[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 52 (Wednesday, March 18, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1784-S1786]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CORONAVIRUS
Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I thank my good friend, the Senator
from South Dakota, for his usual display of patience.
The coronavirus pandemic continues to test our Nation in new and
difficult ways. There is now a confirmed case of coronavirus in all 50
States and the District of Columbia. Our public health system was
understaffed and underresourced, and without intervention, it could
soon become overwhelmed.
Even as the market shifts from day to day, the coronavirus is slowing
our economy to a near-standstill, and we are almost certainly
anticipating a recession. You go to the streets of many cities, towns,
and villages, and they are empty. Schools are closed in large portions
of the country. Businesses are struggling not to lay off workers
because they don't have customers, they don't have clients, and they
don't have income. There is great urgency here.
There are really two separate and simultaneous emergencies--one in
our healthcare system and another in the economy. We have to deal with
both. If we don't solve the one in our healthcare, the economy will
continue to get bad no matter what we do for it.
Less tangible than those two emergencies but still very real is the
impact the virus is having on American society. My home city of New
York is effectively on lockdown. You can go to a place like the Times
Square subway station and see actually nobody there. Americans are
being asked--rightly--not to gather in groups of 10 or more, not to go
to dinner or to a bar or to their church or place of worship.
I lived through 9/11. It occurred in my city. I knew people who were
lost. I lived through the days of the financial crisis in 2008 and
other moments of national urgency. But there is something much worse
about this crisis we face. I have never sensed a greater sense of
uncertainty, a greater fear of the future, of the unknown. We don't
know how long this crisis will last.
You don't even know if you contracted the virus right away, or maybe
your spouse, maybe your child, maybe your parent, maybe your friend.
Then there is a much greater sense of isolation, a problem for which
there is no cure. I miss not meeting and talking to my constituents.
They are our lifeblood. That is not happening just to us here in the
Senate; it is happening across America--friends who used to get
together and families who had gatherings. Different social activities
are gone--book clubs, card games. The fabric and sinew of our lives as
human beings have been put on hold, and nobody knows for how long.
By necessity, Americans are now sacrificing their normal lives and
daily routines and, maybe worst of all, sacrificing the sense of
community because we all, each individually and together as a country,
must fight this awful virus.
Unfortunately, we are only just beginning to see the necessary
seriousness and mobilization of resources from the Federal
Government. Sadly, unfortunately, and with awful consequences, this
administration took far too long to wake up to this global crisis. It
has wasted precious weeks in downplaying the severity of the
coronavirus--weeks that could have been spent in earnest in the
preparation of building our testing capacity. As a result, the United
States continues to lag behind other countries in the number and the
percentage of the population we are testing.
Stories of Americans who feel sick and show symptoms but who are
unable to access coronavirus tests appear every day in every single
newspaper. Warnings of the potential shortages of masks, hospital beds,
and ventilators appear in the paper every day. In 2 weeks, the issue of
ventilators and ICU beds will be like the issue of tests today. In
other words, 2 or 3 weeks ago, many of us were saying to get those
tests out. A month ago, people were saying it, and now we are seeing
the consequences--lockdowns because we can't test people. We don't know
who has the virus and who doesn't. The same crisis will be occurring in
a few weeks. Mark our words. Unfortunately, it is true about
ventilators and ICU beds. We are behind the eight ball on tests, and we
are soon going to be behind the eight ball on ICU beds and ventilators
as more and more people get sick.
The administration didn't pay attention to tests, and now we are
paying the price even though many of us were hollering for weeks about
the emerging issues with testing. The same problem is about to happen
with ventilators. We know, in 2 weeks, the number of ventilators might
become a massive problem. We must get ahead of it and get ahead of it
now. I call on President Trump to use his existing authority to help
address the widespread shortages of medical equipment, particularly
ventilators, as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak.
[[Page S1785]]
I joined 27 of my colleagues in a letter to President Trump to urge
him to invoke the Defense Production Act of 1950, which authorizes the
President to strengthen domestic manufacturing capacity and supply in
extraordinary circumstances. It is used in times of war, and we must
mobilize as if it were a time of war when it comes to hospitals--beds,
supplies, equipment. The DPA, the Defense Production Act, allows for
the President to direct the production of private sector firms of
critical manufactured goods to meet urgent and national security needs.
The President should do so immediately.
A report came out today that the Army Corps of Engineers and FEMA are
ready and willing to participate in the response process. The Army
Corps could build temporary hospitals with beds, but it still hasn't
received instruction from the White House, from the administration. I
thank the men and women who are willing to be on the frontlines,
combating the pandemic, but this kind of inexcusable action is
maddening, infuriating, and must be rectified. Lives are at stake.
Public health infrastructure is the top priority because, if we can
curb this virus, the economy will get better. We need to do things to
help it, obviously, but if you ignore the public health crisis with
regard to the equipment and infrastructure and personnel which is
needed in many more numbers than we have ever seen, the economy will
not get better.
The legislation passed by the House on Saturday--phase 2 of the
coronavirus response--has a little bit of this, and it must pass the
Senate today. Unfortunately, first, we must dispose of a Republican
amendment that would make a condition of the bill a requirement for the
President to terminate military operations in Afghanistan. Yes, you
heard me right. Our Republican leadership has put on the floor an
amendment that would make a condition of the bill a requirement that
the President terminate military operations in Afghanistan.
