[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 139 (Wednesday, August 5, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4915-S4920]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              CORONAVIRUS

  Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I rise tonight to talk about a couple of 
issues I know that will be considered--at least I hope will be 
considered--in the negotiations that are under way.
  Later in this hour, we will be joined by three of my colleagues: 
Senator Whitehouse, Senator Blumenthal, and Senator Duckworth. Each of 
us will be talking about these issues from different perspectives, but 
all focused on those in our society who are most at risk in the midst 
of this worldwide pandemic and in the midst of this economic and jobs 
crisis that we are confronting right now. We know that this is the most 
difficult public health crisis in a century, and one of largest, if not 
in the top two, job crises we have ever faced.
  When we talk about Americans who are most at risk, among them are, of 
course, older Americans. Tonight, I will spend some time talking about 
older Americans in nursing homes who are at risk if we don't take 
action, and people with disabilities who need the benefit of--as do 
many older Americans need the benefit of--home and community-based 
services; and, third, Americans who are in communities of color who 
need the benefit of Medicaid, among other programs that we should be 
focused on.
  Let me start with nursing homes. We know that in the context of 
nursing homes, the skilled care that is provided there is the highest 
level of care for an older American or sometimes a person with a 
disability. We also know that is care that is provided to men and women 
who have done so much for the country--Americans who have fought our 
wars, worked in our factories, built the middle class, built America in 
so many ways and gave us life and love. All that they ask and all their 
families ask is when they are in a long-term care facility, especially 
a nursing home, that they are receiving skilled care that is quality 
care, and in the midst of this crisis, that we are taking every step 
possible to protect them from the virus and to keep them safe.
  Unfortunately, that hasn't happened in America today.
  As we speak tonight, more than just a couple of days ago, the number 
was lower than this, but now it is more than 62,000 Americans who have 
died in long-term care settings. Most of those are in nursing homes. 
When you add up the number of residents who contracted the virus and 
died with the workers who have died, the number is more than 62,000 
Americans. That is

[[Page S4916]]

about 40 percent of all the deaths in America. We have to take steps to 
get those numbers down--both the death number as well as the case 
number. Of course, the two are directly related.
  A number of months ago, Senator Whitehouse, who joins us on the floor 
tonight, and I introduced S. 3768, which was the Nursing Home 
Protection and Prevention Act. It was a proposed $20 billion investment 
in best practices. The tragedy here is that we know what works to get 
the death number down in nursing homes. We know exactly what works. 
Those nursing homes that were implementing these best practices months 
ago--way back, sometime in early March or even in February--are the 
ones that had lower numbers, fortunately, of deaths and case numbers.
  We know that you have to invest in a series of best practices, which 
means having enough personal protective equipment for everyone in a 
nursing home, but especially the residents and workers. We know that is 
essential to keeping people safe. We know that testing is part of that, 
of course, and having the capacity to test frequently and to have 
results transmitted very quickly.
  Cohorting is not a term that we hear a lot about, but it is a very 
simple concept. Cohorting means you separate the residents with COVID-
19 from those who don't have it. As easy as that is to say, it is more 
difficult to institute in a nursing home. Sometimes you have to 
retrofit. Sometimes you have to take other steps that funding is needed 
for.
  Cohorting works, which stands to reason, but we know it works now 
that we have some experience with the virus.
  We know that surge teams are critically important, as well, as part 
of these best practices. If you have an outbreak in a nursing home--and 
we have had so many examples of that in my home State of Pennsylvania 
and in so many other States--when the virus is spreading and there is a 
crisis in that nursing home because of the virus, you might need more 
help. You may need more doctors or nurses or certified nurse's 
assistants or so many other critical personnel in that nursing home. So 
$20 billion is a good down payment on protecting Americans in nursing 
homes. Our bill would do that.
  I am grateful for the help of Senator Whitehouse, as well as so many 
other Members of the Senate who joined in that bill. Unfortunately, the 
bill proposed--I guess it was July 27 or one of the last days of July. 
Unfortunately, the bill proposed by the majority has no meaningful 
investment in these best practices. We have to ask ourselves: Is this 
what America is going to settle for, that the greatest country in the 
history of the world is going to throw up our hands and say: There is 
really nothing we can do. It is a pernicious virus and the virus is 
spreading in congregate care settings like nursing homes, where you 
have individuals who are particularly vulnerable. So there is not much 
we can do.

