[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 184 (Sunday, October 25, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Page S6468]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                              Coronavirus

  Mr. President, while the Senate continues to work through this 
important process of the next Supreme Court nominee, I am also here on 
the floor today to remind all of us that we are still in the middle of 
an unprecedented healthcare and economic crisis caused by this ongoing 
coronavirus pandemic. I am here to express my frustration that the 
sense of urgency and compromise that we had for the first several 
months of this coronavirus seem to have disappeared as we have 
approached the election.
  The Democratic leader today raised the seriousness of the pandemic. 
Something said on the other side of the aisle was that we shouldn't 
even be taking up a Supreme Court nominee because of the seriousness of 
the pandemic and the need to focus on that.
  I don't understand why then, on Wednesday, the same Democratic leader 
and his colleagues blocked even taking action on the coronavirus or 
even having a debate on whether to take action because, once again, 
they blocked a legislative initiative to have a discussion about this 
issue.
  By the way, it is a discussion about an issue that affects every 
single one of our States. Again, we are not out of the woods, so we 
should be not just discussing it but passing legislation on it.
  The legislation that we have introduced might not be legislation that 
every Democrat can support. In fact, I think there were some things 
that were in our bill that some Democrats might not love. But for the 
most part, there were bipartisan proposals that everybody can support, 
and all we asked for was to be able to get on the bill to have a 
debate. Yet we had to have 60 votes to be able to do that. That is the 
supermajority that is required around here, and those 60 votes could 
not be found, even though last Wednesday the $500 billion package got a 
majority vote. There was a majority vote for this package but not the 
supermajority needed. It was blocked by the other side.
  If we had gotten on the legislation and had the debate about what the 
PPP program ought to look like, how much money should be used for 
testing, what we should do with regard to liability protections, 
Democrats would have had the opportunity to put their own ideas 
forward, to offer their own amendments, and I would have strongly 
supported them in that process.
  Also, some of us had some additional amendments we would like to have 
added and changes we would like to have seen. But, ultimately, if 
Democrats or Republicans found that they didn't like the final product 
that came out of that discussion, that debate, they would have had 
another chance because there would have been another 60-vote hurdle to 
get over before passage of the legislation.
  I know this is sounding like a process issue, but it really is not. 
It is about doing our jobs as Senators. Both Republicans and Democrats 
care about this issue, yet we just can't seem to figure out how to get 
it unfrozen here and to be able to move forward. Having blocked, again, 
even having a debate on moving forward was very discouraging to me.