[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 140 (Thursday, August 6, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5259-S5260]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CORONAVIRUS
Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I want to thank both of my friends from
Oregon. We are Oregon strong on the floor. We have great, powerful,
effective Senators from Oregon, and I want to thank Senator Merkley for
his words, as well as my colleagues and friends from Delaware and New
Hampshire and Maryland.
We are on the floor today because we know this isn't just another
regular Thursday where you can close up for the week and go home and do
whatever is going to be done and then maybe come back Monday, maybe
Tuesday, maybe Wednesday. We don't know because we don't know what is
happening on negotiations. But, oh, well, there is no real sense of
urgency anyway, right?
There is an incredible sense of urgency, and, as we have been saying
this afternoon, this should not be treated like just another end of the
Senate week on a Thursday afternoon. We have the largest health
pandemic in a hundred years. As of today, it is about 160,000 deaths in
this country. You can't even wrap your head around that: 160,000
people. Yet we are a little over 4 percent of the world's population.
We have 25 percent of the deaths.
This did not have to happen. This should never have happened. It
should never have happened. And to be in a situation where people are
acting as if we have got all the time in the world--how many people
have to die before we wrap our arms around what is happening and have a
national strategy on testing and on contact tracing and a national
strategy to make sure we have all of the testing materials and the PPE
and everything that our doctors and nurses and other professionals need
and we are treating this with the seriousness that it deserves?
This is a health pandemic. We have to get our arms around this. We
have to be able to manage it until we can get vaccines. We did come
together and work together on a bipartisan basis in the beginning. That
is what is just so frustrating and disheartening and maddening about
this situation we are in now, as we go forward, because it is not done.
I wish it was, for my own family and everyone else's. It is not even
close to being done, and we have a responsibility to continue to be
there and to have people's backs to address the pandemic and all of the
economic hardship that has happened as a result of that.
Now, in the CARES package, it was comprehensive. It was great that we
were able to come together. One of the things was that the Treasury,
the Fed, was able to basically have the capacity to have a safety net
under the stock market, under our large businesses: Don't worry. Keep
investing. We have got a safety net for you.
But for somebody on unemployment, somebody who is worrying about
feeding their children tonight, tomorrow, the next day--somebody who is
worried that the water is going to get shut off or they are going to
lose their shelter right in the middle of a pandemic when we tell
people, ``stay home and, by the way, wash your hands frequently,'' and
then the water gets turned off or you have no shelter and you are on
the street or you can't feed the kids, or the additional money--the
$600 that was allowing you to pay those bills--goes away, which is
about a 60-percent cut, in Michigan, for people getting help--no safety
net for you. Unh-unh.
There are over 31 million people right now who are on unemployment
insurance, and somehow, people want to have us believe that nobody
wants to work, that there are over 31 million jobs out there and people
just don't want to take them; they just don't want to work.
I can tell you that is not true in Michigan. People in Michigan work.
We grow things. We make things. We innovate. We build things. People in
Michigan work and work hard.
It is not their fault that we have a 100-year health pandemic that
has pushed everybody back down and taken away the capacity for
businesses to be safely open and for people to continue their jobs.
People would expect that in the United States of America all of us
would care about that and that it wouldn't just be another Thursday
afternoon, closing up shop for the weekend or beyond.
[[Page S5260]]
There is one other thing I want to stress when we talk about
supporting communities right now. The President said: It is up to the
Governors to step up. It is up to local communities to step up to keep
people safe. No national response is necessary.
It is the Governors, the mayors, the county commissioners. They have
done that. They have done that. They took all of their resources to
make sure they could do everything humanly possible to make sure they
could help people be safe: Get the PPE, create a way for people to get
testing, do all of the other things to help people. Now, for the Senate
and for the President of the United States to say that we have no
responsibility to step up and have their back and support them is
incredibly irresponsible.
What I find so interesting--who are we talking about locally? We want
the restaurants to open. Yet you have to have a food inspector before
you can open the restaurant. In Michigan, that is funded through the
county--through county government.
We are concerned about first responders--police and fire and 9-1-1
call centers and all of the people who respond to keep us safe. Do you
know who the largest group is that will be losing their jobs without
help for local communities and States? It is the first responders and
law enforcement.
In fact, I had a very prominent police leader in Michigan tell me
that the only people he saw trying to defund the police were Donald
Trump and Mitch McConnell because they didn't and aren't--the Senate
Republicans aren't willing to step up to support funding for first
responders, as well as the public health department, as well as the
teachers, as well as everyone else involved.
These are not normal times. These are not normal times in terms of
the health risks for families. These are not normal times in terms of
our economy and what is happening--not even to count the fact that
racial disparities are on full display now in front of us in every part
of our economy and services.
This is not a normal time. This should not be a normal Thursday
afternoon in the U.S. Senate. Every single one of my Democratic
colleagues feels a sense of urgency and panic about what is happening.
People need help. There are incredible hardships, and they deserve that
help.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed help over 2\1/2\ months ago.
Senator McConnell at the time said that he felt no sense of urgency. In
fact, he suggested that States and cities go bankrupt. That is one way
to do it: Lay off all the police officers, firefighters, food
inspectors, teachers.
People in our country--and I know people in Michigan--feel an
incredible sense of urgency to both manage and get beyond this
healthcare pandemic, which is not going to be easy. It is going to take
all of us working together. But they are anxious to do that, and they
are anxious to open up the economy safely and to open up our schools
safely and to know that there is some sense of normalcy that we can
count on again.
That is going to take all of us working together on a bipartisan
basis to get it done. It is going to take a sense of urgency, a sense
of responsibility for the role that we play at this moment in time in
the history of our country and people's lives. It is going to take a
lot of hard work. It is going to take political will more than anything
else because the other things we can do. We have to decide we to want
to do them.
I hope very, very soon that Senator McConnell, our Senate Republican
colleagues, the President and the White House decide that they want to
work with us to really get things done for people all across our
country.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
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