[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 221 (Tuesday, December 29, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7959-S7960]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              CORONAVIRUS

  Mr. MURPHY. Madam President, America has 600 billionaires. Now, $1 
billion doesn't sound like a lot of money these days. President Trump 
just signed a bill, begrudgingly, that has $900 billion in it. But 
trust me--$1 billion is still a whole lot of money. It is actually so 
much money that it is really hard to find words to describe what it 
looks like, but let me try.
  If you are, for instance, one of the half a million Americans who 
make the minimum wage in this Nation and are lucky enough to work 40 
hours a week, guess how many years you would have to work in order to 
get $1 billion. Five hundred years? A thousand years? Ten thousand 
years? No, you are not even close. If you make minimum wage in America 
today, you would need to work for 75,000 years in order to make $1 
billion--75,000 years. Neanderthals were roaming the Earth 75,000 years 
ago. Those guys, if they had made minimum wage, would have had to have 
worked up until present day, every single day--that is, of course, if 
they hadn't spent a dime of the money they had made in order to accrue 
$1 billion.
  One billion dollars is a bananas amount of money, and there are 600 
people in America today who make at least that amount of money or have 
that amount of money to their names. That is crazy. With $1 billion, 
you are leading a life that, frankly, none of us can really imagine, 
right? You have private planes. You have yachts. You have household 
staffs in the dozens. You have enough money to make sure that your 
children and your grandchildren and your great-grandchildren and your 
great-great-grandchildren never have to work a day in their lives. 
Generations of your offspring can just live lives of indolent luxury, 
without a care, if they so choose.
  Do you know where I was 2 days before Thanksgiving this year? I was 
at Hamden Middle School, in my State, to help hand out free food for 
the unemployed, the poor, and the disabled ahead of a long holiday 
weekend. Those long weekends can be really hard, especially the ones 
that fall at the end of the month when the SNAP benefits have long run 
out. I got there as darkness fell but right at the beginning of the 
event. I noticed that down the hill from the roundabout at the school 
at which they were handing out the food, there was usually an empty 
parking lot. That night, at that moment, at the beginning of the event, 
that parking lot was lit up by hundreds of sets of headlights of 
hundreds of cars that were just sitting there, idle, in that parking 
lot.
  I asked the organizer of the event what was going on in that parking 
lot. Was there some other event happening that evening? Why all the 
cars?
  He told me: The cars started pulling into that lot hours ago. They 
got wind we were handing out food, and they got here early to make sure 
they didn't get left out. We have enough food for 300 people, and there 
were 300 cars in that lot before I even got here.
  That is what has happened during this pandemic. Millions of families 
all across this Nation, through no fault of their own, have lost their 
jobs or have had their hours dramatically cut back. They have no 
savings because work doesn't pay in this country anymore. They spend 
everything they earn each month.
  So when the economy collapsed, virtually overnight in the spring, 
they got desperate--really fast.
  I want you to think about what it is really like on an hour-to-hour 
basis when you don't have enough money for food for your family. The 
decisions you have to make every single day are practically 
animalistic. Do you make your kids go hungry during the day, when they 
need the most energy, or do you skimp on dinner and force your kids to 
go to bed with hunger pangs?
  There are hundreds of thousands of mothers and fathers who, right 
now, as I am speaking, are making that decision today. That is the 
reality of this pandemic.
  But here is another reality: Those 600 billionaires in this country? 
As it turns out, as a group, they lost nothing--nothing--during this 
pandemic. No, exactly the opposite. They got richer.
  The wealthiest 600 Americans collectively added $1 trillion to their 
bank accounts. Let me say it again. The richest 600 Americans gained $1 
trillion over the course of 2020.
  Let's be clear. That is not money that grew in their money tree 
orchards. Yes, we are printing some more money these days, but wealth 
isn't far away from a zero-sum game still. So when we allow for 600 
people in the country to control 50 percent of the Nation's wealth, 
that is coming out of your pocket.
  Six hundred people in a country of 328 million isn't a lot of people. 
But do you know what is a smaller number than 600? Fifty-two.
  There are 52 Republicans in this Chamber--52 people who are going to 
have a decision to make about what to do in a country where millions 
are literally starving as we speak, while 600 billionaires count the $1 
trillion in additional wealth that they have accumulated during this 
period of national calamity.
  The question before these 52 Senate Republicans is simple. It is 
simple: Should we give $2,000 to low- and middle-income Americans right 
now to help them survive this crisis? That is the decision Senate 
Republicans have to make right now. Time is running out.
  Six hundred billionaires got $1 trillion richer this year, and the 
question

