[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 41 (Thursday, March 4, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1038-S1039]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    AMERICAN RESCUE PLAN ACT OF 2021

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, on a completely different matter, 
yesterday, our Democratic colleagues had planned to begin ramming 
through their partisan spending spree, but it seems they have had some 
difficulty getting to the starting line. After all, Senate Democrats, 
including committee chairs, are essentially being jammed with text from 
over in the House. Their own Members have barely been able to read this 
thing, let alone shape it.
  So let's think back to where we were 1 year ago. Eleven-and-a-half 
months

[[Page S1039]]

ago, the Senate was also discussing a major spending package. In fact, 
it was the same size as what is being proposed right now--about $2 
trillion--an appropriate pricetag back at the start of the crisis, but 
that is where the similarity actually ends.
  Last March, the Senate was working overtime, in a bipartisan fashion, 
to craft good policy from the bottom up. I assembled bipartisan task 
forces. We had Republicans and Democrats and staff working around the 
clock to build the policies that would save our health system and our 
economy.
  The CARES Act sustained us for almost a year of shutdowns. It funded 
the healthcare fight, saved small businesses, and funded Operation Warp 
Speed, which helped pave the way for these pioneering vaccines and 
preordered hundreds of millions of doses for Americans. The law sent so 
much relief to households that, even as the GDP declined, personal 
incomes and savings actually went up. Even liberal economists say 
President Biden has inherited an economy that was already primed for a 
swift recovery. It was the largest American rescue package ever. Yet it 
passed the Senate without one single dissenting vote because it was 
built the right way.
  That was last March. So what about today?
  Instead of heading into a dark tunnel, we are accelerating out of it: 
incredible vaccines, a rebounding economy. That is what the Biden 
administration inherited thanks to what we did last year.
  Yet Washington Democrats are trying to exploit the last chapters of 
this crisis to pass what President Biden's Chief of Staff calls ``the 
most progressive domestic legislation in a generation,'' and they have 
told Republicans: Take it or leave it. No openness to meaningful 
bipartisan input. Ten Republican Senators approached President Biden 
and proposed cooperation on the order of hundreds of billions of 
dollars. They were refused. All that interested the Democrats was a 
partisan hodgepodge of, largely, non-COVID-related items.
  Last year, the Democratic leader said:

       Sitting in your own office, writing a bill, and then 
     demanding the other side support it is not anyone's idea of 
     bipartisanship.

  As recently as last November, he said:

       We need a true bipartisan bill--not ``this is our bill, 
     take it or leave it.''

  Another time, our friend from New York told everyone to ``go look up 
in the dictionary what `bipartisanship' is. It's both parties working 
together, not your party doing a bill and then saying it's 
bipartisan.''
  In less than 4 months, we have had two completely different versions 
of the Democratic leader. The two of them could have a fascinating 
debate with each other.
  But look, the real tragedy here is not Senate process; it is how ill-
suited this bill is to what Americans need right now. There are no 
policies to get schools reopened right away and no smart solutions to 
directly spur rehiring. Less than 1 percent of the money goes to the 
vaccines that will end this nightmare--only 9 percent to the entire 
healthcare fight altogether.
  I guess it has become a rite of passage for a new Democratic 
President to begin with a poorly targeted spending spree that doesn't 
give Americans what they need.
  We already laid the foundation for a roaring comeback. The Biden 
administration inherited a tide that was already turning, but they have 
chosen to ignore the approach that got us this far

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