[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 155 (Wednesday, September 9, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5488-S5490]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                              Coronavirus

  Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, for the past several weeks I have had 
the opportunity to be able to travel around the great State of 
Oklahoma. I have literally been from Guymon to Talihina, to 
Bartlesville, to Lawton to cover as much space as I could and talk to 
as many people as I could.
  Obviously, we were in smaller groups, with masks and social 
distancing and doing all the things we could to take care of each 
other, but taking the moment to meet with school superintendents, 
parents, teachers, healthcare providers and hospital administrators, 
small business owners and employees of large and small businesses, not-
for-profits and their volunteers, law enforcement individuals, city 
managers, mayors, city councilmen, State leadership.
  I wanted to hear what was happening on the ground in my State in 
order to know what needs to be addressed because there has been a lot 
of noise in Washington, DC, about what needs to be done on COVID.
  There are many people in the national press who are struck by the 
fact that $3 trillion has already been allocated to deal with COVID-19 
and a tremendous number of changes have already occurred. But in this 
town there are a significant number of people who say: We just spent $3 
trillion. That was fun. Let's do it all over again and see how we can 
spend even more.
  My focus has been very simple: What is needed to be able to beat the 
virus? What I heard all over Oklahoma wasn't ``Go do more; just spend 
more and create new programs'' but ``How can we beat this virus back so 
that we can actually get to a moment where we can function again 
economically as a nation?''
  People are returning to work, but they are asking very basic 
questions. The first of those is ``This is a health crisis. What do we 
do?''
  The bill that has just been released, which we are voting on in the 
Senate tomorrow, has a whole series of issues tailored to actually work 
on beating the virus back and getting our economy going and helping to 
protect our families. That is the design of this. It is not just doing 
something; it is trying to do the right things to actually help us get 
through this and get to the other side, starting with money for 
testing--not just additional testing but new types of testing to make 
sure that we have even faster tests out there and that we have more 
testing that actually addresses the issue of how we can do it on-site, 
get an accurate result, and not wait weeks. While we literally have 
millions of tests that have been done, we have some tests that take a 
long time to get back. In March, we were dealing with ``Let's get a 
test,''

[[Page S5489]]

and now we are dealing with ``Let's get a faster test.'' That is a lot 
of the focus of the funding here: faster testing.
  On vaccines, there are six vaccines right now that are in human 
trials or that are approaching human trials, which is remarkable, 
thinking about the history of vaccines and how long it has taken. But 
there was a significant amount of money invested in this in February 
and March in previous bills to be able to fast-track the research, and 
that has made a difference. Now it is a matter of moving it from the 
research phase to trials to actually implementing it nationwide. So 
there is significant money for testing, for vaccines, and for 
treatments.
  Secondly, how do we get our schools open again? I heard over and over 
again from parents, administrators, and teachers: We want to get our 
schools open again--public, private, charter, online, whatever it may 
be. Those parents who are taxpayers and individuals--regardless of 
where they choose to send their child to school or if they choose to 
keep their child at home for school--want to know what is going to be 
done to help our kids get educated. While the vast majority of funding 
and authority for education is in the States, there is a Federal 
connection here that we should be able to help, especially kids with 
special needs. They have unique challenges during this time of COVID-
19, and we need to be able to get those kids back in school and get 
them the additional care they need during this time period.
  What all parents are saying to me is this: I want the best possible 
moment. I do not want my kid being written off for the future because 
someone didn't choose to invest in them now.
  This bill has $105 billion toward education--public, private, 
charter, homeschool. It has tax credits built in to assist parents to 
be able to choose where they want their kids to go. It has the ability 
for more schools to go online to help through this season. It has 
additional dollars to be used for transportation because many school 
districts are doing multiple bus routes to keep down the number of 
people on individual buses. All of those things are helpful. We want to 
help get our kids back in school and make sure that this is successful.
  During this moment, it has been interesting. As I talked to many 
superintendents and educators, they all said to me the same thing: We 
are working hard to get our kids back to class and to do the things 
they need to do.
  Then they would pause and say: For years we have talked about 
innovation in education, but we have been stuck doing the same thing 
over and over again and have been frustrated with the results. This 
pandemic has forced us to innovate in education in ways that we only 
dreamed about years ago. We need to be prepared during this season not 
only to continue to educate our kids in the best way possible but to 
take notes on the best innovations across the country in education 
because we have said as a nation that we need to be stronger in how we 
are educating our kids and the end product of that and how we are 
preparing them for the workforce. This is that moment we should pay 
attention to, as well, in the education innovations that are actually 
going on in my State and in many States around the country.
  There is money in this, as well, for childcare. This has been an 
interesting challenge. Childcare facilities have fewer people who are 
actually allowed to be there--the children who are able to be there--
but the profit margin doesn't work for them to have all those employees 
and fewer children. We want them to be able to be there and be 
successful and survive this, so we added additional dollars for 
childcare.
  We have additional dollars for ag because in some areas of 
agriculture across the country, they have done very well, but some have 
really struggled. If we all want to be able to eat at the end of this, 
we better make sure that ag survives and thrives through this.
  I met with a lot of small business leaders and heard a lot of 
different conversations. They were very appreciative of the Paycheck 
Protection Program. In my State, 61,000 small businesses and not-for-
profits took advantage of the Paycheck Protection Program, and many of 
them told me that they would not be open today if it weren't for that. 
They are grateful this body came together to deal with the Paycheck 
Protection Program because it made a difference in my State and many 
other States around the country.
  The bill we are putting on the floor on Thursday deals specifically 
with the next round of paycheck protection, limiting it to the hardest 
hit small businesses and nonprofits, those that have had the largest 
amount of revenue loss and that are the smallest of businesses. We need 
them to be able to survive through this. Nothing is going to make them 
whole, and the goal of this shouldn't be to make every business 
whole. We can't financially sustain that as a country, but we can try 
to get people through this and get to the other side of it.

