a different focus on our Alaskan of the Week. The Alaskan of the Week this week is an intrepid Alaska reporter, Kyle Hopkins, who led coverage in our local paper, the Anchorage Daily News, that earned him the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for public service. It is probably the most prestigious award in all American journalism--the prize of prizes. Kyle Hopkins, an Alaska reporter, won that on Monday. He won it for a 17-story series called ``Lawless,'' about the public safety crisis of rural Alaska and the horrendous issue of sexual assault and domestic violence in our State. As we all know, we are confronting a pandemic in our country. I live in a great State, but we have a lot of social challenges, just like a lot of States. We are confronting this pandemic right now nationally. My State has been confronting an epidemic of domestic violence and sexual abuse that has been going on for years--decades, generations. Kyle's series combined dogged reporting and meticulous fact-checking with the utmost sensitivity that a subject like this requires, which is not an easy task at all. It was, according to the Pulitzer committee, riveting public service reporting. It was so much more than that. I will tell you that it was very, very important to the State of Alaska. Let me tell you a little bit about our Alaskan of the Week, Kyle Hopkins, and what made him very qualified to write this series and why it had such an impact. And I believe--maybe, I should say I hope--it is beginning to bring changes to our public safety system and, most importantly, to the unfortunate culture that we have in our State that spawns this kind of abuse and violence. Kyle was born in beautiful Sitka, AK. That is in Southeast Alaska. His father was a teacher who came from California to teach the children of logging camp workers at a time when the southeast part of our State had a very vital timber industry. The family moved back to California after a few years, but then back to Alaska again, and then away and then back again. Sitka, Kake, Skagway--two small towns, one village--are all in Alaska's beautifully gorgeous southeast. For Kyle, the towns provided the backdrop of a magical childhood--spruce trees that seemed to rise to the clouds, aquatic universes and tidal basins, fish to catch, towering totem poles. High school was all about basketball for him, as it is for so many Alaskan high schoolers and kids. Traveling for tournaments in Alaska is a unique experience, requiring trips on small bush planes. Kyle remembered seeing the planes and the ferries: ``I remember thinking I was lucky to see and do these things.'' He knew that even as a young man. He went to the University of Alaska Fairbanks for college, searching for a subject that allowed him to read a lot. He had an adviser that recommended a journalism class. Well, the rest, you could say, is history. During college, he had a host of internships across the State in journalism, covering business, politics, sports, and crime--all the usual beats--and with some of our best journalism and media establishments, like the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, before moving to Anchorage to work for the Anchorage Press, a weekly paper; then, to KTUU, Channel 2, our big TV station in Alaska; and, then, to where he is now, the Anchorage Daily News. Throughout all of his reporting, a few things constantly struck him. One is that we are a very big State, but also how few people even in Alaska had ever been to a village in our State. They didn't know the challenges and the beauty of what we call rural Alaska, the soul of Alaska. More than 200 villages dot our State, most of which are not connected by any roads or infrastructure. He was always struck and increasingly disturbed by the challenge that I mentioned at the outset of my remarks--these very high rates of sexual violence that we have in Alaska. Depending on how you measure it, it is at least three times the national average--three times the national average. Just like so many of us in Alaska, he assumed that someday the adults, the people in charge, would do something about it, until he realized at a certain point in his life that he was an adult and he had two children, two girls, with his wife Rebecca Palsha, another intrepid reporter in Alaska, and he wanted to make Alaska a better placenot only for his girls but for all other children across our State, a State that he knows and loves. So the time was right to tackle this issue, and the time was right for another reason throughout the State. There was a more open discussion about this dark issue, this black mark on Alaska, the issue of sexual assault. Brave women had started coming forward to tell their stories. A statewide initiative that I was part of called Choose Respect was launched over a decade ago trying to address cultural changes and then the ``Me Too'' movement came, and more and more people were beginning to share their stories of trauma and abuse and to have the courage to do it--because it takes courage. Kyle not only captured many of those voices, he also began to dig into the larger issues of generational trauma and an issue that is so important in our State, the lack of law enforcement in many of these places, in so many small villages across Alaska. He did it all the while by capturing the complexities of a multitiered public safety system in Alaska. Working with ProPublica, he traveled throughout the State, dug through reams of documents, talked to dozens and dozens of survivors, perpetrators, police officers, lawyers, you name it. Let me try to capture the breadth and depth and heartache of his 17-part series told by just a few headlines. These are some of the headlines of the stories in the Anchorage Daily News: one, ``Discussing Alaska's history of sexual violence is one step toward seeking solutions;'' another headline, ``Lawless: One in three Alaska villages have no local police;'' another headline, ``Dozens of convicted criminals have been hired as cops in rural Alaska. Sometimes, they're the only applicants;'' another headline: ``She leapt from a van on the Kenai Peninsula to escape her rapist. Then she waited 18 years for an arrest.'' You get the picture. Let me summarize the opening to one of the stories, a first-person piece headlined, ``Why we're investigating sexual violence in Alaska,'' and it tells Alaskans why this series is delving into this very, very difficult topic. It is a story--a horrible story--of a very young girl in one of our villages who vanished from the playground, found later sexually abused, murdered, and it rips your heart out. These are the kinds of stories that I have certainly heard about and tried to address in my time in public service in Alaska. These are the stories that haunt us as Alaskans. They have haunted countless Alaskans: of