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“AMERICAN RESCUE PLAN ACT OF 2021” mentioning Christopher Murphy was published in the Senate section on pages S1039-S1042 on March 4.
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.
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The publication is reproduced in full below:
AMERICAN RESCUE PLAN ACT OF 2021
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, some of our Republican colleagues say that America doesn't need President Biden's COVID rescue plan because ``the pandemic is nearly over.'' Funny. I have never heard them say we shouldn't spend money to help tornado victims in their States after the tornadoes were gone.
Let me say it clearly. We are not out of the woods yet. I wish we were. There are 510,000 Americans--maybe more now--who have died. The United States has 5 percent of the world's population. We have 20 percent of the COVID infections and deaths. Why? Because of poor leadership during the first year of this pandemic.
We had a President then, who is now gone, who would announce it was a hoax, and it was going to disappear by Easter, downplaying the seriousness of the situation with his fanciful flights about certain chemicals that were going to save us or whether or not we should all be gargling Lysol every morning. It made no sense, and the American people came out of that experience confused and infected, with deaths in their families. That was the reality of the first year of the pandemic.
There was also another reality, which the Republican leader just alluded to in that, 12 months ago, we passed something called the CARES Act. It was historic--the largest Federal expenditure in the history of the United States of America. Who designed that bill? Well, it was Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, whom I didn't know well but who, apparently, had some skill as a negotiator because he managed to not only speak for President Trump but to negotiate a bipartisan package in March of last year, called the CARES Act, for $2 trillion. It came to the floor of the Senate, with a vote of 96 to nothing. Every Democrat voted for the COVID rescue plan of the Trump administration a year ago--every Democrat.
The second major bill occurred in December, that of $900 billion, designed to help us through the first 3 months of this year--again, with Treasury Secretary Mnuchin at the table on behalf of President Trump, negotiating with Democrats and Republicans. It came to the floor of the Senate, and, this time, there were 92 votes in favor of it, including every Democrat, and 6 Republicans voted no.
So, you see, when it came to COVID rescue plans under the Trump administration, the Republicans were happy to ask us to join them, and we did. Oh, some people said we were giving them a political advantage here or there or the other place, but those arguments didn't prevail on the Democratic side. The Nation came first. The pandemic came first. Unemployed people and businesses that were struggling came first, and we voted that way.
Then came a new President: Joe Biden, elected November 3, despite the denial of some. It was a reality. He took this pandemic and faced it squarely--no excuses about hoaxes or ``it is going to go away'' or ``I have got a favorite chemical that will save everybody's life.'' He faced it squarely. He accepted the responsibility, as President of the United States, to tell the American people the truth.
The first thing he told them was that we cannot, we should not, stop in our efforts to end this pandemic and put America back on its feet. So he made a proposal, a proposal with at least $160 billion in it, for buying vaccines, administering those vaccines, and distributing them across the United States. I would think that everybody would agree with that as a starting point. It wasn't the end point.
As for the cash payment promised by the Trump administration and agreed to by most Democrats, he wanted to keep his word on that--$1,400 more for families all across America.
He talked about State and local aid. I can tell you that this is more than a theoretical exercise in my State of Illinois. We need help. The expenses of COVID-19 and the lost revenue by our shrunken economy have taken their toll in my State and in the cities across the State.
I just got off a Zoom call with a dozen small towns in Illinois. They are all down from my neck of the woods. They are great folks, doing their best, struggling under COVID-19.
They asked me: Are you going to send us any help?
I said: President Biden has made his American rescue proposal. If we can pass it, help is on the way.
Assistance won't just go to Springfield, our State capital, or to Chicago, which does need help, but to cities across our State and across our Nation. That is included in this bill too. Help for our schools is included in this bill too. The list goes on, and it is an important list because it really highlights the priorities of recovery in the United States.
President Biden and all of us heard the news a day or two ago when the Governors of Texas and Mississippi, in full-throated denial of the reality of this pandemic, basically took off all the limitations on businesses and on individuals. No more mask requirements. Let's open up everything all the way. The President was right. That was not a smart choice. It was not a wise choice. We are up against it, and we have to remain united in our effort to defeat this coronavirus.
So this week, in a day or two, President Biden's American Rescue Plan will come to the floor. Will we have another bipartisan rollcall, 96 to nothing, 92 to 6? I am afraid not. As of this moment, and I hope it changes, no single Republican Senator has expressed an interest in voting for this bill. Not one. I hope it changes, and it could. Some Senators at the last minute, I think, will realize this is the right way to go.
Meanwhile, the Republican leader comes to the floor every day and mocks this plan--a Democratic wish list, a liberal wish list, Nancy Pelosi's wish list. This is the American people's wish list. Eighty percent of the American people support what President Biden is trying to do, and the leading economists have told us we have to do this. If we don't inject money into this economy to restore its energy and future, we will pay for it not just for months to come but far beyond.
