[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 100 (Thursday, May 28, 2020)]
[House]
[Pages H2349-H2352]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
COVID-19, STRATEGIC TESTING FOR WORKERS
(Ms. KAPTUR asked and was given permission to address the House for 1
minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, as of yesterday, the United States death
toll from COVID-19 has reached over 100,000 precious lives.
Recent headlines tell the story of COVID-19 risks as workers report
to work with no testing. The Toledo Blade reports: ``Coronavirus
Strikes Fermi 2 Nuclear Plant During Refueling.'' Reuters reports:
``All Three Detroit Automakers Had Workers Test Positive for COVID-19
Since Plants Reopened.'' And Willamette Week reports: ``The Reopening
of Vancouver, Washington, Is On Hold as 65 Workers Test Positive for
COVID-19 at a Fruit Processing Facility.''
Madam Speaker, I include in the Record the articles I mentioned.
[From the Blade, Apr. 8, 2020]
Coronavirus Strikes Fermi 2 Nuclear Plant During Refueling; Utility
Keeps Working
(By Tom Henry)
Newport, Mich.--An undisclosed number of coronavirus cases
have been documented inside Fermi 2 during the nuclear
plant's latest refueling outage.
But owner-operator DTE Energy said it believes it has
enough precautions in place now to complete the work and get
the plant restarted in the coming weeks.
In a statement, DTE spokesman Stephen R. Tait said the
company ``can confirm that we have had employees test
positive, but are
[[Page H2350]]
not giving out numbers, locations or names at this time.''
Media reports showed the first worker tested positive about
the same time the refueling outage began on March 21. A
Detroit television station reported at least two more
positive cases were documented within days of that.
DTE won't say for the record when it expects to complete
Fermi 2's outage.
But many similar operations--which once took six weeks or
longer--have been shortened to about a month in recent years.
Utilities lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in potential
electricity sales each day nuclear plants sit idle.
Nuclear plants are refueled every 18 to 24 months,
depending on the type of uranium used in their reactor cores.
Fermi 2, located along western Lake Erie in northern Monroe
County's Frenchtown Township, is one of many nuclear plants
across the United States scheduled to be refueled during the
spring or fall of 2020, the two seasons when demand for
electricity is lowest.
Energy Harbor's Davis-Besse nuclear plant along the Lake
Erie shoreline in rural Ottawa County recently completed its
latest refueling.
Both plants are about 30 miles from downtown Toledo.
The coronavirus pandemic has, of course, complicated those
efforts this year.
To help keep refuelings on schedule, the U.S. Nuclear
Regulatory Commission last month allowed for an exemption
from rules which limit the number of consecutive hours
workers are allowed to be inside the plant at a time. The
agency said in a March 28 letter to the Washington-based
Nuclear Energy Institute that it will consider such requests
on a case-by-case basis, and that exemptions will be limited
to 60 days.
``We are aware of the NRC's willingness to relax some rules
for overtime at plants if there is a need,'' Mr. Tait said.
``At this time, we have not requested any variances.''
The NRC has ``no immediate concerns in this area,''
Viktoria Mitlyng, agency spokesman, said. ``We are
communicating regularly with Fermi staff to discuss current
activities and future plans, including staffing, medical
screening, reductions in nonessential maintenance work, and
other related matters.''
In nearly all refuelings, including at those at Fermi 2 and
Davis-Besse, hundreds of specialized, out-of-state
contractors augment the regular plant workforces, often
resulting in 1,000 or more workers assigned to any given site
at a time. Work is usually divided into eight-hour shifts,
with activity occurring 24 hours a day.
Officials have noted those contractors move throughout the
country from job to job, bringing with them the potential of
carrying viruses outside of the sites they last worked.
Monroe-area resident Michael J. Keegan, a longtime activist
associated with the activist group Don't Waste Michigan, said
he worries the NRC will again allow DTE to postpone some of
the work planned for the submerged portion of Fermi 2's
pressure suppression chamber, also referred to as the torus.
The utility came to an agreement with the NRC to fix
degraded coating there, a situation that has lingered for 31
years. It was first identified in 1989, the NRC has said.
One of the concerns is that loose paint chips in drains
could make it difficult for vital reactor coolant pumps to
move water in the event of an emergency.
The NRC told DTE it will grant the utility's request to
remove only coatings found to be degraded through
inspections.
