[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 21 (Wednesday, February 2, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S464-S465]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                              Coronavirus

  Madam President, this week marks 2 years since the Federal Government 
first declared the new coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency. 
I don't need to recount the staggering number of lives lost or the 
terrible upheaval throughout our society that our citizens have had to 
endure.
  Two years in, it is time for leaders at all levels of our society to 
take a deep breath, clear the decks, and review where we stand today.
  Here is what we know in February of 2022: Thanks to the prior 
Senate's work with the prior administration, our country is flooded 
with safe and effective vaccines for all who want them.
  We know the vaccines do not prevent us from catching the current 
variant of the virus or transmitting it to others, so there is no moral 
justification for vaccine mandates. But it is absolutely clear that 
vaccines slash the odds of hospitalization and death. They are a 
powerful personal shield that lowers the fatal risk of COVID beneath 
other normal background risks that we face regularly in our daily 
lives.
  As the New York Times explained this week, ``With a booster shot, 
COVID resembles other respiratory illnesses that have been around for 
years,'' and ``[t]he chance that an average American will die in a car 
crash this week is significantly higher.'' That is from the New York 
Times.
  The good news goes on. As we have known for months, children are even 
better off still. Unvaccinated kids seem to face the same extremely low 
risk as vaccinated people on the younger side of middle age.
  In February 2022, we know we are currently facing an Omicron variant 
that seems both significantly more contagious than its predecessors but 
also significantly less severe.
  Even in hard-hit States like my own, where hospitalizations remain 
too high, the curve of cases and hospitalizations appears to be 
starting to bend back down.
  I continue to encourage Kentuckians and all Americans to discuss the 
vaccines with their doctors and take this safe and effective step. It 
can be the difference literally between life and death.
  But from a society-wide perspective, after 2 years on this hellish 
highway, it appears our country is finally arriving at the off-ramp. 
The virus appears to be heading endemic. Seventy percent of Americans 
agree with the statement ``It's time we accept that COVID is here to 
stay and we just need to get on with our lives.'' It is time for the 
state of emergency to wind down.
  But, disturbingly, whether or not we should trust the science and 
reclaim normalcy is somehow becoming a partisan question. As a New York 
Times writer observed this week, ``[M]illions of Democrats have decided 
that organizing their lives around COVID is core to their identity as 
progressives, even as pandemic isolation and disruption are fueling 
mental health problems, drug overdoses, violent crime, rising blood 
pressure and growing educational inequality.'' Those are not my words; 
that is the New York Times.
  For goodness' sake, nearing 60 percent of partisan Democrats told one 
survey they would support placing unvaccinated people under a form of 
house arrest.
  Let me say that again. Nearly 60 percent of partisan Democrats told 
one survey they would support placing unvaccinated people under a form 
of house arrest. A supermajority of Americans oppose that absurd idea, 
but most Democrats say they would support it.
  A majority of Americans oppose the heavyhanded vaccine mandates where 
mayors and local politicians are trying to substitute their own 
judgment for the decisions of free citizens and their doctors. A 
majority of Americans oppose these vaccine passports, but nearly 80 
percent of Democrats want them.
  In communities across the country, bureaucrats are still forcing 
young children to wear a mask to participate in society, when neither 
kids nor vaccinated adults are remotely--remotely--likely to get 
gravely ill.

  So what exactly are we doing here? Where are the goalposts? What is 
the end game?
  Consider if this variant were its own separate virus that we were 
just meeting for the very first time, without the scar tissue from the 
prior 2 years. Nobody would accept anywhere near this much disruption 
to fight the virus that we are actually facing right now.
  Here in Washington, multiple Congresses have spent a staggering $6 
trillion on this crisis. Of the most recent $2 trillion that our 
Democratic colleagues rammed through last year, only 9 percent went to 
healthcare in any form; less than 1 percent went to vaccines. Even 
within that 9 percent, the Biden administration then diverted important 
COVID funding to other unrelated crises, like their border crisis.
  Now we hear Democrats may request yet another--yet another--huge 
chunk

[[Page S465]]

of emergency spending. But experts say as much as $800 billion or $900 
billion of the money that we have already set aside has not even been 
spent yet. Eight or nine hundred billion of the money that we have 
already set aside has not been spent yet. What about a full accounting 
of the $6 trillion that has already been approved?
  If there are urgent needs for true, medical COVID needs, let's 
discuss it, and let's start the discussion by talking about repurposing 
the hundreds of billions that are already sitting in the pipeline.
  As one report put it, ``[T]he vast majority of almost $200 billion 
allocated to K-12 schools has not been spent.'' That is $200 billion. 
``The same goes for half of the $195 billion sent out to state 
governments. And most city and county governments have not spent much 
of the $130 billion they . . . received, either.'' Many States are 
swimming in cash and running surpluses. They have had to dream up 
creative non-COVID-related uses for these windfalls.
  So, look, 2 years in, if Democrats call for more giant sums of 
emergency spending, the burden of proof lies with them to demonstrate 
that the hundreds of billions of dollars of unspent money already in 
the system are not sufficient. And unless something changes, so long as 
COVID continues retreating to the level of risk that we all regularly 
face in other aspects of daily life, then our leaders' duty to the 
American people is perfectly clear: Trust the vaccines, follow the 
data, forget the tribalism, work to assuage people's fears and neuroses 
with facts instead of feeding into them, and articulate your clear game 
plan to give the American people back their normalcy in the very near 
future.