[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 139 (Wednesday, August 5, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4885-S4887]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              CORONAVIRUS

  Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, negotiations on the next round of COVID 
relief continued yesterday and will continue again today. Speaker 
Pelosi and I are making progress with the White House, but we remain 
far apart on a large number of issues.
  As I mentioned yesterday, the fundamental disagreement between our 
two parties is the scope and severity of the problem. This is the 
greatest economic crisis America has faced in 75 years and the greatest 
health crisis in 100. There must be a relief package commensurate with 
the size of this historic challenge. A skinny package--a package that 
doesn't solve so many of the problems that America faces--would hurt 
the American people, and we cannot have it.
  But our Republican friends are wedded ideologically to the idea that 
government shouldn't take forceful action; that we should leave the 
welfare of the American people to the whims of the private sector. It 
just doesn't work like that, especially in a time of national 
emergency. The private sector cannot do it.
  While we have started to generate some forward momentum, we need our 
partners in the White House to go much further on a number of issues, 
let alone the Republican Senate, where 20 or so Republicans, by the 
majority leader's admission, don't want to do anything.
  For example, the administration has finally come around to the view 
that we should extend the moratorium on evictions, but they continue to 
refuse to provide actual assistance to the renters themselves. What 
good does that do? We can prevent Americans from being kicked out of 
their apartments for another few months, but if they can't pay the 
rent, they will be right back at square one when the moratorium 
expires, with even more unpaid bills piled up. Extending the moratorium 
on evictions solves only one-half of the problem.
  Republicans continue to stonewall support for State, local, and 
Tribal governments, which have already shed more than a million public 
service jobs this year and will continue to lay off teachers, 
firefighters, and more if Congress does nothing.
  In the early days of the crisis, State and local governments fought 
this disease basically on their own. The Trump administration couldn't 
be bothered to coordinate a national response or supply them with the 
necessary resources. Now Leader McConnell and others on the Republican 
side say our States should just go bankrupt. They put zero into their 
proposal for State and local and would like Republican Senators to go 
home and tell their Governors, tell their mayors, and tell their county 
executives: We want zero for you. That is what our leader is for. Well, 
it is not acceptable.
  On unemployment insurance, a few Senate Republicans have belatedly 
accepted the view we should extend the enhanced benefit of $600 for an 
extended period of time, as Democrats have proposed and voted for in 
the House. Of course, many Senate Republicans--most Senate 
Republicans--still object to that, but at least a few have come around. 
At the moment, however, the White House is not there, and we are not 
going to strike a deal unless we extend the unemployment benefits, 
which have kept nearly 12 million Americans out of poverty.
  The same goes for healthcare, testing, and tracing. How is it that 
everyone in the White House can get tested, everyone in the NFL can get 
tested, but average Americans still cannot access tests easily or get 
results back fast enough? More than 7 months into the crisis, this 
administration does not have a plan or adequate capacity for testing 
and contact tracing. It is a shocking failure on the part of the Trump 
administration and the Republican Senators
  So Democrats are insisting that we provide enough resources to 
finally slow the spread and defeat this disease--the single most 
important thing to our recovery. The American people know that the 
Trump administration and their Republican adherents in the Senate are 