  That is a defeatist, anti-American attitude. We know we can get these 
numbers down if we make the investment. The America that we claim to be 
would have a full-court press, a pull-out-all-the-stops effort to make 
sure that we get these numbers down.
  I don't think most Americans believe that we should throw up our 
hands and surrender to another 62,000-plus deaths a couple of months 
from now, which is where we could be headed if we don't take these 
steps. No one would assert that we can get these numbers down to zero 
or that there is some magic wand that will allow us to remove this 
threat from those we love so much in these nursing homes. But, my God, 
in America we are not going to take steps we know will work to get the 
case number down and the death number down?
  I think America is ready for an action plan that has been developed 
here in the United States by smart people who know how to attack this 
problem.
  So issue No. 1 is the most at-risk Americans.
  The second issue in terms of at-risk Americans is older Americans and 
people with disabilities who need the benefit of home and community-
based services. Again, the Republican bill proposed by the majority 
here in the Senate doesn't mention Medicaid. In order to attack the 
nursing home issue--the nursing home death problem--or to invest in 
home and community-based services, we need to invest in Medicaid. We 
must stabilize and strengthen home and community-based services to keep 
older adults and people with disabilities both safe and healthy.
  To do that, you have to pay the workers more. The workers should be 
paid a living wage. When those workers are going into a home to provide 
that critical care, they should be provided the personal protective 
equipment that they need to keep themselves safe and also that person 
with a disability or a senior, if someone is coming into their home.
  Without sufficient dollars, human service organizations cannot 
recruit and retain the direct support professionals and personal care 
attendants who provide essential healthcare and community inclusion 
services for seniors and people with disabilities.
  This is just one example, among many. This is a picture of Marisa. 
She is from Allegheny County, PA. You can see by the picture--you may 
not see it from a distance--that the T-shirt says: ``Proud to Be Your 
Neighbor.'' You can barely read the words: ``Giant Eagle.'' That is one 
of the great supermarket chains in Southeastern Pennsylvania.
  Marisa uses home and community-based services to live independently. 
She is a volunteer at a food pantry and works at one of the Giant Eagle 
grocery stores and has done that work for 19 years. All these years 
later, she is one of the beneficiaries of this program. She can get 
services in the home and in her community.
  The key to this is that without dedicated dollars, agencies like 
Achieva, one of the many agencies that does this work and provides such 
services--these agencies will not be able to provide services that 
people with disabilities like Marisa and families like hers need.
  Pennsylvania, like many States, has so-called centers for independent 
living. They told me just last week on a phone call that as for helping 
people move from a nursing home or a congregate care setting, where 
often the risk is higher with the virus, often their ability to move 
people from that setting who want to go into a home or an apartment is 
fully dependent on the dollars from the funding they have. They have 
been able to move some people, but very few because they don't have the 
funding to move them.
  Another implication of this concern we have is that the direct 
service providers have scaled back these services. Most don't have 
enough cash reserve for longer than a month because of the lack of 
funding. Just imagine that.
  I introduced a bill 4 months ago, S. 3544, which provided dedicated 
dollars to respond to this crisis. But it wasn't until the HEROES Act 
passed by the House--not yet passed by the Senate, but passed by the 
House 10 weeks ago--included provisions of my bill, which was supported 
here in the Senate by 28 Senators.
  I have just two more issues. One is Medicaid and the other issue I 
will address is on the liability debate.
  Of course, we know what the Medicaid program is. It has been around 
since 1965. Medicaid is the program that helps 75 million Americans. If 
you add up the children on Medicaid, which is about 31 million 
children, and people with disabilities, which is another 9 million, you 
have roughly 40 of the 75 million.
  Medicaid is not just a program. It is a program that saves lives, 
maybe even more so in the middle of a public health emergency that we 
have been in all these months.
  Medicaid is also, I believe, a reflection of who we are as a nation. 
I think it also reflects whom we value. That is why Medicaid is so 
critical to seniors living in nursing homes who are sometimes from 
relatively middle-class families who could not afford long-term care.
  Many Americans with disabilities--as I mentioned, 9 million at last 
count, and of course, 31 million children--many of them live in rural 
Pennsylvania, in rural America. In fact, if you look at it by 
percentage, it is often the case that in rural counties, there is a 
higher percentage of children on Medicaid and the Children's Health 
Insurance Program. There is a higher percentage in a rural county than 
children in a county that has a lot of urban communities in it. So 
rural and small town America depend heavily upon Medicaid.

