[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 40 (Wednesday, March 3, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Page S1001]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              CORONAVIRUS

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, last year, Congress rallied five times 
around historic bipartisan legislation to meet urgent and unprecedented 
needs. Our COVID-19 packages reinforced the healthcare frontlines, 
fueled the sprint for vaccines, and cast lifelines for the workers and 
small businesses hit hardest by shutdowns.
  Together, those bills cost about $4 trillion, but none of those 
measures passed the House of Representatives with less than a 
bipartisan supermajority of about 80 percent--completely overwhelming 
support.
  Then, last week, House Democrats rammed through the American Rescue 
Plan Act on a razor-thin margin of 50.7 percent. The only thing 
bipartisan about their bill was the opposition to it. Their bill costs 
about $2 trillion. That is roughly the same size as the entire CARES 
Act that saved our health system and economy through months of 
shutdowns last year. Even liberal experts admit this is far out of 
proportion to what is needed now, with vaccines going into arms and the 
economy already primed to literally roar back.
  Amazingly, Democrats managed to allocate less than 9 percent--9 
percent--of their massive bill to the entire healthcare response; 9 
percent of the $1.9 trillion related to the healthcare response, and--
listen to this--even less than 1 percent of the $1.9 trillion to the 
vaccines that will actually finish the fight.
  They needed to save the other 91 percent of the borrowed money for a 
vast catalog of liberal spending with basically no relationship 
whatsoever to beating COVID-19. For example, they want to send 
wheelbarrows of cash to State and local bureaucrats to bail out 
mismanagement from before the pandemic. They are changing the previous 
bipartisan funding formula in ways that will especially bias the money 
toward big blue States. This outraged a bipartisan group of Governors, 
largely from middle America, who went on record this week. There are 
generous new benefit packages for government employees. There are 
provisions to let abortion providers drain money from rescue programs 
that were built to save Main Street small businesses. There is a 
strange new Acela corridor kickback where they will make Medicare send 
more money to just New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Delaware.
  Just looking at the timeframe for all of their spending belies any 
notion that this is an urgent rescue plan.
  Take the K-12 funding which, contrary to science, Democrats say is a 
prerequisite for opening schools. Ninety-five percent of that 
supposedly urgent money would not be spent this fiscal year but, 
instead, over the next 7 years. Let me say that again. Ninety-five 
percent of the money for K-12 is not going to be spent this year, but 
over the next 7 years. That is not my definition of an emergency.
  Grants for rural healthcare would be on a slow drip out through 
fiscal 2024. Agriculture-related funds would trickle out over the 
next--listen to this--over the next decade. It doesn't sound very 
urgent to me.
  What the American people need are fast-acting plans to get schools 
reopened now, get laid-off workers back into jobs, and finish the fight 
against this virus right now. The Democrats have, instead, drawn up a 
liberal omnibus to fund miscellaneous government spending over the next 
decade.
  We are adding all this money to the national debt, and they have a 
rescue package with most of the money being spent out far in the 
future. That is why there was bipartisan opposition over in the House. 
That is why aspects of the House bill are already dropping like flies 
before this thing even hits the Senate floor.
  A pet project for the San Francisco Bay area is gone. Special 
upgrades for a bridge connecting New York to Canada, gone. Even CNN had 
to admit these were ``controversial.'' Senator Sanders' far-left 
minimum wage policy that would have killed 1.4 million jobs just as we 
try to recover appears to be gone, too--at least for now.
  According to public reports, right now, as we speak, several of our 
Democratic colleagues are frantically trying to trim back other crazy 
provisions: the runaway government bailouts, the policies that will 
keep workers at home when we should be focusing on rehiring.
  Just a few days ago, President Biden's Chief of Staff bragged that 
this smorgasbord of borrowed money will add up to ``the most 
progressive domestic legislation in a generation.''
  So that is what you get when the Democratic leader persuades all of 
my distinguished friends across the aisle that their first undertaking 
as Senate committee chairmen should be to outsource all their gavels to 
the House.
  The Senate wrote the CARES Act. In the earliest days of the crisis, 
this Chamber took the bull by the horns. I personally assembled 
bipartisan task forces that crafted urgent solutions to help America 
weather the storm.
  This time around, on the substance, the Senate has been largely 
missing in action. House Democrats are bristling and publicly pushing 
back if our Senate Democratic colleagues even try to make their mark on 
this partisan bill in small ways.
  So these two radically different processes have generated two 
radically different pieces of legislation.
  The Democrats had a choice. They chose to go it alone, tack to the 
left, leave families' top priorities on the cutting-room floor

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