course, survivors, victims, their families, leaders, good citizens, good people. They are difficult and shocking stories to tell, but they need to be told, they must be told, and that is what Kyle Hopkins did, and that is why he earned the Pulitzer Prize. These are the kinds of stories that Attorney General Barr confronted when he came to Alaska last May, his first trip to any State in the country after he was confirmed as our new Attorney General. Before his confirmation hearing, Senator Murkowski and I had both invited him to come to Alaska. We talked to him in detail about these challenges, and then we did something that I think mattered, and, again, it gives a sense of why this series was so important. We started sending the Attorney General some of Kyle Hopkins' stories of this 17-part series, the ones that he had written at this time. So the Attorney General knew before he even got here some of the challenges because of this reporting. Attorney General Barr actually came to our State for almost 5 days--a long visit--to hear from survivors, law enforcement, lawyers, meeting dozens of Alaskans throughout the State who have worked on these issues--some without a voice, without help from the Federal Government, many Tribal members. It was a really important trip. He was given a beautiful kuspuk as a gift, and when he left, he took a piece of Alaska with him in his heart. I am convinced of that. As a matter of fact, I talked to him about Alaska yesterday on the phone and this very series. He still wears the kuspuk, by the way. He says it makes him look trim. Shortly after returning to DC, he began to focus with the Department of Justice on some of these big issues, declaring a public safety emergency in rural Alaska and starting to free up significant resources to improve public safety in our State's rural communities. So the funding helps, and it is already being put to good use, but this is a story not just about money. As a matter of fact, that is not even the important issue. The important issue is culture. We desperately need a cultural change on these issues in Alaska that have been going on for way too long, and that is another reason why Kyle's work is so important, because you can't change the culture if you don't know how broken it is. Will it work? Does he think things will change? ``I wouldn't presume to know,'' he said, when my team caught up with him on Tuesday, a day after the Pulitzer Prize was announced, already hard at work on another story, by the way. ``I hope things change,'' he said. ``That's one of the goals of the series . . . But if nothing changes, at least people will know about the injustice in our system . . . and if it's going to continue, if we're going to allow this to continue, it should be with our knowledge.'' That is his quote. ``This is my place,'' Kyle added, talking about Alaska. ``It's an awesome place and I don't want to live anyplace else. But things are wrong. And it shouldn't be for the next generation, for my girls and other girls. If there's something we can do about it, we should do it.'' That is his quote. And of course, he is right. We should do it, and many of us in Alaska--really, thousands of us in Alaska--are committed to this cause and have been committed to the cause for a long time. I believe Kyle's work is going to help a lot in that regard. I want to thank the Anchorage Daily News for supporting this series, to all the staff who worked on the series, to the owners, the Binkleys. Thanks to the Pulitzer committee for recognizing the importance of this series, and thank you, Kyle, for your hard work and determination. Congratulations, again, on winning the Pulitzer Prize, and probably even more prestigious than winning the Pulitzer Prize for the United States, congratulations on being our Alaskan of the Week. I yield the floor.
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2020-01-06
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Mr. SULLIVAN
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Senate
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CREC-2020-05-07-pt1-PgS2316
| null | 590
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formal
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based
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white supremacist
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Ms. BALDWIN. Mr. President, I rise today to honor the life and achievements of Mr. Roshell ``Mike'' Anderson, acclaimed journalist for 36 years with the Milwaukee-based television station, WISN-12. Mike was born in Bogalusa, LA, in 1952 and raised in New Orleans. New Orleans' rich musical culture inspired Mike's life-long passion for R&B that landed him twice on the R&B soul charts in the 1970s with ``Snake out of Green Grass'' and ``Grapevine will Lie Sometimes.'' His musical accomplishments continued into the early 1990s and helped spawn a unique brand of journalistic storytelling. Mike attended Louisiana State University and the Career Academy School of Broadcast Journalism in Atlanta, GA. He started his career as a disc jockey in various Atlanta radio stations in 1970 and got his start in television in Seattle, WA, in 1979. When Mike took the job at WISN in Milwaukee in 1981, he planned to stay 3 years. He retired from the station 36 years later in 2017. Mike's journalism career spanned nearly four decades and six U.S. Presidencies. He was proud to have interviewed Richard Nixon, George Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. But Mike's most powerful work involved telling powerful and moving stories about the Milwaukee community. He is perhaps best known for his two award-winning documentaries on inner-city violence, ``Children in the Line of Fire'' and ``Solutions to Violence.'' Five years after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, Mike returned to his home city to cover the city's devastation and its slow process of rehabilitation. Through his interviews with local residents, Mike found stories of hope, resilience, and many sobering reminders that much work was left to be done. As always, Mike brought his unique style of warmth, kindness, and optimism to even the darkest issues and events. After breaking racial and class barriers, he mentored other journalists of color and worked to celebrate their success through his work with the Wisconsin Black Media Association and Milwaukee's annual Black Excellence Awards. Mike's straightforward style and commitment to fairness led to a deep sense of trust on the part of his viewers. He will long be remembered for telling the stories of Milwaukee honestly and with a deep connection to the community. Mike Anderson's most lasting legacy, however, is that he was beloved by the Milwaukee community for not only being a great reporter people could trust, he was a good person whose kindness will be missed.
