[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 94 (Tuesday, May 19, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2493-S2497]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                              Coronavirus

  Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, Americans have come together in this 
moment. We have come together to defeat the coronavirus. We have come 
together to ramp up testing, to ramp up healthcare, and to reopen our 
communities and our country.
  The coronavirus has brought out the best in so many ways in America 
and in the American people. From our frontline healthcare workers 
taking care of patients to scientists and researchers working on 
testing, on treatment, and on vaccines, to those in public service 
keeping essential parts of the government running day in and day out, 
to those working on supply chains to deliver goods 24 hours a day, and 
to those who are staying at home to keep themselves and keep others 
safe, Americans are in this together.
  It is interesting because all we are seeing from the other side of 
the political aisle is more of the same old politics and name-calling. 
President

[[Page S2494]]

Obama is taking cheap shots at President Trump; Speaker Pelosi just put 
out a $3 trillion bill that reads like the Democratic Party platform; 
and Joe Biden is holed up and hiding in his basement. Is this the best 
the Democrats can offer? Is this the best they can do? Biden, Obama, 
and Pelosi should be embarrassed. This is not leadership.
  Republican policies in the CARES Act that we passed actually have had 
significant results--real results--with the Paycheck Protection Program 
making sure 50 million Americans are still getting their paychecks, 
economic impact payments, which are reaching 130 million families. 
These are policies that are going to build a bridge for the country to 
get to the other side of the devastation done by the virus, and, still, 
more money and resources from the CARES Act are slated to go out to 
States, to hospitals, and to small businesses all across America.
  All together, between Congress and the Federal Reserve, we have 
injected close to $9 trillion into the economy in just a couple of 
months. All of this money is nowhere close to having even been spent. 
In fact, it is only because of the steps we have taken already--the 
efforts of Governors across the country, the work of this 
administration--that the House Democrats have found themselves in a 
position, as they were last Friday, of wasting time and energy on a 
fantasy bill.
  Republicans now have two jobs. The first is to get the country back 
on track, and the second is to not allow the Democrats to try to 
exploit the crisis that is upon this country for their own political 
gains.
  Democrats are pushing their agenda as a cure-all for the virus. Let 
me be clear. It is not. It is simply a solution for their electoral 
problems.
  Yesterday, the New York Times published a front page article. Online 
it was called ``Seeking: Big Democratic Ideas That Make Everything 
Better.'' In the printed copy, they changed the headline to say: 
``Biden Pursues Ideas to Match Scale of Crisis,'' ``Left Senses an 
Opening for a Bolder Agenda.'' The article goes step by step on how the 
pandemic is being used by the Democrats to make sweeping changes in 
their policy platforms in their effort to remake America, basically 
consistent with their dangerous Democratic socialist views.
  They are planning, according to this, to get rid of their so-called 
center-left policies that they had additionally and initially 
envisioned. They are now courting what they call leftwing allies. They 
are adopting the ideas of single-payer healthcare--one size fits all 
healthcare, with the government making decisions for you rather than 
you or your doctor making decisions for you. They are adopting ideas 
through labor unions, liberal think tanks, progressive institutions. 
They have taken over the Democratic Party, and they are all beholden to 
Nancy Pelosi.
  Democrats are using the coronavirus so that their favorite groups get 
a giveaway. That is what it reads when you take a look at that $3 
trillion bill that Nancy Pelosi dragged across the floor of the House 
last Friday night with Members of her party kicking and screaming about 
voting for it. That is what we see.
  Some were kicking and screaming because the $3 trillion bill that 
started as a $1.5 trillion bill didn't get big enough, didn't include 
enough of their far left socialist agenda. This is not a solution for 
the crisis facing America. It is not a solution for the crisis that we 
are facing with coronavirus. It is not a solution that we are facing 
with a crisis of a shut-down economy, shut down by the government in an 
effort to protect ourselves from the disease. Oh, no. What we see here 
is a partisan political playbook. It is the Democrats' agenda for the 
2020 election.
  The efforts to get the coronavirus behind us and get our communities 
and our country open must be targeted, must be temporary, and must be 
tailored to the needs of our communities at this critical time in our 
Nation's history. Ultimately, it is time for America to open swiftly 
and smartly and safely.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.
  Ms. STABENOW. Madam President, I first want to give a thank-you to 
everybody who is working right now and all the folks who are required 
to be here with the Senate in session. I wish we were focused on those 
things right now that are directly related to making sure everybody is 
going to be able to continue to be safe and to focus on what we need to 
do to safely reopen the economy rather than what we are voting on this 
week. I want to thank all of you for being here.
  I also want to send condolences and thoughts to everyone who has lost 
a loved one in this crisis. We are approaching, this weekend, 100,000 
Americans. If that doesn't give us a sense of urgency right now to 
effectively address this health pandemic and to get this right and to 
work together, I don't know what does.
  I rise today with a real sense of urgency. I think it is important to 
understand how we got here so we know what we need to do going forward.
  On January 20, the first case of COVID-19 was reported in the United 
States, the same day as the first case in South Korea. Our White House 
didn't act. They were, unfortunately, more worried about the stock 
market than people in the supermarket.
  In South Korea, they did act. Within 8 weeks, they were testing 40 
times more people per 1 million of their citizens than we were. By 
April 14, they had 10,000 cases, and we had over 600,000 cases because 
there was no sense of urgency to do what needed to be done to take this 
seriously. Now we know that we are well beyond that.
  Unfortunately, on the American side, in the weeks and months that 
came after January 20, the White House slow-walked declaring a national 
emergency. They failed to quickly implement widespread testing that was 
being done all around the world and in every other country, and they 
dropped the ball on getting the essential medical equipment and 
supplies doctors and nurses still need to treat people and keep them 
safe. Their reckless delay made us the world leader--the world leader--
in the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths. When you think about it, we 
are a little over 4 percent of the world's population; yet we have 
about 30 percent of the deaths because of a lack of urgency and the 
inaction from the very beginning to be able to get our country's arms 
around this deadly virus and what was happening.