[[Page S4917]]

  They depend upon Medicaid in another way when you consider rural 
hospitals. Often the largest employer in a rural county in 
Pennsylvania--or the second or third largest employer at least--is a 
rural hospital. We have 48 of our 67 counties that are rural, and in 
those 48 rural counties, more than half of the top employers in the 
county are hospitals--or I should say the top or the second or third 
highest employers. So, of the top three employers in the most rural 
counties, you have a hospital--and Medicaid is so vital to those rural 
hospitals--operating on a thin margin and is evermore stressed in a 
pandemic.
  Medicaid expansion, of course, made it possible for millions of 
Americans to get healthcare through the Affordable Care Act, and we 
just saw yesterday, in the State of Missouri, the vote there to expand 
Medicaid. It has been happening in a lot of States that may not have 
embraced Medicaid expansion a number of years ago but that are now 
embracing it.
  Medicaid is a safety net in this time of crisis, in terms of the 
economic and jobs crisis we are living through. It, of course, impacts 
State budgets. One of the biggest expenditures in State budgets is 
Medicaid. For example, in our State of Pennsylvania, our unemployment 
rate in June was 13 percent, and there were 821,000 people out of work. 
In some counties, the unemployment rate is 14 percent or 15 percent or 
16 percent or 17 percent. So, when 821,000 people are out of work in a 
State, a lot of them have lost their healthcare, and they have turned 
to Medicaid.
  Now, in the Families First bill, way back in the early part of March, 
the matching dollars--the so-called FMAP, which means the Federal 
matching dollars for Medicaid--were increased by 6.2 percent. That was 
a good step in the right direction, but Governors in blue and red 
States will tell you now, as a lot of other people will tell you now, 
they need an additional increase in Medicaid. I think the 14 percent 
FMAP, or matching dollar percentage, in the Heroes Act in the House 
made a lot of sense. I hope we can get to that number in the bill we 
are considering or we hope to be considering soon.
  The Republican bill does not have additional dollars for Medicaid, 
matching dollars, despite the fact that many of the Republican 
Governors around the country have asked for this kind of help. So I 
hope that will change as the negotiations move forward.
  I want to end on time if I can, maybe in the next 10 minutes. That is 
the goal.
  Finally, I want to talk about the liability shield issue. There are a 
lot of different perspectives on this. Let me talk about it in the 
context of those we are discussing tonight--seniors in nursing homes, 
people with disabilities who need home- and community-based services, 
folks who are in communities of color, and others who need the benefit 
of Medicaid.
  In my judgment, the Republicans' proposal, when you look at the 
liability proposal, would slam the doors of justice on those who want 
to bring an action. We have had a lot of commentary lately about our 
criminal justice system and its defects, its shortcomings, and even 
about the racism that, I believe, permeates that system. In this 
context, we are talking about the civil justice system.
  What do we do about that part of our justice system--the ability for 
a citizen to bring an action in a court of law to deal with an injury 
of some kind either by way of negligence or intentional conduct?
  In this context, we have a proposal by the majority to short-circuit, 
to undermine, that system of justice. It will affect those we are here 
to talk about tonight in very real ways whether they are low-income 
workers or people with disabilities or older adults or even, more 
broadly, essential workers.
  Why do I say that?
  If you are going to use a crisis like we are in now to try to achieve 
gains that some in this Chamber have tried to achieve for years in the 
so-called tort system--really, the civil justice system--and you paint 
with a very broad brush, you are going to slam those doors of justice 
pretty tightly.
  Just by way of comment from a Georgetown law professor, David 
Vladeck, in reference to this proposal, he recently explained the 
``extreme reach'' of the proposal vastly exceeds ``any prior `tort 
