[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 42 (Tuesday, March 3, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1274-S1280]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
LEGISLATIVE SESSION
______
ADVANCED GEOTHERMAL INNOVATION LEADERSHIP ACT OF 2019--MOTION TO
PROCEED--RESUMED
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will
resume consideration of the motion to proceed to S. 2657, which the
clerk will report.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
Motion to proceed to S. 2657, a bill to support innovation
in advanced geothermal research and development, and for
other purposes.
Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Recognition of the Minority Leader
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic Leader is recognized.
Coronavirus
Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, the number of confirmed coronavirus
cases in the United States has recently surpassed 100. As more
Americans are tested in the days and weeks to come, that number is
expected to increase. Just this morning, we learned that a second New
Yorker, from New Rochelle in Westchester County, has contracted the
virus and is in serious condition and currently in a New York hospital.
Our prayers are with him and his family.
This only underlines the urgent need to respond to the coronavirus on
a national scale. The only appropriate response in Congress is to come
together quickly and in a bipartisan fashion to deliver the resources
and authorities our Federal agencies need to track and combat the
virus, treat Americans with the disease, and develop a vaccine and
additional treatments. We also must aid the States and localities in
their efforts to deal with the disease because they are on the
frontlines.
I am glad that Congress is headed in that direction. I expect that,
today, appropriators will announce an agreement on an emergency,
bipartisan funding package to deal with the coronavirus. The agreement
is expected to include between $7 billion and $8 billion of funding--
very close to the $8.5 billion that we Senate Democrats requested last
week--and over four or five times the amount of new funding initially
proposed by the administration.
That is good news. When it comes to Americans' health and safety,
there is no reason to be penny wise and pound foolish. If the bean
counters at OMB unnecessarily cut the money we need, it will cost us
more in the long run. It is far better to get our public health
professionals, experts, and agencies the funding they need, up front
and all together, rather than be forced to pass additional
appropriations in the coming months. We may have to, but we ought not
skimp now. If we did skimp, the scenario would make no sense. Yet, left
to its own devices, that is what the administration would have done. So
I am glad we pushed them earlier, despite the fact that President Trump
didn't want to hear anything contrary to what he was proposing.
I am pleased that both parties in Congress, in both Houses of
Congress, are coming together to do the responsible thing. I hope and
expect that we can pass the emergency appropriations through the Senate
before the end of the week.
As Congress does what is necessary to respond to the coronavirus,
unfortunately, the Trump administration's efforts leave much to be
desired. While the Trump administration's response is slow, halting,
loose with the facts, and President Trump blames everyone but himself,
Congress--Democrats and Republicans, House and Senate--are acting like
the adults in the room. We are not letting President Trump's
accusations and nastiness, his false statements and his inability to
really grapple with the problem--and, instead, try to brush it away--
get in our way of doing what America needs to have done and done
immediately.
Congressional appropriators have had to include provisions in the
emergency bill to prevent the administration from stealing funds from
other public health and disease programs to fight the coronavirus. That
is what the White House wanted to do. Test kits were not as widely
available or accurate as they should have been in the early days of the
coronavirus outbreak. POLITICO reported this morning that the
administration was very slow to develop an accurate test for
coronavirus and slow to allow hospitals and public health labs to
develop that on their own.
The emergency funding bill seeks to deal with these two issues. It
explicitly funds laboratory testing. We may have to do even more in the
weeks to come, but that is no reason not to immediately give a generous
appropriation so that testing can be done. Every day we delay testing,
every time a person who needs a test doesn't get one, is a day and a
time when the virus gets worse and worse and worse and can spread.
There are still major issues with the lack of testing infrastructure
that is being provided by the administration. States and cities still
don't have enough tests, and yesterday we heard from the National
Indian Health Board that the Indian Health Service and Tribal health
facilities are being left behind in the coronavirus response and have
received few, if any, resources. That is unacceptable.
Meanwhile, as Congress works--Democrats and Republicans, House and
Senate--to come up with a strong, comprehensive bill with the necessary
dollars, President Trump continues to spread rumor, loose speculation,
and happy talk. If any member of the administration tells the President
something optimistic, he repeats it and exaggerates it to the point of
absurdity. The President said the disease might magically ``disappear''
once the weather gets warmer and promised that the
[[Page S1275]]
vaccine would arrive ``soon''--his words. Only yesterday were a group
of governmental health experts and pharmaceutical executives able to
convince the President that a vaccine will not be ready in a matter of
months--as the President believed and said--and, in fact, could take a
year to develop.
We need leadership in this country. We need serious leadership at a
time of crisis like this. We don't need the facts being brushed under
the rug. We don't need executives being told: Just do happy talk. Don't
tell the American people the truth.
We don't need a President who doesn't know the facts and blithely
states whatever pops into his head that he thinks will benefit him for
the moment.
