[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 214 (Thursday, December 17, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Page S7576]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CORONAVIRUS
Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I had an opportunity to listen to my
friend and colleague from the State of Ohio outline in great detail the
efforts that a bipartisan group has been working on for just a month
now.
It was just a month ago, I was reminded--November 17, apparently--
that I had an opportunity to invite some colleagues over to my house
for dinner and conversation. And while it wasn't pizza, it didn't make
any difference what we were eating. It was all about the conversation
and what we could do to be responsive to the urgency of the need.
As my friend from Ohio has said, people in Ohio are suffering. People
in Alaska are suffering. People around the country are suffering. And
they are looking to us for answers and for hope.
I felt on Monday that there was that sense of hope that we could
offer. It is not the end-all and be-all in terms of a legislative
proposal, but it was a dozen Members, bipartisan--Republicans and
Democrats from this body, as well as Republicans and Democrats from the
House--coming together over the course of a month, hours on Zoom,
digging into the details and the issues in a way that, as someone who
has been part of this body now for 18 years, I have not had the
opportunity to be as engaged in every level of the debate and aspect as
we were in these conversations.
The Senator from Ohio, while he might not have been at that dinner,
was with us every step of the way and was truly leading on the
negotiations when it came to the liability provisions and the input in
so many other areas.
But what we were able to outline, given a framework of how we can be
responsive to the pandemic and the economic crisis at hand, focusing on
the most vulnerable--those who have lost their jobs, those who have a
small business that is open but just barely open because there are no
customers or because the limitations on your restaurant are so small
you can barely even afford to keep your doors open--to be responsive to
those who have lost their jobs, to those who are looking at the first
of January and wondering if they are going to be able to stay in their
home or in their apartment, to those families who have children at home
who haven't been in a classroom since March of this year, for those
rural healthcare providers that have been struggling as they have tried
to meet the crush of demand and need within their small hospitals.
What we tried to do was build a package that was responsive to the
emergency at hand. And as Senator Portman has noted, this was not
designed to be a stimulus bill. This is not designed to be the end-all,
be-all for how we move forward. It is targeted emergency relief.
What we were able to present on Monday, which I felt was so hopeful,
were not only the debate and the contours of the framework but then to
actually put that into legislative text--5 or 6 inches of legislative
language, a bill--a bill for this body to consider, a path to move us
forward at a time when it is so incredibly critical.
Also on Monday, we were met with hope because the vaccine--the long-
promised vaccine--has come about in extraordinarily short order,
historic efforts by so many to get the development to this point, to
get the approval, the safe approval, and now moving forward to
distribution.
The headline in our largest newspaper yesterday was ``Morale gets a
boost'' as vaccine arrives. And, boy, do we need a morale boost.
This is a dark time in Alaska right now. The sun sets about, I don't
know, maybe about 3:45 in the afternoon right now, so it makes for a
short day. But we are used to short days because we know that in the
darkest times of winter, there is going to come that time when things
start to change and the days actually begin to get longer; the sunlight
is with us more and more.
And as Alaskans are considering the very deep, deep economic strife
that we are in right now, we know that there is light at the end
because the vaccine is arriving; that is coming.
But in the meantime, they need to get from here to there. So what we
have outlined in this proposal--this bipartisan, bicameral proposal--is
just exactly that. It is that lifeline that can get them from December
to March, to April, when hope really starts to return.
So I know that there is a great deal that is being considered right
now. As I have shared with folks, I say: Well, we were able to advance
the ball significantly with this effort that we have made. But when we
presented that multihundred-page package to the public, to the
administration, to leadership, we basically said: Here is a gift. Take
it.
So we have kind of lost ball control, if you will. That is good. That
is fine. That is what this process is all about. But I am just urging
that we commit with every sense of expediency and urgency to do our
business quickly and fairly, with the politics aside, because the last
thing that folks back home need, whether it is in Ohio or Alaska, is to
know that we might have wrapped up our business here, and we didn't
hear them. We didn't respond to their need. We left them hanging. That
is not an option for us, and that will not happen.
We are all pledging to make sure that we resolve this before
Christmas or we are not going home. But we can do better than that. We
don't need to draw this out. We have an opportunity, working together,
so I encourage those who are negotiating. We have provided not only a
template and a framework, but we have really given you considerable
meat in terms of this legislation.
My hope is that we are going to have good news very, very shortly
that will allow us to not only address the urgency in response to this
COVID pandemic but also be able to resolve our end-of-year
appropriations and other matters that we have had working before this
body.
But as they say, we are running out of daylight, so let's get moving
with it.
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