``If degraded coating is found, they will remove it prior
to returning the reactor to operation after the spring 2020
outage,'' Ms. Mitlyng said.
Fermi 2, one of Michigan's largest employers, is about 30
miles south of Detroit, which is now one of America's hot
spots for the coronavirus pandemic.
____
[From Reuters, May 27, 2020]
All Three Detroit Automakers Had Workers Test Positive for COVID-19
Since Plants Reopened
Detroit.--In the week since U.S. auto factories reopened
after coronavirus lockdowns, workers at all three Detroit
automakers have tested positive for COVID-19 but only Ford
Motor Co has temporarily closed plants.
The U.S. auto industry reopened many plants last week after
a two-month shutdown due to the global pandemic. To ensure
safety during the outbreak, companies imposed new safety
measures, including screening employees, use of face masks
and social distancing.
Ford paused production at its Claycomo, Missouri, plant for
an hour on Tuesday after a worker tested positive. Work
resumed at the plant, which builds the F-150 pickup truck and
Transit van, without workers being sent home following a deep
cleaning, Ford spokeswoman Kelli Felker said Wednesday.
General Motors Co and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV (FCA)
said Wednesday they have had workers test positive since the
restart, but have not been forced to idle plants. They did
not disclose the number of workers affected.
On Wednesday, a union leader at Ford's Kentucky Truck Plant
said on Twitter a worker there tested positive, but had not
worked since May 21. Felker said the plant never closed.
Last week, Ford closed two assembly plants, due to a
positive test at its Dearborn, Michigan, factory and a parts
shortage due to a positive test at a supplier that closed the
Chicago plant. It had marked the second consecutive day for
closures in Chicago following two positive tests.
United Auto Workers Local 600, which represents hourly
workers in Dearborn, last week demanded testing for every
worker there and that Ford shut down the plant for 24 hours
after a positive test. Ford said the safety of its workers is
a top priority and cited the safety measures it has developed
in conjunction with the UAW.
In Mexico, Ford told workers it was targeting a May 28
restart at its Hermosillo plant. GM and FCA have restarted
operations in Mexico.
____
[From wweek.com, May 25, 2020]
The Reopening of Vancouver, Wash., Is On Hold as 65 Workers Test
Positive for COVID-19 at a Fruit Processing Facility
(By Tess Riski)
Clark County's application to move into Phase 2 of
reopening has been put on pause.
The COVID-19 outbreak at a fruit processing plant in
Vancouver, Wash., climbed from 38 workers Friday to 65
employees Monday. The Oregonian first reported.
The facility, called Firestone Pacific Foods, halted
production May 19. On May 23, Washington state health
officials suspended Clark County's request to enter Phase 2
of the state's reopening plan due to the outbreak.
The state health department cited the Firestone outbreak as
its reason for suspending Vancouver's reopening.
The county health department said in a press release
Saturdav that it is identifying and notifying close contacts
of all who tested positive and asking them to quarantine for
14 days.
Firestone processes frozen fruit mostly berries. Food
processing plants have been epicenters of COVID-19 outbreaks
across the U.S., in part because social distancing is
difficult on assembly-line floors.
The facility told The Oregonian it's unaware of any workers
who have been hospitalized because of the virus.
``While this outbreak is unfortunate, our response
demonstrates we have the confidence and capability to respond
to situations like this,'' Dr. Alan Melnick, the Clark County
health officer, said in a press release.
____
[From the New York Times, May 25, 2020]
`This Is Not the Hunger Games': National Testing Strategy Draws
Concerns
(By Apoorva Mandavilli and Catie Edmondson)
The Trump administration's new testing strategy, released
Sunday to Congress, holds individual states responsible for
planning and carrying out all coronavirus testing, while
planning to provide some supplies needed for the tests.
The proposal also says existing testing capacity, if
properly targeted, is sufficient to contain the outbreak. But
epidemiologists say that amount of testing is orders of
magnitude lower than many of them believe the country needs.
The report cements a stance that has frustrated governors
in both parties, following the administration's announcement
last month that the federal government should be considered
``the supplier of last resort'' and that states should
develop their own testing plans.
``For months, it was a tennis game, it was going back and
forth between the feds and the states, and it's now landed
with the states,'' said Scott Becker, executive director of
the Association of Public Health Laboratories.