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2020-01-06
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Ms. BALDWIN
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Senate
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CREC-2020-05-07-pt1-PgS2321
| null | 591
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formal
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the Fed
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antisemitic
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Ms. MURKOWSKI (for herself, Mr. Udall, Mr. Hoeven, Mr. Tester, Mr. Lankford, Mr. Schatz, Mr. Moran, Ms. Cortez Masto, Ms. McSally, Ms. Smith, Mr. Daines, Ms. Baldwin, Mr. Bennet, Mr. Blumenthal, Mr. Booker, Ms. Cantwell, Ms. Duckworth, Ms. Harris, Mr. Heinrich, Ms. Hirono, Mr. Kaine, Mr. King, Ms. Klobuchar, Mr. Merkley, Ms. Rosen, Mr. Sanders, Mr. Schumer, Ms. Sinema, Ms. Stabenow, Ms. Warren, Mr. Wyden, and Mr. Sullivan) submitted the following resolution; which was considered and agreed to: S. Res. 565 Whereas the United States celebrates National Women's History Month every March to recognize and honor the achievements of women throughout the history of the United States; Whereas an estimated 3,081,000 American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women live in the United States; Whereas American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women helped shape the history of their communities, Tribes, and the United States; Whereas American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women contribute to their communities, Tribes, and the United States through work in many industries, including business, education, science, medicine, literature, fine arts, military service, and public service; Whereas American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women have fought to defend and protect the sovereign rights of Native Nations; Whereas American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women have demonstrated resilience and courage in the face of a history of threatened existence, constant removals, and relocations; Whereas more than 6,000 American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women bravely serve as members of the United States Armed Forces; Whereas more than 17,000 American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women are veterans who have made lasting contributions to the United States military; Whereas American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women broke down historical gender barriers to enlistment in the military, including-- (1) Inupiat Eskimo sharpshooter Laura Beltz Wright of the Alaska Territorial Guard during World War II; and (2) Minnie Spotted Wolf of the Blackfeet Tribe, the first Native American woman to enlist in the United States Marine Corps in 1943; Whereas American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women have made the ultimate sacrifice for the United States, including Lori Ann Piestewa, a member of the Hopi Tribe and the first woman in the United States military killed in the Iraq War in 2003; Whereas American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women have contributed to the economic development of Native Nations and the United States as a whole, including Elouise Cobell of the Blackfeet Tribe, a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, who-- (1) served as the treasurer of her Tribe; (2) founded the first Tribally owned national bank; and (3) led the fight against Federal mismanagement of funds held in trust for more than 500,000 Native Americans; Whereas American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women own an estimated 154,900 businesses; Whereas these Native women-owned businesses employ more than 50,000 workers and generate over $10,000,000,000 in revenues as of 2016; Whereas American Indian and Alaska Native women have opened an average of more than 17 new businesses each day since 2007; Whereas American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women have made significant contributions to the field of medicine, including Susan La Flesche Picotte of the Omaha Tribe, who is widely acknowledged as the first Native American to earn a medical degree; Whereas American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women have contributed to important scientific advancements, including-- (1) Floy Agnes Lee of Santa Clara Pueblo, who-- (A) worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II; and (B) pioneered research on radiation biology and cancer; (2) Native Hawaiian Isabella Kauakea Yau Yung Aiona Abbott, who-- (A) was the first woman on the biological sciences faculty at Stanford University; and (B) was awarded the highest award in marine botany from the National Academy of Sciences, the Gilbert Morgan Smith medal, in 1997; and (3) Mary Golda Ross of the Cherokee Nation, who-- (A) is considered the first Native American engineer of the National Aeronautic and Space Administration; (B) helped develop spacecrafts for the Gemini and Apollo space programs; and (C) was recognized by the Federal Government on the 2019 $1 coin honoring Native Americans and their contributions; Whereas American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women have achieved distinctive honors in the art of dance, including Maria Tall Chief of the Osage Nation, who was the first major prima ballerina of the United States and was a recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Kennedy Center; Whereas American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women have accomplished notable literary achievements, including Northern Paiute author Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, who wrote and published one of the first Native American autobiographies in United States history in 1883; Whereas American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women have regularly led efforts to revitalize and maintain Native cultures and languages, including-- (1) Tewa linguist and teacher Esther Martinez, who developed a Tewa dictionary and was credited with revitalizing the Tewa language; and (2) Native Hawaiian scholar Mary Kawena Pukui, who published more than 50 academic works and was considered the most noted Hawaiian translator of the 20th century; Whereas American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women have excelled in athletic competition and created opportunities for other female athletes within their sport, including Rell Kapoliokaehukai Sunn, who-- (1) ranked as longboard surfing champion of the world; and (2) co-founded the Women's Professional Surfing Association in 1975, the first professional surfing tour for women; Whereas American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women have played a vital role in advancing civil rights, protecting human rights, and safeguarding the environment, including Elizabeth Wanamaker Peratrovich of the Tlingit Nation, who-- (1) helped secure the passage of the Anti-Discrimination Act of 1945 of the Alaska Territory, the first anti- discrimination law in the United States; and (2) was recognized by the Federal Government on the 2020 $1 coin honoring Native Americans and their contributions; Whereas American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women have succeeded as judges, attorneys, and legal advocates, including Eliza ``Lyda'' Conley, a Wyandot- American lawyer and the first Native woman admitted to argue a case before the Supreme Court of the United States in 1909; Whereas American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women have paved the way for women in the law, including Native Hawaiian Emma Kailikapiolono Metcalf Beckley Nakuina, who served as the first female judge in Hawaii; Whereas American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women are dedicated public servants, holding important positions in State governments, local governments, the Federal judicial branch, and the Federal executive branch; Whereas American Indian and Alaska Native women have served as remarkable Tribal councilwomen, Tribal court judges, and Tribal leaders, including Wilma Mankiller, who-- (1) was the first woman elected to serve as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation; and (2) fought for Tribal self-determination and the improvement of the community infrastructure of her Tribe; Whereas Native Hawaiian women have also led their People through notable acts of public service, including Kaahumanu, who was the first Native Hawaiian woman to serve as regent of the Kingdom of Hawaii; Whereas the United States should continue to invest in the future of American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women to address the barriers they face, including access to justice, health care, and opportunities for educational and economic advancement; and Whereas American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women are the life givers, the culture bearers, and the caretakers of Native peoples who have made precious contributions, enriching the lives of all people of the United States: Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That the Senate-- (1) celebrates and honors the successes of American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women and the contributions they have made and continue to make to the United States; and (2) recognizes the importance of supporting equity, providing safety, and upholding the interests of American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women.
