[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 160 (Wednesday, September 16, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5625-S5627]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                              Coronavirus

  Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to urge that 
we come together and resume negotiations on a comprehensive, bipartisan 
COVID relief package--the kind of package that this country has been 
calling for.
  Today, nearly 200,000 Americans, including 436 Granite Staters, have 
died from COVID-19, and we still have as many as 40,000 new cases each 
day in this country--enough people to fill a baseball stadium each day. 
As a result, our economy continues to struggle, with nearly 30 million 
Americans still out of work and more than 1 million filing new 
applications for unemployment each week. Many Americans have been 
forced to raid their retirement savings just to pay rent and put food 
on the table--and that is for those people who actually have retirement 
savings. Sadly, too many people do not.
  The President's recent Executive orders have many State unemployment 
officers tied up in knots. Those orders affect Social Security and 
Medicare, and they provide no new help for the nearly 13 million 
households who could be at risk of eviction in the coming months.

[[Page S5626]]

  Unfortunately, the Trump administration and Majority Leader McConnell 
have refused to recognize that too many Americans are still suffering 
and still need help.
  It has been 4 months since the House of Representatives passed the 
Heroes Act--a bill to provide assistance to Americans who are in need. 
Instead of negotiating a bipartisan bill, as we did with the CARES Act 
back in March, Leader McConnell has released partisan legislation--
written in secret--that is woefully inadequate and ignores many of the 
problems I am hearing about from Granite Staters.
  Not surprisingly, the bill that was put on the floor last week--the 
so-called skinny bill because it didn't provide the kind of help so 
many people need--that bill failed. I opposed that skinny bill because 
I didn't believe it came close to addressing the public health and 
economic issues that our country is facing. It provided no funding for 
hospitals or healthcare providers on the frontlines, and the nursing 
home and hospital staff I talk to in New Hampshire tell me that more 
financial support is needed to stem the financial losses from this 
pandemic.
  New Hampshire hospitals have already experienced more than $550 
million in lost revenue statewide, and they don't see an end this year. 
Losses of that magnitude are unsustainable, and the skinny bill that we 
voted on last week would not have addressed those losses.
  That proposal provided no support for State and local governments 
that are facing severe budgetary shortfalls. The State of New Hampshire 
expects to experience a budget shortfall of nearly $540 million, over 
half a billion dollars. That is about a 20-percent drop in State 
revenues.
  In the city of Manchester, which is our largest city, they expect to 
spend $11 million between this year and next related to COVID-19 
expenses--money they hadn't budgeted for. They had hoped that some of 
those expenses would get reimbursed by FEMA, but under the recent order 
from the administration, FEMA is being told to no longer reimburse 
those expenses.
  So what I am hearing from mayors and municipal leaders in New 
Hampshire is that they are soon going to have to face some very 
difficult choices about whether they are going to have to cut essential 
services like trash collection and water and sewer and whether they are 
going to have to lay off teachers and firefighters and police officers.
  The bill we voted on last week, that skinny bill, provided no 
financial help for families struggling to pay the bills and put food on 
the table. There was no help in there to feed kids, nothing to address 
broadband needs--the needs that we have seen in New Hampshire for 
telehealth and for remote learning. We have significant parts of our 
State and significant communities where we have students who don't have 
access to technology to do remote learning.
  There wasn't nearly enough to help with testing and contact tracing 
and no real assistance for the Postal Service even as it faces 
bankruptcy.
  Funding for schools in that skinny bill? That was tied to whether the 
students are going in person or learning remotely. Well, in New 
Hampshire, we believe those kinds of decisions should not be made in 
Washington; they should be made by States and local school districts. 
If local school districts don't feel they can bring kids back safely, 
then they shouldn't be forced to do that just to get the help they need 
to ensure that kids can go to school safely.
  I think the American public wants results. They want a bipartisan, 
comprehensive bill so we can address the needs of Granite Staters and 
the people of this country. That is what I am fighting for, and I 
believe it is past time for people to come to the negotiating table so 
we can get that done.
  What we have seen during this pandemic is unemployment levels that we 
have not had in this country since the Great Depression. We need to 
provide additional unemployment benefits for people who need those 
dollars so that they can continue to pay their rent, their mortgages, 
put food on the table, and pay their bills. We need to make sure this 
emergency relief continues to be available to Granite Staters.
  Small businesses need a second round of PPP loans, which would 
prioritize those smallest businesses and those industries that have 
been hardest hit by this pandemic, industries like tourism and the 
hospitality sector.
  We need to provide support to our live venues. I recently visited the 
Bank of New Hampshire Stage in Concord, our capital. I heard firsthand 
how their business has been affected by the pandemic and the ripple 
effect that has on all live entertainment venues, on the performers who 
depend on those venues to be able to support themselves and the other 
members who are part of their performances.
  We need to make sure that childcare centers are supported. I was 
visiting a small business, a restaurant that has two locations in New 
Hampshire--one in Portsmouth and one in Epping. The business is called 
Popovers. It is very popular. What I heard from them is that the PPP 
loans had made a huge difference. They were able to keep some of their 
employees on. But as they are looking to the fall, they are worried 
about whether those employees are going to be able to come back full 
time because they don't have access to childcare and they are not sure 
whether schools are going to be remotely or in person. We need to 
provide help so that those businesses can get their employees back to 
work and people can continue to support their families.
  We need a comprehensive bill that provides emergency housing relief 
and food assistance to Granite Staters.
  We should support our counties and towns that are experiencing 
historic drops in revenues and that desperately need help to continue 
providing the most basic services--schools, firefighters, police, trash 
collection, water and sewer, and wastewater treatment--because those 
have been dramatically affected by the loss in revenue.
  Of course, we urgently need assistance for our nursing homes and for 
our long-term care facilities, which in New Hampshire account for more 
than 80 percent of the COVID-19 deaths, the highest percentage in the 
country.
  We need an answer from the administration as to why they are not 
disbursing the funds that Congress directed. For instance, the CARES 
Act provided up to $200 million for nursing home infection control 
efforts. To date, only $17 million of that has been sent out to those 
long-term care facilities that need it.
  On top of that, HHS has only spent about half of the $16 billion that 
Congress provided for the acquisition of personal protective equipment 
and other medical supplies. Nursing facilities and providers across the 
care system in New Hampshire desperately need this help, and they need 
it now.
  We had a hearing this morning in the HHS Appropriations Subcommittee, 
and I had a chance to ask some of the officials from HHS about why they 
have not distributed these funds. And, of course, the answer they gave 
me was this: Well, we don't know. That is not part of our 
responsibility.
  Well, that is part of everybody's responsibility--to ensure that 
funds that Congress has provided get distributed in a way that Congress 
has said they should be distributed, because we have people across this 
country who need that help and they need it now.
  We need a comprehensive bill to help treatment and recovery centers 
for those who are still struggling with substance use disorders, 
because we have seen this crisis worsen during the pandemic. We had 
been seeing deaths go down from overdoses in New Hampshire, and since 
the pandemic, we are beginning to see those numbers go up again.
  This isn't a problem that is unique to New Hampshire. I heard Senator 
Capito in the hearing earlier this morning talking about the challenges 
that West Virginia is facing. It has become more critical than ever 
that Congress provide substantial funding for substance-use disorder 
treatment and prevention.
  We need real support for the post office, which was lacking from that 
skinny bill last week. The Postal Service is the only Federal agency 
mentioned in the Constitution, and every community in New Hampshire and 
the United States relies on its essential services, especially those 
States that have rural communities. A lot of rural communities in New 
Hampshire don't have access to the internet. They depend on the post 
office for communications going in and out and the packages that go in 
and out. What I am hearing from Granite Staters is that there are 
Postal Service delays that are affecting

