[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 51 (Tuesday, March 17, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1775-S1777]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              CORONAVIRUS

  Mr. SASSE. Madam President, we are in the midst of two crises at 
once--one health-related and one economic. I tend to think that the 
prudent path forward on the health front is that even as we hope for 
the best, we should continue planning for the worst. If this nasty 
disease continues to ramp in roughly the same proportions as it has in 
Italy and Spain, it will overwhelm our hospitals. So I think the social 
distancing recommendations from the President and from the CDC over the 
last 4 days are a prudent action.
  At the same time, we are also in the midst of a genuine economic 
crisis. Lots of moms and dads are worried that they might be laid off, 
and lots of businesses are evaluating whether they are going to make 
payroll and whether they are still going to be in business months down 
the line. They are scared, and DC needs to act more urgently than we 
usually do, but just saying we need to act urgently is not a substitute 
for actually having good ideas and actually advancing good policies.
  There is a herd mentality around this building right now where a lot 
of normally smart people are literally saying things like: The most 
important thing is to be fast, even if the ideas that are being 
advocated for are not really ready for prime time and can't really 
withstand the scrutiny of debate. That is a really dumb idea. It is a 
ready-fire-aim approach. We do indeed need to work fast, but working 
fast is no substitute for working smart.
  Again, I agree that this virus and the strategies necessary to 
contain it are producing some of the worst economic upheavals we have 
seen in a generation.
  Further, we need to be preparing for these unexpected economic 
hardships to last for 6 months or even longer. But that fact is a 
reason to prepare; it is not a reason to panic. That fact is a reason 
to debate hard and fast but still to debate what good policy looks 
like; it is not a reason to allow garbage policies to get by because 
someone simply says: No, no, no, we have to go faster. You can't ask 
questions about the policy.
  Over the next 48 to 72 hours, this body will be making some crucial 
decisions about somewhere between one and four spending packages. I 
agree with the President that this is an unprecedented economic 
situation and that the Federal Government, at the health level, 
obviously has a fundamentally crucial role to play in helping us get 
through this pandemic, which recognizes no borders or boundaries; thus, 
the Federal Government has to spend real money. As the third or fourth 
most conservative Member of the Senate by voting record, that is not 
language I use a lot, saying that we are going to have to spend real, 
significant amounts of money, but that is clearly true in this moment. 
But saying we should spend real money is not the same as saying we 
should spend like idiots.
  Unfortunately, Washington, DC, so far has been handling our 
responsibilities exactly as a lot of voters fear. Right now, the 
proposal on the table, which just came over from the House of 
Representatives, is for Washington, DC, to pull out its checkbook--
which is really your checkbook--and just start firing. If you are an 
industry with a good lobbying team, you are told to line up at the door 
of the Treasury Department and get in line because bailout after 
bailout is probably in the offing.
  Right now, the plan around here is basically just to start shoveling 
money out of a helicopter, and the most important debate is whether 
Democrats or Republicans get to shovel the money first. This is a bad 
idea, and Washington should know better because 12 years ago something 
just like this was tried, and the consequences were really significant 
and lasting. They are still with us.
  I want to be clear. I am not talking primarily about the total price 
tag. The price tag matters, but the point I am trying to debate today 
is whether we are going to spend the American people's money wisely or 
foolishly, and we are not having a lot of debate about that. We are 
hearing a lot of people saying that the only important question is 
whether we can act fast enough. If you act fast but you spend money 
that is ineffective, you didn't effectively act fast.
  The Congress 12 years ago shoveled lots and lots of money into 
supposedly shovel-ready projects which still can't be found today. One 
trillion dollars in spending, and you can go to your Governor and you 
can go to your State legislature and go to your business roundtables 
and you try to find people who know where the $1 trillion of shovel-
ready money went--I challenge you, that is not an easy thing to 
achieve.
  More than just the spending and the debt, though, it also produced 
serious backlashes of national political movements on both the right 
and the left. The Occupy Wall Street movement, some of which became the 
Bernie Sanders constituency, and the tea party were both spawned out of 
2008 and 2009 and are still with us in lots of ways that are not 
ultimately constructive for our body politic.

