[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 195 (Tuesday, November 17, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7027-S7028]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                              Coronavirus

  Mr. President, I would like to also take a second to respond to the 
Senator's comments about our needing to do something about this 
pandemic--that we need to pass another piece of legislation and that we 
need to collaborate with the incoming administration to make sure that 
we don't miss distributing this vaccine on a timely basis.
  My friend from Illinois, at least on three occasions, has voted 
against bills that would help to facilitate the delivery of the vaccine 
and would ensure that small businesses and other individuals get the 
economic help they need during this crisis that has been through no 
fault of their own.
  By my count, our Democratic colleagues voted against a $1 trillion 
HEALS bill. They voted against two separate, more targeted pieces of 
legislation that totaled a half a trillion dollars each. Those are 
three occasions on which they voted against continuing to provide the 
aid that we had voted on, on a bipartisan basis, by the end of March--
four bills worth $3.8 trillion.
  I could only have wished that the sort of bipartisan cooperation we 
saw up through and including the CARES Act in late March would have 
continued, but that wasn't to be. Time and again, Speaker Pelosi stood 
on a $3 trillion piece of legislation that she knew had no chance of 
passing. Why? Because it included things like tax cuts for millionaires 
and billionaires in blue States. She wanted to eliminate the cap on 
State and local tax deductions in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which we 
passed a few years ago, and reward millionaires and billionaires, which 
was not exactly dealing with the virus, either its economic fallout or 
the public health consequences.
  Then, if that weren't enough--stiff-arming every effort that we tried 
to undertake since March to try to pass additional relief, both from a 
public health and economic perspective--today, the Speaker and the 
Democratic leader of the Senate took the bold step--the bold step--of 
writing a letter to Majority Leader McConnell. Man, that was a bold 
step to protect the public health and protect those who, through no 
fault of their own, find themselves out of a job or in financial 
distress.
  Well, I have been around here long enough to know the only reason you 
write a letter to somebody and then release it to the press before it 
gets to its intended recipient is for political purposes. It is 
posturing. That is what we continue to see from our friends across the 
aisle--political posturing.
  Now they are saying--I think the Vice President himself said this--
unless you drop the lawsuits, you drop the efforts to review the vote 
and to make sure all the ballots--all the legal ballots--are correctly 
counted and the ballots that are not appropriate are not counted, then 
people will die, unless you capitulate and give up all those rights.
  In the wake of these partisan efforts to defeat any meaningful, 
additional relief post-March, it should be held up to ridicule because 
that is exactly what it deserves. It is not serious. It is partisan 
posturing.
  If the Speaker and the Democratic leader wanted to get to work on 
another COVID-19 bill, do you know what they could do? They could pick 
up the telephone. You know, they could do a Zoom call. They wouldn't 
even have to socially distance or wear masks. They wouldn't have to 
worry about that. They could do it virtually. Or, if they wanted to do 
it in person, then they could come over, socially distance, and do it 
safely.
  But this is all partisan posturing. This is not about the public 
health of the American people. This is not about helping people who are 
desperately in need of additional financial assistance--the small 
businesses and others that continue to struggle and lay off their 
workforce.
  If we are serious about solving this problem, then we need to work 
together as we did during four separate pieces of legislation, ending 
with the CARES Act in late March.
  But ever since that time, ever since we have offered additional 
assistance, Speaker Pelosi has shut it down. Our Democratic colleagues 
have all voted against it.
  If they were serious about it, they would have voted to get on the 
bill, offer amendments, try to make it better, and let the Senate do 
its job. But, no, they wanted to make things worse in the runup to the 
election because

[[Page S7028]]

one of their main arguments against President Trump was that he 
mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic.
  I know and you know that hindsight is 2020. We know that the public 
health guidance provided by the CDC has evolved over time. We have 
learned a lot since then. But they were more interested in the blame 
game to advance their political cause in the runup to the November 3 
election than they were in actually trying to help the very people who 
sent us here to represent them, and I think it is just shameful.