Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, States across this country, including New Hampshire, are beginning to reopen after this pandemic, although, the pandemic isn't really over. The ongoing economic and public health fallout from COVID-19 continues to affect families and businesses in my State of New Hampshire and across this country.

Every day, community leaders, public health professionals, and frontline workers tell me about what they are facing. They have raised concerns about the massive reduction in local tax revenue and the very difficult decisions that will soon need to be made if Federal assistance doesn't arrive soon.

I have heard from teachers and school administrators about the challenges they have encountered trying to educate their students during the pandemic and the difficulties they are anticipating as they begin to plan for the school year coming in September.

The shift to remote learning has exposed the disparities in broadband access across New Hampshire and across this country that leaves behind many students and makes it extremely difficult for teachers to deliver a quality education, especially for students with disabilities.

So many small businesses, while they are very grateful for the Paycheck Protection Program and the loans and grants that have been made available through the Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program, are telling me it is not enough; that revenues for many of these small businesses are still at unsustainable lows, particularly for those in tourism, entertainment, and hospitality--in New Hampshire, tourism is our second largest industry--and that they need help if they are going to weather this storm.

So I can't understand why this body and why Majority Leader McConnell doesn't feel a sense of urgency to pass legislation that will continue to help Americans during this time of crisis.

It has been more than 1 month since the House of Representatives sent to us the Heroes Act to continue to provide assistance to Americans who are in need. In the time since, we have not taken up any proposal that would provide comprehensive relief for the sectors of our economy that are still hurting.

We just can't wait until the end of July, when we know that there will be so many families, workers, and businesses across the country who will be in an even more dire position than they are now.

Americans are urging Congress to act, and we should work together in a bipartisan way, just as we did with the first three--really, four, if you count the second count of the small business assistance. Those four bills all passed with strong bipartisan votes. Now it is time for us to do that again, to provide Americans with the relief they so desperately need.

Congress has taken some very important bipartisan steps to provide assistance to the Nation, but the conversations I have had with Granite Staters on the frontlines are a very powerful reminder of how much work still lies ahead.

We should provide assistance for our hospitals and healthcare providers, especially for nursing homes and long-term care facilities because, in New Hampshire, they have accounted for more than 70 percent of COVID-19 deaths, and across the country, for a very high percentage.

We need to provide support to all of our essential workers who are still on the frontlines getting out there every day, despite the health risks; that includes grocery store workers, healthcare workers, and first responders who are sacrificing so much for our health and safety.

We should provide investments in our Nation's infrastructure, like broadband, to make sure we have better access to telehealth and education opportunities.

We should provide support for sectors of our economy that have taken major losses, like the clean energy sector, which has lost more than 600,000 jobs over the past few months.

We should provide help for food and rental assistance for those who have lost income and are struggling to make ends meet.

We should support the Postal Service so it can continue to serve our communities and small businesses. In New Hampshire, we have so many small towns that depend on the Postal Service for prescription drugs. Families in those towns depend on the Postal Service for prescription drugs and to communicate with the outside world. Especially now, when so many people are still feeling so isolated, they need to know they can count on the Postal Service and that it is not going to get into a financial crisis this summer.

Finally, we need to support our States and our local communities. They have been on the frontlines fighting this pandemic. As the cost of COVID-19 response efforts continue to rise, mayors, town administrators, and county officials are all grappling with whether they are going to have to lay off first responders, firefighters, police, teachers, and municipal workers--all of those people who continue to provide services in our communities and without whom people are going to face even more dire consequences. States and communities need help now. They should not have to cut essential services and frontline workers.

In Congress, we must also provide additional support to small businesses. PPP, the Paycheck Protection Program, by any measure, despite some of the challenges, has been the most significant small business assistance program in our Nation's history. It has delivered over $500 billion in aid in a very short time.

I am proud to have worked with a bipartisan group of colleagues to offer that provision, but when we first sat down to design it just over 3 months ago, none of us had any concept of the magnitude of this crisis or what would be its duration. Since then, we have learned just how devastating this disease is and how terribly difficult it is to defeat.

I have heard from so many businesspeople in New Hampshire who took a PPP loan. They used the proceeds just as we had intended: They kept their employees on the payroll or they hired them back if they had already laid them off. They have kept their lights on. Now it is time-- when they are beginning to reopen their businesses, and they are still running short because those loans are about to run out, they need more help. If we don't provide it, they are going to lay off all those workers again. For many small businesses, they are going to be forced to close their doors.

Last week, I was pleased to work with Senators Cardin and Coons to introduce the Prioritized Paycheck Protection Program, the P4 Act. That is legislation that would provide a second round of PPP funding for smaller businesses and particularly for those in the restaurant and hospitality industries which have been hit especially hard in recent months. They were the first to be closed down by government order, and they are the last to be able to open back up.

I am hopeful that, once again, we can work in a bipartisan way to make a proposal that will have support on both sides of the aisle and that will ensure that more businesses can stay afloat as we reopen our economy.

Our country is still hurting, and the coronavirus isn't going to go away without a vaccine. It is going to take a while for us to get back on our feet as a nation.

The devastating health and economic effects from COVID-19 will not be alleviated just because we pretend the coronavirus is going away. It will not be alleviated unless Congress acts. It was the decisive action that we took back at the end of February and March that has allowed so many businesses to stay afloat, so many families to continue to feed their kids and to pay their rent. It is going to be critical for us to continue to take action to provide that assistance.

We can't wait. We can't take a wait-and-see approach. We know that people are hurting right now. So I urge the Senate to take up and pass legislation. Let's negotiate what we don't like about the Heroes Act. Let's make changes, but let's take up that relief bill and continue to provide the help Americans are calling for. We have no more time to waste.

Thank you.

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