Coronavirus
Floor Speech
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Mr. COTTON. Mr. President, I want to commend Senator Toomey and thank him for his expertise, for his foresight, and for his courage on the issue of ending these CARES Act-funded Federal Reserve programs.
You have probably seen that over the last few days, he has been subjected to an onslaught of vicious, dishonest attacks by Democrats and their stenographers in the Press Gallery, saying that he was somehow gumming up the works, that we were not going to pass this bill because the Toomey language was stopping it. Nothing could be further from the truth.
First off, while Senator Toomey may be our thought leader on this issue, this was the Senate Republican conference's position. That is why our majority leader stood firm behind it.
Second, as Senator Toomey said, this is not a new issue; this is not something we just started debating. We had versions of this in our bill this summer. As he laid out, the minority leader and the Speaker of the House had a version of it in their $3.4 trillion this summer as well. The minority leader sent a letter about it. This has been at the heart of this legislation's debate for months. And the fact that it was in their legislation, it was in their letter--they kept saying that we wanted to somehow sabotage the economic recovery--just goes to show you what their intents were with these programs. It was to use them, as Senator Toomey said, as political slush funds; use them to bail out--I don't know--New York State or the city of New York; use them to impose politically correct policies on companies that could come to the Fed and get low- or no-interest-rate loans if they danced to the woke left's tune.
Senator Toomey and Senate Republicans drew the line on this. We drew the line on politicizing the Fed. We had no intent whatsoever to harm the Fed's background ability to take emergency action, and we will be prepared in the future, as Congresses in the past have been, in an economic crisis to act as well, just like we have twice in the last 12 years--2008 and 2020.
But nothing you have read in the news about Senator Toomey and his language that he carried on behalf of the Senate Republican conference could be further from the truth. I want to thank him for standing strong, and I want to thank the majority leader for standing strong on this as well.
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