reform' bills that have been introduced in Congress.'' He went on to 
call this corporate liability shield provision ``essentially 
impenetrable.'' That is how he described the strength of this shield. 
He warned that such proposals would give ``license for irresponsible 
and reckless conduct.''
  When it comes to liability, it would also preempt all State laws 
requiring businesses to act reasonably. It would impose a heightened--
so-called--clear and convincing burden of proof on plaintiffs instead 
of the typical preponderance-of-the-evidence standard
  We know that in our system, in a civil case, the preponderance-of-
the-evidence standard is the lowest standard. Just a little more than 
50 percent of the jury would have to make the determination in terms of 
liability. We know that, in the criminal system, in order to find 
guilt, it has to be found beyond a reasonable doubt. That is the 
highest standard. There are some cases that are given the middle 
standard of--so-called--clear and convincing. That burden of proof is 
right in the middle. In a civil lawsuit, this bill would elevate it 
from a preponderance to clear and convincing, which would be, I think, 
a step in the wrong direction.
  The proposal would also force a worker, a consumer, a resident of a 
nursing home, or even a patient to show that a business failed to make 
``reasonable efforts'' to comply with any applicable government 
standard.
  The issue here is that the Federal Government hasn't issued any 
mandatory standards. So these entities--many of them employers of one 
kind or another, sometimes very large employers--would be able to 
follow any standard they would choose. They could choose a local 
standard or a State standard or a Federal standard even if the one they 
were to choose would be the weakest standard as it relates to the 
protection of the worker.
  What the administration could have done, which I called for and many 
Members of the Senate called for, would have been to have promulgated a 
standard against which the actions of an employer could be measured.
  One idea was to promulgate an emergency temporary standard. I don't 
know why the Department of Labor wouldn't do that in the middle of the 
worst public health crisis in a century--why the Department of Labor 
would not simply take that step. That would give clarity to employers. 
That would give clarity to so many Americans about what the standard 
would be in a workplace to keep people safe from a raging virus, but 
they chose not to do that.
  Without any mandatory standards, it is wide open. Then we are 
supposed to believe that taking away the right to bring an action is 
somehow going to be just fine for a period of time. An emergency 
temporary standard by the Department of Labor should have been 
promulgated months ago, and it could still do it and remove the 
uncertainty--the lack of clarity--that prevails right now.
  With regard to the liability provisions, this bill would immunize 
healthcare providers and facilities from any claims arising from 
``coronavirus-related healthcare services.''
  That is pretty broad. How does the bill define that? The bill defines 
that as follows: the treatment of patients ``for any purpose,'' not 
merely the treatment of COVID-19 patients during this public health 
emergency. That is about as broad as it gets, and that impenetrable 
liability shield would be in place for several years.
  It gets worse when it comes to people with disabilities. To add 
insult to injury, just consider what we did last week. Our Nation 
celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities 
Act--a law that extends civil rights protections to people with 
disabilities in every State. President George H. W. Bush signed the 
bill into law, and Republicans and Democrats and Independents all over 
the country celebrated its 30th anniversary.
  Literally, the next day, the majority proposed this corporate 
liability shield, which would blow a hole in the protections provided 
by the so-called ADA after the celebration of 30 years. That bill, the 
Americans with Disabilities Act, makes it possible for people with 
disabilities to be full participants in American society, but this 
corporate liability shield would undermine those very protections.

