MIDDLE CLASS HEALTH BENEFITS TAX REPEAL ACT OF 2019--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I would like to thank my colleague from Connecticut for his remarks tonight and for the hopefulness that he has expressed. I have been here now for 11 years, and I can't predict success here, and I can't say it is assured, but I think it is very likely that we are going to come together in a deal. I hope we come together in that deal today, and I think the American people are going to be able to assess the progress that has been made for workers as a result of taking a little bit of extra time, for hospitals as a result of a little extra time, for State and local governments that are going to benefit mightily because of the work we have done.

I rise tonight not to get into this back-and-forth about this because I think we are going to address it, and I think we are going to address it in a way that is meaningful and in a way that is bipartisan and in a way that can help give the American people a measure of confidence that we are doing our job. For those of you who have heard me over the years on this floor, I don't always come here with a report that optimistic. But tonight, given everything I have heard over the course of the day, I want to say that this is a serious problem. It is an unprecedented challenge. We have to rise to this challenge together, and I believe that when the votes are counted on this bill, it will have been a better bill for the work that has been done, and the vote will be a big bipartisan vote, which will be a shot in the arm for the country and for the American people.

I want to talk not about this back-and-forth, but I want to talk about something that is confronting us; that is, the worst pandemic in a century. Just a month ago, just 30 days ago, nobody here would have imagined--30 days ago we had 30 confirmed cases in the United States. Today, there are over 41,000 cases, the most anywhere outside of China and Italy.

The President is right. He goes out and says that there are 140-some countries that have this. That is true. We are in the top three of those countries. There are 379 Americans who have died as we are here tonight. In the middle of the worst public health crisis in a century, our medical community doesn't have the basic supplies and equipment they need to respond.

This matters because if we don't get our doctors and nurses protective gear, they are going to get sick. If they get sick, they can't help everyone else who is sick. That is a huge problem, and our medical professionals in Colorado, as in the Commonwealth of Virginia and all across this great country, have been begging for us to pay attention to this for months--for months.

The chief medical officer at Denver Health--which is our fabulous public hospital in Denver, one of the leading hospitals in this country--says that they do not have enough tests or swabs to keep pace, and the turnaround time for tests is taking much too long. ``Our ICU right now is full of patients awaiting test results,'' she said. ``We need faster testing.'' Hopefully that is coming, but it has been a long time getting here. And every single healthcare worker who is tested in this country but does not get a result for 5 or 6 or 7 or 8 days--even if they don't have the coronavirus--can't go back to work.

As a result of that, we face a severe shortage of healthcare workers in this country. At Denver Health, they say: ``We are burning through our personal protective equipment to the point that we are on short supply, as is every other health care institution in Denver and likely in Colorado.''

If this continues, she said they are going to have to put two patients on a single ventilator. That is not how it is supposed to work.

In Colorado, our nurses are sewing masks because they don't have masks. My wife was sewing a mask at our home in Denver yesterday--in the United States, in the 21st century.

We have doctors who are getting just a single mask and being told to use it indefinitely. I was on the phone this evening with doctors and administrators from our hospitals who are telling me that they are having to ration swabs for tests. It is a two-swab test, but they are only using one swab because they don't have enough swabs to do it properly. There are doctors who are having to use the same mask patient after patient when the mask is designed for it to be only one patient; that is the way it is supposed to work. They are violating protocols of the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control because they are rationing equipment. There is no excuse in this country--the richest country--that they should be rationing in this public healthcare crisis. Gowns, masks, shields, clothes--America's healthcare workers don't have any of it. And do you know what they spent today doing? They spent today scrolling through ads--not all of them, not the ones with patients, but the ones who have to equip our medical professionals. They were scrolling through ad after ad after ad--from where? China--saying that their masks are for sale in China. They have no idea whether these are fly-by-night organizations.

These companies are requiring Denver Health and other hospitals to put the money upfront and say: You will get the masks 3 or 4 weeks from now. They don't even know whether those masks will come. They don't know what the quality of those masks will be. We were told yesterday by the President that China was sending us masks, and now all of those seem to be being sent to Italy.

