August 5, 2020 - Issue: Vol. 166, No. 139 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 2nd Session

[Pages S4913-S4915]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              CORONAVIRUS

  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, as everybody knows, this country faces at 
this moment an extraordinary set of crises--in fact, crises that are 
unprecedented in the history of our country. We are in the midst of the 
worst public health crisis since the Spanish flu of 100 years ago, and, 
sad to say, this Senate has done nothing to address that crisis over 
the last 2\1/2\ months.
  Over the past 4 months, the coronavirus has infected nearly 5 million 
Americans and caused 160,000 deaths, and the Senate is doing nothing.
  Incredibly--and this is incredible--more Americans have been killed 
by the coronavirus than by the Korean war, the Vietnam war, the Persian 
Gulf war, 9/11, the Afghanistan war, and the Iraq war combined, and the 
Senate is still not acting.
  We are in the midst of the worst economic meltdown since the Great 
Depression of the 1930s, and the Senate is doing nothing.
  Since March, more than 30 million Americans have lost their jobs. 
Last week, the Senate allowed a $600-a-week increase in their 
unemployment benefits to expire. Over half of the American people have 
seen a loss in their income. Yet the Senate continues to do nothing.
  Forty million Americans--an unbelievable number--40 million Americans 
are in danger of being evicted from their homes while the Senate has 
allowed a moratorium on evictions to expire.
  This is no great shock. Everybody knew this would happen. Yet the 
Republican leadership here has allowed that moratorium to expire.
  Twenty-six million Americans cannot afford food to feed their 
families, and those Americans are lining up at emergency food banks in 
record numbers, the vast majority of whom have never been to an 
emergency food bank in their lives, and the Senate is doing nothing.
  A recordbreaking 5.4 million Americans recently lost their health 
insurance. Under our dysfunctional healthcare system, when you lose 
your job, you often lose your health insurance, and that now leaves us 
with over 90 million Americans who are uninsured or underinsured; that 
is, 90 million Americans who today worry about whether they can afford 
to go to a doctor when they or their kids are sick. The Senate is doing 
nothing.
  In total, American households have lost a staggering $6.5 trillion in 
wealth since this pandemic began. It is an unimaginable number. What 
does that mean? That $6.5 trillion is a number much too large for many 
of us to fathom, and the Senate does nothing.
  Although I know there is some obfuscation about this, what everybody 
in America should understand is that over 2.5 months ago, the House did 
its job. Over 2.5 months ago, the U.S. House of Representatives did its 
job, and they passed legislation responding to the enormous pain and 
suffering that the American people are now experiencing. They did their 
job, but the Senate has not.
  The Heroes Act passed by the House in May would extend the $600-a-
week increase in unemployment benefits until January. I want everybody 
to understand that. I think sometimes there is confusion. The House did 
its job. Under the House bill, if that bill were passed here today here 
in the Senate, people would continue to get that $600 supplement in 
their unemployment benefits.
  The House bill would provide over $900 billion to State and local 
governments to prevent the massive layoff of teachers, firefighters, 
nurses, construction workers, and millions of other workers who are 
serving the public during this horrific pandemic. Over 1 million 
workers who work for State and local governments have already lost 
their jobs, and if we do not provide substantial aid to State and local 
governments, there will be a mass epidemic of job loss there.
  The House bill would provide hazard pay to essential workers, which 
is something that is long, long overdue. People are putting their lives 
on the line and sometimes dying in order to provide us with groceries 
or to get us to work on a bus or on a train. Those workers need hazard 
pay, and that is what the House did.
  The House also passed a provision in their legislation to require 
businesses to adopt strong health and safety standards to protect their 
employees and their customers.
  The House bill would provide $175 billion in rental and foreclosure 
assistance to make sure that millions of Americans do not lose their 
homes or get evicted from their apartments and end up out on the 
streets.
  The House bill also provides vital funding for nutritional 
assistance, for election security--an enormous issue here, whether or 
not we are going to have free and fair elections--and also substantial 
funding for the U.S. Postal Service, which is now being sabotaged by 
the Trump administration. That is what the House passed 2.5 months ago.
  Do I agree with everything that was in the House bill? No, I don't. I 
think much of it, however, is excellent. But we can and should make 
improvements in that bill here in the Senate. That is what we should be 
doing--accepting the bill and improving it.
  Two and a half months after the House passed its bill, Senate 
Republicans finally woke up, and they said: We have to do something. We 
have to respond. The public wants us to respond. We have to do 
something. And they finally released their bill to respond to the 
coronavirus crisis. Unfortunately, although not surprisingly, the 
Republican plan is woefully inadequate for the working families of our 
country, for the elderly, for their children, and for the poor, while 
at the same time it provides even more corporate welfare to the rich 
and the powerful. One might think that in the midst of this terrible 
pandemic, my Republican colleagues could control themselves just a bit 
and not pile on more benefits to the people who don't need them and 
maybe--just maybe--pay attention to the people who do need help.
  The Senate Republican bill provides nothing for hazard pay. If you 
are a grocery store worker, if you are a truckdriver, if you are a 
busdriver, if you are working in mass transit, nothing in that bill is 
provided for hazard pay. There is nothing for nutrition assistance and 
nothing for the 92 million Americans who are uninsured or underinsured. 
Ninety-two million people are uninsured or underinsured in the midst of 
a terrible public health crisis, and the Republican legislation ignores 
that reality completely. There is nothing for the U.S. Postal Service 
and nothing for State and local governments, many of which are on the 
verge of bankruptcy.
  Here is what that Republican bill does contain. It does include 
another

