[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 52 (Wednesday, March 18, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1802-S1803]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              CORONAVIRUS

  Mr. COONS. Mr. President, the Senate of the United States has just 
acted. It has taken up and passed a roughly $104 billion package of 
assistance that will go out to American families, to American workers, 
to our healthcare system, to our States, and to our communities. I want 
to take a few minutes to talk about this important step we have just 
taken and where we have to go next.
  The Delawareans I have heard from today and this week and this month 
are worried, and they are anxious. They have been up all night and are 
trying to figure out how they are going to care for their children who 
are home from school and need support and instruction and how they are 
going to care for their parents who are vulnerable and elderly and 
sick. They are concerned about our hospitals and our healthcare system 
and its capacity.
  They are anxious because they are frontline workers, they are first 
responders, and they are volunteer firefighters, nurses, and orderlies, 
who are exposed every day and concerned. They are just average citizens 
asking: How can I get a test and where?
  I have heard from the presidents of our major universities, the head 
of our hospital system, our Governor, and my colleagues in our 
congressional delegation. We have talked repeatedly to our director of 
public health, our secretary of health and human services, and I have 
heard from business owners, large and small, who run everything from 
coffee shops and diners to restaurants and hotels in our State. There 
is a lot of anxiety and concern.
  The folks in my State want to know that we here in Washington are 
going to put the partisan bickering aside, find answers, and get 
resources out to deal with this significant public health emergency.
  And so I hope folks take some encouragement from today's actions. It 
passed 90 to 8. Very little passes in this Senate 90 to 8, and I have 
very rarely seen a bill of this size, scope, and magnitude that goes 
from an idea to bill text, to enactment in such a short period of time, 
but this moment demands it.
  Let me talk through, also, the priorities that are reflected in the 
Families First Coronavirus Response Act, because the name reflects the 
priorities.
  Hubert Humphrey, who is a former leader in the United States in our 
political community and system, once said, ``The moral test of our 
government is how it treats those who are in the dawn of life, the 
children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those 
who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the 
handicapped.''
  I am pleased that the package just passed here in the Senate takes 
important strides to take care of exactly those folks. Children home 
from school, who need support for learning remotely, and those, in 
particular, who rely on school lunch programs for their one good, 
stable healthy meal a day, will be able to continue to get school 
lunches delivered, either through their schools or at home. There are 
significant resources in this bill for that. Those who are on the 
frontlines of this crisis, the individuals who are cleaning offices and 
cleaning hospital rooms and cleaning Amtrak cars and public buses, 
those who are putting themselves directly at risk by cleaning the 
spaces we all count on for our society, frontline workers, people who 
are in our first responder community, people who are working in our 
hospital emergency rooms--this provides support for them.
  And for anyone who is concerned about the cost of access to testing, 
this bill makes clear that testing for COVID-19, for this dreaded 
disease caused by the novel coronavirus, will have a test for free, 
including those without health insurance.
  There are some big pieces in this bill that I will briefly mention. 
There is paid emergency leave for workers at companies below 500 
employees for 2

[[Page S1803]]

weeks of sick leave and up to 10 weeks of additional paid family and 
medical leave. We just had a disagreement over exactly how that is 
going to get paid for and how it is going to get compensated and on 
what timeline, and we are going to work out those details.
  My office's website will have an accessible, readable summary of what 
is in this bill up later tonight.
  The larger point was that we thought it essential that folks who we 
want to stay home, but who are maybe living paycheck to paycheck, know 
that they will get paid sick leave so they can stay home and we can 
slow the spread of this disease.
  There is also an increase in funds from the Federal Government to 
States for Medicaid, because a lot of our States are going to see 
increased costs as folks move to Medicaid as the place they get 
healthcare as they move to unemployment. One hundred million dollars in 
additional resources will go to the State of Delaware alone to provide 
support for those who may be newly dependent on Medicaid.
  Then, last is an expansion of unemployment benefits--26 weeks of 
unemployment benefits, including temporary unemployment caused because 
of COVID-19.
  There are more details as to how this temporary unemployment 
insurance will work, but it will last longer and have a higher level of 
benefit and be more flexible than previous versions of Federal 
unemployment insurance, and it is being delivered in partnership with 
States.
  So those are the biggest pieces of this bill. It is just $104 
billion, but the bill we are already hard at work on will be an order 
of magnitude greater, likely more than $1 trillion. If what we have 
seen in terms of anxiety and concern from families up and down my State 
and all over our country is any indication, we must take this up 
quickly and enact it.
  There are small business owners, whom I have heard from today, who 
want to keep employing the folks who work for them but have lost half 
of their business since our Governor took the bold and necessary step 
of closing our restaurants and bars to all except drive-through and 
delivery service. Ten percent of the folks who work in Delaware work in 
restaurants and hospitality. Folks who want to keep their people on 
payroll but have no work for them to do face a very hard choice.

  We need to find ways that we can both defer the payments that are 
necessary for students, for homeowners, for businesses, for those who 
have outstanding payments on SBA loans or on federally guaranteed 
mortgages or on bank loans where we can work out some way to provide 
temporary relief, and then individual payments that will help students, 
that will help heads of households, and that will help individuals.
  So there are a lot of different pieces that are being debated and 
discussed here in the Senate--support for Amtrak, a priority for me 
because I commute by Amtrak and it is one of the biggest modes of 
transportation on the east coast; support for the airline and 
hospitality industries because they employ hundreds of thousands of 
people and have seen their business drop off sharply; support for long-
term structural changes to how we provide access to healthcare, access 
to skills and training for our workforce, and access to higher 
education.
  I have heard very concerning stories from the folks who lead some of 
the most important nonprofit and faith and educational institutions in 
my State, and they are looking to us for bold and decisive leadership.
  Last, we must not forget those on the margins of our society--people 
who are homeless, people who are incarcerated, people who are 
uninsured, people who are undocumented. If we want to make sure that we 
make our country safe, we need to practice not just good hygiene, not 
just social distancing, but we need to refrain from moral distancing. 
We need to remember the words of Hubert Humphrey, and we need to be 
reminded exactly why people look to this Federal Government for prompt 
action and for significant resources: It is because they look for us to 
be able to make sure that we see all Americans and that we know that we 
are all in this together.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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