Coronavirus

Floor Speech

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Mr. HAWLEY. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the COVID relief bill that I understand is soon to be brought before the House and then to this floor.

I understand that we have finally, at long last, a deal that hopefully will result in real relief for the American people. And there is a piece of good news that I want to be sure to note, and that is that this COVID relief package will contain direct assistance to working people. For every working family in this country that needs it, they will be, under this deal, getting a direct check just like they did in March.

Now, that is a victory. There are no two ways about it, and we should celebrate that victory not on our own behalf but for the many people in this Nation who desperately need it and who, until just a few days ago, could expect nothing at all in the way of direct assistance from this body.

I want to thank those who worked so hard to make sure that this relief was available and is going to the working people of this country--not least the President of the United States, who has been very clear, over and over again, that he wants to see direct relief to working families, that it should be the cornerstone of the bill. Of course, I thank Senator Sanders for his strong stand on this issue, and it has been a privilege to work with him on it.

So this is good news--good news for working families, good news for working people just before Christmas, when they need the help the most.

But I have to say that the levels of support that I understand will be offered to working people are hardly adequate, and we should not pretend otherwise: $600 per person, $600 per child. This is a fraction of what was offered to working people in the CARES legislation just a few months ago--legislation, I might add, that every Member of this body voted for--every Member voted for. Now they will be getting only a portion of that. It all adds up to about $100 billion. And we are told that there just wasn't enough left over, that there just wasn't any more available for working people.

Yet I notice that in the spending bill that we are also going to vote on as part of this package, a bill that costs over $1 trillion, we managed to have found $65 million for salmon recovery in the Pacific, $643 million to carry out international communication activities in the Middle East, $116 million for the Export-Import Bank, and $118 million for that sterling example of international leadership, the World Health Organization, which has done more to undermine world health in the last year than I think any international organization in the history of the world.

Then there is the so-called bipartisan proposal, which is the basis for the present deal--the bipartisan proposal which included, I might point out, not a cent--not a cent--in direct relief for working people--almost $1 trillion in costs, not one penny in direct relief for working people, until it was added recently. That proposal included $20 billion for higher education--$20 billion. This is going to many universities that have massive endowments worth billions and billions of dollars, most of that built on the backs of taxpayers, I might add. Yet we cannot find any further funds to help working people in this country.

I cannot help but note that working people were the last consideration in the draconian shutdowns earlier this year that sent so many of them home, that cost them their jobs, that cost them their wages, that cost them their healthcare on the job, and they have consistently been the last consideration in COVID relief in this body ever since. Frankly, it is disgraceful and, frankly, it is unacceptable.

So the work that we are going to do today--and I hope to see a vote on this floor yet today on this relief--is a step--a step--in the right direction, but it is only a step. And I hope that it will be the beginning of a better approach, the beginning of actually putting working Americans first, putting their needs, putting their independence, putting their strength, their families, their communities first.

That ought to be the economic policy of this Nation. That ought to be the economic policy of this body. And I can assure you, that is the foundation on which economic recovery will be built because it is the working people of this Nation who power the American economy.

Don't believe anything else. We hear a lot about global capital. We hear about the need to secure the financial markets--oh, and, by the way, the Federal Reserve. We are taking back $430 billion from the Federal Reserve in this piece of legislation--$430 billion from the Federal Reserve--funded to the max. Wall Street--funded to the max.

But I say again: Wall Street, capital, the financial markets--they are not the foundation of this economy. The working people of this Nation, the working people of Missouri, the working people of our other States--they are the foundation of this economy, and it is time that they were put first--first for COVID relief, first in our economic policy, first in all that we do.

So I hope that this effort to get them direct assistance will be the beginning of a larger effort to orient our economic policy and the policy of this Nation around the strength and the independence and the needs of our great working Americans.

I want to end by saying thank you to them, thank you to the working people of Missouri who have endured through this crisis day in and day out, who have gone to work as essential workers, who have taken care of children at home, who have missed shifts at work in order to care for loved ones, who have contributed food to others in need even when they didn't have enough food for themselves, who have gone without in order to see that their children could eat.

The people of this country, the working people who have sacrificed again and again and again and have borne the brunt of this pandemic and have continued to show up for their families, for their communities, and for this country--thank you. Thank you for making this country work. Thank you for building this country as we know it.

Help is on the way. Help is on the way in this bill, which I hope will become law tonight. But there is much more to do, and I, for one, stand ready to work to do it.

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