Coronavirus
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mrs. CAPITO.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mrs. CAPITO. Madam President, I rise today to address the healthcare and economic crisis facing our Nation because of COVID-19. According to Johns Hopkins University, more than 1.5 million Americans have tested positive for COVID and more than 90,000 have died. And 1,509 West Virginians have tested positive for COVID, and 68 have died, according to our State's Department of Health and Human Services.
We mourn each one of those lost lives and remember the families who grieve for them now and the friends who have lost a loved one. All of us join together, and we thank all of the heroes who are on the frontline performing lifesaving and life-sustaining jobs during this pandemic.
The economic consequences of this pandemic have been devastating as well, but the health devastation is what really, I think, breaks all of our collective hearts.
On the economic front nationally, the unemployment rate is 14.7 percent, and 36.5 million Americans have filed for unemployment since mid-March--an incredible number.
In our small State of West Virginia, 164,000 unemployment claims have been processed since March, and the unemployment rate is over 15 percent. With these terrible facts and the urgency of them, it is right for Congress to come together to take bold action.
We have enacted four major pieces of bipartisan legislation to help ease this crisis. Most significant of those, of course, was the CARES Act, which passed this body 96 to 0. With bipartisan support, the CARES Act provided $100 billion for our hospitals and medical providers to help them respond to this crisis.
Together, we created the Paycheck Protection Program--PPP, as everybody knows it--to save jobs and to keep our employers and employees connected but also to save jobs at small businesses and help those businesses survive.
As of this past weekend, 15,972 West Virginia small businesses had taken advantage of the PPP program.
The CARES Act provided direct relief for the American people through payments of up to $1,200 apiece, and more than 780,000 payments totaling $1.3 billion have been sent to my fellow West Virginians.
The CARES Act increased unemployment benefits to help meet the needs of those workers who lost their jobs due to the crisis, and we see the numbers. That has been a great benefit.
It provided significant resources for our State and local governments. Our State of West Virginia has received $1.25 billion to help our State, city, and county governments.
After the CARES Act, despite some delays, we came together again and passed additional bipartisan legislation that provided more funding for the PPP program and more resources for hospitals, more money for COVID testing. We just sent $57 million to the State of West Virginia for more testing.
In a bipartisan way, Congress responded to the needs of our medical community, as we should. Our small businesses, our workers, our families, our State and local governments, and our heroes are essential workers. As our communities begin the process of carefully reopening, we know that more Federal resources and additional legislation will in all likelihood be necessary. We all hope that our economy, which only months ago was very strong, can rebuild quickly. But our small businesses and workers will need additional help. There is no question that will happen.
As we face the possibility of a second wave of infections later this year, we should continue to build our stockpile of medical supplies and aid our hospitals.
I have heard from our Governor, county commissioners, and our mayors across West Virginia about the lost State and local government revenues caused by COVID. Allowing the CARES Act funds to be used to replace these lost revenues will make sure that State and local governments can continue to meet the public safety and public health needs. This is critical.
I have joined Senator Sullivan and others in supporting bipartisan legislation that would do just that. We should enact meaningful liability reform to protect our hospitals, doctors, businesses, college, universities, and nonprofits from lawsuit abuse. Those who do their best to treat patients, following government guidelines, and prevent the spread of the contagious virus should not be held liable when treatments fail or COVID spreads. Unless we act, lawsuit abuse could choke off our economic recovery. And we should hold China-- China--accountable for hiding the true scope of the COVID pandemic, making the global spread of this disease much worse.
We should all work on all of these priorities going forward. It is appropriate that Congress should examine the effectiveness of the CARES Act--we have been doing that for the last several weeks; that is why I am glad we are here--as well as the ongoing need for resources before considering continuing new legislation to aid the Nation's response. But legislation passed in response to this crisis should be, as has been in the past--should be--bipartisan, and it should be tailored to respond to COVID and the economic problems that it has caused.
Speaker Pelosi's legislation that passed the House of Representatives on Friday night fails on both of these counts. To the extent there was bipartisanship on Friday night, it came from the 14 Democrats who voted against the Speaker's wish list. The bill was certainly not tailored to help Americans respond to the COVID cases. There were things in there that did respond, but there was a whole lot more that I will talk about that I think was irrelevant.
Speaker Pelosi's bill took a massive step toward federalizing our elections. That is the beauty of our elections. They are all different in every single State, and our States have the decisions to make. These decisions should be made by State and local officials and not micromanaged here in Washington. By the way, I think it makes our elections safer that they are not federalized.
The bill prohibits States from requiring a photo ID to vote and requires States to allow same-day voter registration, something we do not do in the State of West Virginia. Aside from being bad policy, what does that have to do with COVID or helping small businesses and working families?
The word ``cannabis,'' as we might have heard already today, appears in Speaker Pelosi's bill 68 times. The bill requires a report to make sure that women and minorities are able to fully participate in the cannabis industry, and it makes sure that cannabis businesses are able to access the banking system. By the way, that is an issue that has been worked on since I was in Financial Services 10 years ago. But what does that and how does that relate to COVID?
By allowing stimulus payments to be sent to individuals without a verified Social Security number, Speaker Pelosi's bill would send taxpayer dollars to illegal immigrants, and the bill requires the Department of Homeland Security to review the files of every illegal immigrant in custody to determine if he or she should be released.
Speaker Pelosi also appropriates $50 million for environmental justice grants. It sounds good--environmental justice. I am not sure what it has to do with COVID, but it sounds good. In reality, a lot of these funds, among other things, assist those who are working to stop industries that are very critical to my State, all the energy industries from coal and natural gas. That is exactly the opposite of promoting an economic recovery in the State I am from.
While working families continue to struggle, Speaker Pelosi's bill offers significant tax relief for rich taxpayers in high tax States. Coincidentally, that is not my State; we run our State on a balanced budget--and very well.
Overall, the House bill costs more than $3 trillion while doing little to help our economy recover and get our laid-off workers back on the job. There is a bipartisan model out there for working together in response to this crisis. We have done it four times, as I mentioned. But that model is certainly not what the House passed last Friday night.
The Senate is continuing to hold hearings--we are having them today-- to learn more about the current crisis and provide oversight. More importantly, we are listening to the people in our States and their needs and their wants and their fears and their hopes and dreams. I am confident that we will take responsible action to build our economy together, that we will put people back to work together, and that we will help keep our families safe and healthy. Together we can do this.
Speaker Pelosi's legislation will not become law, and she already knew that when she passed it. But we will continue to press forward to respond as one Nation and one people for this unprecedented disaster
I yield back.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source