It is a situation that every parent knows, when they go to the doctor, to the pediatrician, with their little boy or little girl with an earache, and he says: I am going to give you some antibiotics. Now, this is a 5-day prescription. This little boy is going to start feeling better on the second day, and by the third day, he is going to be playing as usual. You are going to think, well, he doesn't need the rest of these antibiotics. Don't make that decision. Keep giving him the full dose of medicine to get well completely, or he may lapse back into it again and get sick all over again.
So you stick with it even when your little boy is running rings around you or the little girl is getting ready to get on her tricycle, because that is what the doctor said, and that was the right thing to do.
That is the same thing with this. If we accept the Republican argument that this pandemic is really over; if we accept the argument of the Governor of Texas--that was yesterday; we don't have to worry about it tomorrow; if we take that approach, we could have a disastrous result. We could be back in trouble again in just a few weeks.
I hope we don't. I hope we come together in the Senate, preferably on a bipartisan basis, and help the President get us through this pandemic. This is our chance. We have no greater responsibility than to put an end to this pandemic, put the economy on its feet, get the kids back in school, and let grandparents visit those grandkids again. That is part of getting America back where it needs to be.
We need bipartisan support. As Democrats, we provided that support to a Republican President. Now that we have a Democratic President, will our Republican Senators do the same?
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut
Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I was presiding on Tuesday. Sometimes my staff will give me a folder of things to review while I am presiding, and often they will be upset when I come back having not reviewed what they have given me. The reason for that is simple: When there are Members speaking before the body, I am, frankly, very interested to listen and to hear what our colleagues have to say. We don't do enough of that in this place. We are so busy during the day, we don't spend a lot of time on the Senate floor. We might have the floor on on our TV in our office, but we are not always paying attention to what our colleagues have to say. One of the benefits of being able to preside is that you do get to listen to the arguments that are being made right here on the floor.
In the hour or so that I was presiding on Tuesday, I got to hear about four or five of my Republican colleagues come down in sequence to make their case as to why they would be voting against the American Rescue Plan, and so I got to hear a number of themes being developed.
I don't think coincidentally a number of arguments were made repeatedly by many of our friends on the Republican side of the aisle, and so I decided it might be worthwhile to just spend a few minutes talking about the claims that are made about this bill by Republicans, the reasons why they are voting against it, and to talk about how some of these arguments may be a little bit more disingenuous than we might like.
The first thing that I heard was that this bill was just too expensive. It is $1.9 trillion. That is a lot of money, no doubt, but this country has never ever faced a healthcare crisis or an economic crisis like we do today. This is an unprecedented moment in our Nation's history, and it requires us to step up and do something that isn't just going to sound like it will work and help people but actually will.
What is, I guess, to me ironic about this claim that it is too expensive, that it is going to cost our kids and grandkids too much money, is that Republicans passed a tax bill that was almost to the dollar the exact same amount as this relief bill is. They passed a $1.9 trillion tax bill where the majority of the benefits went to the richest Americans who needed no more help. There was no crisis in 2017 amongst American millionaires and billionaires. Yet Republicans were very willing to draw down $1.9 trillion in debt-financed tax cuts; $1.3 trillion in corporate tax cuts; $83 billion to let heirs of huge mega-
estates be able to inherit more money without taxation; $435 billion tax cut for the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans. So it is a little hard to listen to my Republican colleagues claim that this bill is too expensive when they were willing to spend the exact same amount of money in 2017 on tax cuts for their wealthy corporate and millionaire friends.
It is also hard to listen to this argument because just a year ago, Republicans were willing to spend $1.9 trillion to address this crisis. It isn't as if Republicans haven't understood, when they were in control of the White House and the Congress, that we needed to step up and meet this moment. Republicans have said: Well, this is different because we are turning the corner. Well, as Senator Durbin laid out very well, we may be able to see the corner, but we are not there yet.
March 24 was the day that we passed the CARES Act--almost the same amount of money as we are considering today. On that day, 737 people died of COVID-19. Yesterday, 2,369 people died of COVID-19. So in many ways, the crisis today is exponentially worse than it was a year ago when Republicans, to a person, were willing to spend $2 trillion on the crisis. Now, all of a sudden, when Democrats are in charge of the White House, when a Democratic majority leader sits here in the U.S. Senate,
$1.9 trillion is too much money to spend on a crisis that is taking on a daily basis three to four times as many lives as it did when we spent this money a year ago.
By the way, the economic crisis is still acute. There may be technically more people at work today than there were in April or May of last year, but surveys suggest today 80 percent of Americans don't have enough money to pay their bills. Why? Because a lot of people are back to work, but they are working fewer hours, right? They have less reliable work. So there is still a crisis that exists amongst 80 percent of Americans today. This is no less than the crisis that existed in 2017.
