Providing A 77-Day Extension of Certain Authorities for Foreign Intelligence and International Terrorism Investigations

Floor Speech

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Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, let me associate myself with the remarks of the Senator from Delaware and others who spoke before him.

We are here. We are all in town. We came back for an expected vote tonight that did not occur. There is no excuse for us not to be voting at this moment on an assistance package that is going to be dispositive on some of the toughest decisions that many American families will make over the course of this year or next.

Let me drill down on what those decisions are. Right now, there are parents in my State of Connecticut who have to go to work tomorrow but have a child who is home from school, and they have to make a decision as to whether they are going to forgo tomorrow's paycheck and stay home from work, possibly face termination or discipline, or leave their child at home alone or in an unsafe environment.

There are thousands and thousands of families in my State who cannot afford to miss a paycheck--a paycheck--that is the difference between being able to put food on the table or not, whether or not their kids have diapers, whether the lights stay on. That is the decision many families are making tomorrow in Connecticut.

Here is another decision that many individuals are making in my State: Tonight there are a lot of moms and dads who have a cough, who are starting to feel a little fever coming on, but they have work tomorrow, and they have a paycheck they need for their family, and they don't have paid sick leave as part of their compensation package. That is not part of their contractual deal with their employer. So they are making that decision. Do I forgo a paycheck? Do I risk getting fired or disciplined, or do I go to work even though I am not feeling well, even though I have symptoms that I know are problematic?

They are facing those decisions tonight because we weren't here this weekend, because a bill passed the House that had in it an answer for many of those families--not all of those families--had guaranteed paid sick leave for thousands and thousands of workers all across this country who were waiting for that assurance that if they stayed home with their child who is home from school or they decided to stay home with the beginnings of symptoms that look like COVID-19, they would be protected financially. That bill was ready for action here in the Senate, and had we passed it on Saturday or Sunday, there would have been thousands of parents, thousands of workers, who would have stayed home today. But they didn't. They didn't.

I know this to be true. I know this to be true--that there were many, many workers who went to work today even though they might not have been feeling well, didn't stay home with their kids because they didn't feel they could go without that paycheck. So this is about real-life, minute-by-minute decisions that are being made by families in this country.

I know sometimes it doesn't feel that important if we wait a day. I know sometimes it feels like a bummer if we have to miss out on a weekend. But not this weekend. Not today. These decisions that families are making are fundamentally different if we do it a day ahead of time.

The epidemic has less of a chance at winning if we pass this legislation tonight rather than tomorrow or Wednesday or Thursday. And I worry about that because I have listened to some of my Republican colleagues suggest over the last 24 hours that we are not going to pass this bill, that we are going to change the bill, that we are going to amend it and we are going to send it back to the House.

This bill is ready. It has bipartisan support. The President announced on Friday night that he was for it. No reason to wait in order to give our constituents some assurances, in order to make sure they are making the right decisions for their family and for their health and for all of our health rather than decisions necessary in order to guarantee that next paycheck comes, which is essential-- essential--for their family's financial health.

Lastly, I just don't want to let the President of the United States off the hook here. I watched yet another one of these press conferences yesterday in which he once again sort of glossed over the gravity of the moment, in which he hinted that young people didn't have as much to worry about as older people, in which he once again savaged the press, attacking them right at the moment when Americans are relying on the media to give them information that is going to keep them safe.

I talked to several of my hospital leaders today, and they talked about the fact that not only do they need personal protective equipment--they are running out--not only do they need more ventilators, but some of my hospitals don't even have the swabs necessary to do the tests. That is not an issue today because they can't get the tests processed, but once we get the testing capacity ramped up, they are not sure they will have the swabs necessary to do the tests.

It is just inexcusable that we got caught this unready. It is inexcusable that many of us were sitting in a meeting with the President's representatives in early February, begging for a supplemental bill to be sent to the Senate and House then so that we would be ready when the disease ramped up and were told by the administration that they didn't need it, that they had enough resources.

It is unacceptable that to this day, this President doesn't understand the urgency of this crisis. This is a crisis of a pandemic sweeping the country, but it is also a crisis of leadership. It is also a crisis of leadership. And at the very least, we need to keep the heat on this President to be accurate in his portrayal of the scope and the danger of this national public health emergency, and on a daily basis, he is failing even to just be honest with the American people.

I really hope that we get this done tomorrow. It doesn't look like we are coming in tonight. For my constituents in Connecticut, they can't wait another 24 hours, they can't wait another 48 hours to know whether they are going to have at least some modicum of protection if they choose to do the right thing by their family, do the right thing by their health. We need to provide them that assurance, and we need to do it immediately.

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