[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 23 (Monday, February 8, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Page S564]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                              Coronavirus

  Madam President, in 2020, a Republican Senate and a Republican 
administration led five historic pandemic rescue packages on a 
completely bipartisan basis.
  We marshaled the largest Federal response to any crisis since World 
War II--about $4 trillion across five bills--all of it completely 
bipartisan, but now Washington Democrats have other ideas. Even though 
we are still pushing out $900 billion in relief that Congress passed 
less than 2 months ago, even though a group of Senate Republicans met 
with President Biden to discuss bipartisan avenues for hundreds of 
billions of dollars more, Washington Democrats have decided they want 
to go it alone.
  It was last March--remember?--when a senior House Democrat called 
this disaster a ``tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit 
our vision.'' Americans are suffering, but their side seems to see an 
opportunity to ram through ideological change. That is the impulse 
behind the Democrats' latest $1.9 trillion proposal. Their plan for 
more massive borrowing puts leftwing myths ahead of the scientific 
evidence and the Nation's urgent needs. While the Biden 
administration's own scientists say schools could reopen safely right 
now with smart and simple precautions, their proposal buys into the 
myth from Big Labor that schools should stay shut a whole lot longer.
  While Republicans want to save as many jobs as possible, Washington 
Democrats are backing Senator Sanders' demand to more than double the 
minimum wage. The Congressional Budget Office says this would kill 1.4 
million American jobs. Nonpartisan experts say it would send more 
people to the unemployment line than it would lift out of poverty. But 
remember, this is all about liberal dreams, not urgent needs.
  Some Democrats even want to break Senate rules to jam this through. 
Last week, the Senate had a 14-hour voting marathon on amendments to 
the phony, partisan budget that Democrats jammed through as a 
procedural first step. We got Senators on the record on a host of 
questions that matter to American families. Sadly, the Democrats 
blocked our efforts to say that, at the very least, school districts 
where teachers have been vaccinated certainly need to reopen, to press 
States to accurately report nursing home deaths, to protect the free 
exercise of religion, and several more.
  Other amendments divided Democrats and were adopted. For example, 
over some Democrats' objections, the Senate said that illegal 
immigrants should not receive stimulus checks, that the Keystone XL 
Pipeline should not be canceled, and that our government should not 
declare war on fracking. But, amazingly enough, at the end of the 
night, the very same Senate Democrats who had sought to appear moderate 
by supporting those three things turned around and voted in lockstep to 
strip them all out again.
  Our colleagues who said they supported these changes voted to strip 
them right back out at the end of the evening. That is about as 
Washington, DC, as it gets.
  For the sake of America's kids, American jobs, Americans' health, 
Democrats should put the political games aside and resume the same 
kinds of bipartisan talks they demanded constantly all of last year. 
American families deserve a process and a bill that put their actual 
needs at the center.