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2020-01-06
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Unknown
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Senate
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CREC-2020-05-07-pt1-PgS2327
| null | 592
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formal
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safeguarding
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transphobic
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Ms. MURKOWSKI (for herself, Mr. Udall, Mr. Hoeven, Mr. Tester, Mr. Lankford, Mr. Schatz, Mr. Moran, Ms. Cortez Masto, Ms. McSally, Ms. Smith, Mr. Daines, Ms. Baldwin, Mr. Bennet, Mr. Blumenthal, Mr. Booker, Ms. Cantwell, Ms. Duckworth, Ms. Harris, Mr. Heinrich, Ms. Hirono, Mr. Kaine, Mr. King, Ms. Klobuchar, Mr. Merkley, Ms. Rosen, Mr. Sanders, Mr. Schumer, Ms. Sinema, Ms. Stabenow, Ms. Warren, Mr. Wyden, and Mr. Sullivan) submitted the following resolution; which was considered and agreed to: S. Res. 565 Whereas the United States celebrates National Women's History Month every March to recognize and honor the achievements of women throughout the history of the United States; Whereas an estimated 3,081,000 American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women live in the United States; Whereas American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women helped shape the history of their communities, Tribes, and the United States; Whereas American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women contribute to their communities, Tribes, and the United States through work in many industries, including business, education, science, medicine, literature, fine arts, military service, and public service; Whereas American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women have fought to defend and protect the sovereign rights of Native Nations; Whereas American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women have demonstrated resilience and courage in the face of a history of threatened existence, constant removals, and relocations; Whereas more than 6,000 American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women bravely serve as members of the United States Armed Forces; Whereas more than 17,000 American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women are veterans who have made lasting contributions to the United States military; Whereas American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women broke down historical gender barriers to enlistment in the military, including-- (1) Inupiat Eskimo sharpshooter Laura Beltz Wright of the Alaska Territorial Guard during World War II; and (2) Minnie Spotted Wolf of the Blackfeet Tribe, the first Native American woman to enlist in the United States Marine Corps in 1943; Whereas American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women have made the ultimate sacrifice for the United States, including Lori Ann Piestewa, a member of the Hopi Tribe and the first woman in the United States military killed in the Iraq War in 2003; Whereas American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women have contributed to the economic development of Native Nations and the United States as a whole, including Elouise Cobell of the Blackfeet Tribe, a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, who-- (1) served as the treasurer of her Tribe; (2) founded the first Tribally owned national bank; and (3) led the fight against Federal mismanagement of funds held in trust for more than 500,000 Native Americans; Whereas American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women own an estimated 154,900 businesses; Whereas these Native women-owned businesses employ more than 50,000 workers and generate over $10,000,000,000 in revenues as of 2016; Whereas American Indian and Alaska Native women have opened an average of more than 17 new businesses each day since 2007; Whereas American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women have made significant contributions to the field of medicine, including Susan La Flesche Picotte of the Omaha Tribe, who is widely acknowledged as the first Native American to earn a medical degree; Whereas American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women have contributed to important scientific advancements, including-- (1) Floy Agnes Lee of Santa Clara Pueblo, who-- (A) worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II; and (B) pioneered research on radiation biology and cancer; (2) Native Hawaiian Isabella Kauakea Yau Yung Aiona Abbott, who-- (A) was the first woman on the biological sciences faculty at Stanford University; and (B) was awarded the highest award in marine botany from the National Academy of Sciences, the Gilbert Morgan Smith medal, in 1997; and (3) Mary Golda Ross of the Cherokee Nation, who-- (A) is considered the first Native American engineer of the National Aeronautic and Space Administration; (B) helped develop spacecrafts for the Gemini and Apollo space programs; and (C) was recognized by the Federal Government on the 2019 $1 coin honoring Native Americans and their contributions; Whereas American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women have achieved distinctive honors in the art of dance, including Maria Tall Chief of the Osage Nation, who was the first major prima ballerina of the United States and was a recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Kennedy Center; Whereas American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women have accomplished notable literary achievements, including Northern Paiute author Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, who wrote and published one of the first Native American autobiographies in United States history in 1883; Whereas American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women have regularly led efforts to revitalize and maintain Native cultures and languages, including-- (1) Tewa linguist and teacher Esther Martinez, who developed a Tewa dictionary and was credited with revitalizing the Tewa language; and (2) Native Hawaiian scholar Mary Kawena Pukui, who published more than 50 academic works and was considered the most noted Hawaiian translator of the 20th century; Whereas American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women have excelled in athletic competition and created opportunities for other female athletes within their sport, including Rell Kapoliokaehukai Sunn, who-- (1) ranked as longboard surfing champion of the world; and (2) co-founded the Women's Professional Surfing Association in 1975, the first professional surfing tour for women; Whereas American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women have played a vital role in advancing civil rights, protecting human rights, and safeguarding the environment, including Elizabeth Wanamaker Peratrovich of the Tlingit Nation, who-- (1) helped secure the passage of the Anti-Discrimination Act of 1945 of the Alaska Territory, the first anti- discrimination law in the United States; and (2) was recognized by the Federal Government on the 2020 $1 coin honoring Native Americans and their contributions; Whereas American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women have succeeded as judges, attorneys, and legal advocates, including Eliza ``Lyda'' Conley, a Wyandot- American lawyer and the first Native woman admitted to argue a case before the Supreme Court of the United States in 1909; Whereas American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women have paved the way for women in the law, including Native Hawaiian Emma Kailikapiolono Metcalf Beckley Nakuina, who served as the first female judge in Hawaii; Whereas American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women are dedicated public servants, holding important positions in State governments, local governments, the Federal judicial branch, and the Federal executive branch; Whereas American Indian and Alaska Native women have served as remarkable Tribal councilwomen, Tribal court judges, and Tribal leaders, including Wilma Mankiller, who-- (1) was the first woman elected to serve as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation; and (2) fought for Tribal self-determination and the improvement of the community infrastructure of her Tribe; Whereas Native Hawaiian women have also led their People through notable acts of public service, including Kaahumanu, who was the first Native Hawaiian woman to serve as regent of the Kingdom of Hawaii; Whereas the United States should continue to invest in the future of American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women to address the barriers they face, including access to justice, health care, and opportunities for educational and economic advancement; and Whereas American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women are the life givers, the culture bearers, and the caretakers of Native peoples who have made precious contributions, enriching the lives of all people of the United States: Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That the Senate-- (1) celebrates and honors the successes of American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women and the contributions they have made and continue to make to the United States; and (2) recognizes the importance of supporting equity, providing safety, and upholding the interests of American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian women.
