August 6, 2020 - Issue: Vol. 166, No. 140 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 2nd Session
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CORONAVIRUS; Congressional Record Vol. 166, No. 140
(Senate - August 06, 2020)
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[Pages S5256-S5258] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] CORONAVIRUS Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, Senator Stabenow said some time ago that this is not just another Thursday. She and my eloquent colleagues, Senator Coons and Senator Hassan, who has just left the floor, have shown how painfully true Senator Stabenow's statement is about letting this not be just another Thursday here in the Senate. With Republican colleagues headed home for the weekend, perhaps for weeks, I want to take stock for a moment of all of the very crises the country faces while American families and communities don't have the luxury of a weekend. There is the COVID crisis, which Senator Stabenow and Senator Coons just talked about, with more than 50,000 newly confirmed cases and 1,000 or more deaths a day with a total of 4\1/2\ million cases in our country to date. There is the joblessness crisis. Enhanced unemployment benefits have expired. Tens of millions of Americans are out of work, with millions walking on economic tightropes. My colleagues are reading the letters. This is not based on some kinds of media reports. They are reading directly from what their constituents are saying, and I want to make sure everybody knows this, having listened now for days to our colleagues saying that the big problem is that somehow the American worker doesn't actually want to work. Senator Stabenow and I have heard that repeatedly in the Finance Committee room. I think it is insulting to the American worker. [[Page S5257]] We had a nationwide townhall sponsored by the Town Hall Project on unemployment issues recently, and people would say things such as this: If I heard about a job on Monday night, I would be there at the crack of dawn on Tuesday morning to get that position. So, as we take stock of these crises, the COVID crisis, the joblessness crisis, I think what we ought to do is add the crisis of legislative malpractice that we are seeing with this Senate Republican walkout today, heading home instead of working, as Senator Coons has said, in a bipartisan way to get the coronavirus rescue bill. I have not seen anything like this in my time in public service: The biggest public health disaster in over a century, the worst level of unemployment since the Depression, an economy that barely holds on, and tomorrow's jobs report will almost certainly show that any hope for a V-shaped recovery that Donald Trump talked about is long gone. Republicans delayed and sat on their hands for months. I think the Presiding Officer heard me walk everybody through the calendar, how weeks passed, months passed. We made offer after offer for negotiation. Senator Schumer and I developed a proposal that to a great extent was based on some of the thinking of Senator Thune. I always think of my friend from Delaware, who is the champion of bipartisanship. That proposal was based on Senator Coon's--excuse me, Senator Thune's thought that, you know, if unemployment is high, people need a benefit so they can make the rent and pay for groceries. Then Senator Thune said: But, you know, when unemployment goes down, the benefits should reflect that as well. He said that. So Senator Schumer and I wrote the unemployment insurance bill to reflect that. The unemployment benefits would be tied to economic conditions on the ground. Yet what we have seen is that somehow Senate Republicans can now leave in good conscience for the weekend, possibly the August recess, when the Senate hasn't passed a bill to help all of those Americans who are sick and jobless. Our job is to legislate on the big issues, not to run home and campaign. Our job is to sit down, negotiate, and find solutions. Mitch McConnell, on the basis of this morning's newspaper, doesn't seem to even show up at the negotiating table. Now, as I mentioned, we have been warning for days and weeks and months that enhanced unemployment benefits were going to expire at the end of July. Republicans sat on their hands. Earlier, we heard Senate Republicans talk about how they had a 1-week proposal which, of course, wouldn't--based on the unemployment experts--get any real help to people who need that money for rent and groceries anytime soon. The Senate Republicans said: You know, workers are going over the cliff. Well, the fact that Republicans have sat this debate out is what pushed those workers over the cliff--pushed them over the cliff--as we warned week after week after week that the economy was cratering and permanent layoffs are increasing. Senator Merkley has joined us. We hear all the time at home and in the Pacific Northwest about people who got laid off once, things seemed to be getting better, they got brought back, and they were laid off again. So it seems--when Senator Stabenow points out that this is not just another Thursday in the Senate--that the economy is headed in the wrong direction. I am just going to spend a couple of minutes, as we talk about this issue of how things are definitely not right here on this Thursday in the Senate, on the question of what would it take for Senate Republicans to get serious about working with us on a coronavirus bill now? How bad would it have to get? One-quarter of a million Americans' lives lost? Half a million? How many jobless? 40 million? 