  Now 4 months have passed, and as I mentioned, more than 90,000 to 
100,000 Americans have passed away from COVID-19. Think about that. 
When we look at over 90,000 lives, that is as if a whole city in 
Michigan just disappeared from the map; yet the White House and the 
Republican leader and our friends across the aisle continue to show a 
lack of urgency about this crisis.
  On March 14, the House of Representatives passed the Families First 
Coronavirus Response Act. It had a whole range of things that were 
incredibly important in it: COVID testing so that you could get free 
testing if you needed it, increased Medicaid funding for States, 
extended unemployment help for more workers. It established 14 days of 
paid sick leave for people who lost their paychecks because they had to 
stay home due to the virus, and the bill provided nutritional food for 
moms and babies and families. Yet the Senate leader felt no urgency to 
pass it right then. The House passed the bill on a Friday night, in the 
middle of the night. All we had to do was to stay until Saturday and 
get it done, but there was no sense of urgency for the nurses and the 
doctors and the unemployed workers and the small business owners and 
the hungry families. They had to wait. They had to wait until the next 
week, for the Senate leader to go home for the weekend. The leader 
returned to Washington, but his sense of urgency still wasn't there.
  So, while the White House didn't act and the Republican leader didn't 
act, I will tell you who did act: The Governors acted. Democratic and 
Republican Governors stood up, and they leaned in to protect their 
citizens. I am so grateful for what our Governor and her great team 
have done in Michigan and for all of our mayors and local communities 
that leaned in, for their taking whatever resources were available and 
putting them right out there to make sure people's lives were being 
saved--the No. 1 priority. They have been stepping up and taking the 
action needed to save lives over and over and over again in this 
crisis.

[[Page S2495]]

  Frankly, that is what the White House said should happen. Remember 
the words of President Trump's when he tweeted:

       Governors must be able to step up and get the job done. We 
     will be with you all the way.

