[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 38 (Monday, March 1, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Page S909]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          AMERICAN RESCUE PLAN

  Mr. McCONNELL. On another matter, at about 2 a.m. on Saturday 
morning, House Democrats rammed through the bonanza of partisan 
spending they are calling a pandemic rescue package. Only Democrats 
voted for it. Both Republicans and Democrats voted against it.
  Last year, under a Republican Senate and a Republican administration, 
Congress passed five historic coronavirus relief bills--five of them. 
Not one of the five bills got fewer than 90 votes in the Senate or less 
than about 80 percent over in the House.
  Ah, but alas, this time Democrats have chosen to go a completely 
partisan route. Even famous liberal economists and liberal editorial 
boards are saying their half-baked plan is poorly targeted to what 
families needed.
  We have gone from passing public relief with 80 percent and 90 
percent bipartisan supermajorities last year to the Speaker of the 
House ramming this through with just 50.7 percent of the House on 
Friday night. The bill contains all kinds of liberal spending on pet 
projects with no relationship whatsoever to pandemic relief.
  Remember, we are almost to the 1-year anniversary of a leading House 
Democrat admitting they see this whole crisis as ``a tremendous 
opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision.''
  So, sorry to all the American families who have just been hoping to 
get their jobs back, their schools back, and their lives back. 
Democrats are more interested in some restructuring. That is why only 1 
percent--1 percent--of this huge package goes directly to 
vaccinations--1 percent for vaccinations. That is why it proposes 
another 12-digit sum of Federal funding for K-12 schools, even though 
science shows those schools can be made safe right now. About 95 
percent of that funding won't even go out this fiscal year. Ninety-five 
percent of the school funding in this bill won't go out this year. And 
this is an emergency package?
  That is why they are pushing economic policies that would drag down 
our recovery--like the House's vote for a one-size-fits-all minimum 
wage policy that would kill 1.4 million jobs or continuing to pay laid-
off workers a premium to stay home that would extend well into a 
recovery where job growth and rehiring will be pivotal.
  Whenever their long-term liberal dreams came into conflict with what 
Americans actually need right now, Democrats decided their ideology 
should win out.
  Well, it doesn't have to be this way. We could have built more 
practical policies to help the American people move forward. Some 
Senate Republicans literally went down to the White House and proposed 
that both sides work together, like we did five times last year. The 
administration declined. So this is where we are: a bad process, a bad 
bill, and a missed opportunity to do right by working families.

                          ____________________