  We don't need a policy where Washington, DC, handpicks winners and 
losers. There is no one here in this Chamber who is actually competent 
to do that. We are indeed in a period of extraordinary uncertainty, but 
no politician actually knows what happens next week, let alone 6 months 
from now, and humility would require us to admit that a bit more.
  The proposal currently on the table from Speaker Nancy Pelosi is to 
blow through a massive amount of money on a policy core that isn't 
actually well thought out. When you ask hard questions about the bill 
that has come over from the House, there is nobody who actually defends 
it as really good, well-thought-out policy. That is why the first 
version of their bill, which passed so urgently last week at 120 pages, 
last night required over 90 pages--we are right at 90 pages--of 
technical corrections. Think about that. Imagine your kid does homework 
and--you say you wrote a 12-page essay, and after you turn it in, you 
say that 9 of the 12 pages actually have to be thrown away and 
rewritten. That is what happened last night in the House of 
Representatives. They tried to pass a 90-page fix to a 120-page bill 
that was supposedly really urgent last week.
  By the way, when you talk to the architects of that legislation in 
private, when the cameras aren't rolling, and you ask them hard 
questions about how their policy actually works, everyone starts 
pointing at everyone else,

[[Page S1776]]

and a lot of people admit that the bill might actually accelerate 
layoffs from small businesses. Think about that.
  The reason this first bill--if it ends up remaining independent 
rather than being bundled with the other ideas that are coming down the 
road in the form of industry-specific bailouts--this first bill, which 
is supposed to slow the pace of layoffs from small business, when you 
ask questions about it, the architects of the bill will admit to you in 
private that it might actually accelerate the pace of layoffs from 
small business. Nonetheless, despite admitting that today's version of 
the Rube Goldberg policy might have the opposite of its intended 
effect, the main answer you get is ``We have to go very, very fast.'' 
This is wildly irresponsible, what is happening here.
  Once the first couple hundred billion dollars of money is gone, that 
means there is less money left for the next round of stimulus and 
action and recovery and relief that are required. But besides money, it 
also means that there is less public trust left. There are gonna be 
more rainy days ahead in the coming weeks and months, and there is not 
a lot of grassroots American trust in the wisdom or the work ethic of 
this institution. Simply screaming that we should go faster is not a 
substitute for debating and advocating for the actual policy.
  We have many politicians pretending right now that they know how to 
centrally plan rifle-shot bailouts industry by industry. It is not 
true, and even they don't believe it. This is a game of pretend: Hurry 
up and look busy. If you are not sure what to do, just spend more of 
the people's money, but do it faster.
  That is not good policy. That is not good stewardship of our 
responsibility. The Senate is supposed to exist to calm down the 
passions that lead the House to move fast and write policy that is bad 
enough that a 120-page bill requires 90 pages of technical fixes. The 
Senate's actual job in our bicameral constitutional structure is to ask 
hard questions of legislation just like this.
  Here is the good news: We don't have to mindlessly go down this path 
again. We can do better than this. We can affirm the policy goal that 
we do need to help get resources to the people who need them, but we 
can also make smarter, more responsible, less risky decisions right now 
that will provide a lifeline to people in need but will also leave room 
for further action in the future, hopefully, as we know more in the 
coming days and weeks.
  So here is an alternate idea: Instead of DC pretending it is 
omnicompetent, let's admit that a complex situation like what is 
actually happening in the small business environment in all 50 of our 
States will actually require differentiated solutions. Let's be sure we 
are accurately naming the problem here, because I am not talking now 
about the public health issues, like speeding the development of a 
coronavirus vaccine, where DC obviously needs to maintain a leading 
role, but I am talking precisely about the economic problem of the next 
90 days.
  What is that economic problem? The question before us is, How do we 
minimize the number of layoffs, and how do we minimize the number of 
small business bankruptcies that are looming across our country? How do 
we make sure that more families can keep putting bread on the table 
rather than becoming long-term dependencies on the State? We should be 
laser-focused on what the question is that we are actually debating in 
this Chamber this week. That is the question. Over the next 90 days, 
are there policy steps we can take to minimize the number of 
bankruptcies and layoffs that are going to affect American families so 
painfully?
  Here are some needed truths: The feds don't know the precise answer 
because there isn't a single precise answer. The answers--plural--are 
going to vary across our continent-sized Nation of 325 million souls. 
If we pretend that we have a one-size-fits-all solution for this 
problem or if we pretend that DC can be fair, going industry by 
industry with rifle-targeted bailouts, we are going to screw up badly. 
The lobbyists are going to dominate the day, not the public interests.
  Again, I am open to spending in this moment, but that is not an 
excuse for failing to spend well. We need to spend the people's money 
well, we need to steward our callings with humility, and we need to 
spend much better than this current House bill does.
  Let's take the money that is being proposed and let's direct more 
than half of it to our Governors so they may distribute it to families 
and small businesses.
  I trust Pete Ricketts, who is my Governor. I trust Pete Ricketts a 
heck of a lot more than I trust Nancy Pelosi. Part of it is that Pete 
and I have more aligned political philosophies, but that is not really 
the point. The real reason I trust Pete Ricketts at this moment is the 
same reason why Senator Feinstein would trust Gavin Newsom at the 
moment, and that is because my Governor is on the ground with his 1.9 
million people. He is not in DC looking across a 325-million-person 
nation as if our problems are undifferentiated and as if the solutions 
can be one-size-fits-all. That is not going to work. That is going to 
waste the vast majority of the people's resources. We have 50 different 
States with 50 different circumstances and needs. Californians have 
needs that Nebraskans don't in this moment and vice versa. We can get 
money to the Governors quickly, and they can distribute it in ways that 
will best help their people.
  The House's one-size-fits-all approach, this nationalized leave 
policy in this first bundled bill, is going to cause a lot of people to 
fall through the cracks. Why is it that different industries and 
different-sized firms are being treated so radically different? It is 
because of who was last in the Speaker's office lobbying about the bill 
as they cobbled together the first 120 pages that needed 90 pages of 
corrections.
  The Rube Goldberg bill is going to create a handful of political 
winners, but it is going to create a whole lot more economic losers.
  Parts of these relief packages will need to come from DC in targeted 
ways; I admit that. Part of this is going to need to come from DC, but 
the idea that all of it can or that all of it should is arrogant. It is 
wrong, and it will be ineffective.
  Our Governors know their States and their people. Our Governors know 
how to build public-private partnerships. Congress doesn't. Our 
Governors know so much better than we do what their workforce needs 
were before the coronavirus struck and what their workforce needs are 
going to be in late Q3 or in Q4 when, hopefully, the economy is humming 
again. Simply put, our Governors know how to target this money much 
more efficiently than we do so that much more of that money will make 
its way to Main Street.
  Lots of Governors have led well in the past 3 weeks. I mentioned my 
Governor, Pete Ricketts, and how his strong leadership has been laying 
the groundwork to help shield our State from some of the worst ravages 
of this virus. Likewise, I would recognize Governor DeWine from Ohio, 
who is showing strong leadership on what it looks like to put facts 
front and center.
  What we need right now at the State, at the local, and at the Federal 
levels is not just any action. We need responsible, effective, 
defensible action. This is not a time for Washington to go on an 
``anything goes'' spending spree. It is not an opportunity for 
Washington's connected insiders to exploit personal relationships to 
put their pet projects first on things that they wouldn't have been 
able to get passed if it weren't a time of crisis. We don't have to go 
down that path.
  Instead, we can more efficiently and more wisely spend the people's 
resources. We can give our States and our Governors the lead in making 
sure that the majority of the money and the majority of the resources 
get where they are most needed. We can help families and businesses 
keep afloat during this storm by admitting that 50 laboratories of 
democracy are going to be more effective than a rifle shot approach 
from Washington. We can create room for further action, but we can also 
acknowledge that the particular needs are going to evolve in the coming 
weeks.
  We need less instant certainty and more humility in this building. We 
should not pretend that the only government is the Federal Government. 
Congress should eat more humble pie. There is a reason why even the 
least popular Governor in America is more popular than almost everyone 
who works in this Chamber. There is a reason for that, and the main 
reason is

