[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 159 (Tuesday, September 15, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5578-S5579]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                              Coronavirus

  Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, after the Senate Republicans spent 4 
months dithering and delaying, last week, Leader McConnell pushed a 
partisan, emaciated COVID bill. It was so paltry and ladened with 
poison pills that it was clearly designed to fail. And fail it did.
  It is time for the Senate Republicans to wake up to the gravity of 
the crisis in our country and work with Democrats on a comprehensive 
bill that delivers real help to Americans.
  Speaker Pelosi and I have already come down $1 trillion from our 
initial

[[Page S5579]]

request. Leader McConnell and Senate Republicans must drop the cynical 
and political games and instead work with Democrats to find common 
ground and reach a compromise.
  If Republican leadership lets the 20 Members of their caucus who 
barely want to provide any more relief and allows them to dictate their 
party's agenda, it will block the path to a compromise, and Republicans 
will have to answer to the American people.
  Our country still does not have a strong grasp on COVID-19. America 
continues to lead the world in the number of confirmed cases by far--
over 6.5 million. Nearly 200,000 Americans have died. Yet, unthinkably, 
it was reported that in one of his interviews with Bob Woodward, 
President Trump said that ``nothing more could have been done'' to 
combat the coronavirus. ``Nothing more could have been done''--that is 
what President Trump said. Of the many lies the President has told 
about COVID-19, this is one of the most monumental and one of the most 
galling.
  There were so many vital things the President could have done to 
fight COVID-19 and protect our country. In the early days of the virus, 
hospitals, medical centers, and essential workers were short on PPE, 
ventilators, swabs, masks, and gloves. President Trump never mobilized 
the resources of the Federal Government, never fully invoked the 
Defense Production Act, and never set up a national clearing house to 
get resources where they needed to go.
  It has been 7 months and President Trump still doesn't have a 
national testing strategy. There has never been a national plan for 
contact tracing. The President took months before he even encouraged 
Americans to wear a mask. This is an entire universe of actions that 
President Trump could have taken to help slow the spread of the virus 
and save American lives and American jobs, but he didn't. He never took 
strong action, never took responsibility. It is what it is.
  In many cases, it would have been better, actually, if the President 
did nothing instead of what he did. It would have been better if the 
President never downplayed the virus, never called it a hoax, never 
pushed quack medicines, never speculated about injecting bleach, and 
never held rallies.
  Every week--every week--brings new evidence that his administration 
is totally unequipped to right the ship, especially the Department of 
Health and Human Services. Over the weekend, there were numerous 
reports that political appointees at HHS have been interfering with 
CDC's report on COVID-19, trying to delay, edit out, or halt the 
release of facts that would have been politically embarrassing to the 
President. This is not the first time the administration has tried to 
hide reports and facts that would better inform the American people.
  Meanwhile, as that is happening, President Trump has pressured HHS to 
``slow the testing down.'' He has overstated the benefits of certain 
treatments and pressured the FDA to approve them and accused FDA 
officials of holding back a vaccine, and too many people within HHS are 
trying to suppress the science.
  The Secretary of Health and Human Services, Alex Azar, has not only 
failed to push back against these outrageous moves by President Trump, 
but he has been almost entirely silent about the chaos and 
mismanagement in his own agency.
  In Trump's administration, the most important skill is the ability to 
stand up to the President and resist political influence--more so in an 
agency like HHS than others, where the health of Americans is at stake.
  It has become abundantly clear that the leadership of the Department 
of Health and Human Services has allowed perhaps the most important 
Federal agency right now to become subservient to the President's daily 
whims.
  So, today, I am calling on Secretary Azar to resign immediately. We 
need a Secretary of Health and Human Services who will look out for the 
American people, not President Trump's political interests.