This is a crisis. There is no substitute for credibility and honesty
from our political leaders. We need the President and his team to level
with the American people and tell the truth, more during a health
crisis than ever before. Our public health professionals must tell the
President the facts, and the President and his team must tell the
American public the facts--just the facts.
Now, the Vice President and Ambassador Debbie Birx will speak to both
Senate caucuses at lunch today. I am disappointed that Dr. Anthony
Fauci, the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious
Diseases, who was originally slated to join us, is no longer coming,
but Senate Democrats have many questions for the Vice President about
his administration's response to the outbreak and, even more
importantly, what they are doing now to help deal with the problem as
it gets worse and worse.
We look forward to pressing him on the need for transparency and
decisiveness and hopefully getting useful answers because the health
and safety of the American people are at stake.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.
Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, Samuel Johnson was a great thinker in
the 19th century and was quoted many times for things that he observed
even then. He did have one statement about nothing focusing the mind
like the prospect of a hanging, and I would like to use that as an
analogy to my comments this morning.
I do notice that the Senator from South Dakota has taken the floor.
Let me yield to him because I think, in the order of speaking, he is
next, and I will follow him.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Dakota.
S. 2657
Mr. THUNE. Madam President, I thank the Democratic whip for yielding
time. I will be short here.
We are in a pretty good place in this country right now when it comes
to energy. Our energy supply is abundant, and energy prices are
generally affordable. We can't afford to become complacent. We are in a
good place right now because of American innovation, because President
Trump, working with our Republican majority in the Congress, took steps
to expand our domestic energy supply and to lessen our dependence upon
foreign oil.
If we want to keep American energy affordable and abundant, we need
to make sure we stay on the cutting edge of energy innovation and
continue to invest in our domestic energy supply, from oil and natural
gas to renewable energy sources like hydropower and wind. We also need
to make sure we stay on top of threats to our energy grid and our
energy security.
Our colleagues at the Energy and Natural Resources Committee have
spent a lot of time over the past months working on these issues, and
yesterday we voted to move forward on bipartisan energy legislation put
forward by Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Lisa
Murkowski and Ranking Member Joe Manchin. The bill they put together,
the American Energy Innovation Act, contains measures from more than 60
Senators focused on energy innovation--particularly, clean energy
innovation--workplace development, and the security of our energy grid.
The American Energy Innovation Act invests in a wide range of clean
energy technologies, from wind and solar to hydropower and geothermal.
It also focuses on improving energy storage. Many modern clean energy
technologies are intermittent or lack the reliability of traditional
electric sources. The amount of energy produced from wind, for example,
is dependent on the amount of wind on any given day. So it must be
backed up by a traditional plant, often powered by natural gas.
Creating new ways to store clean energy will allow us to increase our
reliance on renewable energy sources. The American Energy Innovation
Act also focuses on improving research into carbon capture, and it
directs the establishment of a research and development program to
identify ways to use captured carbon.
The bill also invests in advanced nuclear energy research so that we
can regain our edge in the use of this clean energy technology.
I plan to introduce amendments to the legislation to review where we
can boost hydropower in the Upper Missouri River Basin and to develop
ways to recycle the windmill blades used in wind energy generation.
Nearly half of the electricity generated in South Dakota is from
hydroelectric, and we should explore building off of these investments
through repowering existing dams and adding power generation to those
without.
In addition to clean energy and innovation, the Energy and Natural
Resources Committee's legislation focuses on boosting the security of
our electric grid. Our electric grid is the subject of a steady stream
of cyber attacks, some of which could have devastating consequences. It
is not hard to imagine the deadly results of prolonged traffic signal
outages or long-term power outages at hospitals or fire stations. That
is why the American Energy Innovation Act invests in cyber security and
grid modernization.
The act also focuses on improving our domestic supply of some of the
key elements and minerals that we rely on for manufacturing everything
from computer chips to batteries, to defense applications. Right now we
have to import too much--too much--of these critical minerals from
countries like China. For the sake of our national security, it is
important that we find ways to identify supplies of these minerals here
at home.
Finally, the American Energy Innovation Act invests in workforce
development. All the innovative technologies in the world will not help
us if we don't have the skilled workers to operate and maintain these
technologies. We need to ensure that, while we are investing in
innovation, we are also investing in the energy workforce of the
future.
This legislation would help ensure that we maintain our energy
independence for the long term. It will boost the security of our
electric grid, strengthen our national security, and invest in American
workers. It will help pave the way for a clean energy future.
This is a good bill, and I hope that my colleagues will support it
and not derail this legislation with partisan amendments. I know many
of my colleagues across the aisle have a keen interest in adding
certain energy tax provisions to this bill. I will remind them,
however, that last summer the Senate Finance Committee created a number
of task forces to examine expiring and expired tax policies. I co-led
the Energy Task Force along with the senior Senator from Michigan, and
many of the energy tax items that we reviewed were included in the
year-end bill in December. Others were not yet ready for prime time.