[[Page S4918]]

  It would decimate Federal protections granted under other landmark 
employment and civil rights laws, including the Age Discrimination in 
Employment Act, the so-called ADEA; the Genetic Information 
Nondiscrimination Act; and OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health 
Act, which is one of the seminal actions, or pieces of legislation, to 
protect workers. It would also adversely impact the Fair Labor 
Standards Act as well as title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I 
don't know how you could have more of a wrecking ball in place for 
these landmark pieces of legislation in the middle of a pandemic.
  I will wrap up by saying that we have a lot of work to do, obviously, 
in these negotiations. In the midst of the negotiations, we ought to be 
thinking about the most vulnerable, whether they be older Americans, 
children, people with disabilities, or folks in communities of color, 
who have been adversely impacted in so many ways and evermore so in 
this time of crisis.
  I will not enter into it the Record, because it will be in the Record 
anyway, but I am holding in my hand a letter that we sent to Leader 
McConnell that outlines all of these concerns. It is a letter, led by 
Senator Duckworth from Illinois, Senator Warren from Massachusetts, and 
me, as well as now more than 40 of our colleagues, which goes through 
these concerns that we have for investments in strategies to get the 
nursing home death number down and for investments in home- and 
community-based services. It goes through the concerns we raised about 
the corporate liability shield, as well as about an overdue investment 
in Medicaid, which is the program that takes care of the most 
vulnerable among us.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am grateful to have the chance to 
follow my friend from Pennsylvania, who has shown such great leadership 
with respect to healthcare and particularly with respect to the nursing 
home population. I am delighted to join him to discuss what COVID is 
doing to the elder Americans who are in our nursing homes and long-term 
care facilities, because this illness has swept like a savage scythe 
through those facilities.
  In my small State of Rhode Island, 750 residents of long-term care 
facilities have died of COVID. We just crossed 1,000 deaths statewide, 
and 750 are at these facilities. If that doesn't attract the concern of 
this Senate, something is very wrong with this Senate.
  Across the country, the death toll in nursing homes and long-term 
care facilities, just as Senator Casey said, is 62,000 Americans. My 
dad served for 5 years in the Vietnam conflict. In the decades of the 
Vietnam conflict, we sustained over 58,000 American military 
casualties.
  That means the death toll in our nursing homes and long-term care 
facilities--just in COVID, just in these months--is greater than the 
death toll of our soldiers in Vietnam.
  And if that is not enough to attract the attention of the Senate, 
something is wrong with the Senate.
  In Rhode Island, there is a little nursing home--just by way of 
example--called Hallworth House. Hallworth House is a great little 
place. It has been operating for half a century. It opened in 1968. It 
has a five-star rating from CMS. They do a great job.
  It was announced that it will permanently close at the end of August 
due to COVID. It had 51 residents, and by June, 29 had been infected; 
12 had died.
  Of its staff, 20 were infected and had to be quarantined. It couldn't 
survive that. It is closing.
  And the stories behind the institutions like Hallworth House are the 
stories of people like Therese in Lincoln. The Senator from 
Pennsylvania is amicably disposed to women named Therese.
  Therese's mom Germaine is 88 years old. She has Alzheimer's. She is a 
resident of a nursing home in nearby Manville, RI. That facility has 
not allowed visitation since March 11. Therese hasn't seen her mom 
since March 11. This is a woman with Alzheimer's, living in a facility. 
As a result, her mom's cognition has declined. The presence of her 
daughter was part of what kept her active, kept her moving. She used to 
take her for walks every day.
  Now, the best they can do is Skype, and her mom barely recognizes the 
little image on Skype.
  So behind 750 deaths, behind collapsing institutions that have served 
elderly people for 50 years are these personal stories of broken 
relationships.
  Barry in Narragansett has been married to his wife Dorothy for 46 
years. Now he can only see her through Plexiglas and only twice. That 
is a real cost.
  Germaine, 88 years old, not being able to see her daughter; Barry and 
Dorothy, after 46 years of marriage, separated by Plexiglas, unable to 
see each other.
  Those are small concerns, but you can multiply them across the 
population of our nursing homes and of our long-term care facilities.
  And if that isn't something that the Senate will care about, then 
there is something wrong with the Senate.
  We have tried to give the Senate something to do, something we can be 
for. So we have the Nursing Home COVID-19 Protection and Prevention 
Act. It has $20 billion for staffing support, for testing--because 
there is not enough testing--for personal protective equipment, for the 
staff who serve, really heroically and tragically underpaid in these 
circumstances, in these facilities.
  It encourages successful practices like cohorting. It provides 
responses like surge teams. When a place becomes so hit with COVID that 
the staff are quarantined out, who is going to come in? We were talking 
about deploying the National Guard in nursing homes. No, we need 
trained surge teams that provide for those things and data so people 
learn fast and know what to do to take care of this.
  We have a solution, and I hope very much the Senate will care enough 
to consider our solution in whatever bill we end up beginning to 
negotiate on.
  I will close by talking about what has been called liability 
protection but is, in fact, corporate negligence amnesty.
  I have been around here a little while, and I have been through the 
immigration debate. And in this building, we heard people talk about 
children--children who were brought to this country who were innocent 
of any misconduct. In fact, they were minors. They were, by law, 
innocent, and they had done no one any harm. Children guilty of no 
misconduct, innocent who had done no one any harm. And what was the 
word we heard? ``Amnesty.'' We can't have amnesty. There are laws 
around here that have to be followed--for children who were innocent 
and had done no one any harm.
  What does the corporate negligence amnesty bill do? It gives 
corporations that are not innocent, that are negligent, that have 
caused harm, and that have even caused death, amnesty.
  If that is the standard, when you are small and innocent and a child 
and have done no harm, then we are going to be outraged at any amnesty 
for you, at any kindness, but if you are a big corporation and you 
actually are negligent and as a result of your negligence someone dies 
of this disease, what is the solution? Amnesty. That is what we will 
do. We will help our corporate friends.
  If that is where this Senate is going to stand, then there is 
something wrong with this Senate.
  Oh, and by the way, this is no small thing. This is no small thing, 
by the way. The right to a jury began, really, at about the time of 
Henry II, in the 12th century, and followed through English common law, 
through Blackstone's legendary commentaries, the book that informed the 
early creation of American law, through to the Declaration of 
Independence, where the jury was part of the casus belli of our 
country, and then into our Constitution.
  This is an important part of our Anglo-American rule of law 
tradition, and the fact that we are willing to throw it over the side 
because big corporations come and say: We can't bear the indignity of 
having to be treated equally and fairly in court with these people we 
are so used to pushing around in legislatures where we have lobbyists 
and money--that is why we are going to throw out eight centuries of 
tradition and learning?
  Do you want to know how long ago that was? There is a great movie 
called