  Unfortunately, when he said ``all the way,'' he actually meant to 
find your own way, which puts us where we are right now, today, in 
trying to help them get resources for critical State and local 
services.
  The vacuum of Federal leadership has real-life consequences. I 
released a report today that shows the price American families will pay 
if the White House and congressional Republicans refuse to support 
State and local services. Our Democratic Policy and Communications 
group, which is supported by all of the Democratic Senators, is saying 
we have to act. There are real consequences. Families and communities 
will pay the price if we do not act and step up and have their backs.
  Through no fault of their own, our States and local communities are 
facing critical budget shortfalls--up to $650 billion over 3 years--
that far exceed what States lost after the great recession. Without 
urgent Federal assistance, these cuts will affect our safety, our 
children's educations, and our quality of life. Yet the Republican 
leader said he has not yet ``felt the urgency of acting immediately.'' 
Maybe States should go bankrupt, he said.
  I can tell the White House and the Republican leader who feels the 
sense of urgency. He is the healthcare worker who has been laid off and 
doesn't know when he will get paid and what he is going to do to take 
care of his family. He is feeling a sense of urgency. He is the student 
whose school might have to be cut back, and they are the teachers who 
are going to be laid off through the severe budget cuts. They feel a 
sense of urgency. The woman who can't continue treatment for opioid 
addiction because of cutbacks at her local community behavioral health 
center feels a sense of urgency right now. It is the community that is 
cutting back on its police and fire departments and the 9-1-1 call 
centers in order to save money because the President said that he would 
be with them all the way but who now is saying ``No way. You are on 
your own'' that feels a sense of urgency. She is the mom who is waiting 
in line for hours in her car at the local food bank to try to get some 
food for her children for today, not next month. It is not ``Hey, we 
have 2 or 3 months.'' She wants them to eat today and tomorrow and the 
next day. She feels a sense of urgency.
  Americans across the country are feeling a sense of urgency, and it 
is urgent that we act to meet this moment so that they understand, in 
this horrendous moment and through no fault of their own--the health 
crisis and the economic crisis and so on--that someone really does have 
their backs. We need to help our State and local governments continue 
paying vital workers who educate our children and keep us safe and 
provide all of the essential services. We need to extend unemployment 
benefits so that people who are out of work will be able to pay the 
rent and feed their children. We need to approve access to healthy 
foods for families in need right now. We need to create a heroes fund 
to ensure that essential workers who have taken the most risk to keep 
our country running, to keep us safe, and to save lives during this 
pandemic receive the additional hazard pay, the compensation, that they 
deserve.
  They need to know they are essential and not expendable. Just saying 
thank you is good, but it is not enough when you are worried about 
paying your own mortgage while you go to work to save somebody else's 
life or put food on your own table for your family. Our country can do 
better for them. That is what the House bill did. That is what the 
Senate needs to do
  We need to invest in our State and local health departments so that 
we can continue to fight the virus and keep our communities safe. That 
should really be a no-brainer right now, the fact that we need to 
support our health departments that are on the frontlines of tracking 
what is happening and get the critical information so the right 
decisions can be made to keep us safe and the right decisions can be 
made so as to safely reopen our economy, which we all want and know 
needs to happen.
  Actions have consequences. I am here to say that inaction also has 