to blame for this huge failure in testing and tracing. They demand we 
act and act fully now, not with some half-baked, poorly funded plan 
that won't do the job, which is where the administration seems to be at 
right now.
  Democrats are insisting that every American should be able to vote 
this November safely and confidently in-person or by mail. COVID has 
affected how we will vote. Many more will vote by mail. There will be a 
need for polling places--maybe more of them--and a need to space people 
out as they vote. We are not going to stop fighting until State 
election systems and the post office, which is part of getting the mail 
there on time, get the resources they need.
  Elections are a wellspring of our democracy, and the only answer as 
to why neither the Republicans in the Senate nor the White House wants 
to do anything about it is they fear a free and fair election. That is 
inimicable to the core of this Republic.
  We are going to keep fighting. There have been alarming reports about 
recent failures at the post office, about residents in Michigan and 
Pennsylvania not getting their medicines or their paychecks for 3 weeks 
or more. The Postal Service is vital--and not just for elections but 
every single day.
  The new Postmaster, Mr. DeJoy, a big donor to President Trump--which 
many believe is his main qualification for being chosen--has enacted 
new guidelines in the post office that experts say will cause severe 
delays in mail delivery. Then he refused for weeks to even hold a phone 
call with Democrats, including myself, about this issue. I called three 
times. Mr. DeJoy evidently didn't have the time to call back when I was 
so concerned about mail delivery in New York and the rest of the 
country. So we have insisted to Mr. Mnuchin and Mr. Meadows on meeting 
with Mr. DeJoy, which will take place later today.
  We need to resolve the problems at the post office--this lack of 
funding and the new regulations that get in the way of the timely 
delivery of the mail. We must resolve those issues in a way that allows 
mail to be delivered on time for the election and for the necessities 
that people need.
  Each and every one of these issues is critical, and there are many 
more. We need answers and movement on all of them, not just on one or 
two, but some of our Republican friends seem content to pass a bill--
any bill--so they can check the box and go home. We cannot do that. We 
cannot agree to an inadequate bill and then go home while the virus 
continues to spread, the economy continues to deteriorate, and the 
country gets worse. So we are going to keep slogging through, step by 
step, inch by inch, until we achieve the caliber, the extent, the depth 
and breadth of the legislation that the American people need, deserve, 
and want.
  In stark contrast, the Republican leader has decided that he would 
rather lob partisan pot shots from the Senate floor each morning rather 
than join in productive negotiations. It is difficult to listen to the 
Republican leader spin such a malicious fiction about why Congress has 
yet to pass another round of relief when he can't even sit in the room 
with us and negotiate, when he can't even create a modicum of unity in 
his disturbingly divided caucus.
  For 3 months, Leader McConnell and Senate Republicans put the Senate 
on pause when it came to the coronavirus. As COVID threats spread 
throughout the South and West, as States hit daily records for new 
cases and hospitalizations, as 50 million Americans filed for 
unemployment, the Senate Republican majority merely hummed along as if 
it were living in a different universe.
  Leader McConnell scheduled confirmation votes on rightwing judges. 
The chairman of Judiciary and Homeland Security held hearings on the 
President's wild conspiracy theories about the 2016 election and 
conducted desperate fishing expeditions, hoping to dig up dirt on the 
family of the President's political rivals. When the Republican 
majority did put legislation on the floor, it wasn't even remotely 
related to COVID.
  All through that time, Democrats came to the floor to practically beg 
our