  We are all going to have to innovate. Most of the small businesses 
that I talked to told me about the innovations they were doing and how 
they used to do business one way, and, within 36 hours, they figured 
out a way to do it a different way. That is the American system. That 
is free market and capitalism at their best--that at the moment of 
struggle, you can go innovate and do things different and be successful 
with that. That is what we have to continue to protect--not too much 
government oversight and control of everything that, in the days and 
moments where we have to innovate, people can't innovate because they 
have so much government mandates on them.
  I was grateful to the Trump administration for how much flexibility 
they gave to the process, not only to waivers for child lunches through 
the schools and flexibility there, but flexibility for businesses to be 
able to innovate in a very difficult moment.
  We will need another round--a smaller round, but another round--for 
the hardest hit businesses for the Paycheck Protection Program. Our 
not-for-profits told me over and over how much work they are doing 
during this time period. We need to make sure those not-for-profits not 
only survive it but thrive.
  As I have said to this body before, we have three safety nets in 
America: the family; churches, not-for-profits, and faith-based 
institutions; and then government is third. A lot of people look at our 
safety net as being all the government programs, but that is the last 
in this cycle. If our families aren't strong, then individuals 
struggle. If our faith-based entities and our not-for-profits that take 
care of so much human need are not strong and thriving and those 
volunteers aren't engaged, there is no way the government can keep up 
with the issues.
  So just keeping not-for-profits open can't be the goal for this. We 
have to keep them thriving. Those not-for-profits around the country 
are taking care of the homeless, the hungry, and the hurting, and we 
need to find ways to strengthen them. The best way to do that is not to 
have some government program to establish the best way to identify good 
not-for-profits. The best way to do that is to allow the American 
people to look at what is working in their neighborhoods and their 
communities, because they will invest their own dollars to do that.
  In the CARES Act, I pushed for and we got a $300 write-off on your 
taxes if every American will give $300 to the not-for-profit of their 
choice. In this proposal, that doubles for the individuals and 
quadruples for the family. This is a $600 tax write-off for an 
individual or a $1,200 tax write-off for a family if they will donate 
to a not-for-profit.
  Why do we choose to do that? Because not-for-profits are way more 
efficient at taking care of human need than the government is and 
because they have a face. They are interacting with a family. They are 
interacting with an individual directly. They are not dealing with 
someone on the phone or online. It is not a check that you receive or a 
form that you fill out. It is a person that you meet with face to face 
who says: How can I help you? And it is a volunteer that will walk 
through life with you.
  Those faith-based ministries and those secular and other not-for-
profits out there are making an enormous difference, and the best thing 
that we can do to make sure they thrive in this moment is to make sure 
that we incentivize individuals that give to them by saying: You can 
give this to Uncle Sam or you can give this to a local charity of your 
choice. Either

[[Page S5490]]

way, it is going to strengthen individuals. Go engage with that.
  That is in this bill, and it is important that we continue to walk 
alongside them and all of those not-for-profits to make sure they 
thrive because we need them thriving, not just surviving in this 
moment.
  There is one other thing that I want to identify. There are a lot of 
things that are in this bill. It is liability protections. Businesses 
and universities in my State said: We desperately need the Federal 
Government to clarify liability protections.
  Now, there have been individuals on the other side of the aisle that 
have said: We don't want to do that. We want to just leave that up to 
the lawyers in the days ahead who have lawsuits. What is occurring is 
there are many businesses in my State that are holding back and many 
schools in my State that are holding back trying to figure out what 
happens next for fear of what could be a series of lawsuits. They just 
want clarity. They want to do business where they can protect their 
employees, protect the customers or individuals or students that are 
there that are around them, but they also want to be able to operate 
and function again, and they don't feel like they can do that without 
basic liability protections and liability definitions. This bill 
provides that.
  Now, I have heard some in the media and some even in this building 
who have said this is a pared-down skinny bill. Only in Washington, DC, 
is a $300 billion piece of legislation considered skinny--only here. 
Over and over again at home, when I talk to people across the State of 
Oklahoma and I would present what has already been done in the previous 
acts--the $3 trillion that have already been spent on COVID in the 
months before and the proposals that we have now--they would quietly 
pull me aside at the end of the meeting and they would say almost 
exactly the same thing: Where is this money coming from?
  People are worried about the virus, but they are also worried about 
what is coming next. People are used to taking out a loan if there is a 
major storm or a major life event, knowing I have to take this loan out 
to get through it, but they also realize that for every loan they take 
out, they have to pay that back. The people in my State are saying the 
same thing: Where is this money coming from? How are we ever going to 
pay it back? And they are shocked that the House of Representatives and 
many in this room are pushing a bill that is $3.5 trillion in spending 
on top of the $3 trillion that was already spent earlier this year, and 
they just gasp when they think about an additional $6.5 trillion of 
deficit in a single year. They wonder what happens with that, and I 
respond to them: So do I. That is why we are trying to be as tailored 
and as focused as we can possibly be to meet the needs that need to be 
done but to not just throw a big number out and to say we have to go 
big. We already have gone big earlier this year.
  Now, it is not just ``can we throw money out the door from 
Washington, DC,'' but it is ``what do we have to do to get to the other 
side of this for our health, for our students, for the basic operations 
of our economy and survival to be able to get on the other side of 
this,'' because on the other side of this is a bill that has to be paid
  We, in this body, should pay attention to that because, certainly, 
the people in Oklahoma are paying attention to that and so should we. 
There are things that need to be done, and I look forward to bringing 
this up to be able to focus on the essential things that need to be 
done for our economy right now and be able to keep moving from there.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.