[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 60 (Tuesday, April 5, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1949-S1950]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                              Coronavirus

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, now on COVID, yesterday afternoon I 
announced that Senator Romney and I had reached an agreement for a $10 
billion COVID supplemental appropriations package. It took many rounds 
of bipartisan talks, many days and nights and weekends of negotiations, 
but we have shaken hands on a compromise that the Senate can and should 
move forward very soon.
  I thank the Senators on both sides of the aisle who participated in 
this, and Senators Burr, Blunt, and Graham were involved with Senator 
Romney. Senator Coons gets a special shout-out because of his fierce 
determination to work on international, on getting an international 
thing done. Senator Murray, as well, was very helpful in our 
negotiations.
  The deal we announced yesterday has the support of Speaker Pelosi and 
President Biden, who urged Congress to work quickly to get a bill to 
his desk. We are going to work hard to get that done, and I hope my 
Republican colleagues will join us to move forward on this legislation.
  There is no reason why we shouldn't be able to get this funding 
passed. The administration needs it right now, and we all know that our 
country is in great need of replenishing our COVID health response 
funding. Putting in the work, today, to keep our Nation prepared 
against new variants will make it less likely that we get caught off 
guard by a new variant down the line.
  So this is really essential to America's well-being. It is essential 
to getting back to normal. All those who decried that we didn't get to 
normal quickly enough should be supportive of this legislation, because 
the longer we wait, the more difficult it will be when the next variant 
hits.
  This $10 billion COVID package will give the Federal Government and 
our citizens the tools we need--we depend on--to continue our economic 
recovery, to keep our schools open, to keep American families safe. The 
package we agreed to will provide billions more for vaccines, more 
testing capacity, and--essential--$5 billion for more lifesaving 
therapeutics, arguably the greatest need right now for the country.
  These therapeutics are great drugs, but if we don't have them at the 
ready when the new variant hits, it will let the variant get its 
tentacles deeper into our society. But this money will go a long way at 
keeping our schools, our businesses, our churches, our communities 
running as normally as possible, should a future variant rear its nasty 
head.
  Approving this package is simply the sensible, responsible, and 
necessary thing to do. Republicans and Democrats alike should now work 
together

[[Page S1950]]

to make sure we can move this package through the Chamber.
  Now, while this funding is absolutely necessary, it is far from 
perfect. I am deeply disappointed that some of our Republican friends 
could not agree to include $5 billion for global response efforts. I 
pushed them hard to include this international funding, as, of course, 
did Senator Coons and Senators Graham and Romney because fighting COVID 
abroad is intrinsically connected to keeping Americans healthy at home.
  It is not just the right thing to do to help struggling nations, 
though we certainly have an obligation to help. It is also good for our 
country. So it is putting money overseas to prevent COVID from 
spreading here, because, remember, every variant--all three variants--
that hit us started overseas and then came here. So that is not only 
humanitarian and the moral and right thing to do, but it is in our own 
self-interest. I know it sometimes sounds anomalous--sending money 
overseas is in our interest--but with COVID, where it germinates and 
starts the new variants, inevitably overseas, and then comes to hurt us 
is the right thing to do in our own self-interest, even if you had no 
humanitarian interest in doing it, which, of course, many of us do have 
a great deal of humanitarian interest.

  If we don't help the developing nations of the world with vaccines 
and treatment, we leave ourselves seriously at risk for potential new 
variants. Omicron, after all, started, in all likelihood, in South 
Africa, where today less than a third of the population is vaccinated--
fully vaccinated.
  It is thus my intention for the Senate to consider a bipartisan 
international appropriations package that will include funding to 
address COVID-19, as well as other urgent priorities, like aid for 
Ukraine and funding for global food insecurity.
  I know that many on both sides--I mentioned the names earlier--are 
serious about reaching an agreement on this issue. Nevertheless, this 
week's agreement is carefully negotiated. We bent over backward when 
our Republican colleagues did not want to accept certain kinds of pay-
fors which we thought were appropriate and have always been used, but 
we thought it was so important to get this done that we did that. It is 
a very important step to keeping the country healthy and keeping life 
as close to normal in the future as we can.
  I want to thank, again, Senator Romney for leading the negotiations 
for the Senate Republicans and working in good faith to reach 
agreement. I also want to thank, as I mentioned, Coons, Murray, Burr, 
Blunt, and Graham for their help and support to reach this bipartisan 
agreement, and Chairman Leahy and his staff for their assistance in 
putting the legislation together.
  Finally, I want to thank the staff of the CBO, the Congressional 
Budget Office. They worked around the clock with us to score this 
legislation.
  So we have taken a massive step closer to getting this important 
funding done, and I thank everyone for their good work to reach this 
point.