[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 218 (Monday, December 21, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7893-S7895]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              CORONAVIRUS

  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I rise today to thank all of my 
colleagues who worked so hard on the bill that is coming to the floor 
today, the pandemic relief package.
  We know all the top priorities in there--the vaccine distribution--
and I want to thank Senator Schumer and leaders and those on both sides 
of the aisle who put more funding into that.
  I want to thank the group who has worked so hard on this agreement 
and this negotiation in the Senate for their work, including Senator 
Manchin and Senator Romney and Senator Warner and Senator Shaheen and 
Senator Hassan and Senator Durbin, as well as all of their Republican 
colleagues, Senator Collins and Senator Murkowski, Senator Cassidy, who 
worked so hard on this original agreement, with many others who joined 
in as well.
  This bill contains such important priorities, including unemployment 
and help for our hospitals and help for our rural areas--housing, rent, 
small businesses, unemployment, the direct checks.
  I think we all know that there is more work to be done, including 
next year, including for our cities and our States, but it is so 
important that we get this done by the end of the year.
  I wanted to focus on something that I have worked on for quite a 
while with Senator Cornyn from Texas. We have done this on a bipartisan 
basis from the beginning, and it is the Save Our Stages Act.
  When we first introduced it in July, we knew that it was going to be 
a long road, and we also knew that the only way we would get this done 
is by sticking together as a team and by working with other Members of 
Congress from red and blue States. And by the end--this bill is 
included in full in this package--we had 57 Senators who sponsored this 
bill out of 100, with many more supporting it. We had over 200 House 
Members.
  We worked so hard to make this about America and American music and 
American theater and American culture.
  We all know that you can't go stand in a mosh pit in the middle of a 
pandemic. These live entertainment venues were among the first 
businesses to close, and they will almost certainly be among the last 
to reopen.
  This was about, yes, Nashville and New York, but it was just as much 
about the Fargo Theater or a small, small country music venue in Texas. 
And while we see the light at the end of tunnel with the vaccines, we 
know that it will be quite a while before these businesses, which 
operate on such thin margins as it is, can keep going.
  I think we also know the importance of the arts and music, not only 
as a cultural icon in America but also as an economic driver. It is one 
of our No. 1 exports, when you combine all of it. And the fact that we 
were able to stick together with not only the nitty-gritty of this bill 
and this coalition and actually add partners as we went along is a 
tribute to all the musicians out there, all the venues, all the 
lighting operators, all the truckers--everyone who came together and 
said: We are going to get this done.
  I know when Senator Cornyn and I first introduced this, people kind 
of patted us on the head and said: Oh, this sounds nice. But I think 
when people started to hear the facts and how much this matters to 
economies and even small towns, it made a difference. In the end, to 
quote Minnesota's own Bob Dylan from ``The Times They Are a-Changin,'' 
he says:

       Come senators, congressmen
       Please heed the call
       Don't stand in the doorway
       Don't block the hall

  No one blocked the hall.
  I want to thank my colleagues, and I want to especially thank Senator 
Cornyn. We have led many bills together, and we had to go back and 
forth a lot.

[[Page S7894]]