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$29 billion for the Pentagon. Last week, this body passed a $740 
billion bill for the Pentagon, which is more money than the next 11 
nations combined, most of which are our allies--a huge military budget, 
but clearly, in the midst of the pandemic, the Pentagon needs even 
more.
  The Republican bill does include another tax break for the meals and 
entertainment of wealthy CEOs. The Republican bill does include another 
$1.75 billion for an FBI building, $1 billion for new surveillance 
planes, $636 million more for F-35s, $360 million more for a new 
missile defense system, and $283 million more for Apache helicopters. I 
am not quite sure what Apache helicopters have to do with a pandemic, 
but be that as it may, they did put money in for the helicopters and 
for the Pentagon.
  Under the Republican bill, if you are a wealthy business executive, 
you will get a 100-percent tax deduction for a three-martini lunch--a 
100-percent tax deduction for having lunch at some fancy restaurant and 
spending another couple hundred dollars on your meal. But if you are 
one of the 26 low-income Americans who do not have enough food to eat, 
you get nothing in the Republican bill. In other words, when 
Republicans, in their bill, refer to nutrition, they are talking about 
tax breaks for the rich who eat at expensive restaurants but not one 
nickel for the children in this country who are facing hunger.

  Under the Republican bill, if you are a profitable defense 
contractor, you will receive an additional $11 billion in corporate 
welfare, but if you are one of the 92 million Americans who are 
uninsured or underinsured, you get nothing.
  Under the Republican bill, if you are a business owner who forces 
employees to work in an unsafe and unhealthy environment, you are 
rewarded. The Republican bill will provide you with the immunity you 
need from lawsuits if your workers get sick or die from the 
coronavirus. In other words, you have employers who are saying: You 
have to come back to work, or else you are going to get fired and not 
be able to feed your family. But the working conditions that we are 
providing for you are not protective of your health, and if you get 
sick, if you die, you are on your own. Don't hold us responsible for 
that.
  The Republican bill does not provide a nickel for essential workers 
during this pandemic, but it does make sure that you do not receive the 
hazard pay or the personal protective equipment that you need and 
deserve.
  Unbelievably--unbelievably--in the richest country in the history of 
the world, we have tens of thousands of workers--not only doctors and 
nurses but workers from all kinds of professions--who are interacting 
with the public who need high-quality personal protective equipment, 
and they don't have it.
  While the Republican bill slashes unemployment benefits by 43 percent 
for 30 million Americans who lost their jobs, it continues a $135 
billion tax break to 43,000 millionaires, primarily in the real estate 
and hedge fund industry. In other words, we stop the $600 benefit for 
unemployment, but we maintain a $135 billion tax break for the wealthy.
  It goes without saying that I am strongly opposed to the Senate 
Republican proposal. Instead of listening to the needs of the military-
industrial complex, we should be listening to the needs of working 
families and the poor. Instead of providing more tax breaks to the very 
wealthy, we need to provide more economic relief to the tens of 
millions of Americans who are hurting economically.
  Just last month, I asked my constituents in Vermont and, in fact, all 
over this country to write to me, email me, and tell me how the 
economic crisis we are in has impacted their lives. We received 
thousands and thousands of responses.
  I would like to take a moment to read just a few of the many stories 
that came into my office because I think sometimes it is very easy for 
us to live in a bubble and not really appreciate what is going on. It 
is especially more difficult when, because of the pandemic, many of us 
can't get out the way we would like to get out. So I used our email 
approach to reach out to people in Vermont and around the country and 
asked them to tell me what is going on, what is going on in your lives. 
Let me just repeat and read to you some of the responses--a few of the 
responses that I received.
  A gentleman named Dominic from Williston, VT, wrote:

       Without the additional $600/week benefit, my benefit will 
     automatically revert to the minimum $191/week.