[[Page S4886]]

colleagues to consider COVID relief legislation. We asked consent to 
pass urgent relief no fewer than 15 times, and every single time, 
Republicans blocked our requests.
  Once Senate Republicans finally decided to write a bill, it was the 
legislative equivalent of a dumpster fire. Republicans bickered among 
themselves for over a week and a half before finally giving up. They 
didn't even release a coherent bill; just a series of nibbling 
proposals, rife with corporate giveaways and K Street carve-outs. 
Republicans proposed a tax break for three-martini lunches but no food 
assistance for hungry kids; $2 billion to build an FBI building to 
boost the value of the Trump hotel but not a dime to help Americans 
afford their rent
  Then, to top it all off, almost as soon as the Republican plan on 
COVID was released, it became clear that even Senate Republicans didn't 
support it. President Trump called it ``semi-irrelevant.'' ``Semi-
irrelevant'' is what President Trump called the Republican proposals.
  Leader McConnell basically gave up and left Democrats and the White 
House to negotiate the next bill. So it strains reason for Leader 
McConnell to criticize those of us who are actually engaged in 
negotiations while he is intentionally staying out of it. His ``Alice 
in Wonderland'' rhetoric--flipping everything on its head and accusing 
the other side of the sins that Leader McConnell, in fact, is 
committing--is extremely counterproductive.
  Since Senate Republicans clearly cannot reach a consensus, any 
agreement is going to require a lot of Democratic votes. Suffice it to 
say, the Republican leader's rhetoric and positions are not helpful in 
that regard.
  While Republican leadership continues to sit on the sidelines, 
Democrats are in the room working hard. That is what the American 
people expect of us. They want to see us working to get something done 
in this time of extraordinary challenge.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I want to thank the Senator from New York 
and thank him for the negotiations he has engaged in.
  It is nothing short of amazing that the Republican leader of the U.S. 
Senate comes to the floor of the Senate every morning and criticizes 
Senator Schumer and Speaker Pelosi, who are sitting in a room day after 
day after day, trying to hammer out an agreement to help America in 
this time of need, while there are two empty chairs at that table. 
Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, does not attend the 
meetings, and sadly, the Republican leader of the Senate is also 
boycotting these meetings. I can't remember a time when this has 
occurred, ever--no time in history when there was a critical national 
decision to be hammered out between the parties and the leaders of the 
Republican Party in Congress refused to attend the meetings.
  Senator McConnell gives polished speeches on the floor criticizing 
Senator Schumer and Speaker Pelosi. They should be polished--he has 
time to practice them all day instead of going into the negotiations 
that can actually make a difference in the future of America.
  Americans are genuinely concerned, and they should be. We face a 
national health emergency with this pandemic, sadly, where the 
infections are spiking across America. It is still amazing to consider 
two numbers: the number 5--the United States has about 5 percent of the 
world's population; and the number 25--the United States has generated 
25 percent of the COVID-19 infections in the world. Five percent of the 
population and 25 percent of the reported COVID infections in the 
world.
  How did we reach this point where this great developed, civilized, 
and strong Nation has been brought to its knees by this pandemic? We 
have reached this point by lack of leadership. The American people know 
that there have been leadership failures at the top. They know this 
President refuses to listen to experts. If the experts say something he 
doesn't like to hear, he banishes them, as Dr. Fauci has found.
  We also know that this President is downplaying the threat that sadly 
is taking American lives in the thousands by the day. Just yesterday or 
the day before, he branded this pandemic as all but over. Really? There 
is hardly anyone in America who would agree with that statement--
certainly no one who is paying any attention to the sad realities 
facing families.
  This President has failed to tell the truth. He has been engaged in 
medical quackery. This hydroxychloroquine that he clings to has been 
discredited by the sources that test it. It just isn't an answer. The 
President should know better. For goodness' sake, he doesn't have the 
competence to make a medical judgment along those lines, but that won't 
stop him.
  But many people across America are just fed up with it, whether it is 
Lysol cocktails or ultraviolet insertions. Lord only knows what he will 
come up with next. At a time when people are literally sick and dying, 
when our healthcare heroes are risking their lives every day, this 
President goes off on these flights of medical fantasy, and the 
American people are fed up with it.
  This President has failed to take the action that America desperately 
needs. We cannot reopen this economy, we cannot consider reopening 
schools until we dramatically invest in better, quicker testing. That 
is a reality.
  As Senator Schumer said earlier, Americans wonder how the President 
manages to test everyone who crosses the threshold of the White House 
over and over, every single day, and how Major League Baseball and the 
National Football League can get test results in a matter of hours 
while Americans are standing in line and waiting for results that are 
largely irrelevant when they are delivered 5 or 6 days after the 
test. What good is a test if it tells you that you are safe 6 days ago, 
when you want to see your grandchildren today? That is the reality of 
testing in America.