consequences. Inaction has consequences. We are losing lives; we are 
losing time; and every part of the economy is being affected. It is 
time to act. It is time for this Senate to act, not on more judges over 
and over and over again, but on the things that the American people 
need to have happen, that the people of Michigan need to have happen so 
they can be healthy and survive the virus and also be able to survive 
economically for their families, for their businesses, for their farms.
  Mitch McConnell may not feel a sense of urgency, but I do on behalf 
of the people of Michigan. It is time for the Senate to act.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. MURPHY. Madam President, I yield to the Senator from Oklahoma for 
a unanimous consent request.
  Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent, at the 
conclusion of the remarks by the Senator from Connecticut, that I be 
recognized to speak for whatever time I may consume.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. MURPHY. Madam President, I concur in the remarks of my friend 
from Michigan. A lot of our constituents have long thought that there 
has just been an enormous gulf between the conversations that we have 
in the U.S. Senate and the conversations that are going on at people's 
kitchen tables, that are going on between friends and neighbors at the 
supermarket. They think that what we worry about here is guided by 
lobbyists and K Street and political action committees and that it 
really doesn't have much to do with what they care about.
  I don't know that their perception of that gulf has been any bigger 
than it is right now because the message that Senator McConnell and the 
Senate Republicans are sending is that there is no urgency, that there 
is no need for the Senate to act, that we have done everything that 
needs to be done for the time being when it comes to the depression 
levels of unemployment in this country, the lines that go on for blocks 
for families who can't afford food to pick up groceries and the schools 
that are scrambling to figure out how the heck they are going to reopen 
with the revenues for their municipalities and counties and States that 
are cratering through the floor.
  So it just tears people's hair out right now to know that there is a 
piece of legislation that has been passed in the House of 
Representatives that will help millions of families who are in meltdown 
crisis right now as they have lost their jobs, as they, maybe, have 
sick loved ones, and as they don't know when life will get back to 
normal, but the Senate is doing nothing.
  I understand my Senate Republican friends wouldn't have written the 
bill that passed in the House. It is understandable in that there is a 
different party in control of the Senate than is in control of the 
House of Representatives. Of course, there is going to be a difference 
in priorities. Yet the decision to not even take up the House bill--to 
not try to amend it, to not try to draft a version of our own to fill 
these enormous gaps that families are feeling right now--is maddening 
to the people whom I represent back home who feel that sense of urgency 
that is not shared by the folks who haven't lost their salaries or 
their healthcare benefits in the U.S. Senate.
  Earlier today, we tried to take a small step forward to better 
protect our constituents and try to bring this pandemic to an end. 
Senator Durbin offered a pretty simple resolution that would have just 
expressed the sense of the Senate that we should join with nations 
around the world to try to develop a vaccine for COVID. I don't agree 
with the President. I don't think that it is all hopeless until we find 
a vaccine. I think that we can take steps in our communities through 
State leaders to try to reopen our economy even before we have a 
vaccine. Obviously, that is the goal for which we all strive, and we 
are much better off if we work with other countries to develop that 
vaccine.
  As we speak, there are very promising discoveries that are being made 
in other countries. Many of the countries are allies of the United 
States.

