Unanimous Consent Request--S. Res. 88

Floor Speech

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Mr. PETERS. Madam President, I certainly appreciate the Senator from Florida's interest in oversight of the coronavirus emergency relief funds. This funding has been and continues to be critical to the American people throughout the pandemic.

I also appreciate the Senator's support for the creation of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee when he voted for the CARES Act. This was a provision that I authored to ensure that we would have strong oversight of coronavirus relief dollars.

I agree wholeheartedly that we must be faithful stewards of taxpayer money. That is why the CARES Act directed the Government Accountability Office, our congressional watchdog, to oversee coronavirus spending. We are fortunate to receive consistent, detailed reporting and recommendations on these issues. The Senator's resolution, however, will not strengthen these oversight mechanisms, nor will it deliver any form of relief to families who are hurting and small businesses that are struggling.

If the Senator from Florida wants an update on the current status of funding from previous coronavirus relief bills, I am happy to provide one to him.

Let's first look at the first coronavirus relief measures, all of which were passed in March and April of last year. To date, approximately 93 percent of those funds have been obligated and 88 percent have been outlaid. After accounting for benefits that are, by design, continuing to be paid out over time, there is less than $100 billion of uncommitted funds left, and approximately half of that is in the Provider Relief Fund for struggling medical providers, whose needs continue to be extremely high.

For the legislation signed into law on December 27, 2020, more than half of this funding has already been committed, but if we set aside expanded unemployment benefits, which expire next month; small business relief; and the tax credit portion of the economic impact payments, which will be disbursed over time, less than 12 percent of the funding from December remains unobligated.

We know the status of funds from past COVID relief bills. This information is not being kept secret in any way. In addition to reports from the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee and the Government Accountability Office, we have a monthly SF 133 report from the Office of Management and Budget.

Coronavirus-related spending is also publicly tracked--publicly tracked--on both USASpending.gov and on the website of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee.

We don't need more reports right now; we need action. We have been fighting a public health and economic crisis, neither of which will magically disappear without additional Federal action. We can't wait until more small businesses close or hospitals run into the red. We know how badly Americans are hurting, and they are hurting right now.

We are a full year into this pandemic that has taken the lives of over 515,000 Americans. And this pandemic is not over. It is continuing to ravage communities all across our Nation.

Let's look at where we are right now. Upwards of 2,000 Americans are dying each and every day. Daily cases are at the same levels we saw during the last surge in July, with over 50,000 Americans testing positive for COVID-19 every day. We are also facing the new threat of emerging variants like the UK and South African strains, which unfortunately could lead to even more cases.

The economic toll continues to go on. Millions of Americans remain out of work. In January, the unemployment rate was nearly double that of prepandemic levels, and unemployment claims are still more than double prepandemic levels. We all have friends, family members, and neighbors who are hurting right now. Small businesses have had to slash their hours, cutting into their own bottom line and employees' paychecks.

We need to help struggling families by providing rental assistance, stimulus checks, and unemployment benefits. We need to help kids by supporting our schools so we can get back to in-person learning. We need to invest in the public health infrastructure necessary to combat this virus by increasing testing capacity, implementing vaccine education campaigns, and tracking and containing the new COVID variants that we see springing up.

We are starting to see a glimpse of light at the end of this very long--far too long--tunnel, but we must keep moving forward. The American Rescue Plan will finally allow us to control the virus, improve the lives of all Americans, and get us out of this crisis.

We should not be wasting time on partisan resolutions that will neither deliver relief nor meaningfully improve oversight of COVID relief efforts. We must come together and provide the relief that families and small businesses all across our country so desperately need.

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