I am eager to continue to work with my colleagues on advancing
American energy innovation, as this bill will do, but we have to be
realistic about the fact that a number of the energy tax proposals in
question are not yet ready for implementation and need to be considered
in the context of other reforms and corrections to the Tax Code.
As I said, I hope debate over tax provisions or other amendments will
not delay passage of this important bipartisan legislation, and I look
forward to working with colleagues of both parties to advance this bill
and to help secure America's energy future.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.
Coronavirus
Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, as I noted earlier, Samuel Johnson once
noted that there is nothing that focuses the mind like the prospect of
a
[[Page S1276]]
hanging. I would say there is nothing that focuses the mind on the
issue of healthcare like the prospect of a pandemic, and that is what
we are facing now with the coronavirus. Americans should not panic and
shouldn't be pessimistic, but we need to be realistic as the numbers
total up around the world and we start to take an assessment of our own
vulnerabilities--personal, family, community, and State
vulnerabilities--here in the United States of America.
We are also, I hope, reflecting on what we are counting on to get us
through this pandemic in a positive fashion in America. The first thing
is we look to two major healthcare organizations of the Federal
Government: the National Institutes of Health, which is the premier
health research agency in the world, and the Centers for Disease
Control, which, again, leads the world when it comes to preventing the
spread of disease and threats to the public health of America.
The question we should ask ourselves is, How have we treated these
agencies to date? The answers are mixed. The answer, when it comes to
National Institutes of Health, is a positive one.
Over the last 4 years, something dramatic has occurred. I was happy
to be part of a bipartisan effort that was led by Senator Patty Murray
of Washington, Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, and Senator Lamar
Alexander of Tennessee. What we have accomplished in the last 4 years
is to increase the spending at the National Institutes of Health for
medical research grants from $30 billion to $39 billion. It is a
dramatic increase.
We started off with a premise we wanted to increase the NIH budget by
real growth of 5 percent--that is 5 percent over inflation--each year.
We held to that standard; in fact, some years were even better. We have
a lot to show for it. There have been real breakthroughs when it comes
to medical research. We want to continue down this line.
When it came to the Centers for Disease Control, I had the same goal
in mind. We didn't quite reach it. Over the last 4 years, we have seen
a 14-percent increase at the CDC. I believe this coronavirus pandemic
threat is going to open the eyes of America to the need to make sure
the CDC is adequately, properly funded for years to come.
At the outset, the focus of the mind is on those agencies of
government which do the absolute essential work of research and the
prevention of the spread of disease. The NIH and CDC need to occupy a
special place when it comes to budgeting by the Federal Government.
The second thing we note is there are practical questions to be asked
and answered. We are now talking about the development of a test to
determine whether individuals have been affected by the coronavirus.
That test is now starting to come forward. It will be released in
States across the United States in the next several weeks.
Some obvious, practical questions face us: How much does this test
cost? Is it covered by health insurance? If it is not covered by health
insurance, can the average family afford it? These are the practical
questions which those of us who have good health insurance and are not
worried about the next paycheck can take care of, but for millions of
Americans, it is a significant challenge. We notice that in some cases
it takes more than one test to determine that a person is truly free of
the coronavirus.
The obvious question is, Does our health insurance cover this kind of
testing? As I stand here, I don't know the answer to it. If it turns
out to be an expensive test, and it is not covered by insurance,
Americans are going to be faced with that challenge right off the bat.
It brings to mind the real fundamental issue of the debate in
Congress over the last 10 years about health insurance. Our friends on
the other side of the aisle argue that people ought to be able to pay
less for health insurance that covers even less. We on this side call
that junk insurance. The Affordable Care Act said that health insurance
plans had to have certain basic coverage before they could be offered
in this country. We got rid of the lifetime limits that some health
insurance plans had. We eliminated the discrimination against people
with preexisting conditions. We said that kids could stay on their
parents' health insurance plan until they reached the age of 26. We
said every health insurance plan had to include those provisions. We
included coverage in basic health insurance of mental illness and
addiction services--basic fundamental care that every American should
expect when they buy health insurance.
The Republicans on the other side of the aisle say: Well, we ought to
be able to buy insurance that doesn't cover those things. It will be
cheaper. Let the consumers decide.
It is OK for a consumer to decide for less coverage, I suppose, if
they can be guaranteed good health for the rest of their lives. No one
knows about the next accident or the next diagnosis that might really
call into question the adequacy of our health insurance coverage.