[[Page S7960]]

before Senate Republicans is this: Are you willing to spend an amount 
equal to just half of that windfall to America's billionaires in order 
to help 160 million Americans?
  Right now, the 52 Senate Republicans serving in this Chamber are the 
only thing standing in the way of $2,000 being sent to 160 million of 
our neediest citizens.
  The House passed the bill authorizing the checks in a big, bipartisan 
vote. It is hard to get two-thirds of the House of Representatives to 
agree on what time it is, but two-thirds of the House of 
Representatives voted for the $2,000 checks. President Trump supports 
the $2,000 checks, so he will sign the bill if the Senate sends it to 
him. We can vote on the House bill today in a matter of hours if Senate 
Republicans agree.
  So why isn't this happening? Why didn't Senator McConnell announce 
the schedule for the vote on the $2,000 checks bill? Why didn't he 
agree to Senator Schumer's request to bring it up for an immediate 
vote?
  Now, a lot of Republicans are saying they object to the payments 
because they cost too much and they are going to add too much to the 
deficit. Well, frankly, spare me the fake righteous indignation about 
the deficit all of a sudden.
  Three years ago, these same deficit hawk Republicans passed a tax cut 
bill that, before the pandemic hit, had already added over $200 billion 
to the annual deficit, and that was a tax cut where 80 percent of the 
benefits went to the richest 1 percent of Americans.
  Warren Buffet wrote in his note to investors last year that the 
deficit-financed tax cuts earned his empire $29 billion overnight. That 
windfall, Buffet noted, ``did not come from anything we accomplished at 
Berkshire.'' So it is funny: Deficits just didn't matter to the 52 when 
it was tax cuts to the 600 richest people in America.
  But even if this Congress weren't ending in 5 days and we had time to 
figure out how to pay for it, do you know how we can't pay for it? 
Cutting foreign aid.
  President Trump has been talking a lot about foreign aid in the last 
week. Now, the money we spend on foreign aid, all supported by 
Democrats and Republicans over the years, all of it smart investments 
in our Nation's security--that actually wasn't in the COVID relief 
package. It was in the annual budget, as it always is. It just so 
happens that this year the COVID relief package and the annual budget 
were passed together.
  But just for argument's sake, let's say Trump got his way and every 
single dollar of foreign aid was cut out of the budget. Would that pay 
for the $2,000 checks? Not even close. President Trump apparently has 
an oversized impression of how much money we spend on foreign aid, 
because our annual foreign aid spending doesn't even equal 10 percent 
of the cost of a one-time $2,000 payment to low- and middle-income 
citizens.
  There is also some speculation that Senator McConnell is going to 
join together the $2,000 payments with other, much more controversial 
measures, much more complicated measures, like the reform of our 
internet liability laws. That is an invitation for this entire effort 
to fall apart.
  The House has finished voting. They have passed the $2,000 payment 
bill and sent it to us. They are not interested in taking up anything 
else. If we start adding poison pills to the $2,000 payment bill, that 
is just another way of telling the American people that this body 
doesn't support $2,000 payments.
  Listen, being a billionaire must be crazy. I make a lot of money as a 
Senator, but even I would have to work 7,500 years before my earnings 
equaled $1 billion. You know what was happening $7,500 years ago? The 
Stone Age.
  There isn't a good reason to oppose giving Americans who aren't 
billionaires a measly $2,000 check to help them put food on the table 
for their kids in the middle of this once-in-a-lifetime crisis.
  There isn't a good reason to choose to make moms and dads all across 
this country decide which two meals they will feed their kids each day 
because three meals are not an option. Two thousand dollars doesn't put 
dinner on the table every night, but, man, going to bed hungry when you 
are 11--it sucks. And even dealing with it every other night instead of 
every single night, no kid is going to turn that down.
  There are 52 of you, and in the next 24 to 48 hours, you get to 
decide: Do you protect the billionaires or do you choose to feed that 
11-year-old kid? The only thing that stands between the American people 
and a $2,000 emergency survival check is 52 Senate Republicans. Got it? 
Understand?
  There is a bill pending right now before the Senate that gives $2,000 
to ordinary Americans. Yes, it costs a lot of money, and maybe down the 
line we will have to ask the billionaires to pay for it, but the bill 
is here right now. The legislative session expires in 5 days. President 
Trump says he will sign it, and all that matters right now is what 
these 52 people decide.
  The House passed the bill with lots of Democratic and Republican 
support. The President supports the idea. The only thing that can stop 
$2,000 payments to struggling Americans right now is 52 Senate 
Republicans.
  Some things in Washington aren't that simple--but this is.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Collins). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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