[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 180 (Wednesday, October 21, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6378-S6380]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
STATEMENTS ON INTRODUCED BILLS AND JOINT RESOLUTION
By Mr. REED (for himself and Mrs. Capito):
S. 4825. A bill to provide clarification with respect to the
effective date of
[[Page S6379]]
Medicare coverage of COVID-19 vaccines without any cost-sharing; to the
Committee on Finance.
Mr. REED. Mr. President, today I am pleased to introduce the Ensuring
Access to COVID-19 Vaccines for Seniors Act with Senator Shelley Moore
Capito of West Virginia. It is critical that a future COVID-19 vaccine
be made available to Medicare beneficiaries with no cost sharing, which
is the goal of our legislation.
The CARES Act, which Congress passed overwhelmingly and was signed
into law at the end of March, included provisions requiring Medicare to
cover FDA-approved COVID-19 vaccines with no-cost sharing. These
provisions are designed to ensure that as soon as there is an approved
and available COVID-19 vaccine, seniors across the Nation would be able
to get the vaccine for free under Medicare. Vaccines are one of the
best public health interventions in our lifetime and we must do
everything we can to encourage everyone to get the vaccines recommended
by their doctors. One of the most effective ways to improve vaccination
rates is to remove barriers such as cost. In fact, working with my
colleagues, I was able to include provisions in the Affordable Care Act
to ensure that vaccines are covered by insurance with no cost-sharing.
This not only makes our population healthier, but it also saves money
in the long-term.
While the COVID-19 vaccine development and testing protocols are
ongoing, it is very likely that the first vaccines will be made
available under an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) by FDA. An EUA may
be granted to one or more COVID-19 vaccines in order to get vaccines to
those who need them the most, while the pharmaceutical companies
continue testing and evaluating vaccine candidates and pursuing full
FDA approval. While I have concerns that the Trump Administration may
attempt to interfere in the vaccine approval process, most public
health experts believe that the first vaccine candidates will be made
available under an EUA. In this case, the CARES Act provisions
requiring Medicare to cover COVID-19 vaccines would not apply, as
vaccines made available under an EUA would not yet be considered FDA-
approved. Our bipartisan legislation would address this oversight and
ensure that COVID-19 vaccines would also be covered by Medicare if made
available by an EUA.
I am pleased that the House of Representatives has already passed
this provision as a part of the much broader Heroes Act. It is my hope
that the Senate will follow suit immediately. It has been more than six
months since the CARES Act was signed into law, and the need to provide
additional relief to combat the health and economic impacts of the
COVID-19 pandemic has only increased. We are far overdue for another
robust relief package, and it is shameful that the Senate has not yet
acted to pass such a measure. It is critical that the Ensuring Access
to COVID-19 Vaccines for Seniors Act be considered swiftly in the
Senate, along with a number of other critical efforts to help the
American people during this difficult time.
______
By Ms. HIRONO (for herself, Mr. Booker, Mr. Van Hollen, Mr.
Casey, and Ms. Baldwin):
S. 4831. A bill to provide resources for States, State educational
agencies, local educational agencies, educators, school leaders, and
others to measure and address instructional loss in students in
kindergarten through grade 12; to the Committee on Health, Education,
Labor, and Pensions.
Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, recently Hawaii public schools resumed
classes for the start of the 2020-2021 school year.
Faced with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, our schools had planned
to combine in-person, distance, and blended learning this year.
Unfortunately, a sudden increase in coronavirus cases required a shift
to fully distance learning through the first quarter. Now schools are
navigating distance learning as they determine how they will return to
the classroom.
The pandemic has made it difficult to plan, and our principals,
teachers, parents, and students are doing the best they can. Many are
still recovering from earlier this year, when the coronavirus closed
campuses for two months--resulting in 46 fewer days in the classroom
for students, who almost certainly experienced learning or
instructional loss.
I have heard from parents and students, and they have been effusive
in their praise for educators who are making this school year work. I
have also heard from educators, who have been clear in their need for
more training and resources--especially when it comes to learning new
strategies for providing effective distance learning and addressing
instructional loss in students. Many educators are concerned about how
the pandemic will disproportionately impact at-risk and marginalized
students. In Hawaii, educators are concerned about how it will impact
Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander students, who before the pandemic
already experienced achievement gaps in reading, math, and science, and
graduated from high school and attended college at lower rates than
their peers. These are not new challenges that we need to address, but
they could certainly be made worse by the pandemic unless we provide
the appropriate resources.
Until a vaccine is widely available, we must make decisions based on
the best science and public health information we can get in order to
keep families, teachers, and school support staff safe. For many school
districts around the nation, distance learning will be a key component
of our education system, and we owe it to our students to do it right.
