[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 42 (Friday, March 5, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1217-S1218]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    AMERICAN RESCUE PLAN ACT OF 2021

  Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, a year ago this week, Congress began 
work on what would become the CARES Act, the opening salvo in a 
yearlong battle against what, at the time, was a strange and new 
disease. I don't think anyone could have anticipated that a year hence 
we would have lost more than 10 million jobs and over half a million 
citizens.
  Even as the vaccine makes its way across the country, and hope 
shimmers on the horizon, millions of Americans

[[Page S1218]]

are still struggling with basic necessities. Folks are thousands of 
dollars behind on the rent and utilities. Their heat, water and power 
are getting shut off. More than a million Americans on unemployment 
insurance report that their kids aren't getting enough to eat.
  Sometimes the macrostatistics get in the way because the top end is 
doing very well, the top 10 percent or 25 percent, but so many other 
people are struggling. And if you just look at a big number, you say: 
Oh, everything is getting a little better. It is not for the lower half 
of America. It is not.
  I read about one of my constituents recently, Allilsa Fernandez, from 
Queens, who had a job as a home healthcare aide lined up at the start 
of the pandemic but couldn't take it because of her family's 
preexisting medical conditions. Her mother was in the hospital with 
COVID. Her income went from $3,400 a month to just $1,000.

       It was a huge, huge loss--

  She said.

       I have medications, my electric bill, the phone bill, and 
     [the] other costs. Every day you . . . have to make . . . 
     decisions: Am I going to eat?

  In America, that should not be the case. It shouldn't be at any time 
but particularly when an evil disease has robbed our hard-working 
people of their income, their livelihood.
  ``Am I going to eat?'' And we are supposed to sit here and do 
nothing? We are supposed to say to Ms. Fernandez, and so many like her, 
we are not giving you the help you need?
  Ms. Fernandez hasn't been able to pay the rent since April of last 
year, over $16,000 worth. And this bill will help people like her, but 
it will also prevent people from getting into Ms. Fernandez's place: 
people who work for State and local governments who might be laid off, 
people who work for small businesses who might be laid off.
  It is the job of this government, during this evil pandemic, to 
assist American families, businesses, and workers like Ms. Fernandez 
until this pandemic is over. It is also our job to prevent others from 
falling into the same awful situation that Ms. Fernandez finds herself. 
It is our job to hasten the day when Americans can go back to work, our 
country can go back to normal, our economy can come roaring back. We 
can reduce that awfully high actual 10 percent unemployment. That is 
what the American Rescue Plan will do.
  It will send direct checks to American workers and families 
struggling with the cost of groceries, medicine, and the rent. The vast 
majority of Americans will get the full $1,400 we have asked for. It 
will help reopen schools as quickly and safely as possible. It will 
help the hardest hit small businesses hang on. It will keep 
firefighters and teachers and busdrivers and sanitation workers on the 
job. It will help American families stay in their homes, care for their 
children, put food on the table, and it will give our country the 
resources, the vaccination and testing, that it needs to crush the 
virus once and for all.
  All told, the American Rescue Plan will be one of the largest anti-
poverty bills in recent history, cutting child poverty just about in 
half. The entire country has gotten behind the bill: business leaders, 
mayors, Governors, from big cities, small towns, Red States, Blue 
States, Democrat, Republican.
  The clear majority of the American people--Democrats, Independents, 
and Republicans--all support the American Rescue Plan. It seems the 
only group in America who doesn't support the American Rescue Plan are 
Washington Republicans.
  My colleagues on the other side of the aisle say $1.9 trillion is too 
expensive. Well, my Republican colleagues didn't think it was too 
expensive when they gave nearly the same amount in tax breaks to 
corporations and the ultrarich in a healthy economy, not one that is 
struggling.
  My colleagues claim this bill isn't related to COVID. What hogwash. 
It is a strange thing to say because most of the measures in the bill 
are exactly the same ideas Republicans supported a year ago in the 
CARES Act, which passed without a single dissenting Republican vote.
  Direct checks, in the CARES Act; enhanced unemployment insurance, in 
the CARES Act; assistance for State and local governments, in the CARES 
Act; funding for testing and the vaccine, in the CARES Act; aid to 
schools and small businesses, in the CARES Act. All of them were in the 
CARES Act, which every Republican voted for, and now they are saying 
the American Rescue Plan, which has the basic, same structure, is not 
related to COVID.
  When we passed the CARES Act, we all thought that maybe COVID would 
be gone by the summer. It isn't. We need to keep at it in the same way. 
Every single Republican who voted for the CARES Act and those ideas a 
year ago, when a Republican was in the White House and Republicans 
controlled the Senate, is now saying no, it seems. But now that a 
Democrat is in the White House, now that Democrats control the Senate, 
those same ideas, which they supported when Trump was President and 
McConnell was majority leader, are a liberal wish list--same ideas. Who 
the heck are they kidding? They have no good answer.
  But let's face it, we need to get this done. It would be so much 
better if we could in a bipartisan way, but we need to get it done.
  We are not going to make the same mistake we made after the last 
economic downturn when Congress did too little to help the Nation 
rebound, locking us into a long, slow, painful recovery, where it was 
years before employment was back to where it was before that crisis.
  We are not, we are not going to be timid in the face of big 
challenges. We are not, we are not going to delay when urgent action is 
called for. The Senate will move forward today with the American Rescue 
Plan. There will be a lengthy amendment process, as the rules of the 
Senate require. The Senate is going to take a lot of votes, but we are 
going to power through and finish this bill however long it takes. The 
American people are counting on us, and our Nation depends on it.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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