[[Page S2496]]

There is, in fact, an international effort underway to help pay for 
that vaccine development. Probably the most prominent of those efforts 
is something called CEPI, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness 
Innovations. Curiously, though, all of our friends--all of our allies--
and some of our adversaries are members of that coalition, but the 
United States is not. So, if this coalition were to develop a vaccine 
and if it were to get there before the United States, then we wouldn't 
have a seat at the table to be able to decide where that vaccine goes. 
It is a question as to whether we would be able to get it to the United 
States if we are not sitting at that table. Why not hedge our bets?

  I hope the dollars that we have proposed here in the U.S. Senate lead 
to the discovery of a vaccine's happening here, but if it doesn't, why 
would we not also want to be part of a coalition like CEPI so that, if 
it were to discover the vaccine first, we would get the benefit of it 
or, at the very least, we would get a say in where it would go. That is 
all the resolution said. Yet we couldn't get it passed.
  This resolution was especially important because there is something 
extraordinary happening right now. It is not as if the Trump 
administration has decided that it is not going to go forward with 
membership in CEPI because it is going to lead a different 
international coalition. No. In fact, the Trump administration is 
taking a giant step back from the world and from international 
organizations just at the moment when it is the most necessary for us 
to be cooperating with the rest of the world in finding a vaccine or in 
stamping out this virus.
  Remember, how we stopped Ebola from becoming a crisis in the United 
States is by being present in Africa to make sure that it didn't reach 
our shores. The Obama administration understood that travel bans and 
walls couldn't stop a virus from entering one's country, so you have to 
stamp it out everywhere in order to be protected here. So, just at the 
moment we need to be more engaged with the world, the Trump 
administration is withdrawing us from it.
  Witness the President's unprecedented attacks on the WHO. Now, there 
is a stipulation. The WHO is not unlike any other major, multinational, 
international organization. It has flaws, and it has inefficiencies, 
but there is no way you can stand up an international coalition to 
manage the coronavirus or prevent the next pandemic without the World 
Health Organization. Color me skeptical that the President is sincerely 
interested in reforming the WHO. It seems as if it has been a fairly 
recent interest of the White House. One of the ways I can tell that is 
that we have a seat on the governing board of the WHO. If we have 
legitimate grievances over how the WHO is run--and I am amongst those 
who has a laundry list of reforms I would like to see at the WHO--then 
the proper way to express those grievances would be through our seat on 
the board of the WHO. But do you know what? It has been vacant for 3 
years. The Trump administration hasn't put anybody on the board. It 
nominated somebody, but then Senator McConnell didn't bring him up for 
a vote. Then his name had to be withdrawn, and it took another 10 
months for the Senate to finally put somebody on it in the middle of 
this crisis. So we have been absent from the WHO for 3 years.
  Now the Trump administration is leveling some pretty serious 
criticisms at that organization. Many of them are crystallized in a 
letter that the President released to the world last night. What is 
extraordinary about this letter is that it is almost as if the 
President took a letter that detailed his administration's failings 
with respect to how it addressed the early moments of coronavirus and 
just substituted in the WHO for the Trump administration, because in 
this letter to the WHO, it reads: ``The World Health Organization has 
repeatedly made claims about the coronavirus that were either grossly 
inaccurate or misleading.''
  Here is President Trump on January 22:

       Question: Are there worries about a pandemic at this point?
       No, not at all. . . . We have it totally under control. 
     It's one person coming in from China, and we have it under 
     control. It's going to be just fine.

  If you want to talk about the leading world figure making 
misstatements about the seriousness of the coronavirus, it is President 
Donald Trump, especially in January and February, when we could have 
been getting a head start.
  Further in this letter, it reads: ``[T]he World Health Organization 
has been curiously insistent on praising China for its alleged 
`transparency.' ''
  Here is President Donald J. Trump on January 24. This isn't in answer 
to a question. This is just an unsolicited remark about China on his 
Twitter account.
  He writes:

       China has been working very hard to contain the 
     Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their 
     efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In 
     particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank 
     President Xi!

  There was no more enthusiastic cheerleader for China and its response 
to the coronavirus in January, February, and March than our own 
President.
  If President Trump wants to level criticisms at the WHO for being too 
soft on China, he has to look himself in the mirror and understand that 
it frankly would have been hard for the WHO to stand up and contradict 
its most important donor and patron, the United States of America.
  On February 7, the President was given this question:

       Are you concerned that China is covering up the full extent 
     of coronavirus?

  President Trump's answer:

       No. China is working very hard. . . . They're working 
     really hard, and I think they are doing a very professional 
     job.

  On February 18:

       Mr. President, are you still satisfied with how President 
     Xi is handling the coronavirus?
       Answer: I think President Xi is working very hard.
       Question: Some people don't seem to trust the data coming 
     from China. Are you worried about that?
       Trump: Look, I know this: President Xi loves the people of 
     China. He loves his country, and he's doing a very good job.

  February 26, the question is:

       How can you legitimately trust President Xi and the 
     Chinese?
       Well, I can tell you this: I speak to him; I had a talk 
     with him recently. And he is working so hard on this problem. 
     . . . And they're tough and very smart.