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2020-01-06
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Unknown
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Senate
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CREC-2020-05-07-pt1-PgS2327
| null | 593
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formal
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Federal Reserve
| null |
antisemitic
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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, the Senate is back for its second week in session, and we have more important work to do for the American people. While our Nation fights the coronavirus pandemic, many of our fellow Americans have been taking new safety precautions but continue to show up to perform essential work. Because of delivery drivers and grocery clerks, families can keep food on their shelves. Because of utility workers, people hunkered down at home have power. Because of pharmacists manning their counters, Americans have been able to keep getting the medicines they need so this health crisis does not compound itself. Then, of course, there has been the selfless work of so many doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals. Frankly, even the word ``essential'' does not do full justice to all the new American heroes we have met these past weeks. In my home State of Kentucky, we met people like Leilani Krause. She is a 30-year nursing veteran who now oversees care at a senior living facility in Louisville. A few weeks ago, she herself contracted the coronavirus. Even as she stayed home to recover, she never stopped working. She still did all she could to coordinate her patients' care over video calls. As soon as shefelt better and doctors gave her the all-clear, she checked right back into work right on the frontlines. I want to thank all of my Senate colleagues as we continue to perform our essential responsibilities to serve citizens like Miss Krause and so many other American heroes all across our country. Of course, much of the work before us relates to the pandemic itself. Our committees of jurisdiction are attacking COVID-19 and its effects from every angle. This week, Chairman Alexander and our colleagues on the HELP Committee will hold a major hearing on smart and safe ways for Americans to get back to work and back to school. They will hear expert testimony from the very top leaders: Dr. Fauci, Dr. Redfield, Dr. Hahn, and Admiral Giroir from HHS. Chairman Crapo and the Banking Committee will hear from representatives from the Federal Reserve and the FDIC on financial regulation. Obviously, that is an essential topic as the government continues to push out billions and billions of dollars in emergency liquidity following the CARES Act. With huge numbers of Americans working, teaching, and learning from home and with telemedicine more important than ever, the Commerce Committee will hear from experts about access to broadband internet during the crisis. The Judiciary Committee will hold an important hearing on issues of legal liability during this unprecedented time. It is crucial that as we continue to fight the pandemic itself, we ensure it is not followed up by a second job-killing epidemic of frivolous lawsuits. This would be just about the worst time in living memory to let trial lawyers line their pockets at the expense of the rest of our country. The Senate is going to play a strong role in ensuring that does not happen. While our committees are working away, here on the floor, we will start this week by confirming two more qualified nominees to important posts that should not remain empty at this time. We will begin with Brian Montgomery of Texas, named by President Trump to serve as Deputy Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Then we will turn to Troy Edgar of California to be Chief Financial Officer at the Department of Homeland Security. I understand some of my distinguished Democratic colleagues complain that the full Senate should not have to spend more time on these sorts of uncontroversial executive branch nominees. I agree. But as long as their own Democratic leadership continues to hold important posts open for as long as possible in order to just spite the White House, as long as the minority continues to break from longstanding Senate precedent to obstruct even the least controversial nominees, then, frankly, they will have to continue to show up and vote on them. The floor votes they say they dislike are the direct result of their own tactics. We are also going to take up important legislation this week. While COVID-19 rightly dominates headlines around the world, the United States of America also faced many serious threats before this virus began to spread, and they are still with us today. Later this week, we will turn back to reauthorizing important authorities under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. This is urgent because the House refused to take up the Senate's short-term extension of important counterterrorism and counterintelligence authorities before they left town. House Democrats let these tools expire, so we must act quickly to clean up their mess and renew these authorities, which our government needs to fight terrorists and check the agents of China and Russia. The bipartisan bill we will take up was negotiated exhaustively by House Republicans and the Attorney General of the United States. Determined advocates for reform after the shameful abuses of 2016 sat down with determined defenders of the good parts of these tools, and they hammered out a strong compromise. The legislation will introduce more daylight and more accountability into the FISA process where appropriate, but it will ensure that the embarrassments of 2016 do not jeopardize these essential national security tools altogether. I hope the Senate will be able to dispatch the amendments that we will consider and pass this important legislation on a bipartisan basis to keep the American people safe.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. McCONNELL
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-05-11-pt1-PgS2331-8
| null | 594
|
formal
|
the Fed
| null |
antisemitic
|
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, the Senate is back for its second week in session, and we have more important work to do for the American people. While our Nation fights the coronavirus pandemic, many of our fellow Americans have been taking new safety precautions but continue to show up to perform essential work. Because of delivery drivers and grocery clerks, families can keep food on their shelves. Because of utility workers, people hunkered down at home have power. Because of pharmacists manning their counters, Americans have been able to keep getting the medicines they need so this health crisis does not compound itself. Then, of course, there has been the selfless work of so many doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals. Frankly, even the word ``essential'' does not do full justice to all the new American heroes we have met these past weeks. In my home State of Kentucky, we met people like Leilani Krause. She is a 30-year nursing veteran who now oversees care at a senior living facility in Louisville. A few weeks ago, she herself contracted the coronavirus. Even as she stayed home to recover, she never stopped working. She still did all she could to coordinate her patients' care over video calls. As soon as shefelt better and doctors gave her the all-clear, she checked right back into work right on the frontlines. I want to thank all of my Senate colleagues as we continue to perform our essential responsibilities to serve citizens like Miss Krause and so many other American heroes all across our country. Of course, much of the work before us relates to the pandemic itself. Our committees of jurisdiction are attacking COVID-19 and its effects from every angle. This week, Chairman Alexander and our colleagues on the HELP Committee will hold a major hearing on smart and safe ways for Americans to get back to work and back to school. They will hear expert testimony from the very top leaders: Dr. Fauci, Dr. Redfield, Dr. Hahn, and Admiral Giroir from HHS. Chairman Crapo and the Banking Committee will hear from representatives from the Federal Reserve and the FDIC on financial regulation. Obviously, that is an essential topic as the government continues to push out billions and billions of dollars in emergency liquidity following the CARES Act. With huge numbers of Americans working, teaching, and learning from home and with telemedicine more important than ever, the Commerce Committee will hear from experts about access to broadband internet during the crisis. The