In a time of national emergency, this Republican amendment is
ridiculous--a colossal waste of time. We probably could have voted on
this bill a day or two ago if it had not been for the need to have
scheduled this amendment. I am eager--we are all eager--to dispatch
this absurd Republican amendment and send this bill to the President.
For instance, it allows for the free testing and treatment of the
coronavirus, which is very much needed. We can send this bill to the
President and begin work on the next phase, phase 3.
As my colleagues know, Senate Democrats have already outlined several
proposals for the next phase of legislation, and the specifics have
been made public. The proposal has four main priorities: public health
capacity, unemployment insurance, paid sick leave, and priority
treatment for labor in any bailout to industry. There are many things
in this bill that are important: no payment on student loans or
mortgages and help with our mass transit systems. There are many
things, and the Democrats are going to fight for them in the next phase
of the response, but the priorities I mentioned are key: public health
capacity, unemployment insurance, paid sick leave, and priority
treatment for labor in any bailout to industry.
On the public health capacity, as I mentioned, we need masks; we need
hospital beds; we need ventilators; and we still need testing kits. So
the Democrats are proposing a Marshall Plan for our public health
infrastructure. The sooner we act on it, the better. We also need to
help in terms of public transportation for our healthcare system. Tens
of thousands of healthcare workers in New York City and in many other
cities cannot get to their jobs--their very needed jobs--if there is no
public and mass transit. So a Marshall Plan for our public health
infrastructure is what is needed now. It will prevent the situation
from getting even worse, and it will allow our ailing economy to begin
to heal once we contain this virus.
Workers who get laid off or have their hours cut to almost nothing
need expanded unemployment insurance--period. The Secretary of the
Treasury reportedly told Republican Senators yesterday
that unemployment could hit 20 percent. Unemployment insurance is a
nonnegotiable part of our response to the coronavirus.
With regard to paid sick leave, Senators Murray and Gillibrand have a
paid sick leave policy to meet this crisis. It should be added to this
part of the legislation. I think they will ask for it in a unanimous
consent request or will offer an amendment to do so. If it is not
included in this part, it should, certainly, be included in the next
phase of legislation.
There will be other items that we will have to address down the road.
Certain industries are struggling--airlines, hotels--but we must make
sure that we prioritize public health and workers over corporate
bailouts. If there is going to be a discussion about a bailout, it must
include workers' priorities and protections. The airlines are very
important, for sure, as they employ a lot of people. Many of us who fly
back and forth to our States know of the good people who work as the
pilots and the flight attendants and the mechanics and the clerks and
the ticket takers. They are good, fine people. We want to make sure
they are protected. One of the reasons--let's not forget--that many
airlines are so short of cash right now is that they have spent
billions on stock buybacks, which is money they had to send out when
they should have been saving it for a rainy day for their workers and
customers. That issue should be addressed.
A few of my Republican colleagues have proposed a onetime cash
payment of $1,000. My fellow Americans, this is not a time for small
thinking, and this is not a time for small measures. This is a time to
be bold, to be aggressive. A single $1,000 check would help people pay
their landlords in March, but what happens after that? How do they pay
their rent in April when their offices or restaurants or stores are
still closed for business? How about May? How about June? The President
has suggested that this recession could last through the summer. One
thousand dollars gets used pretty quickly if you are unemployed. In
contrast, expanded unemployment insurance, beefed-up unemployment
insurance, covers you for a much longer time and would provide a much
bigger safety net.
This is the time to put tribalism aside and acknowledge that this
recession, if we allow it, will do real harm to Americans up and down
the income scale, and it will hurt Americans of all ages. So, if we are
going to provide direct payments, they need to be bigger, more
frequent, and more targeted. Millionaires shouldn't get them.
These are the kinds of issues that all parties are going to have to
discuss--Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate with the
White House. The sooner we discuss them together, the quicker we will
be able to move forward. Yet Leader McConnell announced yesterday that,
in his plan to develop the next phase of legislation, Senate
Republicans would sit among themselves and then sit down with the
administration and come up with their own proposal before presenting it
to Senate Democrats, let alone to House Democrats. The process that
Leader McConnell has outlined for phase 3 legislation is too
cumbersome, too partisan, and will take far too long given the urgency
and need for cooperation.
Secretary Mnuchin says he wants legislation passed by the end of the
week. The McConnell process will not get us there. The phase 3
legislation should be the product of a five-corners negotiation, that
being with House and Senate leaders--majority and minority--plus the
White House. That is the way it has worked the best, the quickest, and
the fairest in the past. If all parties are in the room from the get-
go, the final product will be guaranteed swift passage. The process
Leader McConnell outlines is far too reminiscent of the typical
legislative process in the Congress--a process that far too often
results in delay and gridlock. We can't afford that right now.
Leader McConnell was right when he said that, in times of national
emergency, we must shed our partisanship and rise to the occasion. So
let's begin that way--Republicans and Democrats, the House and Senate,
Congress and the White House. The best way to advance phase 3
legislation is to have a five-corners negotiation from the outset.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sasse). The Republican whip.
[[Page S1786]]
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