Coronavirus

Floor Speech

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Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I rise in support of my amendment to pay for this economic stimulus package by removing less important spending from elsewhere in the budget.

I would ask every American: If you were faced with a personal crisis and had to spend extra money and you had to spend extra money on food and medicine--money that you had to borrow from a relative--wouldn't you prioritize your resources and immediately stop loaning money to friends overseas for their children to go to, for example, space camp? Wouldn't you stop funding clown colleges in Argentina? If you had a true emergency like this pandemic, wouldn't you stop building roads and gas stations in Pakistan? If you had a true emergency like this corona pandemic, wouldn't you immediately stop spending money studying why drunk people fall down more than sober people?

I ask my colleagues to stop wasting money in this time of crisis. Stop being a rubberstamp for wasteful spending. Do your jobs and prioritize our precious resources. It is our job and our responsibility to conserve these resources.

Why is this important? Why shouldn't we just print or borrow the money instead of making cuts in things like foreign aid? Because next time, maybe in the not too distant future, our children may not even be able to borrow their way out of a crisis. Our dollar will be devalued, our economy ruined, and all because we will have been profligate fools with our resources; all because we refused to do what we were elected to do, which is to prioritize the truly vital, such as coronavirus relief and medical research, over the extraneous, such as spending money on clown colleges, gas stations, and roads in Afghanistan.

To my fellow Americans, remain hopeful, remain kind, remain faithful, and above all, remain resilient. In the world's history, pandemics are the norm, not the exception. It is only recently--in the modern era of antibiotics and vaccines--that pandemics have become less frequent.

Ever since vaccines eradicated polio and smallpox, modern man has become accustomed to the idea that life is relatively safe and that a long life is to be expected. Consequently, any re-eruption of diseases beyond our control paralyzes us with fear.

People have forgotten what it is like to experience the annual dread of recurring infectious disease. My parents remember vividly the polio pandemics of the 1950s. In one of the last great outbreaks of polio, before the vaccine, almost 60,000 people contracted polio and over 3,100 died. Jonas Salk was greeted as a conquering hero for developing the first widespread polio vaccine, but that was nearly 70 years ago. In the early 18th century, Dr. Zabdiel Boylston showed great courage in introducing inoculation for smallpox. Within a generation, smallpox was on the wane and ultimately defeated when Edward Jenner discovered how to vaccinate using the milder cowpox.

This latest pandemic already has heroes--some known, but most of these heroes are unknown doctors and nurses on the frontlines. The innovators among us are already putting forth potential treatments and possible cures. A half dozen antiviral medications are in the final stages of study. Researchers believe that an old drug developed for malaria may help. Reports indicate that scientists will likely set a speed record in developing a vaccine.

Now is not the time for malaise; now is the time for optimism. By summer, there is a very good chance we will be in the recovery phase. Now is not the time to give in.

Several generations have grown up unfamiliar with the devastation of pandemics, and even now, when it is impossible to look the other way, the young and healthy rationalize their relative safety. Psychologically, it is easier for the young and healthy to view mortality as something that happens to the old and unhealthy. Coronavirus scares us because it kills not only the old and infirm but the young and vibrant, although much less frequently. One of the coronavirus's first victims was a 32-year-old, previously healthy ophthalmologist in Wuhan.

The question is not how serious is the pandemic or whether we should act but whether there is a plan of action that can preserve our economy and lead to a quick rebound.

I don't think anyone will ever know for certain whether grinding the U.S. economy to a halt was necessary. Likewise, no one can really know the converse--what would have happened had we not attempted to slow the virus's spread. It is useful, though, to remember that just 10 years ago, we suffered the swine flu pandemic, and the swine flu was no walk in the park. It is estimated that about 60 million Americans were infected and over 12,000 people died.

Now experts have said that the coronavirus is much more lethal than the swine flu--likely true--but worldwide deaths from the swine flu were estimated to be between 150,000 and 575,000. When calm returns, it will be helpful to examine how our responses differed between the swine flu and the coronavirus.

At one time, we were completely helpless before the ravages of natural disasters, such as infectious diseases, but our history is one of great innovation and perseverance. We will survive this pandemic. What government does to mitigate the calamity should be short-lived, temporary, and cause as little distortion to the free market economy as possible.

The history of pandemics indicates a strong likelihood that the peak of infections and mortality could pass in a few weeks to a few months. Congress should remain calm and try not to explode the debt in our response.

The public should know that Congress has already enacted reforms that will free up millions of industrial masks to be used by our doctors and nurses. Thoughtful sequestration and quarantining is in place and helping. In addition, I have introduced legislation to allow our university labs and advanced private labs to be able to develop additional testing for coronavirus and possible cures by removing redtape at the FDA.

I do worry, though, that as we go further into debt, we may reach a point where our debt is so large that we are unable to manage the next pandemic. We should never forget fiscal responsibility, even in a crisis. We should pay for any new Federal funding by taking that money from areas of the budget where it is not being wisely used. My amendment does just that.

My amendment says that if you want to apply for money from the government through the child tax credit program--this is money the government gives to people--then you have to be a legitimate person and you have to have a Social Security number. We have been talking about this reform for a decade now, and we never seem to be able to get it passed. It has nothing to do with not liking immigrants; it has to do with saying taxpayer money shouldn't go to nonpeople. You should have to be a person to get taxpayer money. It just says you have to have a Social Security number. People estimate this will save $26 billion. That goes a long way toward paying for this bill.

I think we should also end the war in Afghanistan. We are spending $50 billion a year on that war. And it is mostly not to fight war. It is to build stuff for them. It is to build infrastructure for them. We have a lot of problems with infrastructure in our own country without spending $50 billion a year in Afghanistan.

If we have a true emergency now, it is our job to prioritize, to take that money from where it is not being spent wisely and spend it on something we need at the moment.

My bill also allows the President to look throughout the budget and transfer money from any other wasteful areas. If you look at our budget, it is loaded with waste. Nobody ever culls the waste, and then we have an emergency, and they say: Let's just borrow more money. Instead, what we should do is we should actually take money that is unwisely spent and move it over to account for this emergency.

What I am offering is a very reasonable proposal. We simply pay for this emergency bill by taking money from other areas of waste in the budget.

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