I stand with the Affordable Care Act. We should have a basic standard
when it comes to health insurance in America so that when you buy a
plan, it covers what most Americans will need, the basics that they
will need. Junk insurance has no place in America, and it is no bargain
for people who truly need health insurance for reimbursement.
When it comes to the cost of dealing with the coronavirus, whether it
is the initial test or followup hospitalizations, we all want the peace
of mind that our health insurance plan will cover those needs.
The third issue that is clear is that there are people who are going
to miss work because of this coronavirus. Some of them are asked to
stay home and work from home and things continue as usual, and they
receive their regular paycheck, but for others, they have to leave the
workplace because of fears they may have a flu or may be contagious or
someone else at work might be. What happens when they go home when it
comes to their paycheck? Are they going to be given medical leave and
paid for their absences?
It is an issue which comes to the forefront in this coronavirus
debate. Frankly, it is with us all of the time. Those of us on the
Democratic side believe that medical leave should be extended. We have
just expanded it when it comes to Federal employees. We should do it as
well for people across the United States. Medical leave gives you peace
of mind to make the right medical decision. Don't go to work with a
fever. Don't go to school with a fever. Stay home. Protect yourself,
your family, the people you work with, the people you are around during
the course of a day. Medical leave gives you that option, and it is one
that is a practical solution to something that we face all the time.
The fourth issue that I will raise has been brought up by this
coronavirus debate is the role of pharma in the future. It is
interesting that across America when you ask Americans their concern
when it comes to the cost of healthcare, the cost of prescription drugs
is high on the list.
It is also interesting that health insurance companies--the major
companies--tell us that one of the biggest drivers in the increase in
health insurance premiums is the cost of prescription drugs. Pharma is
obviously a challenge to all of us. We want them to have the money to
be profitable, to invest in research, but we don't want them to
dramatically overcharge for the products they make. ``Your money'' or
``your life'' is not a good answer when it comes to pharma and the
public health of America.
Now we are going to face it again, the prospect of a vaccine. We hope
to have a vaccine quickly, but even ``quickly'' by medical terms is a
long time.
Dr. Fauci, of NIH, has said it could be a year, a year and a half,
even 2 years before a real, reliable vaccine is discovered to deal with
coronavirus. It is an indication of the kind of research that has to
take place--research that starts, I might add, at the Federal level,
with your government doing research.
I know pharmaceutical companies will ultimately produce the product,
the vaccine, but it starts with an investment by the Federal Government
in the basic research to lead up to that vaccine whenever it is
discovered. Then we have the question about once the vaccine is
discovered, who will sell it to America and at what price? That is a
debate that we went through several years ago.
We faced the swine flu. During that period of time, some 40 million
Americans were actually vaccinated in 1976
[[Page S1277]]
for swine flu--45 million, to be exact. For several months, four
pharmaceutical firms refused to sell the vaccine they had manufactured
to the government until they received full liability indemnity and a
guaranteed profit. The vaccine was there, but they wouldn't sell it
until they received those promises. In fact, the Federal Government
assumed the liability for this vaccine. According to this article that
was published this morning in the New York Times, they eventually paid
out over $100 million in claims.
Are we going to face that again with pharma when it comes to a
vaccine for coronavirus? Certainly, they are entitled to a profit for
their own investment, whatever it may be in that vaccine, but the
initial work on the research is being done by the Federal Government.
That Federal Government research will lead to a product which will lead
to a profit for these companies.
I am not opposed to a reasonable profit, but I do think, if they are
going to hold us hostage for months over a guaranteed profit that is
unreasonable, that America is going to rebel against these
pharmaceutical companies. Our debate about pharma and its relationship
with America in the future has really sharpened its focus by this
debate on the coronavirus that we are facing today.
Madam President, there is one other aspect that I would like to
raise. I was surprised at the briefing we received 2 weeks ago in
Washington on the coronavirus to learn how many pharmaceuticals are
actually produced in China and how many pharmaceutical ingredients are
produced in China and India. It turns out we have a real dependence,
when it comes to developing medicines and drugs, on these two countries
and many others. When it comes to medical devices, the same is true;
medical equipment, the same.
It raised a question in my mind as to whether we should do something
thoughtful and perspective in terms of dealing with global dependence
on medicine, medical devices, and medical supplies.
I am introducing legislation this week calling for the creation of a
commission to look at this dependence, to measure it today. Today we
are facing the coronavirus, the possible--I underline ``possible''--
interruption in the supply of pharmaceuticals and the supply of
pharmaceutical ingredients from China because of the coronavirus. Did
we anticipate this? Have we stockpiled enough of these drugs so we will
not be caught short on something that is absolutely vital? If we
haven't, we should.
We should also think about the prospect that in the future, for
certain critical drugs, there should be a domestic source in the United
States that we can count on if there is some interruption in global
trade because of a medical crisis such as this or because of terrorism,
for example. I hope we can get some guidance on this from the agencies
involved and from those we respect who can give us third-party judgment
on this.