Judiciary Committee will hold an important hearing on issues of legal liability during this unprecedented time. It is crucial that as we continue to fight the pandemic itself, we ensure it is not followed up by a second job-killing epidemic of frivolous lawsuits. This would be just about the worst time in living memory to let trial lawyers line their pockets at the expense of the rest of our country. The Senate is going to play a strong role in ensuring that does not happen. While our committees are working away, here on the floor, we will start this week by confirming two more qualified nominees to important posts that should not remain empty at this time. We will begin with Brian Montgomery of Texas, named by President Trump to serve as Deputy Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Then we will turn to Troy Edgar of California to be Chief Financial Officer at the Department of Homeland Security. I understand some of my distinguished Democratic colleagues complain that the full Senate should not have to spend more time on these sorts of uncontroversial executive branch nominees. I agree. But as long as their own Democratic leadership continues to hold important posts open for as long as possible in order to just spite the White House, as long as the minority continues to break from longstanding Senate precedent to obstruct even the least controversial nominees, then, frankly, they will have to continue to show up and vote on them. The floor votes they say they dislike are the direct result of their own tactics. We are also going to take up important legislation this week. While COVID-19 rightly dominates headlines around the world, the United States of America also faced many serious threats before this virus began to spread, and they are still with us today. Later this week, we will turn back to reauthorizing important authorities under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. This is urgent because the House refused to take up the Senate's short-term extension of important counterterrorism and counterintelligence authorities before they left town. House Democrats let these tools expire, so we must act quickly to clean up their mess and renew these authorities, which our government needs to fight terrorists and check the agents of China and Russia. The bipartisan bill we will take up was negotiated exhaustively by House Republicans and the Attorney General of the United States. Determined advocates for reform after the shameful abuses of 2016 sat down with determined defenders of the good parts of these tools, and they hammered out a strong compromise. The legislation will introduce more daylight and more accountability into the FISA process where appropriate, but it will ensure that the embarrassments of 2016 do not jeopardize these essential national security tools altogether. I hope the Senate will be able to dispatch the amendments that we will consider and pass this important legislation on a bipartisan basis to keep the American people safe.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. McCONNELL
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-05-11-pt1-PgS2331-8
| null | 595
|
formal
|
terrorists
| null |
Islamophobic
|
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, the Senate is back for its second week in session, and we have more important work to do for the American people. While our Nation fights the coronavirus pandemic, many of our fellow Americans have been taking new safety precautions but continue to show up to perform essential work. Because of delivery drivers and grocery clerks, families can keep food on their shelves. Because of utility workers, people hunkered down at home have power. Because of pharmacists manning their counters, Americans have been able to keep getting the medicines they need so this health crisis does not compound itself. Then, of course, there has been the selfless work of so many doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals. Frankly, even the word ``essential'' does not do full justice to all the new American heroes we have met these past weeks. In my home State of Kentucky, we met people like Leilani Krause. She is a 30-year nursing veteran who now oversees care at a senior living facility in Louisville. A few weeks ago, she herself contracted the coronavirus. Even as she stayed home to recover, she never stopped working. She still did all she could to coordinate her patients' care over video calls. As soon as shefelt better and doctors gave her the all-clear, she checked right back into work right on the frontlines. I want to thank all of my Senate colleagues as we continue to perform our essential responsibilities to serve citizens like Miss Krause and so many other American heroes all across our country. Of course, much of the work before us relates to the pandemic itself. Our committees of jurisdiction are attacking COVID-19 and its effects from every angle. This week, Chairman Alexander and our colleagues on the HELP Committee will hold a major hearing on smart and safe ways for Americans to get back to work and back to school. They will hear expert testimony from the very top leaders: Dr. Fauci, Dr. Redfield, Dr. Hahn, and Admiral Giroir from HHS. Chairman Crapo and the Banking Committee will hear from representatives from the Federal Reserve and the FDIC on financial regulation. Obviously, that is an essential topic as the government continues to push out billions and billions of dollars in emergency liquidity following the CARES Act. With huge numbers of Americans working, teaching, and learning from home and with telemedicine more important than ever, the Commerce Committee will hear from experts about access to broadband internet during the crisis. The Judiciary Committee will hold an important hearing on issues of legal liability during this unprecedented time. It is crucial that as we continue to fight the pandemic itself, we ensure it is not followed up by a second job-killing epidemic of frivolous lawsuits. This would be just about the worst time in living memory to let trial lawyers line their pockets at the expense of the rest of our country. The Senate is going to play a strong role in ensuring that does not happen. While our committees are working away, here on the floor, we will start this week by confirming two more qualified nominees to important posts that should not remain empty at this time. We will begin with Brian Montgomery of Texas, named by President Trump to serve as Deputy Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Then we will turn to Troy Edgar of California to be Chief Financial Officer at the Department of Homeland Security. I understand some of my distinguished Democratic colleagues complain that the full Senate should not have to spend more time on these sorts of uncontroversial executive branch nominees. I agree. But as long as their own Democratic leadership continues to hold important posts open for as long as possible in order to just spite the White House, as long as the minority continues to break from longstanding Senate precedent to obstruct even the least controversial nominees, then, frankly, they will have to continue to show up and vote on them. The floor votes they say they dislike are the direct result of their own tactics. We are also going to take up important legislation this week. While COVID-19 rightly dominates headlines around the world, the United States of America also faced many serious threats before this virus began to spread, and they are still with us today. Later this week, we will turn back to reauthorizing important authorities under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. This is urgent because the House refused to take up the Senate's short-term extension of important counterterrorism and counterintelligence authorities before they left town. House Democrats let these tools expire, so we must act quickly to clean up their mess and renew these authorities, which our government needs to fight terrorists and check the agents of China and Russia. The bipartisan bill we will take up was negotiated exhaustively by House Republicans and the Attorney General of the United States. Determined advocates for reform after the shameful abuses of 2016 sat down with determined defenders of the good parts of these tools, and they hammered out a strong compromise. The legislation will introduce more daylight and more accountability into the FISA process where appropriate, but it will ensure that the embarrassments of 2016 do not jeopardize these essential national security tools altogether. I hope the Senate will be able to dispatch the amendments that we will consider and pass this important legislation on a bipartisan basis to keep the American people safe.