Mr. Becker noted that the federal government plans to
distribute some testing supplies, including swabs and viral
transport media, and to store test kits in the strategic
national stockpile. ``That's actually quite significant,'' he
said. ``That's a positive step.''
The Department of Health and Human Services prepared the
strategy, which meets requirements under the Paycheck
Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act, signed
into law by President Trump on April 24, that federal
agencies come up with a strategic testing plan within 30
days. It was reported earlier by The Washington Post.
Mr. Becker, public health experts and Democratic leaders
panned the proposal, saying the strategy runs the risk of
states competing with one another and may create deep
inequities among them.
The strategy mirrors a divide that has played out in
Congress for months. As they negotiated the virus relief bill
in March, Democratic lawmakers pushed to require the
administration to submit this national testing plan to
Congress. Republicans resisted, saying those decisions
belonged to each state.
Mr. Becker and others said it's reasonable to expect states
to implement some aspects of the testing, such as designating
test sites. But acquiring tests involves reliance on national
and international supply chains--which are challenging for
many states to navigate.
``That's our biggest question, that's our biggest concern,
is the robustness of the supply chain, which is critical,''
Mr. Becker said. ``You can't leave it up to the states to do
it for themselves. This is not the Hunger Games.''
[[Page H2351]]
In a joint statement on Monday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi;
Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader; Representative
Frank Pallone, Democratic chairman of the House Energy and
Commerce Committee; and Senator Patty Murray, the ranking
Democrat on the Senate's health committee, said the Trump
administration was not taking responsibility for ramping up
national testing capacity.
``This disappointing report confirms that President Trump's
national testing strategy is to deny the truth that there
aren't enough tests and supplies, reject responsibility and
dump the burden onto the states,'' the lawmakers said. ``In
this document, the Trump administration again attempts to
paint a rosy picture about testing while experts continue to
warn the country is far short of what we need.''
Experts also took issue with the report's assertion that
continuing to test only about 300,000 people a day, by
targeting only those likely to be positive, would be enough
to contain the outbreak.
``On the face of it, the idea that 300,000 tests a day is
enough for America is absurd,'' said Dr. Ashish Jha, director
of the Harvard Global Health Institute.
He offered a quick rundown of the numbers to illustrate the
estimate's inadequacy. Most hospitals nationwide now test
everyone who is admitted for any reason, roughly 100,000
tests each day, fearing that they may be asymptomatic and yet
still spreading the virus. Testing the 1.6 million residents
of nursing homes--known to be at high risk of coronavirus
infection--and workers every two weeks would require 150,000
more tests each day. Add high-risk places like meatpacking
plants that need regular testing, and the numbers rapidly
build.
``Without having tested a single person for symptoms of
Covid, we would quickly exhaust our entire national supply of
testing if all we have is 300,000 tests per day,'' he said.
The H.H.S. report noted that an analysis by the Safra
Center at Harvard estimated the need at more than three
million tests per day. But the federal report said that
estimate was based on faulty assumptions.
The Safra authors who crafted the estimate said that the
federal report had cherry-picked one simple example from
their analysis without considering other evidence.
``We ran multiple models, all of which pointed to the same
order of magnitude,'' said Danielle Allen, director of the
Safra Center. ``They've selected one non-primary model in an
appendix and selectively adjusted assumptions to generate a
different number.''
Dr. Allen said millions of daily tests would be required to
have 4 percent of people test positive with the coronavirus--
the level they say is needed to halt the spread of the virus.
The administration's target, 10 percent, would allow only for
mitigation.
``There is not a single country that I'm aware of that
achieved disease suppression with a positivity rate of 10
percent,'' she said.
And 300,000 daily tests would be insufficient even for
mitigation, Dr. Jha said, estimating that would require at
least 900,000 tests per day.
The proposal also leaves it to states to plan for contact
tracing and isolation, rapidly identify new clusters of
coronavirus infection and adopt new technologies. It says the
federal government is ``supporting and encouraging'' states
to rely heavily on guidance from the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention.
However, the C.D.C. has been slow to release guidance for
states during this outbreak, Dr. Jha said. And the agency
fumbled its role in testing strategy, most recently with last
week's dust-up over the mixing of test results for active
infection with serology. ``This is not C.D.C.'s shining
moment,'' he said.