Here is the second critique that is made over and over about this bill: It is a partisan bill, Republicans say. Well, that is a complaint of Republicans' own making because it is only a partisan bill in the U.S. Senate. Three out of four voters support the American Rescue Plan. This is a recent Morning Consult poll. It has been referred to before on the floor. Seventy percent of all voters support the American Rescue Plan. Not surprisingly, there is some difference between Democrats and Republicans but, frankly, not much. Ninety percent of Democrats support the American Rescue Plan, and 60 percent of Republicans support the American Rescue Plan. Why? Because everybody is hurting in this country. Everybody is hurting. Republicans and Democrats need an extension of unemployment benefits. Republicans and Democrats both want cash payments. Republicans and Democrats know that their kids can't get what they need in schools without additional support.
This is a unifying proposal in the American public. President Biden made a commitment to govern in a way that unified the country. He has done that. He has proposed a bill that has the broad support of Republicans and Democrats. I don't know that it is his fault that it can't draw Republican support in Congress despite the fact that it draws Republican support from the public.
Finally, this was maybe the most interesting theme of the complaints: It is not COVID relief. I have heard different statistics thrown out by my Republican friends. Some of them suggest that only 5 percent of this bill is COVID relief. I am not sure exactly how they come to that calculation, but what I understand them to say is that anything that isn't directly related to putting shots in people's arms or treating people with present cases of COVID is not COVID relief.
Well, let's just take a look at what was broadly part of the CARES Act that was supported by every single Republican and what is broadly part of the American Rescue Plan, because my Republican colleagues thought that everything in the CARES Act was COVID relief, whether it was designed to immediately attack the healthcare crisis or whether it was designed to address the economic crisis.
There were stimulus checks in the CARES Act--not as big as the ones in the American Rescue Plan, but they were COVID relief when we passed the CARES Act. Now, according to Republicans, they are not COVID relief.
There was an unemployment extension and a plus-up in the maximum benefit under the CARES Act. That was COVID relief back in March of last year, but now, according to Republicans, it is not COVID relief.
There was money for vaccines and for testing in the CARES Act. In the American Rescue Plan, there is money for vaccines and testing.
Small business relief was, of course, conceived in the CARES Act, the PPP program. That is a big part of the American Rescue Plan, but now it is not COVID relief, according to my Republican colleagues, whereas it was last year.
There was State and local funding in the CARES Act. There is State and local funding in the American Rescue Plan.
There was rent and mortgage relief in the CARES Act. There is rent and mortgage relief in the American Rescue Plan.
All of a sudden, since Democrats took control of the White House and took control of the Senate, all of these things, which were categorized as COVID relief by Republicans in March, are no longer COVID. You are just supposed to think of these as extras, as Democratic priorities.
Ninety percent--ninety-five percent of what is in the package we are voting on today is simply an extension of the same set of funding streams that we authorized in a bipartisan way a year ago. And so this idea that this is some Democratic wish list, when we are essentially just extending or increasing the same funding streams that were in the CARES Act, is nonsense. It is nonsense. Of course, this is all COVID relief. Of course, it is COVID relief when you are increasing nutritional benefits to people who can't afford to feed their kids because they have lost their job or they have lost hours because the economy melted down due to a pandemic. That is not, all of a sudden, not COVID relief today.
This one is maybe the most bizarre of Republican claims. This bill is expensive, but it is not too expensive. This moment is unique, and we are mandated by our oath of office to meet this moment. Republicans didn't have a problem spending $1.9 trillion to give tax breaks to their wealthy friends. I don't know why they, all of a sudden, have a problem putting money in the pockets of hard-working Americans who are suffering through the worst healthcare crisis this country has seen in a century.
Republicans say this is a partisan bill. Out there in America, guess what--it is not. It is not. Republicans and Democrats support this because it is full of commonsense ideas that make a lot of sense to people, no matter what their political ideology is outside of Washington.
Republicans say this bill isn't COVID relief but a Democratic progressive wish list. No, it is simply an extension of the things that were bipartisan priorities last year. We thought they were good ideas then. We think they are good ideas now, especially given the fact that four times as many people are dying today as were dying in March of 2020, when we passed the first bipartisan CARES Act, and as the economy today is in just as dire straits as it was.
I hope we are turning the corner. I hope we get vaccines into the arms of individuals such that we are soon back to the numbers of deaths per day that we saw in March of last year. I hope that we are on a road again to full employment. But I am confident that none of that can happen unless we make this investment in COVID relief and in economic relief. It is an obligation as stewards of the economy and the welfare of the American people for us to step up to the plate and get this done this week.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. King). The Republican whip
Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, less than 2 months ago, at his inauguration, President Biden spoke about his deep commitment to bringing Americans together.