  I want to thank Dayna Frank, who is the head of First Avenue in 
Minnesota, made famous, of course, by Prince.
  Prince wouldn't be Prince if not for First Avenue. Everyone in our 
State, when they think about First Avenue, they think about Prince.
  She is the head of the National Venue Association. She called me one 
night in the beginning of the pandemic and said: I just can't make it 
through this without some help.
  They already received PPP loans, but that is not enough for these 
venues because of the unique circumstance where they can't partially 
open. You can't go to a theater right now and sit elbow-to-elbow with 
your friends and family.
  I also want to thank my legislative director, Doug Calidas, who has 
worked on this from the beginning, including all the last month's late-
night negotiations. He did a wonderful job.
  I want to thank Senators Schumer and McConnell and Representatives 
Speaker Pelosi and Leader McCarthy for getting this over the finish 
line--Senator McConnell for putting it in his original bill and Senator 
Schumer, who cares so much about this because of all of the great music 
and acts and everything coming out of New York State. It was certainly 
very, very helpful--and that would put it mildly--to have Senator 
Schumer in the room where it happened, where the last negotiations were 
made.
  I also want to thank Senators Shaheen and Collins, who worked on this 
in the original negotiation; Senators Cardin and Rubio with the Small 
Business Committee, who made this a priority; and finally, our House 
authors, our bipartisan House authors out there, Representatives Welch 
and Williams, for their work.
  So how this works--the Small Business Administration will create a 
new $15 billion grant program to help venues cover 6 months of expenses 
and make it through this pandemic. We are very hopeful that once the 
summer comes, we are going to see more and more openings because of the 
vaccine, because of what I hope will be, with a new administration, an 
increased emphasis on testing, and that we will see more and more 
venues able to open.
  The grants can be used to cover all the major costs the venues have 
to pay to stay in business, including rent and mortgage, utilities, 
employee wages, key benefits, maintenance costs, State and local taxes, 
payments to contractors, and purchases of protective equipment.
  Venues that are at the greatest risk of closing--sadly, we have 
already lost a number of our venues--will have priority access to the 
majority of the grant funding. All venues will be able to apply within 
4 weeks of the program's launch with the Small Business Administration, 
but in the first 2 weeks, those venues that have suffered 90 percent 
revenue loss over the year before will be the first to be able to apply 
for these grants.
  So we in Congress don't want to let the music die, and we don't want 
that to happen to any of our other places of culture in America either. 
That is why over the last month or so, we have worked with the museums 
and with the zoos, and I want to especially thank Senator Schumer for 
his work on that, as well as Senator Blunt and many others who worked 
with us--as well as the movie theaters.
  We wanted to make sure that if we expanded our coalition, that we 
didn't hurt the originals, which were these small, small theaters and 
small music venues across the country. We did not do that, because this 
new program will be a lifeline for small entertainment venues across 
the country, such as First Avenue and the Bluestem Amphitheater in 
Moorehead, MN.
  It will also help the millions of Americans who work behind the 
scenes and who have been sidelined, from the engineers and truckdrivers 
to the ticket takers and the designers and the spot operators. It will 
help revive the local economies of neighborhoods and small towns across 
this Nation.
  It is not every day that a coalition sticks together from beginning 
to end, that they kept with their original purpose, haven't been picked 
off, haven't gotten into infighting, but this group did it. Maybe it is 
because so many Americans at home right now cherish music and 
entertainment and that part of America like they have never done 
because they are watching things alone. They are listening to concerts 
by themselves. They are listening to them with their iPhones, or they 
are listening to them on their computers, and it is not quite the same.
  We also know that all of these artists don't exactly get a big boost 
up by themselves with huge funding when they first start out. So many 
of them start out at these little venues--a country music band playing 
at the Bluestem Amphitheater; a little local theater troupe trying out 
a new play in Lanesboro, MN. They can't do it without these venues.
  So today we celebrate the fact that we held together. Not only are we 
passing this bill as a part of this package, we actually brought in 
friends, and we brought in partners, and we made it an even bigger deal 
than it was to begin with.
  So as I began by quoting the great Bob Dylan from Minnesota, I will 
end. He once said:

       Well, I sing by night, wander by day.
       I'm on the road and it looks like I'm here to stay.

