Executive Calendar

Floor Speech

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Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, Americans have come together in this moment. We have come together to defeat the coronavirus. We have come together to ramp up testing, to ramp up healthcare, and to reopen our communities and our country.

The coronavirus has brought out the best in so many ways in America and in the American people. From our frontline healthcare workers taking care of patients to scientists and researchers working on testing, on treatment, and on vaccines, to those in public service keeping essential parts of the government running day in and day out, to those working on supply chains to deliver goods 24 hours a day, and to those who are staying at home to keep themselves and keep others safe, Americans are in this together.

It is interesting because all we are seeing from the other side of the political aisle is more of the same old politics and name-calling. President Obama is taking cheap shots at President Trump; Speaker Pelosi just put out a $3 trillion bill that reads like the Democratic Party platform; and Joe Biden is holed up and hiding in his basement. Is this the best the Democrats can offer? Is this the best they can do? Biden, Obama, and Pelosi should be embarrassed. This is not leadership.

Republican policies in the CARES Act that we passed actually have had significant results--real results--with the Paycheck Protection Program making sure 50 million Americans are still getting their paychecks, economic impact payments, which are reaching 130 million families. These are policies that are going to build a bridge for the country to get to the other side of the devastation done by the virus, and, still, more money and resources from the CARES Act are slated to go out to States, to hospitals, and to small businesses all across America.

All together, between Congress and the Federal Reserve, we have injected close to $9 trillion into the economy in just a couple of months. All of this money is nowhere close to having even been spent. In fact, it is only because of the steps we have taken already--the efforts of Governors across the country, the work of this administration--that the House Democrats have found themselves in a position, as they were last Friday, of wasting time and energy on a fantasy bill.

Republicans now have two jobs. The first is to get the country back on track, and the second is to not allow the Democrats to try to exploit the crisis that is upon this country for their own political gains.

Democrats are pushing their agenda as a cure-all for the virus. Let me be clear. It is not. It is simply a solution for their electoral problems.

Yesterday, the New York Times published a front page article. Online it was called ``Seeking: Big Democratic Ideas That Make Everything Better.'' In the printed copy, they changed the headline to say: ``Biden Pursues Ideas to Match Scale of Crisis,'' ``Left Senses an Opening for a Bolder Agenda.'' The article goes step by step on how the pandemic is being used by the Democrats to make sweeping changes in their policy platforms in their effort to remake America, basically consistent with their dangerous Democratic socialist views.

They are planning, according to this, to get rid of their so-called center-left policies that they had additionally and initially envisioned. They are now courting what they call leftwing allies. They are adopting the ideas of single-payer healthcare--one size fits all healthcare, with the government making decisions for you rather than you or your doctor making decisions for you. They are adopting ideas through labor unions, liberal think tanks, progressive institutions. They have taken over the Democratic Party, and they are all beholden to Nancy Pelosi.

Democrats are using the coronavirus so that their favorite groups get a giveaway. That is what it reads when you take a look at that $3 trillion bill that Nancy Pelosi dragged across the floor of the House last Friday night with Members of her party kicking and screaming about voting for it. That is what we see.

Some were kicking and screaming because the $3 trillion bill that started as a $1.5 trillion bill didn't get big enough, didn't include enough of their far left socialist agenda. This is not a solution for the crisis facing America. It is not a solution for the crisis that we are facing with coronavirus. It is not a solution that we are facing with a crisis of a shut-down economy, shut down by the government in an effort to protect ourselves from the disease. Oh, no. What we see here is a partisan political playbook. It is the Democrats' agenda for the 2020 election.

The efforts to get the coronavirus behind us and get our communities and our country open must be targeted, must be temporary, and must be tailored to the needs of our communities at this critical time in our Nation's history. Ultimately, it is time for America to open swiftly and smartly and safely.

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