  There is no one who was defending China more vociferously in January 
and February than President Trump. It came on the heels of his decision 
to pull two-thirds of the CDC scientists out of that country, to 
shutter a program that was tracking viruses around the world, including 
China, and now the President has compounded that error by pulling the 
United States out of the WHO, an imperfect but absolutely necessary 
body that can be the only natural source of convening for a fight to 
stop coronavirus over the course of this summer and this fall and to 
prevent the next pandemic.
  This is a moment when we should be putting a foot forward into the 
world and leading--and leading. There is no wall; there is no travel 
restriction that can stop this virus. Why do we know that? Because the 
President crowed about his travel restriction on China, and we found 
out that 400,000 people got here from countries subject to the ban 
before and after it was put into effect.
  He sends out pictures on a regular basis of a wall going up with 
Mexico. That didn't stop this virus from getting here. We need to be 
present on the world stage right now.
  Finally, if the President's complaint is that China and the WHO are 
too close, then by withdrawing from the WHO, we are effectively 
exacerbating the problem that the President identifies as one that 
needs to be solved. Why? Because yesterday President Xi accepted an 
invitation to speak before the WHO--an invitation that President Trump 
turned down--and he pledged to lead the world's response to the 
humanitarian suffering caused by coronavirus.
  Now, color me skeptical about China's intentions, but the fact is, 
they were on that world stage putting $2 billion into that effort 
yesterday, and we were nowhere to be found. The greatest beneficiary 
that comes from the United States' stepping back at this moment and 
walking away from the WHO is the Chinese Government. I believe that our 
security will be defined by our ability to contest efforts by China to 
grow its

[[Page S2497]]

power around the world. We are gifting them--gifting them--an 
advancement of their power and influence through our refusal to take 
part in WHO, our refusal to lead the effort to reform it, and our 
refusal as called upon in this resolution that was objected to earlier 
today offered by Senator Durbin to be part of the global effort to try 
to find a vaccine.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Blackburn). The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I was sitting through the last two 
speakers and listening to them. You can tell that it is an election 
year. The Democrats want to defeat President Trump, and I think 
sometimes a tactic to use is to get someone's strongest point and try 
to turn it into his weakest point. In this case, we have heard in just 
the last few minutes that the President is handling the coronavirus 
completely wrong, that he is critical of and then he was friendly to--I 
couldn't quite figure out the relationship with China. I know the 
Democrats in this Chamber are generally perceived as the close friends 
of China and President Xi and the rest of them.
  Also, to talk about what Speaker Pelosi has done in terms of the bill 
that was passed in the House and the criticism that we are not taking 
up that bill, well, all that bill is--we are not supposed to be talking 
about anything in all of this heavy spending except doing something 
about coronavirus. This is something that no one had anything to do 
with. We didn't know it was going to happen. We had no preparation for 
it. I have never experienced it in my life. Yet I do remember so well 
when this body, this Senate, was working on a coronavirus bill and we 
were to be voting on it on a Sunday at 6 o'clock in the evening, and 
the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, came dancing in. It was the 
first time I even knew she was in town because the House wasn't in 
session, and she stopped it. She used her influence to try to stop it 
and successfully did stop it. The vote was taking place at 6 p.m. on a 
Sunday night, and nothing happened except a stall from then until 6 
p.m. on Thursday night, when we finally did vote on it. In the 
meantime, how many days passed? How many people died in the meantime?
  Then, when they come up in the House and they come up with a bill 
that is supposedly their answer to the coronavirus, it has nothing to 
do with coronavirus. It has to do with the very liberal Democratic 
agenda taking advantage of the fact that this crisis is on us in order 
to use this to try to get things passed. I am talking about--now, I 
don't have any notes down here with me. I don't know whether she is 
using gun control or what other efforts they were using in that bill, 
but it is one that has no place in the discussion when we are talking 
about coronavirus.
  The tragedy there, the people dying--and to credit this President, I 
have to say, he has done a great job in addressing this. He is the one 
who, every single day, is there with top medical people and afterward, 
at the end of the day, having a news conference and getting from the 
public what can we do better that we haven't been doing. He has handled 
it in a very, very effective way. But that is not why I am here on the 
floor