  Finally, we are reaching out to this group of employees and these 
businesses and saying: We want you to be here to stay.
  So thank you to Save Our Stages and to all of our colleagues who 
worked so hard on this, and special thanks to my friend Senator Cornyn. 
Again, when we did this, we didn't know if we would be able to mount 
this grassroots effort, but it happened because artists and fans just 
wouldn't give up. So thank you very much.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.
  Mrs. CAPITO. Mr. President, I would like to thank, first of all, the 
preceding speaker, Senator Klobuchar, for her efforts to help those 
venues in those entertainment areas that at this point have been left 
out. We certainly have some of those in West Virginia, and I am pleased 
to say that the coronavirus package we are putting together today will 
help those folks and hopefully get them over the hump.
  Before I begin, I would like to wish everybody, as much as they can, 
a happy holiday and a joyful new year. Turning the page of 2020 is 
something I think we are all pretty anxious to do. Sometimes it seems 
like the longest year, and sometimes it seems like the shortest year, 
but it definitely seems like ``Groundhog Day'' a lot of the year.
  I am very pleased that we have this relief package in front of us. 
While I am glad an agreement has been reached, we certainly should have 
done this earlier and could have done this earlier. We have been 
working since July to deliver targeted additional relief through 
efforts such as we put forward in the CARES Act, and it has been voted 
down twice--once in September and once in October.
  To date, we, the Republicans, have offered targeted relief 
legislation, voted in favor of enhanced employment benefits, more money 
for our schools, which would have been great to have had in early 
September and should have had in early September. We voted in favor of 
stand-alone emergency funding for the Paycheck Protection Program, 
which we know is exceedingly important, and more dollars for vaccines 
and testing so that we could get the great news of the vaccine that we 
see coming forward out to everybody in this country. We offered all 
kinds of ideas to the other side, but they blocked it--all of it. I am 
glad to say that after all this, we have finally joined together, 
realizing that, yes, a deal is better than no deal.
  Last week, unfortunately, a very good friend of mine passed away 
after battling coronavirus. At one point in her life, she was a small 
business owner. I thought so much about her over the last several 
weeks. I thought, what would she say if she knew that months ago, as a 
small business owner, we could have delivered the same help to her that 
we are delivering today.
  We have to do better by the people we represent. It is disappointing 
that politics has gotten in the way. It is disappointing and, quite 
frankly, insulting, in my view, when I see the Speaker of the House 
admitting to holding out on this relief because she thought it would be 
beneficial politically in the end. We can do much better than this.
  I am also a proud member of the Appropriations Committee. We have

[[Page S7895]]

worked hard to get these funds and resources where they are most 
needed, especially in a year like this one. But due to delays, 
critically needed resources to combat the opioid epidemic have had to 
wait; investments to improve broadband have had to wait; research 
dollars into Alzheimer's have had to wait; and the list goes on. This 
is so frustrating to me, as it should be to every American, and I know 
they are frustrated because they tell us they are.
  But here now, we were able to include funds for things that are 
important to me in my State of West Virginia, such as fossil energy 
research, our universities, and the many Federal facilities that call 
West Virginia home.
  I encourage my colleagues to support this important legislation that 
reflects our Nation's priorities and funds the government, which is our 
responsibility as Members of Congress.
  Within the Omnibus appropriations act is the fiscal year 2021 
Homeland Security appropriations bill. I chair that subcommittee, and 
it is with great pride that I can report to the American people and to 
West Virginians that this title invests billions of dollars to protect 
our homeland.
  We maintain our commitment to border security through a border wall 
system to include physical barriers and enhanced technologies.
  We avoided a drastic cut to our cyber security capabilities that we 
see we need now more than ever after all of the reports and the vicious 
cyber attack that we uncovered that has been launched against many of 
those in our country, not just the government but the private sector as 
well.
  We continue our commitment to use every resource at our disposal in 
the effort to prevent those opioids that are killing our people. We see 
overdoses going up and deaths from overdoses going up during this 
pandemic. We tried to get the resources to our Homeland Security folks 
to prevent those drugs from entering into this country at all.
  The men and women at the Department of Homeland Security work 
constantly against threats both old and new, traditional and emerging, 
and deserve the support this legislation gives them.
  So while this is great news in the end, I will repeat what I said 
earlier, and that is, Congress can do better. We could have done this 
earlier, and it should have been done earlier. So there is no reason we 
should be standing here several days before Christmas discussing the 
items that were ready to go several months ago, but we are where we 
are. As we turn the page gleefully into 2021, I think we should all 
pledge to one another and to the country that we will do better, that 
we will work better with each other and prevent politics from infecting 
every decision that could positively impact so many people in this 
country.
  Lastly, I give a hat tip to my friend, whom I will miss seeing and 
who was a great friend to our family, a longtime friend of our family. 
Godspeed. I know she is dancing up there with her mom and dad because 
they loved to dance.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kentucky.

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