Let us, at this moment in time as we face this crisis, look ahead to
what the next challenge might be and be prepared for it. As we debate
this coronavirus, I urge my colleagues to do our best to try to find
bipartisan ground to work on. I have found, across my State, regardless
of political allegiance, the people of Illinois and in many other
States are looking for us in Washington to address this problem
responsibly, in a mature way, in a totally nonpolitical way.
When statements are made by political observers, even by the
President himself, that are far afield from the truth, let's not be
derailed by that. Let's focus on medical expertise that we can trust,
public health experts who can guide us through this in the appropriate
way.
In the meantime, realize we are blessed to live in a country with the
best, most talented medical professionals in the world and the best
medical resources on Earth. We want to make certain we give them all
the room they need to lead us through this crisis and challenge in a
very positive way.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. BOOKER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Loeffler). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Bipartisan Background Checks
Mr. BOOKER. Madam President, I have prepared remarks, but before I do
that, I want to thank the pages who are in this class right now. They
are hard at work, and they do so much for this institution. I just want
it written in the Record of the U.S. Senate that on this day in March,
the junior Senator from New Jersey recognized them for everything they
do around here, even though they do not tell jokes that are very good.
Now, if I may start my prepared remarks, I rise today with other
colleagues who are speaking, particularly my colleague from
Connecticut, Senator Murphy, to speak on a bill that actually passed
out of the House, which was something that was extraordinary. It passed
out of the House of Representatives just over a full year ago, and we
are waiting here in the Senate for it to come to the floor.
I am one of these folks who really believe that we have too much
unnecessary partisanship around issues when there is so much common
cause in our country and when there is so much common ground in our
country. Yes, indeed, debate is important. Disagreement is important.
It undergirds the ideals of democracy that we should form a national
conversation and work through our differences--the idea that that
actually produces a better whole and a better result.
But when we have a nation that has such extensive agreement on an
issue, where 97 percent of Americans agree, where Republicans and
Democrats in the House of Representatives agree, and we can't get
action here, to me, that is not adding to the strength of democracy. It
is weakening our Republic.
It was almost exactly a year ago that the House of Representatives
passed H.R. 8, the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019. This
legislation would require a background check before any sale or
transfer of a firearm. Under existing law, you can go to a gun show and
purchase a gun from an unlicensed seller without having gone through a
background check. Think about this. You could be on a terrorist no-fly
list; you could be a convicted felon; and you could be a spousal
abuser. You can be a lot of things--anything--and be able to go to an
unlicensed seller at a gun show and fill up a trunk full of weapons.
This is a glaring loophole that allows dangerous individuals--who we
all agree are dangerous--to purchase a gun in violation of Federal law.
Again, 97 percent of Americans wanted that loophole closed. The
evidence is clear. A study found last year that States that have this
commonsense, widely supported, bipartisanly backed background check
law--when States have it in place, they get 10 percent lower homicide
rates. This isn't speculation. Folks who have that law in place on a
State level have 10 percent fewer homicides.
But today, over a year out of its passage out of the House, the
Senate has failed to take up this commonsense bill, which we know--
which we know factually--would save lives.
What is one of the fundamental reasons our government was founded in
the first place? For the common defense. We are here to defend our
Nation from violence, from terror, from injury, from harm. Everyone in
this body takes that commitment very seriously. So here we have
something 97 percent of Americans want. We know it would save lives,
protect our country and, yet, no action. The bill has not come to the
floor.
I know this personally. I was the mayor of my State's largest city,
and in the overwhelming majority of homicides and shootings where we
captured the person and found out how they got their gun, they were not
qualified to buy a gun. It was illegal for them to buy a gun in any
State because many of them had criminal convictions. Yet they found
easy ways to obtain a gun because we have so many loopholes in the
commonsense law--loopholes that allow violence to happen that is
terrorizing communities. Of course, we know that is not just anecdotal
evidence. According to the Gun Violence Archive,
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an estimated 15,208 people were killed with a gun in the United States
in 2019.
We know that gun violence is the single leading cause of death for
children and teenagers. Our greatest natural resource in this country
is our children. Black children and teenagers are 14 times more likely
to die of gun homicide than their White peers. There is tragic carnage
going on for African-American kids. In just one city, for example, in
St. Louis, MO, between April and September of last year, 13 children
ranging in age from 2 to 16 were killed by a gun.
There is another kind of gun violence we don't talk about. We don't
talk enough about the death of our children, but we definitely don't
talk about domestic violence in our country. It is factual that when an
abuser can get a gun--if that abuser has a gun, a victim of domestic
violence is five times more likely to be killed. Again, with the racial
disparities in communities of color like the one I live in, we know a
Black woman is twice as likely to be shot and killed by an intimate
partner as well.