|
2020-01-06
|
Mr. McCONNELL
|
Senate
|
CREC-2020-05-11-pt1-PgS2331-8
| null | 596
|
formal
|
Chicago
| null |
racist
|
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair announces the Speaker's reappointment, pursuant to section 201(b) of the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 (22 U.S.C. 6431) and the order of the House of January 3, 2019, of the following individuals on the part of the House to the Commission on International Religious Freedom for a term effective May 14, 2020, and ending May 14, 2022: Ms. Anurima Bhargava, Chicago, Illinois Dr. James W. Carr, Searcy, Arkansas
|
2020-01-06
|
The SPEAKER pro tempore
|
House
|
CREC-2020-05-12-pt1-PgH1989-7
| null | 597
|
formal
|
Federal Reserve
| null |
antisemitic
|
Under clause 2 of rule XIV, executive communications were taken from the Speaker's table and referred as follows: 4284. A letter from the Senior Legal Advisor for Regulatory Affairs, Departmental Offices, Department of the Treasury, transmitting the Department's final rule -- Assessment of Fees on Certain Bank Holding Companies and Nonbank Financial Companies Supervised by the Federal Reserve Board To Cover the Expenses of the Financial Research Fund (RIN: 1505-AC59) received April 23, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Financial Services. 4285. A letter from the Director, Office of Legislative Affairs, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, transmitting the Corporation's interim final rule -- Regulatory Capital Rule: Eligible Retained Income (RIN: 3064-AF40) received April 22, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Financial Services. 4286. A letter from the Secretary, Securities and Exchange Commission, transmitting the Commission's final rule -- Definition of ``Covered Clearing Agency'' [Release No.: 34- 88616; File No.: S7-23-16] (RIN: 3235-AL48) received April 24, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104- 121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Financial Services. 4287. A letter from the Acting Director, Standards, Regulations, and Variances, Mine Safety and Health Administration, Department of Labor, transmitting the Department's direct final rule -- Electronic Detonators [Docket No. MSHA-2019-0007] (RIN: 1219-AB88) received April 23, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Education and Labor. 4288. A letter from the Chief of Staff, Media Bureau, Federal Communications Commission, transmitting the Commission's final rule -- Modernization of Media Regulation Initiative [MB Docket No.: 17-105]; Expansion of Online Public File Obligations to Cable and Satellite TV Operators and Broadcast and Satellite Radio Licensees [MB Docket No.: 14-127]; Standardized and Enhanced Disclosure Requirements for Television Broadcast Licensee Public Interest Obligations [MM Docket No.: 00-168] received April 23, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Energy and Commerce. 4289. A letter from the Chief of Staff, Media Bureau, Federal Communications Commission, transmitting the Commission's final rule -- Electronic Delivery of MVPD Communications [MB Docket No.: 17-317]; Modernization of Media Regulations Initiative [MB Docket No.: 17-105] received April 23, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Energy and Commerce. 4290. A letter from the Chief of Staff, Media Bureau, Federal Communications Commission, transmitting the Commission's final rule -- Implementation of Section 1004 of the Television Viewer Protection Act of 2019 [MB Docket No.: 20-61] received April 23, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Energy and Commerce. 4291. A letter from the Associate Bureau Chief, Wireline Competition Bureau, Federal Communications Commission, transmitting the Commission's final rule -- Call Authentication Trust Anchor [WC Docket No.: 17-97]; Implementation of TRACED Act Section 6(a) ---- Knowledge of Customers by Entities with Access to Numbering Resources [WC Docket No.: 20-674] received April 23, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Energy and Commerce. 4292. A letter from the Deputy Chief of Staff, Enforcement Bureau, Federal Communications Commission, transmitting the Commission's final rule -- Implementing Section 13(d) of the Pallone-Thune Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence Act (TRACED Act) [EB Docket No.: 20-22] received April 23, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Energy and Commerce. 4293. A letter from the Executive Director, Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, transmitting the Board's interim rule -- Temporary Waiver of Notarization Requirement for Spousal Consent received April 23, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Oversight and Reform. 4294. A letter from the Vice President, Environment, Tennessee Valley Authority, transmitting the Authority's final rule -- Procedures for Implementation of the National Environmental Policy Act received April 23, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. 4295. A letter from the Chief, Publications and Regulations Branch, Internal Revenue Service, transmitting the Service's IRB only rule -- Update to Notice 2020-18, Relief for Taxpayers Affected by Ongoing Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic, Related to Gift and Generation-Skipping Transfer Tax Filing and Payment Deadlines [Notice 2020-20] received April 23, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Ways and Means. 4296. A letter from the Chief, Publications and Regulations Branch, Internal Revenue Service, transmitting the Service's IRB Only rule -- Relief for Taxpayers Affected by Ongoing Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic [Notice 2020-18] received April 23, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Ways and Means. 4297. A letter from the Chief, Publications and Regulations Branch, Internal Revenue Service, transmitting the Service's IRB only -- Section 911(d)(4) -- 2019 Update (Revenue Procedure 2020-14 (RP-103465-20)) received April 23, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Ways and Means. 4298. A letter from the Chief, Publications and Regulations Branch, Internal Revenue Service, transmitting the Service's IRB only rule -- Effective Date for Employment Tax Credits Under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act [Notice 2020-21] received April 23, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Ways and Means. 4299. A letter from the Chief, Publications and Regulations Branch, Internal Revenue Service, transmitting the Service's final rule -- Administrative, Procedural, and Miscellaneous (Rev. Proc. 2020-26) received April 23, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Ways and Means. 4300. A letter from the Chief, Publications and Regulations Branch, Internal Revenue Service, transmitting the Service's IRB only rule -- Announcement and Report Concerning Advance Pricing Agreements (March 25, 2020) [ANN 2020-2] received April 23, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Ways and Means. 4301. A letter from the Chief, Publications and Regulations Branch, Internal Revenue Service, transmitting the Service's final regulations and removal of temporary regulations -- Covered Asset Acquisitions [TD 9895] (RIN: 1545-BM36) received April 23, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Ways and Means. 4302. A letter from the Chief, Publications and Regulations Branch, Internal Revenue Service, transmitting the Service's final regulations -- Rules Regarding Certain Hybrid Arrangements [TD 9896] (RIN: 1545-BO53) received April 23, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Ways and Means.