50 million? Does the economy need to contract even more than it did in the second quarter before Senate Republicans say they are going to work with Democrats to help the economy and help the Congress? Back in March, there was a basic deal between the American people and the government to try to make sure that there was an effort to try to provide help for people as the pandemic took hold in this country. Senator Stabenow and I were sort of the point people as it related to the big issues in the Finance Committee. Senator Stabenow, doing her usually terrific job on the big health issues, and I spent days and days hearing essentially from the Labor Secretary, Secretary Scalia, about how he really wasn't going to push hard for much of anything except business as usual. But after that difficult period that went on for days and days in the Finance Committee, we actually got the $600 extra per week, each week, and modernized the unemployment program. As Senator Stabenow knows, back when the program began in the 1930s, nobody knew about a gig worker or the self-employed, or the independent contractor, or freelancers, and the like. There was a sense that we would be working on unemployment for a long time, particularly the way it was administered, because the States have these kinds of bronze-age technologies. One of the frustrating parts of this period is that even though millions and millions of Americans have gotten those extra benefits, that is really cold comfort to the many people who haven't been able to get through the system and who haven't been able, call after call after call, to get their claim resolved. Yet there was the beginning, based on that vote, of a strategy to help people get through the economic hardship. Right now, the Trump administration and Republicans in the Congress are breaking that deal. The virus is out of control, spiking in so many States. The key economic lifeline for jobless Americans is getting yanked away. It is just unconscionable. And, now, just in the last few hours, there is talk that Donald Trump is looking at possibly tomorrow, Senator Stabenow, tearing up the Constitution and ordering a cut in the Social Security and Medicare tax on his own. This will not give a dime to the millions of families who have lost jobs during the pandemic but will put thousands of dollars in the pockets of every lawyer and wheeler-dealer who can pay themselves a salary while sitting at home. What really concerns us--and I have been involved in these issues since my Gray Panthers days--is one thing that Donald Trump is talking about, Senator Stabenow, and that is draining the Social Security trust fund and bringing closer the day when Social Security benefits will be cut. So for all of those people who are, say, in their late fifties, and they have worked so hard and done difficult labor year after year after year just hoping--hoping--to be able to get Social Security, now Donald Trump is talking about draining the Social Security trust fund, cutting the Social Security and Medicare tax on his own. It sure seems like he has a monopoly on bad ideas. He is also talking about some kind of Executive order on enhanced unemployment benefits, which he actually doesn't have the authority to issue--one more Donald Trump ``con'' oil, an additional bit of snake oil. With respect to the unemployment issue and his idea of an Executive order, what he would do there is throw State workforce agencies into chaos. As we talked about, so many States have faced real challenges in getting benefits out to all the deserving Americans. We have been trying, on the Finance Committee. Senator Stabenow has been a big champion of improving technology. We got $1 billion for the State agencies. We are trying to get more. Donald Trump's proposal would just end up hurting the jobless Americans counting on benefits even more. If Donald Trump were serious about extending enhanced unemployment coverage, he would be working with Democrats on extending the benefits instead of fighting them. I am going to close with this, and it is a response to something I have heard from many of my Republican colleagues who seem to have recovered their sense of fiscal conservatism that disappeared when Donald Trump was inaugurated. I heard some of them say that passing another COVID bill would amount to sacrificing our children's futures. Here is what is worse for American children: growing up at a time when their parents can't find good-paying jobs because of double-digit unemployment, getting evicted from their homes [[Page S5258]] in the middle of a pandemic and becoming homeless, having to skip meals because their family can't afford enough food each month, going to school in a district that laid off teachers and staff due to the coronavirus recession, which means packing too many kids into classrooms, which can be dangerous. Let's forget about all of that same old Republican deficit talk. It is the same old routine from a decade ago and a decade before that and a decade before that. The Republican deficit talk was nowhere to be found when they passed--over the opposition of Democrats on the Finance Committee--a $2 trillion tax handout overwhelmingly benefiting multinational corporations and the wealthy. Americans struggle with the pandemic and the joblessness crisis right now. The Senate needs to deal with it right now. As Senator Stabenow said--she eloquently launched this important discussion, and I know my friend from Oregon is here to be part of it-- it is certainly not another Thursday in the Senate, not another garden- variety, end of the week when you have enhanced unemployment benefits expiring, and 160,000 Americans dying. It is unthinkable--unthinkable-- that anybody could be going home when there are so many challenges right in front of us. I hope the majority leader, Senator McConnell, and my Republican colleagues understand the power of what Senator Stabenow has basically outlined, because there are times on a Thursday afternoon in the Senate where I think you could say you wouldn't have the kinds of challenges we are talking about. This is not one of them. This is one where, on issue after issue, there are crises: the COVID crisis, the joblessness crisis, and now we have a legislative malpractice crisis by Senator McConnell leading his Senators. I urge him to come back, work with us, bring about the negotiations we need, as I said again and again, on unemployment. I am not going anywhere--not anywhere. This is one of the most important causes I have ever had the opportunity to be a part of. Even with all of the challenges with unemployment, I can only imagine, Senator Stabenow, how much more hurt there would be in America without those millions of people getting the money for groceries and rent and paying medical bills and car insurance and keeping the lights on. We need the majority leader and Republican colleagues in the U.S. Senate to work with us. There is no time to waste. They ought to be recognizing the power of what Senators have said here today. That negotiating needs to take place now rather than having yet another break for Senators to pursue other kinds of matters I thank my colleagues. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon. ____________________
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