The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“CORONAVIRUS” mentioning Christopher Murphy was published in the Senate section on pages S188-S189 on Jan. 28.
Of the 100 senators in 117th Congress, 24 percent were women, and 76 percent were men, according to the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
Senators' salaries are historically higher than the median US income.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
CORONAVIRUS
Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, it has been more than a year now since the first COVID-19 case was confirmed here in the United States. As the war against this virus has been fought, it has evolved over the last 12 months, and our country has been challenged like never before in my memory.
Healthcare workers across the country have heroically battled this cruel virus, often with insufficient equipment and personnel. Frontline workers in delivery trucks, grocery stores, and other essential businesses have kept the cogs of society running.
As a whole, we have hunkered down and tried to stop the spread of the virus until enough Americans could get vaccinated. We all have come to realize that is really the gold standard in defeating this virus. The Trump administration launched Operation Warp Speed to accelerate the research and development of therapeutics and vaccines to move us toward that goal as soon as possible.
Just last summer, when President Trump predicted we would have an effective vaccine by the end of the year, there was some serious skepticism--and you might even call it blowback--from some of the critics. One media outlet published a fact check saying it would require nothing short of a ``medical miracle'' to have a vaccine by the end of last year.
Thanks to the leadership on a bipartisan basis here and the marvels of science and human ingenuity, that so-called miracle came true not once but twice, and we are expecting more vaccines to eventually be approved in the near term. The world's brightest scientific minds used the foundation built by decades of vaccine research to craft lifesaving and, in fact, world-changing vaccines.
Less than 11 months after the first COVID-19 case was discovered in the United States, the very first vaccine was administered after it was approved--11 months. The number of Americans who have been vaccinated against COVID-19 is growing every day, and so far, more than 24.5 million doses have been administered nationwide.
Nearly 2 million of those doses have gone into the arms of my fellow Texans. Texas became the first State to administer 1 million doses--an accomplishment that underscores the hard work of our State and local leaders and our public health officials, our private partners and healthcare workers.
Every day, our public health experts are evaluating the current distribution process to make improvements and speed up the vaccination process. The State has now set up mass vaccination hubs to expedite distribution and administer as many doses as they can as quickly as they can.
While these sites are an efficient way to administer vaccines to Texans, we need to do more in rural parts of the country. I was glad to see in my State Governor Abbott's announcement that the State is launching a mobile vaccine pilot program to ramp up vaccination efforts in rural parts of the State. Those vaccinations kick off today, and with the support of our incredible Texas National Guardsmen, more at-
risk Texans will be vaccinated against this virus.
With currently two approved vaccines and potentially more on the way, we are beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel, and it is getting bigger and brighter every day. But we can't take our foot off the gas--we all know that. Just as we led an aggressive effort to develop vaccines, it is time to redouble our efforts to distribute those vaccines.
I worry we are not starting off on a strong footing. In December, President-Elect Biden announced his administration's goals to get 100 million shots in the arms of Americans within the first 100 days of his Presidency. That announcement came about a week before the first doses of the vaccine were distributed--before we had a real-world test of the processes that had been in planning for months.
We are now several weeks into this nationwide vaccination campaign, and the Biden administration has stuck by this initial benchmark. The President has repeatedly described this as an ``ambitious goal''--a statement that has led to a fair amount of head-scratching, not because it is too aggressive, as some people thought President Trump's proposed vaccine delivery date was, but because it is too modest.
One physician and public health expert described this as ``a disappointingly low bar.'' An Associated Press headline evaluated the situation pretty well when it said: ``Biden's early approach to virus: Underpromise, overdeliver.''
The truth is, we were largely on track to meet President Biden's ambitious goal even before he took the oath of office. On Inauguration Day, more than 1.6 million doses had been administered, and over the last week, the average number of vaccinations has exceeded 1.5 million a day. It is hard to really frame this as a goal when in reality you could throw the entire operation on cruise control and surpass it.
On Monday evening, President Biden appeared to up the target to 150 million doses in the first 100 days, which would track with the 1.5 million doses we are currently seeing administered. But the White House Press Secretary walked back that claim the following day.
One hundred million doses in 100 days is certainly catchy, and I have no doubt the administration has tried to underpromise so it can be seen as overdelivering. That is not altogether a bad strategy. But the goal here is not to set a target you are almost certain to meet. After all, we didn't see the previous administration set a target of a successful vaccine by the summer of 2021, which is what many experts believed to be the most feasible. So I would urge the administration and all of us to accede to a truly ambitious vaccination schedule and motivate the newly assembled team at the White House to achieve it and to provide the resources that they may need from Congress in order for them to execute that plan. There is no reason to stick to a goal we were on track to meet before President Biden was even sworn in.
President Biden, of course, ran a campaign criticizing the previous administration's handling of the COVID-19 virus, and he campaigned on the promise to lead us out of that crisis. But this modest goal is not going to get us there fast enough.
Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston say we need to be vaccinating 3 million people a day. That is double the pace we are seeing right now and triple the Biden administration's self-described ambitious plan.
The past year has been full of scientific developments and bold action by Congress and the administration to develop and distribute vaccines to the American people. We simply can't afford to put it in cruise control now. Our only option is to mobilize every resource and to push as hard and as fast as we can to get the American people vaccinated and to finally bring an end to this pandemic.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. MURPHY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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