[[Page S5627]]

their ability to pay their bills and to receive medications, and that 
small businesses are not able to complete their transactions. Congress 
has a responsibility to enact legislation that will restore timely 
delivery and fully fund the Postal Service.
  Finally, we need to ensure that the Census Bureau has the time 
necessary to execute a complete and accurate 2020 count. You know, it 
has been interesting to me to see the efforts of this administration to 
try and politicize the census, because this is no red State or blue 
State problem. The States with the lowest percentage of households that 
have been counted during the census are Alabama, Montana, Mississippi, 
Louisiana, Georgia, and South Carolina. They are mostly in the South, 
but not all. We must give the Census Bureau time to make a complete and 
accurate count by including a statutory delay for the apportionment and 
redistricting count that is part of any package before we go home. This 
is something that the Census Bureau asked us for last spring, and it is 
something that we should make sure they receive, even though under 
political pressure they changed their request.
  Bipartisanship on these priorities is possible. We were able to 
negotiate the CARES Act legislation that passed the Senate by a vote of 
96 to 0. We did it before. We can do this again because that is how 
government is supposed to work. We are supposed to come together and 
negotiate and deliver for the American people.
  Probably the most often heard remark that I hear in New Hampshire is 
this: Why can't you just all work together to address the needs of this 
country?
  That is what we should be doing around everything, and it is what we 
should be doing around responding to this coronavirus.
  We should not recess until we can get a bill to the President's desk. 
We were sent here to do a job. We have an obligation to get it done. 
The foot dragging has gone on for far too long. Brinksmanship should 
end because time is running out on the needs of the American people.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic leader