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 S5258-S5259] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] CORONAVIRUS Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, is this just another Thursday? Are things going along well in America, with nothing to worry about, nothing to keep us up at night, nothing to keep mothers and fathers up worried about the health of their children? Is this just another Thursday with America doing well, or are we here in the midst of the worst pandemic in a century since the Spanish flu? You wouldn't know it from this Chamber. You wouldn't know it from the majority leader's shutting this place down. Is it possible that we are in the worst economic implosion since the Great Depression? Is this just another Thursday? You wouldn't know that we are in a terrible economic collapse based on the fact that the majority leader is treating this period of time like just another Thursday, when everything is fine and everything is good in America. It is almost 3 months ago that the House passed a robust bill to address the pandemic and to address the economic implosion--3 months ago. Why didn't the Senate say immediately, we will act, as well, because we are having big issues in America? They didn't act after the first week after the House acted. They just treated it like another week, no concerns. They didn't act in the second week. We are now 11 weeks since the House acted and still the majority leader says: Don't worry, be happy. It is just another Thursday. All is good in America-- no concerns, no anxiety, no worry. Just be happy. I can tell you what I am hearing from Oregonians. They are saying it is not just another Thursday. They are saying our State government is estimated to lose $10 billion in revenue over the next two bienniums--a little less than $3 billion this biennium, a little more than $4 billion in the next biennium, and about $3 billion after that. That is $10 billion of lost revenue for core programs, like healthcare, housing, education, and transportation. That is a pretty big deal in terms of the foundations for the programs Oregonians count on. I am hearing from a whole lot of parents--moms and dads--and they are saying: This is not just another Thursday. We are worried about our children's education. I recognize there are a lot of rich people in America paying for tutors for their children, maybe two tutors for a child--maybe a math tutor and a reading tutor, maybe a special education tutor, who knows-- because they are rich. You know what, most of America are ordinary Americans who count on the quality of our public schools. I can tell you, a lot of parents are worried about how are they going to be able to have an education for their children given the challenge in the school if the school can't afford to convert the way it operates, either in the school, in a very altered manner, or providing workstations and computers and broadband so every child has the ability to work online. Now, we know that even that is going to be far insufficient because so many children are in households where there isn't going to be the type of full-on, all-day assistance to help them utilize that online access. We know that. Shouldn't we be providing the resources to minimize the gap between the best-off and ordinary families? Shouldn't we be trying to do everything for our children? My dad was a mechanic. A mechanic who works in the sawmill is called a millwright. He said it is the best job in the world. If he could keep the machinery humming, it meant that every worker had a job to come to, and it meant the company made money. Everybody was happy if he could keep the machinery running, and he did. He did a marvelous job. He was pretty disappointed when the company was bought by an investor and the mill was shut down overnight and the timber that the company had was sold to another company, a bigger company. But, in that context of a father with a powerful ability to keep machinery humming that would benefit so many other people, he loved the fact that we had good public schools. He told me: Son, because we live in America and have these public schools, if you go through the door of that schoolhouse and you study hard, you can do almost anything in our country. What a glorious vision for an ordinary, working American to say to their child: Because we live in America, you can do almost anything, in our country. The horizons are boundless because we have good public schools. But it is 11 weeks since the House acted. Have we acted to provide good public schools? All of our teachers and our administrators and our parents and our school boards are saying we are just around the corner from the ordinary start of school. It is either just before or just after Labor Day. Where is the U.S. Senate? Mitch McConnell sent us home. He shut this place down while our children's education, preparation for a very unusual and difficult year, goes untended because there aren't the resources. I can tell you, I am hearing a lot from the medical community. My wife, Mary, is a nurse. She is a home hospice nurse, so she goes and coaches families as their loved one goes through the final chapter of their life here on our planet. A lot of these folks that she visits, because they are in hospice, it, by definition, means they are quite ill. Often, the families around them are elderly, and they are very concerned about any presence of COVID, coronavirus. What she hears is that we need to tackle this pandemic. [[Page S5259]] What do the scientists and healthcare experts say? They say a national investment in personal protective equipment; they say a national investment in a testing strategy to be able to do massive numbers of tests to help identify folks who are carrying the virus and spreading the virus but are asymptomatic, as well as those who actually have symptoms; and a massive national investment in tracing so that we can follow up when somebody is identified as carrying the virus--Who did they get it from? Who did they have contact with?--so those folks can go into quarantine and stop the chain of infection from person to person to person. The House, 11 weeks ago, passed a bill that has massive resources for testing and tracing, and for 11 weeks, the leadership of this body has said: Not needed. Let's do nothing. Let's just treat this as just another Thursday. No concern. Then I hear from folks who are really worried about the nutrition for our children--not just the education but nutrition. We worked hard to get the EBT program to help out because of school sites being shut down, but what about this coming year? Why aren't we helping with nutrition? The House, 11 weeks ago, acted, but here, it is just another Thursday--no crisis, no concern when children across America are going hungry. The bill that the House passed had resources for State and local government to help address the hemorrhaging of funds. I noted that Oregon predicts, just in its State government, a loss of $10 billion over next three biennium--or this biennium and the next two. For them to sustain their basic programs, they need help. I heard today from the president of one of our public universities-- our 4-year university, Oregon State University in Corvallis--and they were estimating a massive loss of revenue. They need this bill, which would direct support for our 4-year institutions. They know that the State, if it is going to be able to sustain its support for the universities, so that the money doesn't come in the front door and out the back door, we need to provide help to the State government. I know this isn't a blue-red issue. I know that blue and red Governors are saying the same thing. I know blue and red county commissioners are asking for the same help. So I say to my colleagues, it is morally unacceptable to just say: This is another Thursday. All is well. We have waited 11 weeks to act after the House. What is another week? What does it matter if a family that has been able to pay its rent or its mortgage or its utilities or put food on the table because they got $600 a week extra help in unemployment, what does it matter if they lose their home? What does it matter if they are evicted? Well, I will tell you this: It matters a hell of a lot--a huge impact on that family for a long time to come. I don't know how many of my colleagues have worked in the area of assisting homeless families, but when you are destabilized, when you are tossed out, when you experience homelessness, when you are living in your car with your kids or it is a basement this week and it is a van the next and who knows what shelter will let you in, it destabilizes and knocks you down for a long time. It makes it hard to get ready to go to a job interview. It makes it hard to present yourself effectively in a job interview. It puts all kinds of stresses on the family relationship. Is it really OK that we shut the Senate down when families are going to be evicted because we shut off that $600 per week and the moratorium on evictions expired? This, colleagues, is not just another Thursday. This is a moment of national crisis, a pandemic crisis, an economic crisis, and we need to be in crisis mode. We need to be here day and night. We need to be working on each of these issues that were addressed 11 weeks ago in the House while this body sat on its hands. Sitting on your hands when the people of America need us, that is not acceptable in the U.S. Senate. Let's act boldly. Let's act decisively. Let's recognize that we must rise to meet this national challenge and do so now. I yield to my colleague from Michigan. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan. ____________________
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