  So he is now getting $791. If he didn't have that $600, it would be 
$191.

       At that rate, my wife and I will be in serious crisis 
     within a month.

  Like millions of other people, Dominic does not have a lot of money 
in the bank. If he did not get that $600 on top of his unemployment 
benefit, which in Vermont, for him, would be $191 a week, he would be 
in a serious financial crisis.
  Denise from Waitsfield, VT, wrote:

       I lost my job due to COVID-19 on March 16, 2020. The PUA 
     program and the additional $600 per week is keeping our 
     family out of debt and allowing us to afford our mortgage. 
     Without PUA and the additional federal stimulus, our family 
     would not be able to survive financially.

  In other words, without the unemployment and that $600 supplement, 
her family would not be able to survive financially.
  Casey from Burlington, VT, wrote:

       I have been unemployed since March 20th and have no job to 
     return to and limited options for finding a new job in a 
     timely fashion; losing the extra $600/weekly unemployment 
     benefit would be devastating for me. I know it would be the 
     same for so many others, including many friends and family.

  Amanda from Isle La Motte, a beautiful town in Northern Vermont, 
works, as it happens, while living in Vermont, for an unemployment 
office in the State of Massachusetts. She wrote--and this speaks to the 
job that she now has:

       I have heard heart wrenching stories. I've had moms crying 
     that they can't feed their kids, families telling me they've 
     been evicted and are homeless. A single dad who was a self-
     employed musician, he cried with me saying his savings had 
     run out, he had no money for food. This man's story will 
     stick with me the rest of my life. I've cried so many days 
     for all these people I can't help. I suggest the government 
     officials work in an unemployment call center for a day. The 
     heart-wrenching stories they will hear.

  I thank Amanda for that. I thank Amanda for the work she is doing and 
what she is trying to do but for reminding us that, in too many 
instances, Members of Congress are isolated from the reality that is 
taking place out there.
  The stories go on and on and on. Now that the $600 a week in 
unemployment benefits has expired, now that the moratorium on evictions 
has also expired, this crisis is only going to get worse and worse and 
worse. In my view, we need to extend the extra $600 a week in 
unemployment benefits for the 30 million Americans who have lost their 
jobs. I think that is a no-brainer.
  People are hurting. People are desperate. People cannot feed their 
kids. People are going to be evicted from their homes and their 
apartments. We have to respond to that pain and extend that $600 
supplement to normal unemployment.
  I would go further. I believe that we need to make sure that every 
working-class person in this country receives $2,000 a month until this 
crisis is over so they can have the security they need that they and 
their family are going to survive this crisis with dignity.
  And we cannot continue to ignore the reality that 92 million 
Americans today are uninsured or underinsured. While I, of course, 
believe in Medicare for All and will continue that fight, at least 
during this crisis, we should make sure that all of the 92 million who 
are uninsured or underinsured get covered by Medicare for their out-of-
pocket expenses. It is not asking too much that, during this crisis, 
people who have private insurance or Medicare or Medicaid not have to 
pay out-of-pocket expenses.
  We need a coronavirus relief bill that benefits the working class of 
this country and low-income people, not the wealthy and the well 
connected.
  Now, what I think many people do not fully understand--it doesn't get 
a whole lot of attention--is that, during this pandemic, not everybody 
is hurting. Not everybody out there needs the Senate to act. While over 
30 million Americans have seen their $600 a week in unemployment 
benefits expire, thanks to the emergency actions taken by the Federal 
Reserve to prop up the stock market, 467 billionaires in this country 
have seen their wealth go up