[[Page S4919]]

``Lion in Winter,'' a wonderful movie about Henry II. That is when this 
tradition started, and we are going to throw it out here for 
corporations that have been so negligent as to cause death and injury?
  Something is wrong
  I yield the floor, and I thank the Senator from Connecticut, my 
friend, Senator Blumenthal, for his indulgence for that historical 
exercise.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I would be happy to listen for much 
longer to that kind of eloquence and enormously powerful and 
significant comment on the blanket shield that some of our Republican 
colleagues seek to provide to wrongdoers, whether they are corporate 
wrongdoers or others who have severely harmed innocent people.
  And it is not just about the rule of law that provides accountability 
for victims and survivors of wrongdoing, it is also an important part 
of the deterrent function of our legal system.
  Accountability and penalties for wrongdoing are essential to 
protecting vulnerable people in the future, and so our side will stand 
for keeping the courthouse doors open. Those rights that some of our 
Republican colleagues would destroy are essential not only to the 
Anglo-Saxon concept of rule of law, they are also important to 
vindicating right.
  And some of the folks who lived in nursing homes and who passed away 
as a result of this virus are veterans of wars. They fought for these 
rights. They risked their lives and sacrificed, and many were wounded, 
and they have now reached an age where they are in nursing homes.
  But one of the reasons they fought was to preserve these very rights 
that some of our colleagues would sacrifice so needlessly and so 
readily.
  Today, we are here not to look back and to lay blame. There will be 
time enough to establish a commission, as I hope there will be, a 9/11-
type commission, to learn from the mistakes that were made. Obviously, 
we need to hold accountable other countries, including China, who may 
have failed to reveal the extent and magnitude of the health threat 
posed by this pandemic. We need to hold accountable officials in this 
country who may have failed to warn and who denied the severity of this 
pandemic.
  We need to look forward, and right now, in this relief package, save 
America from the raging pandemic that continues, a health crisis, and 
from the collapse of our economy, happening before our eyes, an 
economic crisis.
  And part of our package must be to provide funds for those nursing 
homes where those veterans live, where grandparents live, community 
leaders, people who have served our Nation in all kinds of capacity, 
raised our children, served in our religious places of worship, and 
been there for us.
  They have served and sacrificed, and we owe them places that are safe 
and clean and, yes, healthy--at least conforming to standards that we 
know are necessary to preserve them from disease.
  And here is the blunt truth: A disproportionate number of the deaths 
have occurred in these nursing homes.
  In Connecticut, as is the case in many other States, the pandemic has 
hit nursing homes especially hard.
  Of over 4,400 COVID-19 deaths in Connecticut so far, about 65 percent 
of all of them--that is 2,900--have been amongst individuals living in 
nursing homes. That is a searing indictment of our society. It is 
staggering.
  And so I am proud to join with my colleague, Senator Casey, others 
who have come to the floor, like Senator Whitehouse. I especially want 
to thank Senator Casey because his leadership has been so instrumental 
in this effort.
  We need now to make nursing home reform and funding part of the next 
package we pass here. We have all seen the signs ``Heroes Work Here'' 
outside nursing homes, and they are well deserved.
  I have visited a number of them. Most recently, the Riverside Health 
and Rehabilitation Center in East Hartford and the Mary Wade facility 
in New Haven.
  What struck me most was, in fact, the heroism of these workers. 
Heroes do work there. They have put their lives on the line. They have 
reported for duty, despite the threats to their own well-being and the 
threats to their own health and safety and their families. They have 
been there for the people who live in those nursing homes. They deserve 
to be recognized and rewarded, not just in work but in money, in 
hazardous duty pay. The $13 per hour on top of regular wages that is 
part of the HEROES Act. It is known as the Heroes Fund. It should be 
part of what we do next as a relief package. We need to put our money 
where our mouth is in saying we support those essential frontline 
workers. Let's recognize and reward them but also retain them and make 
sure we recruit more of them because we need more of them.

