[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 85 (Wednesday, May 6, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2281-S2285]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              CORONAVIRUS

  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 who

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are 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 this

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project. 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 academic

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medical 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. And

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looking 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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