Governors have bristled at claims from the administration
that the supply of tests was adequate, routinely asking for
more federal assistance. Some states have ultimately decided
to negotiate directly with suppliers to obtain test kits.
Federal virus relief legislation required states to release
their individual testing plans last week, but they requested
an extension to later this week. If elements of those state
plans prove promising, Mr. Becker said, the federal strategy
could be revised or merged with them.
____
[From CNN, May 21, 2020]
Coronavirus Testing Is `a Mess' in the US, Report Says
(By Maggie Fox)
Coronavirus testing in the United States is disorganized
and needs coordination at the national level, infectious
disease experts said in a new report released Wednesday.
Right now, testing is not accurate enough to use alone to
make most decisions, including who should go back to work or
to school, the team at the University of Minnesota said.
``It's a mess out there,'' Mike Osterholm, head of the
university's Center for Infectious Disease Research and
Policy (CIDRAP), which issued the report, told CNN.
``Testing is very, very important, but we're not doing the
right testing.''
The number of tests that have been completed--numbers
widely reported by states and by the White House--show only
part of the picture, the report reads.
``The data is really kind of screwed up,'' Osterholm said.
``It's because the public health system is overwhelmed.''
The report has some specific recommendations for diagnostic
tests that check to see if someone is currently infected with
coronavirus.
Testing is most useful for clinical care of patients, for
disease surveillance and contact tracing and for monitoring
frontline workers such as emergency responders, doctors and
nurses who may have been exposed, the report recommends.
People with symptoms should also be tested, it says.
But coronavirus testing is not accurate enough yet to use
in many other ways, the CIDRAP team said.
It recommends against:
Universal testing in hospital settings
Testing in schools or other low-risk settings
Widespread community-based testing
Antibody tests to decide who goes back to work
Immunity passports
It might be useful to test asymptomatic people in long-term
care facilities in some cases because they are likely to have
many cases, the report said. ``Asymptomatic shedding of the
virus may be detected with a molecular test (which looks for
the virus itself) or an antigen test (which looks for
important pieces of the virus). It is not yet clear where,
when and how asymptomatic individuals should be tested.''
The report also says that antibody tests should be used
only with caution. These tests check the blood for evidence
of an immune response to the virus, and indicate that someone
has been infected for some days or has even cleared an
infection. They are most useful for identifying donors of
plasma used to treat patients or for deciding on how to
manage patients when standard diagnostic tests are negative,
the report says.
It's not clear if antibody tests are useful for testing of
health care workers to determine immune status, according to
the report.
``We believe that greatly expanding SARSCoV-2 testing is a
critical element in our response to COVID-19,'' the report
reads. ``For testing to be maximally effective, coordination
across the system and across jurisdictions is necessary.
Ideally, this requires federal guidance, leadership and
support, with strong jurisdictional buy-in at the state and
local levels.''
The report calls on the US Department of Health and Human
Services to appoint a panel to oversee and organize testing.
``The panel should include representatives from public
health, clinical laboratory, and medicine; the laboratory
testing research and development, marketing, and product
support industries; ethicists; legal scholars; and elected
officials,'' it says.
Osterholm noted that some states are combining data from
diagnostic tests and antibody tests to make estimates about
how many people have been infected. The Food and Drug
Administration advises against using tests in this way and so
does Osterholm. ``You need to do the right test at the right
time to get the right result,'' he said. ``Nobody is thinking
through that.''
Plus, there's not enough coordination to ensure that states
have the testing supplies they need. This is a system and if
a system breaks down anywhere, it breaks down everywhere,''
Osterholm said.
``What good are the test results if you can't trust them?''
____
[From the New York Times, May 25, 2020]
As Meatpacking Plants Reopen, Data About Worker Illness Remains Elusive
(By Michael Corkery, David Yaffe-Bellany and Derek Kravitz)
The Smithfield Foods plant in Tar Heel, N.C., is one of the
world's largest pork processing facilities, employing about
4,500 people and slaughtering roughly 30,000 pigs a day at
its peak.
And like more than 100 other meat plants across the United
States, the facility has seen a substantial number of
coronavirus cases. But the exact number of workers in Tar
Heel who have tested positive is anyone's guess.
Smithfield would not provide any data when asked about the
number of illnesses at the plant. Neither would state or
local health officials.