  And what has this President done about it? He has made statement 
after statement that there are all the tests we could possibly want 
available to every American. We know better. All across America, we 
know better. Testing has improved and increased, but it is not where we 
need it. That should be the highest priority of this administration, 
but they failed when it came to providing personal protective 
equipment, and they failed when it comes to providing testing.
  The biggest failure is the attitude of the Senate Republican leader 
and the President when it comes to the crises America faces--first, the 
coronavirus crisis and, second, the economic crisis. The biggest 
tragedy is the fact that they believe we should do little or nothing--
little or nothing when we are facing some the greatest challenges of 
our time, some of the greatest challenges in American history. The 
American people expects us to take it seriously and to aggressively go 
after this coronavirus and its spread and aggressively help this 
economy back to its feet.
  We have come up with a plan, which Senator McConnell has come to the 
floor and mocked every single day. It passed the House of 
Representatives 11 weeks ago. Eleven weeks ago, Speaker Pelosi passed 
it and sent it to the Senate. What has happened in that 11-week period? 
Speech after speech after speech, deriding the efforts of the House of 
Representatives and, literally, nothing on the other side to show for 
it.
  Finally, last week, they started trickling out a few ideas here and 
there, and they weren't very good. They refused to participate, will 
not even attend the negotiation sessions with the White House, and come 
to the floor each day and mock and criticize Democratic efforts to deal 
with the issues before us.
  As far as a recovery is concerned, it is essential that we dedicate 
ourselves to it, but, first, coronavirus--first, get the infections 
under control and save the lives of those who have already been 
infected. That is the first thing that needs to be done.
  The Republican approach is too little and too late. We have come up 
with a $3 trillion plan. They have come up with a $1 trillion plan and 
said: We may not even spend that much.
  Particularly troublesome for me is this attitude toward the 
unemployment compensation being paid to Americans. I couldn't believe 
the Senator from Kentucky when he came to

[[Page S4887]]

the floor today and tried to pit our healthcare heroes against the 
unemployed, saying: They are going to work every day. Why should we 
give any money to those who don't go to work every day?
  Really? We have four unemployed Americans--four unemployed 
Americans--for every single job opening. I don't believe the doctors, 
nurses, and medical professionals who are fighting COVID every single 
day resent those who are unemployed. I think they understand full well 
the devastation of this pandemic, not only on the individuals they 
treat but on the economy at large.
  When it comes to these healthcare heroes, the Democrats have stepped 
up and called for hazard pay. Will the Republicans join us? We think 
these healthcare heroes deserve it--that and more, our gratitude and 
more, for all they have given to the United States.
  Let me say a word about those who are receiving unemployment 
benefits. I met with five of them in Chicago last week, heard their 
stories, asked them a few questions, and learned a little bit about 
their lives. I wasn't surprised at the hardship they face. Many of them 
have been out of work for 4 or 5 months already. It is no surprise that 
almost half of the people out of work have exhausted all of their 
savings at this point, even with unemployment benefits.
  You ask those who are unemployed: Well, what do you do with these 
checks that are sent to you each week?
  It is pretty obvious to them what you do with it. You pay the 
mortgage, if you have one. You pay the rent, the car payment, so it is 
not repossessed and taken away from you. You try to keep food on the 
table. You try to keep the people issuing the credit cards at bay. 
These are the basics that people face every single day. But the 
Republicans don't seem to get that. They don't understand it because 
they don't get to know these people or even ask them what life is like. 
They are not on any bed of roses with $600 a week when you consider the 
debts they face, when you consider the expenses they face, and you 
consider the fact that many of them are struggling to pay for their own 
health insurance at this point. A family trying to pick up the cost of 
their health insurance, that their employer once provided half of, 
finds themselves spending $1,400 to $1,700 a month on that alone. That 
is the reality.
  For the record, of those who have returned to work in America, we are 
grateful that they are back to work. We are happy that they are back to 
work. Seventy percent of them were making more money on unemployment 
than they made returning to work. Well, why would they do that? Because 
they are not lazy people. They are people who take pride in work, 
believe there is dignity with work, and are prepared to return even if 
they made more on unemployment. They know that unemployment is a 
temporary help. They want to get back to work, a place where they can 
prove their worth as individuals and feel some satisfaction that they 
are going to work and doing their best. That is part of the reality

                          ____________________