  Let's put our money where our mouth is, not just for our frontline 
workers, not just for the hazardous duty pay, not just for the Heroes 
Fund but for the people they serve in the conditions and care that 
prevail in these nursing homes. The heroes are not only the workers, 
they are the residents because they are veterans, teachers, 
firefighters, nurses, parents and grandparents, friends, community 
leaders, mentors. They are the Little League coaches who are now at an 
age where they are not going to the baseball field. They are the 
firefighters and police who once stood proudly in protecting our 
communities and now depend on others to help them stand.
  We know that older Americans are more vulnerable to this insidious 
virus. We cannot simply surrender. We must act and we must protect 
those nursing home residents. Let's also be blunt about where the 
effects fall because these health disparities also have a racial equity 
component. They not only affect older people who are more vulnerable, 
they also affect older people in communities of color even more 
heavily.
  Those disparities are unacceptable. A New York Times analysis of 
nursing homes found that nearly all--97 percent--of Connecticut nursing 
homes where at least a quarter of the residents are Black or Latino 
reported a coronavirus case. So there is a gap between homes with 
significant minority populations and homes that do not have them. 
Addressing this crisis in our nursing homes means we must address the 
racism that accounts for those disparities and mars our Nation. We can 
never forget that these residents of nursing homes are more than 
numbers, more than statistics; they are real people. As shocking as the 
numbers are, they are less dramatic than what you and I have seen when 
we visit those nursing homes. And my guess is, everybody listening to 
me now, almost all Americans are touched by the deaths that have 
occurred there in one way or another, directly or indirectly.
  So I am proud to join Senator Casey in fighting for the Nursing Home 
COVID-19 Protection and Prevention Act. It would provide $20 billion in 
emergency funding specifically targeted for protecting those nursing 
home residents and providing the kind of personal protective equipment, 
training, and other kinds of resources that are necessary for making 
sure that the heroes, the frontline workers, have the capacity to do 
their jobs and the heroes who live in those nursing homes both receive 
the care and resources they need.
  I am also proud to have introduced legislation with Senator Booker, 
the Quality Care for Nursing Home Residents and Workers During COVID-19 
Act, which would provide for additional reforms to address the 
egregious number of nursing home deaths in Connecticut and throughout 
the country. It would require weekly tests of every resident and 
testing for every shift for healthcare workers. It would also mandate 
that all healthcare workers have sufficient PPE and comprehensive 
safety training around COVID-19, and each facility have a full-time 
infection-control preventionist on staff to keep residents and workers 
safe. It would guarantee that sufficient staff is available to 
facilitate weekly virtual visits between residents and their families. 
The sense of isolation of many of these nursing home residents is one 
of the major failings of how they have been treated during this 
pandemic.
  We need to move forward without delay. There is no excuse for 
spending time debating this issue. We all know that these steps are 
necessary. There

[[Page S4920]]

should be no politics. Nursing homes do not provide care for red or 
blue residents. They do not employ red or blue frontline workers. This 
cause should be bipartisan.
  Unfortunately, the Republican proposal fails to provide virtually any 
resources--certainly nothing like the $20 billion that we are asking. 
So I hope we will move forward, as reasonable, caring minds and hearts 
must do, and make sure we provide the resources necessary to do justice 
to these heroes.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois

                          ____________________