``There has been a stigma associated with the virus,'' said
Teresa Duncan, the director of the health department in
Bladen County, where the plant is located. ``So we're trying
to protect privacy.''
Along with nursing homes and prisons, meatpacking
facilities have proven to be places where the virus spreads
rapidly. But as dozens of plants that closed because of
outbreaks begin reopening, meat companies' reluctance to
disclose detailed case counts makes it difficult to tell
whether the contagion is contained or new cases are emerging
even with new safety measures in place. The Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention said there were nearly 5,000
meatpacking workers infected with the virus as of the end of
last month. But the nonprofit group Food & Environment
Reporting Network estimated last week that the number has
climbed to more than 17,000. There have been 66 meatpacking
deaths, the group said.
And the outbreaks may be even more extensive.
For weeks, local officials received conflicting signals
from state leaders and meatpacking companies about how much
information to release, according to internal
[[Page H2352]]
emails from government health agencies obtained through
public records requests by Columbia University's Brown
Institute for Media Innovation and provided to The New York
Times. The mixed messages left many workers and their
communities in the dark about the extent of the spread in
parts of Iowa, Nebraska and Colorado.
The emails also reveal the deference some county officials
have shown toward the giant meatpacking companies and how
little power they have in pushing the companies to stem
outbreaks.
``Bad news spreads way faster than the truth,'' said a
county health official in Colorado of an outbreak at a
Cargill plant, according to notes from a conference call last
month. ``At this point, we are not doing anything to cast
them in a bad light. Will not throw them to the Press.''
Questions about the transparency of governments and
companies about the coronavirus extend far beyond
meatpacking. Chinese officials have been widely criticized
for not fully disclosing the extent of the virus's spread
within their borders. And in the United States, President
Trump has questioned the official death toll from the
coronavirus, suggesting that the numbers may be inflated even
as public health experts and statisticians say the opposite
is more likely true.
The meat companies are not legally required to disclose how
many workers are sick. But legal experts say privacy is not a
valid reason for keeping the numbers from the public.
``Alerting a community about the number of cases in a
particular place is a standard public health response;' said
Nicole Huberfeld, a public health expert at Boston
University. ``People need to act appropriately if they are
exposed.''
The lack of full disclosure also demonstrates the
industry's sway as a major employer in the Midwest and the
South.
While more than 80 percent of beef and pork workers are
unionized, even labor leaders acknowledge it is not as easy
to shut down meat plants as other factories because they are
essential to the food supply. Auto plants, for example, were
shut down relatively early during the pandemic and have only
just begun to reopen.
After some slaughterhouses did close, restaurants and
stores experienced significant shortages of meat, leading Mr.
Trump to issue an executive order designating meat plants
``critical infrastructure'' that must stay open.
But the order did not address crucial issues like testing,
leading many companies to reopen plants or keep them
operating without fully assessing whether employees had
contracted the virus.
Across the country, many local health departments have
encouraged companies to test employees--but stopped short of
ordering them to do so.
On April 21, health officials in Dallas County, Iowa, told
Tyson Foods that they could provide rapid testing kits for
workers at its local plant in Perry, according to the emails.
An early draft of that message to Tyson managers underscored
the urgency, saying, ``At this time, we strongly recommend
this option be implemented immediately.''
But the county's lawyer asked that the language be revised
to read, ``At this time, we ask you to consider this be
implemented as soon as possible.''
In an interview, the county attorney, Chuck Sinnard, said
he recommended revising the language because he did not
believe the health department had the authority to order
Tyson to conduct tests.
``It was in the vein of choosing wording cautiously and
conservatively so we didn't get in a position where we were
overstepping our bounds,'' he said.
On May 5, the state health department, which ultimately
worked with Tyson to test employees, said 730 workers, or 58
percent of the plant's work force, had tested positive for
the virus. About two weeks ago, Tyson started to disclose the
number of coronavirus cases at a handful of its plants around
the country where there has been widespread testing.
In North Carolina, workers and community advocates in the
Tar Heel area started to raise the alarm in April, as local
news outlets reported a string of infections linked to the
Smithfield plant.
In neighboring Robeson County, 59 residents who work at the
Tar Heel facility have become infected, out of a total of 669
cases in the community, according to Melissa Packer, the
county's assistant health director.
But like the rest of the public, Ms. Packer does not know
the full extent of the outbreak at the plant.