Our duty is to protect this Nation and to protect one another. This
is not controversial when you have 97 percent--97 percent. Every year
in the United States of America, on average, 100,000 people are shot,
and they survive. Many of them will carry with them, for their lives,
mental and physical wounds. The economic cost of being a gun violence
survivor is measured in the tens and tens of thousands of dollars. The
community costs of folks being killed--I have seen this in my community
when a shooting happened in front of the IHOP in Newark on Bergen
Street. The IHOP had to close one of its shifts, and people lost jobs.
It reverberates out into the community.
You see scars happening every day in America. These wounds are
physical, are economic, and involve mental health. I can't tell you how
many communities in America--when we celebrate the very ideas of our
country on July 4, when those firecrackers go off and children hear
them, they duck for cover. They hide under beds. They show signs of
post-traumatic stress. That is what we are living in right now. This is
an everyday reality.
I just came to the floor today to point out that a year--12 months,
365 days--from the House's passing of the bipartisan bill supported by
97 percent of Americans, which is fundamental to the reason for
government, the common defense in the wake of one of the greatest
killers of children in our country--all of these things, and we here
are doing nothing.
What did Martin Luther King say? What we have to repent for is not
just the vitriolic words and violent actions of the bad people; it is
also the appalling silence and inaction of the good people.
I have stood for comprehensive gun safety reform, and a lot of things
I support aren't supported by 97 percent of Americans like background
checks. Heck, I support gun licensing. The percentage of Americans who
support that falls into the seventies. I support an assault weapons
ban. Support for that falls as well. So maybe that is an area where we
debate. I will stand for those commonsense changes because, again, I
believe in the data. States that do that have seen dramatic drops in
violence. We can debate that.
But when we have a bill from the House that 97 percent of Americans
support, that has bipartisan support, that we know will save lives, and
we don't act, what does that say about us? Every day in this country,
people are being shot, and people are killed, and we do nothing when we
all agree.
This week, March 7, will mark the 55th anniversary of the day that
600 civil rights activists, led by a young man named John Lewis, set
out to walk from Selma to Montgomery to protest systematic racialized
disenfranchisement, discrimination, and violence. Those nonviolent
protesters were met with vicious beatings with billy clubs by Alabama
State troopers. They had tear gas and dogs set on them. Congressman
Lewis had his skull cracked open.
By the next day, Americans all over this country--that horrific
scene, we know this as Bloody Sunday--Americans all over this country
saw that violence, saw that viciousness, and saw what was being done to
people who were nonviolent marchers fighting for justice and equality.
It motivated Americans of all backgrounds--Black, White, Christian,
Jewish, Republican, and Democrat--to join in the call for change.
I love this Nation, and I love my country. I love folks who agree
with me and who disagree with me. I think patriotism is love of
country, and you can't love your country unless you love your fellow
country men and women.
I say to the Presiding Officer, I love you, man.
My friends across the aisle, we don't agree. Heck, in our own caucus,
we don't agree, but we love one another.
My faith and the other faiths represented in this body--I am excited
that we have more religious diversity in this body than ever before--
all of our faiths are founded on this fundamental principle: Love thy
neighbor.
This is the challenge. It is, how do we manifest love into our
policy? Well, as I have read, one of the great authors said: What does
love look like in public? It looks like justice.
This is the great thing about our country. We don't always act right
away, but throughout our history, when we were confronted with the
wretchedness of our society, with the incongruences between reality and
our morals and beliefs, we have seen this country rise up and make
change. When four girls died in the bombing in Birmingham, it shocked
the conscience of this country, and we made change. When women in a
factory called the Triangle shirtwaist factory were trapped in
sweatshop-like conditions--a fire broke out--this country watched in
horror, read about in horror back then, and saw in horror through the
pictures of women throwing themselves out windows, dying on the
pavement below, it shocked the conscience of this country, and we in
this body passed laws to protect workers. I could go on throughout our
entire history.
We are not always fast to get there, but we are a caring,
compassionate, loving country. We are. That is the root of who we are.
They are the values we profess. I know that as much as we disagree and
try to vilify each other, the truth is, we are a nation founded on the
ideals of love.
Again, I look at my colleague up there in that seat. I have watched
him. I saw him on HBO reading our founding documents. It was moving to
me to see Republicans and Democrats--I am sure you saw it--reading our
founding documents. Our Declaration of Independence--I hate to say
this, you might say I am a little too mushy--it ends with one of the
greatest declarations of love in human history. It says, if we are
going to make this Nation work, all the stuff we just talked about, if
we are going to be the country that is, as the prophet Isaiah said,
ultimately a light unto other nations, inspiring free peoples across
the globe--we are the oldest constitutional democracy. We stepped out
into the course of human events and said we are going to found a
country based on virtue, not a theocracy, not a monarchy, on virtue--
that we would be a nation based on ideas. And those ideas, as imperfect
as the geniuses who founded this country--and, God, they didn't believe
that women were equal or Blacks were equal, but they believed in those
ideals and those virtues and that this Nation should always strive to
make a more perfect Union, making more real those virtues and those
values in people's lives. The history of our country is a glorious
testimony of us getting better and better with each generation.
