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

Floor Speech

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I came here today from Connecticut, where I have been to hospitals and local public health departments, small and large businesses, places where healthcare is provided and where the backbone of our economy is done. And I came here to vote. I came here to vote on a package passed by an overwhelming bipartisan majority in the House of Representatives.

That overwhelming bipartisan spirit should be what animates us as we seek to save lives and livelihoods. We are literally on the cusp of an existential crisis in this country that will transform the lives of almost every American of almost every age and background and religious creed. Yet, in the face of that crisis, we will have no vote tonight. That is disgraceful. It is shameful.

In the course of traveling around Connecticut, I have visited hospitals in Milford, Hartford, and in other places around the State and local health departments and with local officials who have said to me that there is still inadequate testing because the Federal Government has still failed to fulfill its promise to provide that testing.

There are fears that the surge of health cases as a result of coronavirus will deplete the resources of hospitals and other healthcare facilities because there are deficient numbers of ICUs and ventilators, and still the Federal Government has failed to provide them.

There is fear and anxiety about the future of our economy when parents have to make decisions about whether to stay home now to take care of their children because they are out of school or because their family has one person who is ill from this virus, and they are all quarantined.

Will they be able to pay their mortgages and put food on the table? They are literally living from paycheck to paycheck. They are trying to make it in real time, right now.

Likewise, I met this morning with small business owners and managers who are fearful they will literally become insolvent, they will go bankrupt, they will go under because they have insufficient resources to weather this financial storm. They are receiving no revenue, but they still have overhead expenses. If they are restaurants, they are now, in effect, closed. If they are retail establishments, most people are staying home. If they are small businesses, the backbone of the economy in providing jobs, they are challenged and they have to make real decisions in real time, right now.

The package that is available for us to vote on would provide relief to those families and those businesses, to people who are anxious about the future of their lives and livelihoods, who have to make those hard decisions right now, tonight, about what they will do. It would provide paid sick leave and emergency medical and family leave and strengthen unemployment compensation, as well as tax credits. For our States, it would provide a kind of expanded Medicaid support--$440 million for Connecticut alone and hundreds of millions for other States around the country.

We need to embark on that program of massive support and sweeping international cooperation and unsparing truth telling about the dimension of this crisis--no more magical thinking or happy talk. We are about to see numbers soar, and, as Anthony Fauci said, we are about to see Americans hunker down, as they must do, and, in that period, what we have before us in legislation will mean, potentially, life and death decisions. Time matters. Hours and days are profoundly significant when families have to make these decisions. We can delay, but it is to the ultimate profound damage of those lives, and we can make a difference if we act now.

We could have acted by unanimous consent over the weekend. I am sorry that the Senate went home and that there was no action. But we need to act now--if not tonight, tomorrow morning. It should have been this afternoon because the loss of time is a loss of opportunity that we cannot afford.

The small business people who met with me this morning, the health directors in New London and in other cities, such as Hartford, the hospital administrators in Hartford and Milford, the local officials, the mayors around the State of Connecticut, and the small business community who were hosted today by the MetroHartford Alliance said to me: We need action.

We have an obligation to act. We cannot allow time to pass without action. We owe it to the people of Connecticut and the American people that there be action to meet that surge and challenge for the hospitals, to provide that assistance in grants, not just loans, in this package and then in a next package.

There must be additional steps. I support the initiative that I understand may be coming from Senator Schumer and others and join in that initiative for hundreds of billions of dollars in aid to meet this crisis on the homefront as well as in the economic arena.

Truth telling to the American people means recognizing the extraordinary, unprecedented, historic magnitude of the challenge before us. The scope and scale of potential suffering can be reduced. We owe it to the American people to act. There is no excuse for delay. The failure to act is unconscionable and inconceivable, given the magnitude of the challenge but also given the resolute and resilient spirit that I have seen across Connecticut. Whether it is with Americans donating to people who need it--supplies and other kinds of necessities--or the spirit of giving that I have seen among faith leaders and public officials, the courage of police and firefighters and emergency responders, and the dedication of healthcare providers, whether it is in hospitals or clinics like Charter Oak in Hartford and across Connecticut, everywhere that I have visited, I have seen that American spirit coming forward--the great, positive spirit of America and the ingenuity. That was the word that one of the small business people this morning used to myself and David Griggs at the MetroHartford Alliance. The ingenuity of meeting this challenge, whether it is in research for new vaccines or devising new ways to deliver the tests or providing for more ventilators and intensive care units--that ingenuity is truly American. The dedication of those healthcare givers, first responders, small business people, local officials, and others around the State and around the country ought to inspire us to do better and to take this vote and do our job.

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