Today, the Senate will consider the first major bill of his Presidency, an intensely partisan piece of legislation. Why is the bill before us today so partisan? It is not because Republicans were unwilling to cooperate with Democrats on COVID legislation. In fact--in fact--Republicans made it very clear that we were willing to work with Democrats.
No, the bill before us today is so heavily partisan because Democrats didn't want to work with Republicans. Democrats saw an opportunity to use the COVID crisis to advance a whole host of liberal priorities, and they were afraid that allowing Republicans to participate in the process would mean that some of their pet projects would be excluded or that they would have to pare back some of their more profligate spending.
So Democrats decided to use reconciliation to ensure that Republicans wouldn't be able to interfere with their Democratic legislation. And let's be very clear about the nature of that legislation. Democrats would like to present this as a COVID bill. It is not. Yes, there are a handful of true COVID priorities in this legislation, such as more money for vaccines and coronavirus treatment, something that I think everybody here on both sides of the aisle supports. But the bulk of this bill is either non-COVID-related or ostensibly COVID-related but, actually, either unnecessary or excessive.
On the non-COVID front, there is the $86 billion bailout for multiemployer pension plans, the billions for climate change and other environmental policy issues, a new taxpayer-funded leave program for government employees with no requirement that it be used for COVID-19, and I could go on.
The version of the bill that came over from the House contained such non-COVID-related measures as $100 million for an underground rail project in the House Speaker's home State and $1.5 million for a bridge in the Democratic leader's home State, plus a massive increase in the Federal minimum wage that would cost an estimated 1.4 million jobs, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and potentially--
potentially--devastate small businesses already reeling from the effects of the coronavirus.
Then there are the ostensibly COVID-related measures, such as $350 billion for States. So what is the big problem there? Well, States don't need anywhere near that much money to weather the rest of the pandemic. The vast majority of States are not in crisis, and rescuing those States that are not in crisis would not take anywhere close to
$350 billion. Democrats are going to spend hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars on an unnecessary giveaway to States, and on top of that, that giveaway is heavily, heavily weighted in favor of blue States. That is right. The distribution formula is designed to heavily favor Democratic States.
Well, then there is the money for schools. Now, Republicans have been very willing to give schools money to help them reopen. In fact, last year, when Republicans were in the majority--which, by the way, during that time we passed five COVID-19 relief bills, all with bipartisan cooperation and support, at the 60-vote level that we use here in the Senate for most legislation that we take up under regular order--but we put a lot of money into giving schools money to help them reopen. In fact, Republicans voted for $68 billion for K-12 schools.
At this point, that money is sufficient. Schools have spent just $5 billion of the $68 billion that we have already provided. Let me repeat that. So far, schools have spent just $5 billion, or less than 10 percent, of the $68 billion that has already been given to them.
Yet the Democrats' bill would appropriate an additional $129 billion for schools, 95 percent of which would be spent after this year--the year of the crisis, the year of the emergency, the year of the pandemic. You would think that, if this was a crisis, the funding would be made available to be used this year, but it is not. It is spent in the years 2022 to 2028.
Do Democrats really expect Americans to believe that school dollars that won't be spent until 2027 or 2028 are urgently needed coronavirus response dollars? This is the pattern with this bill, though.
We just passed a large coronavirus relief bill in December, the fifth coronavirus relief bill that Congress has passed, and a lot of the money from that bill hasn't been spent yet. In fact, a lot of money from earlier coronavirus bills has not been spent. Yet Democrats are throwing massive additional amounts of money at various recipients with no idea--no clear idea--of whether or not that money will be needed or, in some cases, when we know very well that that money isn't needed
Republicans will be introducing amendments to the Democrats' bill. I am introducing an amendment to undo the Biden administration's freeze on the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program, which has provided support for farmers and ranchers who have been hit hard by the pandemic.
I hope some of my less extreme Democratic colleagues will join Republicans to advance some of our amendments, such as Senator Graham's amendment to change the distribution formula for States to the formula used in the bipartisan CARES Act, which passed unanimously here in the Senate, so that both red and blue States would get a fair shot at funding, or amendments to remove those provisions that are in no way related to COVID relief.
Unfortunately, Democratic leaders have made it very clear that they are not willing to entertain Republican ideas. So I don't have a lot of confidence that Republican amendments, even if adopted, will end up in the final bill.
It is deeply disappointing that pretty much the first thing Democrats did this Congress was to take a bipartisan process--the coronavirus relief--and make it partisan. All five--all five--of the coronavirus bills that Congress has passed to date--last year, when Republicans were in the majority--were bipartisan. This bill could have been bipartisan, too, but Democrats decided that Republicans and the Americans that they represent should not have a voice in this legislation.
Is this what the rest of the Biden Presidency is going to look like? I sure hope not, because it is going to be really hard--really hard--to come up with solutions that are durable and that represent the middle of the country--those people whose voices are not heard in the legislation that we will be taking up today.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.
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