[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 216 (Saturday, December 19, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7831-S7832]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              CORONAVIRUS

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, our Nation stands at a crossroads in 
our months-long battle with the new coronavirus. Tracking recent 
developments lately has felt like watching a split-screen television. 
On the one hand, Operation Warp Speed has fostered a modern medical 
miracle. The genius of science has brought forward safe and effective 
vaccines at a pace which, just months ago, many claimed would be 
impossible. For about 9 months now, our Nation has been treading water 
altogether. Now the road to victory is in sight.
  But at the same time, even as we see this hopeful sunrise on the 
horizon, in the here and now, we are still facing an ongoing five-alarm 
national crisis. The virus is surging across our country. Two days ago, 
my home State of Kentucky set another bleak new record--the most 
Kentuckians lost in a single day of this pandemic so far. Nationwide, 
since the start of December, we have lost around 3,000 of our fellow 
Americans to this disease every single day.
  Meanwhile, although the American people have built our economic 
recovery with more speed and resilience than anyone had anticipated, we 
have known all along that recovering prosperity would come hand-in-hand 
with defeating the virus. Thus, millions of working families across the 
Nation are still under terrible strain.
  Last week, economists thought we would see a slight downward tick in 
new unemployment claims. Instead, the numbers shot up, logging 885,000 
new claims in just 1 week--almost

[[Page S7832]]

900,000 newly laid-off Americans in 1 week alone.
  Senators on both sides know what we need to do. In the springtime, 
when the country needed a bridge, we passed the largest rescue package 
in American history on a unanimous, bipartisan basis. Now what 
Americans need is another bridge. Fortunately, this time we do not need 
a bridge over an unknown and frightening future but a bridge through 
the next several months, while the lifesaving vaccines can flow 
throughout our country.
  Frontline healthcare workers are receiving the vaccine as we speak. 
Yesterday, Vice President Pence, Speaker Pelosi, and I all received 
first doses of vaccines pursuant to preexisting plans for the 
continuity of our government.
  These vaccines are safe. They are effective. They are our Nation's 
path out of this hellish chapter. So the first lines of the cavalry are 
already arriving. We just need to help American families hold on while 
reinforcements continue to pour in: more paycheck protection loans for 
the hardest hit businesses, more additional Federal unemployment aid, 
more direct assistance for families, a lot more funding for K-12 
schools to reopen safely and get our kids' educations back on track, 
and, perhaps most important of all, a huge amount of funding for 
vaccine distribution so that we aren't just helping Americans endure 
this battle, but we are helping them win the battle as fast as possible

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