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Floor Speech
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Mr. WYDEN. I will offer another proposal shortly as an alternative to Senator Scott's unanimous consent request, and I am going to make a few brief points before I do that.
I want to make clear that on this side, nobody--nobody--takes a backseat to anyone else when it comes to standing up to the horrific abuses of the Chinese Government against its people as well as its economic cheating that has ripped off American jobs and our prosperity.
That is why I worked with our colleague from Ohio, Senator Brown, to close once and for all an immoral and unjustifiable loophole that allowed some products made with forced labor to enter into the United States.
That is why I have also worked with Senator Crapo on a bipartisan effort to build on that progress with respect to forced labor and crack down on the rest of China's playbook of abuses and rip-offs. We wrote a bipartisan amendment that deals with forced labor investigations, with intellectual property protection, and with counterfeiting. It helps level the playing field in the fight against China. It helps strengthen and speed up trade enforcement and increases transparency in trade agreements and trade law. These have been priorities of mine throughout my time in the U.S. Senate.
Obviously, I was very pleased when our bipartisan amendment with Senator Crapo was included in the China competition bill. Overall, the bill--and it was bipartisan--is all about creating jobs by building up supply chains within the United States, investing in sensible science, and battling some of the key cost drivers--cost drivers--in inflation.
Mr. President, colleagues, Senator Scott voted against that bipartisan bill. The bipartisan bill passed by a vote of 68 to 32, but my colleague from Florida voted no. So I just want--as people reflect on this debate--to note for the record who exactly was working to make progress in the fight against China's worst practices and who is making speeches about them.
Second, America needs as much manufacturing capacity as possible as soon as possible here for antigen tests to meet our needs. Unfortunately, we are not there yet. The Biden administration recently launched a free-to-order testing system--free-to-order testing system-- online. Sixty million households have ordered tests. That is nearly half the total number of households in the country, so there is big demand.
The President has committed to making a billion tests available through that particular program. That is on top of other programs sending millions of tests each week and month to nursing homes, rural health clinics, schools, and elsewhere. The administration is buying all the American-made COVID tests it can get its hands on, but it is not enough to meet demand.
Let's make no mistake--all steps are being taken to make these crucially needed tests available to Americans.
The Scott bill would create a shortage of COVID tests. So, in addition to voting against the bipartisan bill that really would have tackled the big issues dealing with China, my colleague has an effort to create a shortage of tests. That would be a mistake. It would prolong an Omicron wave and put lives in danger. That just isn't common sense.
The American people want the supply of COVID tests to be large enough that nobody has to camp out in a drugstore parking lot waiting for the next delivery. That doesn't mean they are in league with the Chinese Government's horrible genocide against the Uighur people, but that is essentially what this bill is saying.
After we have dealt with the Scott proposal, which doesn't do anything to help America's working families and our children, I am going to propose something that does and does it quickly.
The fact is, there are tens of millions of families across the country who need help paying for housing and childcare and the other basic necessities of life. That is what the Senate ought to be focused on. That is what we ought to be zeroing in on because that is going to make life better for families and for kids. So when this legislation is disposed of, I am going to propose that the Senate pass a 1-year extension of the expanded child tax credit, which expired on January 1. That is something, colleagues, which really helps families, and they are hurting right now. The Senate knows they are walking on an economic tightrope, balancing the food bill against the fuel bill, and the reality is, a lot of them had extra expenses due to the variant.
I have been trying to get colleagues on the other side of the aisle for well over a month to support the child tax credit. Our colleagues on this side of the aisle have been relentless in their support for it. Child tax credit payments cut child poverty nearly in half; food insecurity among families dropped by 25 percent--story after story from parents across the country talking about how the program helped them put food on the table, how it helped them buy their kids' school clothes and helped them avoid financial ruin when a parent was laid off.
The fact is, Social Security was a bond between the government and elders. What the child tax credit has been all about is creating a new bond to try to help families, vulnerable families and their kids--an economic lifeline to them.
What I am going to propose, I think, as we move to this debate-- because we will hear from our colleague from Florida--we have a choice. If you want to do something that does absolutely nothing but put Americans in a tougher spot in terms of getting the help they need to deal with COVID, that is what happens under the proposal by my colleague from Florida, or do you want to do something that will put cash into the pockets of parents so they can help their kids?
I can tell the Presiding Officer, I am sure he, as a new parent, hears this from his contemporaries: The child tax credit is going for luxuries.
I was just home. I had six townhall meetings--by the way, in mostly conservative areas--and families were using those child tax credits for buying shoes and food and essentials.
So that is what the choice here is going to be.
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