[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 42 (Friday, March 5, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1218-S1219]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    AMERICAN RESCUE PLAN ACT OF 2021

  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, today or tonight or tomorrow, 
Democrats say they will break the bipartisan streak that has defined 
the pandemic response up until now. They are dead set on ramming 
through an ideological spending spree packed with non-COVID-related 
policies.
  This is just what a leading House Democrat admitted they would do 
back at the start of the crisis: Exploit the pandemic as ``a tremendous 
opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision.'' To give them 
credit, they never hid the ball. That is how you get a 628-page bill 
that costs nearly $2 trillion, but only 9 percent addresses the fight 
against the virus itself and only 1 percent--1 percent--for the 
lifesaving vaccines that are ending this nightmare as we speak.
  That is how you craft a bill that does nothing to immediately get 
kids back to classrooms. In fact, that spends only 5 percent of the K-
12 school money this fiscal year.
  This isn't a pandemic rescue package; it is a parade of leftwing pet 
projects they are ramming through during a pandemic.
  There is a costly ObamaCare bailout that will disproportionately 
benefit wealthier people; payments to farmers and ranchers based solely 
on the demographics of the recipient without any regard to actual need; 
and a massive cash bailout for mismanaged State and local governments, 
multiple times the size of COVID needs.
  Instead of pushing back on the anti-science bullying from Big Labor 
that is locking kids out of the classrooms, they buy into it.
  They want to create generous new benefits for parents who are dealing

[[Page S1219]]

with school closures but only if they are Federal employees. To all the 
parents without government jobs, no such luck.
  There are provisions to let abortion providers raid the small 
business rescue funds that were meant for Main Street businesses.
  They want to pay people a bonus not to go back to work when we are 
trying to rebuild our economy.
  There is an effort to create a brandnew, sprawling cash welfare 
program--not the one-time checks but constant payments--that ignores 
the pro-work lessons of bipartisan welfare reform and which the White 
House has already stated they want to make permanent.
  The unrelated liberal policies are simply endless. It is like they 
have forgotten we have a pandemic to fight.
  Larry Summers, a top economist in both the Clinton and Obama 
administrations, says this plan piles way more debt on our kids and 
grandkids than we need to spend right now. That is Larry Summers, Bill 
Clinton's Secretary Treasury. Jason Furman, who chaired President 
Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, said the State and local bailouts 
are ``overkill.'' These are liberal economists, Madam President.
  By one analysis, the Democrats' extra cash bonuses for laid-off 
workers who stay home will result in almost 60 percent of workers 
earning more money staying home than they would earn from returning to 
work--more money by staying home than they would earn from returning to 
work. What a great idea. This isn't State unemployment insurance; it is 
borrowing from our kids and grandkids to pay yet an additional cash 
bonus for not working.
  This would extend deep into 2021, when we anticipate serious job 
growth. Just this morning, we had a jobs report that shattered 
expectations, nearly doubling the job growth experts had expected to 
see.
  This is what the Washington Post says about this mess. This is the 
Washington Post about this mess that is before us:

       For policy experts and even members of Biden's own party, 
     the improving picture is raising questions about whether the 
     stimulus bill is mismatched to the needs of the current 
     moment.

  That is from the Washington Post editorial.
  It is mismatched all right because it was never designed to meet 
Americans' needs. The goal was to ``restructure things to fit'' their 
``vision.'' That is why there was no bipartisan process after a year of 
completely bipartisan COVID bills that we worked on together. That is 
why the Senate Republicans who went to the White House to propose 
working together were told: No thanks; take it or leave it.
  This is such a poorly targeted rush job that Democrats can't even 
settle on one set of political spin. The White House Chief of Staff is 
going around town admitting that they have written ``the most 
progressive domestic legislation in a generation.'' That is the White 
House Chief of Staff. Meanwhile, here in the Senate, Democrats are 
still pretending this is some down-the-middle proposal and lecturing us 
for not supporting it. They can't even get their stories straight.
  The administration campaigned on ushering in a new day of unity and 
bipartisanship, but in 2020, under Republican leadership, the Senate 
negotiated five rescue bills totaling $4 trillion, and none of them got 
fewer than 90 votes. That is how this Senate was run last year in a 
time of divided government, and now, in this supposed new era of 
healing leadership, we are about to watch one party ram through a 
partisan package on the thinnest margins. Go figure.
  Republicans have many ideas to improve the bill, many ideas, and we 
are about to vote on all kinds of amendments in the hopes that some of 
these ideas make it into the final product. We are going to try to 
improve the bill. The millions who elected 50 Republican Senators will 
have their voices heard loud and clear.
  Our country is already set for a roaring recovery. We are already on 
track to bounce back from this crisis. That is not because of this 
bill; it is because of our work last year. This is a trend this new 
Democratic government inherited. We are going to come roaring back and 
mostly not because of this bill--in fact, in some ways, in spite of 
this bill. It will be because of the bipartisan foundation we laid last 
year and the strength and resilience of our people. Democrats inherited 
a tide that was already turning.
  We could have worked together to do something smart to finish this 
fight as fast as possible. Democrats decided to do something else.

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