Formatting necessary for an accurate reading of this text may be shown by tags (e.g., <DELETED> or <BOLD>) or may be missing from this TXT display. For complete and accurate display of this text, see the PDF.
[Pages S3627-S3628]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CORONAVIRUS
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, on another matter, each time I have
returned home over the last several weeks, I have had the opportunity
to travel to different Kentucky hospitals to safely meet with
healthcare professionals and thank them for their incredible work, as
well as to listen to what is on their minds.
For more than 3 months now, our Nation's doctors, nurses, and health
professionals have been fighting day and night to heal strangers and
protect our Nation. I said in mid-March that our country was about to
meet a lot of new heroes and that among them would be many people who
wear scrubs, who rush toward the sick, and who wash their hands until
they bleed.
Well, Americans and families from coast to coast have met just such
heroes. The frontline professionals I am meeting are proud to do their
work, and you had better believe they are appreciative that the
sacrifices and smart precautions taken by the American people stopped
health systems from being overrun in the springtime, allowed them to
continue giving each patient the care they deserved, and bought our
country time to plan a smart, safe, and gradual reopening.
So until we have a safe and effective vaccine, it will remain all of
our jobs as American citizens to help our Nation settle into a middle
ground between unsustainable emergency lockdowns and our ordinary life
from before all this. In short, we cannot go back to April, and we
cannot go right back to normal. We need new routines, new rhythms, and
new strategies for this new middle ground in between.
It is the task of each family, each small business, each employer,
and all levels of government to apply common sense and make this
happen. To name
[[Page S3628]]
just one example, we must have no stigma--none--about wearing a mask
when we leave our homes and come near other people. Wearing simple face
coverings is not about protecting ourselves; it is about protecting
everyone we encounter.
In fact, the more we hate the pain and suffering that accompanied the
strict stay-home guidelines a few months ago, the happier we should be
to take responsible, small steps every day to ensure our country can
stay on offense against the virus.
Now, the Senate should take pride in the degree to which our historic
response has helped the country get where we are. All of the health
leaders and professionals I meet continue to be glad for the CARES Act,
the historic bipartisan legislation that Senate Republicans wrote and
then negotiated across the aisle.
We sent historic resources to hospitals and health providers to help
them do their healing work and to fight this new invader. That was in
addition to the historic relief we provided to households and small
businesses, which economists across the political spectrum say saved
millions of jobs and prevented an economic freefall.
In May and June, while the Democrat-led House has been mostly absent,
the Senate has kept right on leading. In addition to legislating on
other important subjects, we have continued to work all angles of the
pandemic.
By the end of this week, I believe our committees will have held more
than 40 hearings on key aspects of the crisis so this institution can
continue to learn and inform any future work.
As I have been saying for weeks, a number of us are putting together
strong legal protections for healthcare professionals, K-12 schools,
colleges and universities, and employers so that our recovery is not
promptly swamped by a second epidemic of frivolous lawsuits.
While the Democratic House slapped together an absurd multitrillion-
dollar wish list that even the mainstream media panned immediately, the
Senate has continued with our substantive, serious, facts-first
approach. That is the winning formula that built the historically
successful CARES Act, and that is the formula we will replicate in any
future recovery legislation down the road.
____________________