Susan B. Anthony stood up and said that it was we the people, not we
the male citizens that made this country, not the White male citizens.
It was we the people. She used the words of our founding documents to
inform her moment of history to call to the conscience of our country.
Martin Luther King, right here in DC on the Mall, did he turn to some
new radical treatise? No. He went back to our founding documents and
quoted them in his speech at the March on Washington. That is the
beauty of our Nation.
So what does it say, that testimony to love, that the founding of our
Nation in the Declaration of Independence--and, yes, to all those
people, I will give you deference that that declaration called Native
Americans savages. I will give you deference that the men who wrote
them were imperfect representatives of the values to which
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they were called to, but that declaration of love at the end is
unmistakable. At the end of the Declaration of Independence, they say,
if we are to make it all work, we must mutually pledge--I look at my
colleague in the seat because he knows these words backward and
forward. It says we must mutually pledge; that is, pledge to each other
our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.
God, I think about those words more than you might realize. What does
it mean to give someone your sacred honor, to pledge to them your lives
and your fortunes? God, I would die for this country, as I know my
colleagues would. None of the people in this body--I know many of my
friends in this body have come here with great wealth, but none of them
are doing it for wealth.
Our lives, our fortunes, but that last one, sacred honor, what does
that mean? To me, a word that evokes that greatest of human values,
love; that word that we honor each other. We believe we are people who
must elevate each other and protect each other.
There is a bill in the House that passed in a bipartisan way on that
fundamental ideal of being there for one another. Whether you pray like
me or look like me, we are there for one another. We protect each
other. We stand for each other. I may have differences with the man in
that seat who is on the other side of the aisle, but, God, I give you
my sacred honor that I am not going to vilify or demonize your
character because we are Americans.
Now, the call of our country is people who are overlooked are dying
every day in communities like mine around this country, people being
felled by domestic abusers. We know from the data that this can make a
difference, a bipartisan voice. Ninety percent of Americans ask: Can we
pass comprehensive background checks?
We can do better. Let's leave the things we want to debate that, God,
I want to debate--gun licensing, assault weapons ban, leave those
aside, but we agree that someone on the terrorist no-fly list should
not be able to go to a gun show and go to a casual seller and buy
weapons. Those are the weapons showing up on the streets in Newark. We
have traced them.
My country tis of thee
Sweet [sweet] land of liberty
Of thee I sing.
May our country be free from fear and free from violence, and may we
be empathetic toward those today who are fearful of their abuser, who
are fearful to walk their kids to school. May we understand that that
liberty to fight for freedom from fear is still an unachieved dream in
this country. That liberty that comes from safety and security is still
an unrealized dream for millions of Americans. May we join together and
pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. May we pledge to
one another to do the work America wants--to keep each other safe and
secure and to ensure our children, disproportionately impacted by
violence, grow up to carry on our culture, and our traditions, and the
honor that is America.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cruz). The Senator from Missouri.
Coronavirus
Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I want to talk for a few moments about
where we are with the coronavirus response and the supplemental. I
think all Senators will have an opportunity to be updated again today.
This is not a new place for us to be. This time last year, the
Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services,
Education, and Related Agencies held a hearing on emerging threats, and
at that point we were experiencing the second largest outbreak of Ebola
in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, antibiotic resistance was a
global danger, and there was a flu outbreak bigger than we had seen in
a long time. So 1 year later, we are still fighting the Ebola outbreak
in the DRC, antibiotic resistance continues to be a global problem,
and, according to Dr. Tony Fauci, the Director of the National
Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the flu we are seeing
this year is shaping up to be one of the worst in decades.
Several thousand Americans die every year from the flu--usually, at
least 35,000, sometimes as high as 75,000. I think about 350,000
Americans have died from the flu in the last decade.
We are now facing a new danger--the COVID-19 danger. That is the new
coronavirus that we hadn't seen before. As we learned with Ebola,
patient zero, who doesn't know they even have this yet, can board a
plane or a cruise ship, and they can be in another country or even in
another continent in a matter of hours. This lesson is, once again,
reinforced.
This is like all other diseases. It doesn't know any boundaries. We
are no longer living in a world where our health can be separated from
the health of other countries. Last week, the number of new coronavirus
infections outside of China outpaced those inside China for the first
time. Maybe the good news is that China is beginning to see something
headed in a different direction, but the bad news is the infections in
Iran, Italy, South Korea, Japan, and other places. This has moved into
Europe now, and in South America a case was just announced in Brazil.