[[Page S4915]]

by over $730 billion since the pandemic has begun. Let me repeat that: 
467 billionaires have seen their wealth go up by over $730 billion in 
the last several months of this pandemic.
  Millions of people are unemployed, struggling to put food on the 
table, but 467 billionaires have seen their wealth go up by over $700 
billion. Meanwhile, during the last 4 months, while the very, very 
wealthy have become much richer, American households have seen their 
wealth go down by $6.5 trillion.
  In all likelihood, in the midst of everything else we are 
experiencing, we are currently looking at what is likely the greatest 
transfer of wealth from the middle class and the poor to the very rich 
in the modern history of this country. A massive transfer of wealth: 
the working-class and middle-class poor getting poorer; the people at 
the very, very top becoming phenomenally richer.
  In other words, in the midst of a pandemic, in the midst of an 
economic meltdown for working families, in the midst of a great 
struggle regarding systemic racism and police brutality, in the midst 
of the existential threat to our planet of climate change, in the midst 
of a President undermining democracy and moving this country in an 
authoritarian direction--in the midst of all of that, we are also 
seeing a massive increase in income and wealth inequality and the 
movement in this country toward oligarchy.
  Let me just give you a few examples of the incredible growth in 
inequality that is taking place right now as we speak. While Amazon is 
denying paid sick leave to its employees, while they are denying hazard 
pay and personal protective equipment to 450,000 of their workers, Jeff 
Bezos, the owner of Amazon, has increased his wealth by over $70 
billion. Yes, one person, during the pandemic, has seen his wealth 
increase by $70--7-0--billion.
  While U.S. taxpayers are subsidizing the starvation wages at Walmart 
by providing food stamps and affordable housing and Medicaid to the 
workers who are employed by the Walton family of Walmart, the Walton 
family--the owner of Walmart--has made over $20 billion during the 
pandemic and now has a net worth of over $200 billion. While 40 million 
Americans face eviction, Elon Musk has nearly tripled his wealth over 
the past 4 months and now has a net worth of more than $70 billion.
  While millions of Americans are lining up at emergency food banks 
because they don't have enough money to put food on the table, Mark 
Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, has increased his wealth by more 
than $37 billion during the pandemic and is now worth over $70 billion.
  In a time of massive wealth and income inequality, when so many 
people in our country are hurting, it is morally obscene for 
billionaires to use a global pandemic as an opportunity to make 
outrageous profits and to very substantially increase their wealth, and 
that is why I will be introducing legislation tomorrow to tax the 
obscene wealth gains billionaires have made during this public health 
crisis.

  According to Americans for Tax Fairness, if we tax 60 percent of the 
windfall gains these billionaires made from March 18 until August 3, we 
could raise over $420 billion. That is enough revenue to allow Medicare 
to pay all of the out-of-pocket healthcare expenses for every man, 
woman, and child in this country over the next 12 months.
  So that is the choice we have to make. Do we have a tax on the 
obscene increase in wealth that has taken place for a few hundred 
billionaires during this pandemic or do we have a fair tax on their 
wealth and say to every man, woman, and child: During this crisis, you 
will no longer have to pay anything out of pocket for the healthcare 
you and your family need?
  By taxing 60 percent of the wealth gains made by just 467 
billionaires--so, in a nation of 330 million people, we are talking 
about a tax on 467 of them--a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of 1 percent. 
Just by doing that, we could guarantee healthcare as a right for all 
people in this country for an entire year.
  By the way, if anybody out there is very worried about the impact of 
this tax on the billionaires, on the people who are being taxed--how 
will they survive a 60-percent tax? That is a high tax. Do you think 
they are going to make it? Well, we have left them more than $310 
billion to survive with. That is a $310 billion increase in their 
wealth. That is what we have left them.
  In my view, above and beyond this circumstance, above and beyond the 
pandemic, this Nation must address the obscene level of income and 
wealth inequality which exists. It existed before the pandemic, and it 
is even worse now. In my view, we can no longer tolerate three people 
in this country owning more wealth than the bottom half of our Nation 
at a time when 30 million Americans have lost their jobs and 93 million 
people are either uninsured or underinsured. We need to reconsider our 
value system and make it clear that so few cannot have so very much, 
such obscene wealth--which is exploding during the pandemic--while so 
many of our people are living in economic desperation.
  Now is the time to develop a new set of priorities and a new set of 
moral values for this country. Now is the time to tax the winnings of a 
handful of billionaires to improve the health and well-being of tens of 
millions of Americans. The time is long overdue for the Senate to act 
on behalf of the working class of this country, the people who are 
hurting like they have never hurt before--not in our lifetime--and have 
the courage to tell the billionaire class, who are doing phenomenally 
well, that they cannot have it all.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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