For these reasons I am introducing the Learning Opportunity and
Achievement Act, or ``LOAA'', which would provide professional
development and training resources for educators, tutoring and academic
services for students, and resources for innovation grants, learning
hubs, and research and best practices related to instructional loss in
at-risk and marginalized students.
No one anticipated how the coronavirus would change our schools, as
the abrupt shift to distance learning this past spring showed. Our
educators need additional professional development and training
resources so that they can provide the most effective educational
experience to students of all ages and backgrounds.
LOAA provides these resources through new and existing programs.
Specifically, the bill provides $2.25 billion for ESSA Title II-A
programs, $50 million for new professional development programs, and
$100 million for new training programs.
Building on what we know about effective professional development,
the bill promotes programs that are evidenced-based, collaborative,
job-embedded, content-based, and sustained. These kinds of programs
will be helpful for educators.
We do not know the full impact the coronavirus will have on schools,
but preliminary estimates have indicated that recent closures could
result in severe setbacks for students--including, on average, 7 months
of instructional loss for all students, 10.3 months for Black students,
9.2 months for Hispanic students, and more than a year for low-income
students. LOAA provides $50 million for new tutoring programs to
address instructional loss in at-risk and marginalized students.
The bill also includes funding for innovation grants and learning
hubs to give public schools the resources they need to provide
effective, equitable distance learning opportunities to all students.
These resources will allow different school districts to take different
approaches based on their local needs and circumstances, while offering
opportunities for at-risk and low-income families who cannot afford to
create privately tutored ``pods'' to ensure that their children don't
fall further behind.
And finally, the bill includes requirements for the U.S. Department
of Education to identify and disseminate best practices for schools to
address instructional loss. It also requires the Department to study
instructional loss in at-risk and marginalized students.
Let me be clear. K-12 schools need additional support during this
difficult time. Senate Democrats are fighting to provide this support,
including at least $175 billion for K-12 schools, and will continue to
do so. But we can go even further to make sure our educators have the
resources they need to help students succeed--not only during the 2020-
2021 school year, but also in future years. LOAA would help to provide
these resources.
[[Page S6380]]
I encourage my colleagues to support this important bill.
______
By Ms. HIRONO (for herself, Mr. Sanders, Mr. Markey, and Mr.
Booker):
S. 4837. A bill to repeal the Alien Enemies Act, and for other
purposes; to the Committee on the Judiciary.
Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Neighbors
Not Enemies Act. This long overdue legislation would repeal the Alien
Enemies Act, one of four laws from 1798 that were collectively known as
the Alien and Sedition Acts. These controversial laws were enacted
during a period of threatened war and were an attempt to severely limit
freedom of speech and press and the rights of noncitizen residents. Of
the four laws, only the Alien Enemies Act remains in effect. The Alien
Enemies Act allows the President of the United States to ``apprehend[
], restrain[ ], secure[ ] and remove[ ],'' noncitizens without due
process during times of war.
In 1941, President Roosevelt used the authority of the Alien Enemies
Act to apprehend ``alien enemies deemed dangerous to the public health
or safety of the United States by the Attorney General or Secretary of
War.'' These actions allowed for the detention of Japanese, Italian,
and Germans as well as confiscation of their property. Then in 1942,
Roosevelt expanded on his actions by issuing Executive Order 9066,
which authorized the mass removal and incarceration of 120,000 Japanese
Americans, both U.S. citizens and noncitizens, during World War II. The
internment of Japanese Americans was a shameful act, and it was not
until 1988 that the Civil Liberties Act was passed, formally
apologizing to Americans of Japanese ancestry and providing reparations
of $20,000 to each surviving victim who was incarcerated during World
War II.
During the 2016 election, Donald Trump invoked President Franklin D.
Roosevelt's application of the Alien Enemies Act during World War II
when he called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United
States. Since taking office, President Trump has continued to advance
divisive policies and hateful rhetoric that target and demonize Muslim
and other minority communities. The President's cruel anti-immigrant
policies have resulted in the separation of children at the border,
detention of families with no end in sight, and many more harmful
policies that betray the principles and values on which our Nation was
built upon.
The President has brought the need to repeal the Alien Enemies Act to
the forefront. We must stop his attempts to divide us through
intolerance and fear. We must prevent civil and human rights travesties
from happening on U.S. soil again. Sadly, we cannot trust the
President. The Neighbors Not Enemies Act would help keep our Nation
from repeating history in targeting an entire group of noncitizens for
unconstitutional and discriminatory arrest, detention, and deportation.
The repeal of the Alien Enemies Act is long overdue, and I call on my
colleagues in the United States Senate to swiftly pass the Neighbors
Not Enemies Act during the 116th Congress.
I yield the floor.
____________________