This is kind of that moment where we have some opportunity to do
everything we can to prepare for the worst, but we still have the
option of hoping for the best. That is what happened with SARS. That is
what happened with H1N1. To some extent, it is what happened with Zika.
It turned out to be bad for the people who had it but not as bad as we
anticipated at one point it might be.
It is disturbing to see the first deaths in the State of Washington,
but, certainly, the message to us is to be more vigilant and be better
prepared.
The Congress, in the last 5 years, has increased money--that doesn't
count whatever we do this week and next week--for preparedness by 44
percent. A year ago, we created for the first time an infectious
disease fund--our colleague in the House, Tom Cole, was one of the
major proponents of this--to let the Health and Human Services people
have access to money immediately. Because of that, they had $105
million that they wouldn't have previously had to be able to spend
immediately to help contain this problem, where it can be contained, to
bring Americans back here, particularly from China, and to keep them in
a known location for the 14-day incubation period to see if anything
happened. All of that was possible because we had given them the
flexibility that they hadn't had before.
The first-line-of-defense funding has been there. We are now moving
toward a conclusion of what we can do to make more money available for
a vaccine. A vaccine takes a while. We are not going to have a vaccine
for a while. We are going to be continuing to talk to Dr. Fauci and his
team about this. We are working with experts at what is called BARDA,
or the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, to move
those vaccines quickly. But even if we had a vaccine in 18 months, that
would be the U.S. world record to develop a vaccine here with the
safety that we would think it would need to have so that anybody could
take a vaccine and, with that vaccine, this particular virus would
likely be dealt with.
So there is no treatment right now. There is no cure right now. The
treatment is to handle these issues in the way that we can in a public
health system that has been built over decades. There are 50 States and
the District of Columbia, and all have local public health providers.
We are going to have new money available to work with them, but, again,
the preparedness money that they have had for the last 5 years should
have been used in a way--and I believe was used in a way--that gets
them all more ready to deal with this than they otherwise would have
been.
We need to continue so that the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention have what they need to improve the surveillance systems, the
testing systems. I think we are going to find quickly that there will
be a test that will be approved by the FDA that allows people to check,
in a number of locations, and have that process in a number of
locations that tests to see if, in fact, you have what you thought was
a worse-than-usual cold--or maybe you thought it was a not-worse-than-
usual cold. Sometimes this particular disease doesn't evidence that
much happened at all. Because of that, I think there is
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probably, at this point, a bigger number of people who we think would
be a percentage of people who would have really negative consequences--
even death--from this disease, rather than all the people who had it
and didn't know they had it.
We have learned in the past, through outbreaks of a flu strain that
we didn't have a vaccine for, of Ebola, of Zika, that what we do to
protect people in other countries winds up protecting people here. We
have to be sure that we understand that a lot of our fate in this has
been determined and will continue to be determined by what we do to
first try to contain this virus and, secondly, to provide the money to
be sure that, when we do have an outbreak, which has already begun in
our country, it is an outbreak that is really held at the lowest
possible level of people impacted and, if you are infected by this
disease, that you have the ability to work from home, to do other
things. The hospital is not always the place to go.
We are working with State and local health officials right now to see
that that happens. The money that has been used, I think, has been used
effectively. Clearly, we are trying to agree--between the House and the
Senate and the administration--to exactly the right number. I would say
that, at this point, the administration has been the most agreeable to
whatever money we want to provide but, obviously, would like to have
that money provided quickly.
I feel confident we are going to have the resources to deal with
this. I feel confident that this will be a problem that will not impact
more people than would usually be impacted by something like the flu.
Again, we need to prepare for the very worst and hope for the very
best, but our job right now is to prepare for the worst things that
could happen and have the funding available so that we don't have to go
through a couple of weeks again where an easy determination should have
been reached.
One thing we could have done is to have given the administration
exactly the amount of money they asked for--we could have decided to
spend it differently--2 weeks ago and then get into a discussion of
what we need next. That is not the course we decided to go down.
We are trying to come up with an amount of money, it appears, that
would get us through this entire incident with this virus, but it is
time to get that done. Hopefully, we will see a bill filed later today
and the House able to vote on that bill before they leave this week.
Once that number is done, I think it will be seen as almost certain
that the Senate will be able to deal with that bill and approve that
number.
We are going to move forward. I think, again, we are going to move
forward in a way that minimizes, as much as possible, the impact that
this has on families and on individuals.
Mr. President, I look forward to you and I both having a chance to
learn more about this even today and to learn more as we move forward.
The big thing we need to learn now is the amount of money we need to
have to spend and how we allocate that money for a vaccine and other
things.
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