|
2020-01-06
|
Unknown
|
House
|
CREC-2020-05-12-pt1-PgH1989-9
| null | 598
|
formal
|
the Fed
| null |
antisemitic
|
Under clause 2 of rule XIV, executive communications were taken from the Speaker's table and referred as follows: 4284. A letter from the Senior Legal Advisor for Regulatory Affairs, Departmental Offices, Department of the Treasury, transmitting the Department's final rule -- Assessment of Fees on Certain Bank Holding Companies and Nonbank Financial Companies Supervised by the Federal Reserve Board To Cover the Expenses of the Financial Research Fund (RIN: 1505-AC59) received April 23, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Financial Services. 4285. A letter from the Director, Office of Legislative Affairs, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, transmitting the Corporation's interim final rule -- Regulatory Capital Rule: Eligible Retained Income (RIN: 3064-AF40) received April 22, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Financial Services. 4286. A letter from the Secretary, Securities and Exchange Commission, transmitting the Commission's final rule -- Definition of ``Covered Clearing Agency'' [Release No.: 34- 88616; File No.: S7-23-16] (RIN: 3235-AL48) received April 24, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104- 121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Financial Services. 4287. A letter from the Acting Director, Standards, Regulations, and Variances, Mine Safety and Health Administration, Department of Labor, transmitting the Department's direct final rule -- Electronic Detonators [Docket No. MSHA-2019-0007] (RIN: 1219-AB88) received April 23, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Education and Labor. 4288. A letter from the Chief of Staff, Media Bureau, Federal Communications Commission, transmitting the Commission's final rule -- Modernization of Media Regulation Initiative [MB Docket No.: 17-105]; Expansion of Online Public File Obligations to Cable and Satellite TV Operators and Broadcast and Satellite Radio Licensees [MB Docket No.: 14-127]; Standardized and Enhanced Disclosure Requirements for Television Broadcast Licensee Public Interest Obligations [MM Docket No.: 00-168] received April 23, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Energy and Commerce. 4289. A letter from the Chief of Staff, Media Bureau, Federal Communications Commission, transmitting the Commission's final rule -- Electronic Delivery of MVPD Communications [MB Docket No.: 17-317]; Modernization of Media Regulations Initiative [MB Docket No.: 17-105] received April 23, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Energy and Commerce. 4290. A letter from the Chief of Staff, Media Bureau, Federal Communications Commission, transmitting the Commission's final rule -- Implementation of Section 1004 of the Television Viewer Protection Act of 2019 [MB Docket No.: 20-61] received April 23, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Energy and Commerce. 4291. A letter from the Associate Bureau Chief, Wireline Competition Bureau, Federal Communications Commission, transmitting the Commission's final rule -- Call Authentication Trust Anchor [WC Docket No.: 17-97]; Implementation of TRACED Act Section 6(a) ---- Knowledge of Customers by Entities with Access to Numbering Resources [WC Docket No.: 20-674] received April 23, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Energy and Commerce. 4292. A letter from the Deputy Chief of Staff, Enforcement Bureau, Federal Communications Commission, transmitting the Commission's final rule -- Implementing Section 13(d) of the Pallone-Thune Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence Act (TRACED Act) [EB Docket No.: 20-22] received April 23, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Energy and Commerce. 4293. A letter from the Executive Director, Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, transmitting the Board's interim rule -- Temporary Waiver of Notarization Requirement for Spousal Consent received April 23, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Oversight and Reform. 4294. A letter from the Vice President, Environment, Tennessee Valley Authority, transmitting the Authority's final rule -- Procedures for Implementation of the National Environmental Policy Act received April 23, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. 4295. A letter from the Chief, Publications and Regulations Branch, Internal Revenue Service, transmitting the Service's IRB only rule -- Update to Notice 2020-18, Relief for Taxpayers Affected by Ongoing Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic, Related to Gift and Generation-Skipping Transfer Tax Filing and Payment Deadlines [Notice 2020-20] received April 23, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Ways and Means. 4296. A letter from the Chief, Publications and Regulations Branch, Internal Revenue Service, transmitting the Service's IRB Only rule -- Relief for Taxpayers Affected by Ongoing Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic [Notice 2020-18] received April 23, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Ways and Means. 4297. A letter from the Chief, Publications and Regulations Branch, Internal Revenue Service, transmitting the Service's IRB only -- Section 911(d)(4) -- 2019 Update (Revenue Procedure 2020-14 (RP-103465-20)) received April 23, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Ways and Means. 4298. A letter from the Chief, Publications and Regulations Branch, Internal Revenue Service, transmitting the Service's IRB only rule -- Effective Date for Employment Tax Credits Under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act [Notice 2020-21] received April 23, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Ways and Means. 4299. A letter from the Chief, Publications and Regulations Branch, Internal Revenue Service, transmitting the Service's final rule -- Administrative, Procedural, and Miscellaneous (Rev. Proc. 2020-26) received April 23, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Ways and Means. 4300. A letter from the Chief, Publications and Regulations Branch, Internal Revenue Service, transmitting the Service's IRB only rule -- Announcement and Report Concerning Advance Pricing Agreements (March 25, 2020) [ANN 2020-2] received April 23, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Ways and Means. 4301. A letter from the Chief, Publications and Regulations Branch, Internal Revenue Service, transmitting the Service's final regulations and removal of temporary regulations -- Covered Asset Acquisitions [TD 9895] (RIN: 1545-BM36) received April 23, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Ways and Means. 4302. A letter from the Chief, Publications and Regulations Branch, Internal Revenue Service, transmitting the Service's final regulations -- Rules Regarding Certain Hybrid Arrangements [TD 9896] (RIN: 1545-BO53) received April 23, 2020, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A); Public Law 104-121, Sec. 251; (110 Stat. 868); to the Committee on Ways and Means.
|
2020-01-06
|
Unknown
|
House
|
CREC-2020-05-12-pt1-PgH1989-9
| null | 599
|
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