[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 46 (Thursday, March 11, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1478-S1479]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              CORONAVIRUS

  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, a year ago, coronavirus cases were 
beginning to climb on U.S. soil. Shutdown measures were starting to 
take effect.
  Americans have endured one of the strangest and most painful years in 
living memory. Nearly 2 million Americans have been hospitalized with 
serious cases of the virus. More than half a million have lost their 
lives. Millions of students and workers have had their lives completely 
thrown off course. But these dark times have also spotlighted some of 
the best of America: heroism, selflessness, ingenuity.
  Last March, the night we passed the CARES Act without a single 
dissenting vote, I said we would see a new generation of American 
heroes, and so we have. Doctors and nurses and first responders have 
worked tirelessly to help their fellow Americans. Essential workers 
kept manning their posts and prevented economic collapse. Neighbors 
looked out for neighbors, and small businesses shifted gears almost 
overnight. Children and parents have fought to adapt to extraordinary 
disruptions, and incredible heroes in lab coats in America and 
worldwide worked at light speed to decode this new enemy and create 
lifesaving vaccines in record time.
  Today, together, we are standing on the cusp of a new springtime for 
our

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country not like anything we have experienced in our lifetimes. More 
than 95 million vaccine doses have reached American arms; another 2 
million every single day. COVID-related deaths have plummeted, now less 
than half of their high, particularly for the elderly and the 
vulnerable. Science reaffirms kids can be safely in the classroom right 
now. States are starting to lift blanket restrictions, freeing citizens 
and small businesses to follow smart precautions themselves. For weeks, 
every indicator has suggested our economy is poised to come roaring 
back, with more job openings for Americans who need work.
  None of these trends began on January 20. President Biden and his 
Democratic government inherited a tide that had already begun to turn 
toward decisive victory.
  In 2020, Congress passed five historic bipartisan bills to save our 
health system, protect our economic foundations, and fund Operation 
Warp Speed to find vaccines. Senate Republicans led the bipartisan 
CARES Act that got our country through the last year.
  The American people already built the parade that has been marching 
toward victory; Democrats just want to sprint in front of the parade 
and claim credit.
  So when 10 Republican Senators went to the White House to suggest 
working together, the Democrats said: Uh, no. Both the Democratic 
leader and the White House Chief of Staff now indicate they think 
President Obama's problem was that he was too bipartisan.
  This time, as one journalist put it, the situation was ``Democrats to 
GOP: Take it or leave it.'' The ``it'' that we are talking about here 
was a bill that only spent about 1 percent on vaccines and about 9 
percent on the entire health fight. The rest of the tab went to things 
like this: a $350 billion bailout for State and local budgets unrelated 
to pandemic needs, with strings attached to stop States from cutting 
taxes on their own citizens down the road--take the money, you don't 
get to cut taxes; massive Federal school funding spread over several 
years, without requiring quickly reopening; sweeping new government 
benefits with no work requirements whatsoever--a time warp to the bad 
times before bipartisan welfare reform--which Democrats already say 
they want to make permanent; and agricultural assistance conditioned 
not on specific financial need but solely on the demographics of the 
farmer, which some liberal activists are celebrating as 
``reparations.'' Only about 20 percent of the spending went to $1,400 
direct checks, to try to keep all of the unrelated socialism out of the 
spotlight.
  This wasn't a bill to finish off the pandemic; it was a 
multitrillion-dollar Trojan horse full of bad, old liberal ideas. 
President Biden's own staff keep calling this legislation ``the most 
progressive bill in American history''--hardly the commonsense 
bipartisanship that the President promised.
  So we pause today at the 1-year mark to remember and to mourn, but we 
also look with great optimism toward the future. Twenty twenty-one is 
set to be a historic comeback year, not because of the far-left 
legislation that was passed after the tide had already turned but 
because of the resilience of the American people.
  (Mr. PADILLA assumed the Chair.)

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