Coronavirus

Floor Speech

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Mr. THUNE. Madam President, on the subject of bipartisanship, I am disturbed by the rumors that Democrats plan to use reconciliation to force another COVID bill through Congress on partisan lines before even giving good-faith effort to bipartisan negotiations.

Republicans are more than willing to work with Democrats on additional targeted COVID relief legislation.

Now, I won't pretend that we don't have reservations about some of the measures that Democrats have proposed. For instance, I don't think an emergency COVID relief bill is the place to push through a change that would more than double the Federal minimum wage and directly increase expenses on businesses that have been decimated by the pandemic. That is a policy with a lot of economic consequences, and it shouldn't be pushed through Congress in a hasty fashion.

Republicans are also concerned about the enormous amount of money that Democrats want to spend. We have already spent more than $4 trillion to address this pandemic, and we need to be very careful--very careful--about additional spending and appropriate only what is necessary to respond to this pandemic and with an eye to the burden that we are putting on the economy and on young Americans as we increase our national debt.

The higher our national debt, the greater the drag on economic growth and the more likely it is that young Americans will face increasingly burdensome tax bills in the future to meet our debt obligations.

But let me be very clear. While Republicans certainly have concerns about some of the Democrats' proposals, we are committed to defeating this pandemic and to getting Americans vaccinated, and we are ready to work with Democrats on any necessary COVID relief legislation that would achieve that objective.

It would be very disappointing if Democrats decided to shove a partisan bill through Congress without even attempting to work with Republicans.

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