Coronavirus

Floor Speech

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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, yesterday, Senate Republicans introduced the next phase of our coronavirus relief effort, the Health, Economic Assistance, Liability Protection, and Schools Act, or the HEALS Act.

This bill has been carefully targeted to address the most pressing issues facing our Nation right now: getting kids back to school, getting workers back to work, and ensuring that we have the healthcare resources necessary to defeat the virus.

The HEALS Act will provide economic incentives to help businesses retain workers. It will give additional support to hard-hit small businesses. It will provide checks to American families to help them weather the economic challenges that they are facing. It will give schools more than $100 billion to help them safely reopen so kids and college students aren't missing out on the academic, social, and emotional benefits of in-person learning.

It will direct funds to diagnosis, vaccines, and treatments. It will ensure that medical professionals, small businesses, and school districts doing their best to protect Americans don't face frivolous lawsuits from predatory trial lawyers.

It will provide incentives for manufacturing personal protective equipment in the United States to help ensure that we never again face the kinds of shortages we have seen with the coronavirus. And more.

Now it is time for Democrats to come to the negotiating table so that we can arrive at a bipartisan bill and get this relief into the hands of Americans. I was disappointed to hear of the Democratic leader's partisan screeds yesterday and today on the Senate floor, although I did appreciate his ability to--with a straight face, I might add-- simultaneously characterize Republican relief efforts as insufficient while touting a House bill that mentions the word ``cannabis'' more often than the word ``job'' and actually contains less money for schools than the Republican bill.

No one is going to get everything they want with this bill, and Democrats are not going to be able to implement their socialist wish list, but if we work together, we can get real relief into the hands of Americans. I hope the Democrats will join us.

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