Further Continuing Appropriations Act, and Other Extensions Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, it is no great secret that the American people understand how far removed the U.S. Congress and both political parties are from their needs. They do polls out there, depending on the month, and Congress gets a 10-percent approval rating, and, on a good day, maybe a 20-percent approval rating.

People understand that, to a shameful degree, what Congress does is worry about the needs of wealthy campaign contributors--both political parties--and turns their backs on the needs of working people.

A few months ago, in Burlington, VT, not far from where I live, they shut down the road so that people could line up in their cars to get emergency food distributed by the Vermont National Guard--hundreds and hundreds of people in Burlington and all over the State of Vermont. And, by the way, Vermont probably is in better shape than most States in this country. We have more hunger in America today than at any time in the modern history of this country. This pandemic has been a disaster not only from a public health perspective but from an economic perspective, and economists tell us that working families today are in worse shape right now than at any time since the Great Depression.

And it is not just the children in America--the richest country on Earth--who are going hungry. You have millions and millions of families who are scared to death that they are going to be evicted from their homes and join the half a million people in America who are already homeless.

We have half of our population working day to day, living paycheck to paycheck, trying to survive. This Congress must address the economic emergency facing the American people. We cannot go back to our families during the Christmas holidays while tens of millions of families are suffering. They are looking toward us and their government--their government--to provide the emergency assistance that they need.

Yesterday, Senator Hawley and I introduced a very simple amendment-- not a radical idea. In fact, we are way, way behind what other countries around the world are doing to protect their workers. All that we want to do is to once again provide the same benefits that were provided in the CARES bill that unanimously--unanimously, Democrats, Republicans--President Trump signed it, supported it. We all came together in March to say that every working-class adult in this country would get $1,200 and their kids would get $500.

So if you have a husband and wife and two kids, that is 3,400 bucks. Maybe they can use that money to pay a couple of months' rent, buy some food, go to the doctor. We are looking at a horrible pandemic now. You have 90 million people who are uninsured or underinsured. That is all we are asking--to do what we unanimously did in March, to make sure that our unemployed workers get the benefits they need to make sure that working families get that $1,200 check per person.

Now, I have been here for a while. I am not one of the Members of the Senate who shuts down, does this and does that, and keeps people here for weeks. I don't do that. But this I want to say right now: I am prepared to withdraw my objection at this moment, but I will not be prepared to withdraw an objection next week. We will deal with the financial crisis facing tens of millions of Americans. And if I have anything to say about it--and I guess I do--we are not going to go home for the Christmas holidays unless we make sure that we provide for the millions of families in this country who are suffering.

With that, I would yield to Senator Hawley

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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I withdraw my objection.

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