Providing Emergency Assistance and Health Care Response for Individuals, Families, and Businesses Affected By the 2020 Coronavirus Pandemic

Floor Speech

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, all 100 Senators are hearing from our constituents about the urgency of our acting. If we aren't hearing about the urgency of our acting, we are hearing about the questions they have about the future economy, as they read about businesses being in trouble, restaurants shutting down, and schools closing. All of these decisions that have brought doubt to the minds of our constituents have been caused by governmental action as a result of the virus pandemic, the world health pandemic, that has been expressed.

We have to respond to that, and I think the leader has said how urgently he takes the response that our constituents expect from us and that we have a responsibility for taking action. This is an urgent time for us.

As Americans continue to do their part to curb the spread of coronavirus and the pandemic that it has been called, we are doing our part here in the Senate to support Americans, and that includes their families and their jobs.

Congress passed two bills quickly to step up the government's ability to combat the virus and to provide greater security for families whose incomes have been disrupted by containment efforts. Those two bills-- one signed just last night by the President--were very bipartisan in these efforts. We need to continue that bipartisanship.

We are now working, as the leader just introduced, on a bold and comprehensive effort to provide additional relief to Americans and our economy in this challenging time, to respond to the anxiety that the American people have that I previously said was caused by government-- and not just the Federal Government but State governments maybe in 50 different ways because of 50 different States and by many local governments in different ways, as they felt they needed to take action. I have already referred to shutting down restaurants, schools closing, et cetera. That speaks to how it affects the individuals we are trying to help.

I am chairman of the Finance Committee, as my colleagues know. I have been working with my colleagues around the clock to find opportunities in the Tax Code to reduce stress on American taxpayers and the businesses that create the jobs and the businesses that are probably closed now and their workers laid off.

Our small group of colleagues is working to help the American taxpayers and the businesses so that jobs continue. We first adopted a do-no-harm approach. We want to ensure that routine government processes don't add to the strain that everybody has out there. We do this by issuing recovery assistance to American families in the form of checks that can go out the door in short order. These direct payments could be as much as $1,200 for individuals, $2,400 for couples, with additional assistance to families. Obviously, the purpose of this is to provide immediate relief to folks who are facing cash flow problems in their families as they stay home to stop the spread of this virus.

To avoid in-person meetings with tax preparers in the midst of the pandemic, we are extending the tax filing deadline from April 15 to July 15, and of course we all know that the administration has already deferred collection of taxes until July or later. So this will help families defer filing costs and avoid meetings that could put folks at risk at this time of--who knows how far the effect of this virus is going to be. The deadline for quarterly estimated tax payments will also be postponed for 180 days.

We encourage those able to lend a financial hand by providing additional deductions for charitable giving. This includes suspending the deduction limitation for cash donations by individuals and easing the limitation on donations of cash and food inventories by businesses. Additionally, for those who do not itemize, a new deduction will be available for everyone who gives, regardless of how you file your taxes.

American businesses, as we know, are the engine of our economy, and we stand ready to help them as well. American business men and women are our job providers, and we need to make sure that they can keep their doors open--or if those doors are closed today, to reopen them-- and that the payrolls they have going out to those individual workers and families across the Nation can be maintained.

Our proposal includes items to improve cash flow and liquidity for businesses of all sizes. Businesses, including the self-employed, will be able to defer their quarterly tax estimates 180 days and their employer Social Security tax payments through 2020.

We are going to increase the limit on interest deductibility. We will speed up the recovery of the alternative minimum tax credits. We will relax limitations on how companies use losses from previous years to reduce their tax burdens.

These are just some of the many provisions in our proposal to unburden businesses, particularly those that have liquidity problems, so that they can keep employing those who are home with their families and helping to prevent the spread of the virus.

I hope nobody tries to tell me or the rest of us that we are bailing out business. We are in the job of preserving jobs. If those jobs have been lost in the last 10 days because of this slowdown of the economy-- almost a shutdown of the economy--then we want those jobs to be brought back. Workers are unemployed because of government's decisions--not the employer's decision, not the employee's lack of hard work, but because Federal, State, and local governments have stopped interaction among people so that we don't spread this virus, and it is because of what the World Health Organization has labeled a world health pandemic.

We don't see it as bad now as we do in Italy and other countries in Europe. We hope we don't see it as bad as they have, but we just don't know, and because we don't know, people have this anxiety. They don't know about the future, and we ought to give some help to the future.

I described to you some of the things the Finance Committee is working on.

I have also joined Senator Alexander and others to assist healthcare workers and patients. This portion of the package includes several Finance Committee provisions to help everyone fight the pandemic. For example, we are adding additional flexibility to the health savings accounts, bolstering telehealth services, and boosting Medicare payments to healthcare providers.

We can contain this deadly virus without destroying livelihoods or the Nation's economy, but right now, our constituents have doubt about that, and this proposal the leader has put forth is to try to quiet some of that anxiety.

These recommendations take bold steps to curb the economic fallout as we work as a country to contain this pandemic. These proposals won't be the end of the congressional response to the coronavirus. I think we made clear that this is the third effort--two already signed by the President of the United States--and there will probably be more. When people want more than what is maybe here, there are going to be plenty of opportunities for more.

I wish I could say we know by a certain date that this anxiety is going to go away and we know this pandemic has slowed down enough that we can go back to work and start interacting with our friends and family to the same extent we always have and open up the restaurants.

I stand ready to continue identifying targeted relief as necessary to help bridge the gap beyond this bill, but we need to take this next step and do it quickly.

I want to thank Leader McConnell for convening our task forces to quickly provide meaningful relief to families, individuals, and all sectors of the economy.

The people I have been working with that I thank are Senators John Thune, Rob Portman, Pat Toomey, Tim Scott, Tom Cotton, and Mitt Romney for working with me on this package. Some of those Members are hard- working Members of the Finance Committee, and some aren't on the committee because we wanted as broad an opinion as we could get. I know our staffs work literally around the clock, so I want to recognize their efforts as well.

So many Americans are working day and night to provide essential services and efforts to combat this outbreak. We in Congress must be prepared to do the same, and that is why you heard the leader a little while ago saying that we are going to stay in until we get this job done. We ought to applaud that type of leadership.

It is a commitment to keep the Senate open until we have done our part, and I look forward to working with Democrats and the administration to get this job done without delay. So maybe, if we work hard Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, we can get a bill to the President next week. Nobody should be going home until we have delivered this needed relief.

We often spoke in World War II about the United States being the arsenal of democracy. I still remember--I was only 9 years old-- December 7, 1941. And then I remember studying history and how we ramped up production for the war effort. Can we ramp up production of the respirators, protective gear, and testing kits we need? Can we do it on the same scale we did in World War II--a scale that can help us overcome this crisis?

I suppose you all remember the cry of ``Remember Pearl Harbor'' to help us pull the country together to win that war. Can we think of ``Remember coronavirus'' as an effort to pull this country together? Because in those times, I remember we all pulled together to--let's say, just one example--we all prided ourselves in planning what we called victory gardens. We did it in unison, as we sought to defeat the Axis powers. Can we pull together in the same way to slow the spread of COVID-19 until our healthcare system catches up with something we never anticipated, never could plan for?

I think this is a test of America's character, just like it was a test of our character in World War II to pull together.

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