In conversations with state officials this month, Ms.
Packer said, a number of county health directors requested
that plantspecific numbers stay private. One of the reasons,
she said, was that the local officials wanted to avoid
antagonizing the meatpackers while they worked alongside them
to curtail the outbreaks.
``A lot of the concerns were around fractured
relationships,'' Ms. Packer said. ``Some local health
directors from the counties where there are processing plants
expressed some concerns about how that may negatively impact
the relationship they have built with the management of the
companies.''
A spokeswoman for North Carolina's health department, Amy
Ellis, declined to reveal plant-specific data. She said the
state has recorded a total of 1,952 cases across meat plants
in 17 counties.
Smithfield said it continued to ``report all Covid-19 cases
to state and local health officials, as well as the C.D.C.''
and was working to provide free testing to all its employees.
This month, Gov. Pete Ricketts of Nebraska announced that
the state would not disclose the number of coronavirus cases
in specific meat plants without the consent of the companies.
The state is releasing aggregate case numbers across the meat
processing industry, the governor's spokesman said. Some of
Nebraska's big meatpackers have also started revealing less
about case numbers to their employees.
Eric Reeder, a local union president representing workers
in 14 plants around Nebraska, said that the larger the
outbreak, the less transparent some of the companies have
become about the case numbers.
``When a plant hits several hundred cases, they get more
tight-lipped, and that makes it difficult for workers to
protect themselves and their families,'' said Mr. Reeder,
president of the United Food & Commercial Workers union local
293.
Those transparency issues were on display last month when
Teresa Anderson, the director of the Central District Health
Department in Grand Island, Neb., told the meat processor JBS
that she planned to conduct coronavirus testing at a park
near the company's plant, which employs 3,700 people.
JBS wanted assurances that the test results would not be
made public.
``We understand that you will be asking and recording the
employer,'' Nicholas White, a compliance official at JBS,
wrote in an email to Ms. Anderson on April 15. ``But we would
ask that you not disclose that information as part of any
public disclosure of the testing results.''
Six days later, though, Ms. Anderson announced that more
than 200 people connected to the Grand Island plant were
infected. By May 5, at least 328 employees had tested
positive, according to the emails from Grand Island, some of
which were previously reported by ProPublica.
A spokesman for JBS, Cameron Bruett, said the company did
not want to publicize the number of positive cases at the
plant because little testing was being conducted in the
broader area. Releasing the data, he said, ``would distort
any one company's role in community spread.''
The tussle over whether plants should test workers has
stretched for months in some states, creating critical delays
in isolating infected workers. Local health authorities
concede that asymptomatic employees are still coming to work
with the virus, fueling the spread.
As recently as May 14, health officials in Wyandotte
County, Kan., warned that the virus was continuing to spread
inside a National Beef plant.
``The outbreak has gone on for a month,'' a county
epidemiologist said in an email to her colleagues.
``Should we bust in, show our badges and test everyone?'' a
colleague suggested. ``Ha!''
A National Beef spokesman said the company was following
the county's health guidelines.
Even when case numbers are disclosed, many health
departments say they have little authority to act at meat
plants.
Last month, a worker in a Triumph Foods pork plant in St.
Joseph, Mo., emailed the city saying at least two employees
were infected and 90 percent of the staff was still working
``less than a meter away'' from one another.
``Workers are scared,'' the employee said. ``Can the
government take action on the matter for the protection of
workers and the city?''
A health official wrote back on April 21, saying the city
had ``limited authority'' in closing a business and suggested
that the workers cover their noses and mouths and use hand
sanitizer.
Since then, Triumph has supplied workers with masks, among
other protective measures, according to the company website.
But at the time, the plant worker was not comforted by the
city's assurances.
``Are you telling me that it doesn't matter that two
workers are infected,'' he wrote. ``Because the plant is
worth more than the workers' health?''
Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, testing requires a national strategy, not
a 50-State, helter-skelter search for limited supplies. Without
rigorous expanded surveillance testing, many more American lives are
put on the chopping block because of pure stupidity and callousness.
If the President can find billions to build more nuclear weapons,
then surely we can find the money to protect those who build them and
all workers who dedicate their talents to moving our Nation to full
throttle again.
Mr. President, get a testing regimen in place. It is your duty. No
excuses.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Members are reminded to address their
remarks to the Chair.
____________________