Coronavirus

Floor Speech

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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, here in the Senate, we are continuing to move forward with the next installment of coronavirus relief legislation. I expect, later today, we will pass the bill that was passed by the House earlier, and we are looking beyond it to a third bill that will provide additional relief to the American people.

As the leader has said, we have three priorities: providing direct assistance to American workers and families, many whose lives have been disrupted and dislocated in jobs, who are feeling a lot of economic harm, economic pain; giving our economy, especially our small businesses, the necessary support with which to weather the storm; and most importantly, providing medical professionals with the resources they need in order to fight this virus. The House bill addresses these priorities to some degree, but it is not a comprehensive bill, and additional legislation is going to be needed.

We especially need to ensure that the worker benefit requirements the House bill places on small businesses are accompanied by sufficient support. Small businesses are at the most risk economically during this time, and we need to ensure they have the resources they need to get through this. I am looking forward to continuing to work with my colleagues of both parties on the House bill and on additional legislation.

This is a time for all of us to come together to ensure that medical professionals, American businesses, and American families have what they need to combat the coronavirus and to deal with its effects. I can't think of a time at which we have seen schools and businesses close on such a mass scale. It is a challenging time for our country, but if we pull together, we can get through this and come out even stronger.

All of us have roles to play in combating this virus--washing our hands regularly and thoroughly, practicing social distancing, staying at home as much as possible, listening to advice from healthcare officials. All of these things are essential to our flattening the curve and limiting the number of infected Americans.

It is vital that we keep as many people as possible from getting infected so that our hospitals and medical professionals are not overwhelmed with cases. Our medical professionals are putting their lives on the line every day to care for coronavirus patients. Let's make sure we do everything we can to keep the number of cases they are dealing with as low as possible.

In difficult times, Americans rise to the occasion, and I am confident that is what we will do again.

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