[[Page S1777]]

that while Members of Congress spend lots of our time playing pundit, 
sadly, Governors actually lead. They manage budgets; they make 
decisions; they lead departments; and they engage their community in 
the actual private sector, not just hire lobbyists who work for the 
private sector. They are physically on the ground with the people they 
serve. That means they know a thing or two about the businesses in 
their community. It means they know a thing or two about the industries 
that are rising and falling in their cities and in their rural areas. 
They have a kind of decentralized knowledge about this crisis and what 
is needed at this moment that people in Washington, DC, lack.
  Cable news is focused on Wall Street, but here is the deal: Main 
Street is going to be the place where lots of the pain is ultimately 
shouldered from this crisis, and when Wall Street needs something, Wall 
Street hires K Street, and Congress is told by K Street what they want, 
and that is usually what ends up in the bill.
  When Main Street needs something, they drive to Lincoln; they drive 
to Indianapolis and Nashville and Columbus and Albany and Sacramento; 
and the granular understanding of their particular problems is almost 
always more nuanced than is understood here.
  That is why, as long as Congress is debating this spending this week, 
I am going to be fighting to make sure that we give more than half of 
all this money to our Governors to distribute. They know how to spend 
this money better than this DC-centric House of Representatives bill. 
That is the way we can actually get this done and help our people grit 
through this time of unprecedented economic uncertainty.

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