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

Floor Speech

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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I echo what the Senator from Illinois has said and what the Senator from Ohio has said.

We have a national emergency. We should have already finished this phase of dealing with this crisis, for there are many more phases to deal with. As part of this debate, we should ensure that there is sick leave for every single worker in our country. That is not in this package that is coming through right now. We have to make sure everyone is covered. We need unemployment insurance, and we need to ensure that it extends to workers in the gig economy--tip workers, domestic workers, and contractors. We have to cover people so they stay home. We have to let them know that unemployment insurance is going to extend to them during this crisis.

We cannot allow our inaction--our thinking through of what we have to do--to shut down any potential for this crisis' not growing to a level which we are seeing in other countries. We can do it, but it is the Senate that has to be here. It is the Senate that has to deliberate on these issues, find the solutions, and deliver them to the American people. They are desperate for answers right now. They are being told to go home right now. Waiters, bartenders, and contractors are being told to just go home.

What is going to happen to them if they don't have sick time? What is going to happen to them if they don't have unemployment insurance? What are they going to be doing in terms of caring for their families?

We should be here this week, taking care of the package that has already been agreed to and beginning the debate immediately on everything else we have to do. I will give you an example.

Let's just take the hospitals of our country. For most of the major cities in America, a high percentage of the revenue for those hospitals comes from foreign patients who fly in from around the world and into our major cities. That revenue stream is going to be cut off for an indefinite period of time. Hospitals depend upon elective surgeries. That is going to be cut off for an indefinite period of time. That is the revenue flow that goes into hospitals that then allows them to take care of the poorer people in each and every one of our communities. If they don't have that revenue stream, it is going to place enormous pressure on them to lay off doctors, to lay off nurses, and to lay off other key personnel because the revenue stream will not be there.

We are the ones who are going to have to provide the revenue stream. At this time, we cannot have a hospital system in crisis in our country. We should be here, deciding whether we are going to provide a fund of $100 billion or $200 billion or $300 billion to ensure our healthcare system stays robust at this time of all times in our history.

We are heading into issue after issue that this Senate has to deal with. If we are here--if we are back--we should deal with it. We should deal with it this week. We should deal with it on the emergency basis that we are telling every family to with regard to this crisis, but every other family is dependent upon us to provide the answers for them and their families.

So I agree with the Senators. This is something that requires our attention. We are here, and we are the answers for them. If we don't give them, then there will be no answers. We know that the first bill-- the $8 billion bill--was three times larger than the White House wanted, but we made sure that the extra funding was going into each and every one of our States. We know that this bill that was just negotiated with the Speaker and the President last week is just being held up by a Republican with regard to a procedural obstacle. That is why.

We have to deal with this on a war footing. We are at war with an invisible enemy that is moving into every single city and town and into every single part of our economy as we speak right now. If we don't provide the defense for our families, then we are going to be looked at as being those who failed the American people.

We should already have robust testing, but we don't. We should have the protective gear in the hands of every doctor and nurse all across our country, but our doctors and nurses are being told to reuse their masks--to reuse them. The Senator from Illinois was already talking about how hard it is to get that extra protective gear for his hospitals, and the same thing is true all across our country.

We know there is a crisis. We know there is a shortage. We know there is a huge gap that exists between what we have and what we are going to need, but we don't have any more time. We didn't use the time in December. We didn't use it in January, and we didn't use it for most of February. There were warnings that were coming, but we now know it is real. We know it is in every community already and in every State already in our Nation.

We should stay here, and we should do this work. We should make sure that our hospitals know for sure that they are going to have the help they need, especially the community hospitals because they are going to be very fragile--very, very fragile--in terms of the revenue stream going in while great expectations will be expected from them in terms of what they are going to do for their local communities.

So let's stay. Let's debate this. Let's make sure that the frontline workers have the protective gear they need, have the testing equipment they need, and have the guarantee that their salaries are going to be paid and that they are going to be taken care of, because we are going to need them to be putting themselves in harm's way in our country for, potentially, months. This is the time for us to stand up and to stay here in order to get these issues resolved this week. We shouldn't do it next week. We should do it this week.

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