[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.

                          ____________________