I saw a quote from a doctor in California who said it is like ``We are at war with no ammo.'' That is not their fault. That is not their fault. They are on the frontlines of this war. We should be ashamed. We should be ashamed. I am.

The question is, How are we going to make sure our medical community has the supplies and equipment they need? Perhaps it would be useful to be honest about where we are, to start with.

The Department of Health and Human Services estimates that we are going to need 3.5 billion masks to fight this pandemic this year. When you hear me tonight use the word ``mask,'' in your own mind add the word ``gown,'' add the word ``glove,'' add the word ``shield'' because they need all of that--3.5 billion masks to fight this pandemic this year. The administration came with their first supplemental requesting $1.8 billion; today we are at $2 trillion in just the last month. They came and said 1.8 billion. We said we need 350 million masks. We need 3.5 billion masks--billion masks--this year. Today in America, we have exactly 35 million masks. That is 1 percent of what we need--not 80 percent but 1 percent of what we need.

Nationwide tonight, our hospitals have 160,000 ventilators among all the hospitals we have in the greatest country in the world. Johns Hopkins estimates that we are going to need another 40,000 ventilators by the time this is done.

In Colorado tonight, I heard--this might be of interest to the other Senators who are here tonight because New York represents half of the cases in this country right now. The concern from Colorado, and I am sure from your States as well, is that all those ventilators are going to go to New York, as they should right now because that is where the greatest need is. What is going to be left for the rest of us? What is going to be left for the rest of us in 7 days or 10 days or 20 days?

How can we be this foolish? How can we be this blind? The administration hasn't taken this crisis seriously enough from the beginning.

When it comes to the equipment that people on the frontline need--the ``ammunition,'' to use their word, that the people on the frontline need--they are being ignored or dismissed with a bunch of happy talk about how we are going to solve this problem--if we can even admit that there is a problem. The result is something I never thought I would see in the United States of America, the country I grew up in. States like New York and New Jersey are literally being forced to outbid--States like New York are being forced to outbid New Jersey and California to secure critical supplies while they are fighting through the worst public health crisis in a century.

Yesterday, during his press conference in the White House, the President said: We want them to be on that open market because we might lose money if we are not on that open market.

Exactly the opposite of what he thinks is happening, is happening. Governors like Andrew Cuomo are being forced to pay $7 for surgical masks that just a week ago cost 85 cents. My doctors in Colorado told me tonight that stuff yesterday that was five times the cost of what it ordinarily is, today is seven times the cost of what it ordinarily is. In Colorado, our children's hospital is paying 70 cents a mask. That is 10 times what they were spending a month ago. Ventilators that used to cost a few thousand dollars now cost up to $40,000 because the President won't act. He will not provide the national leadership that we need.

Ten days ago, when talking about the test, he said: ``I don't take any responsibility at all.'' That is what he said. He may think that he doesn't have the blame for everything that has gone wrong--and I am sure he doesn't--but he does have a very profound responsibility now that only Presidents of the United States have.

When Governors from across the country raised the supply shortages with him last week, he told them to ``get it yourself.'' He told them that the Federal Government is not ``a shipping clerk.''

He said:

The governors, locally, are going to be in command. We will be following them, and we hope they can do the job. . . . We are there to back you up should you fail.

We are failing, Mr. President. We are failing to address the seriousness of the public health crisis this country is facing. And we are going to rue the day that we said it was the hospitals' problem to solve, that it was the Governors' problem to solve, that it was the States' problem to solve.

I want to say this to the American people tonight because it is really important that you know what the facts are. It is important for you to know that we don't need tens of thousands of masks or millions of masks. We need billions of masks and all the other equipment that I talked about earlier--gowns, shields, swabs, the elements of tests, the reagents that are necessary to take those tests. When I say ``we,'' I am talking about the healthcare professionals we are relying on to be the frontline in this effort.

What is the President's response to this? He has touted about the shipments coming out of our national stockpile. I am coming to think this national stockpile must be more like a really small national warehouse.

Colorado received that shipment yesterday. We are grateful for it. We are grateful for the shipment we got from the national stockpile. I want my colleagues to hear me. The Department of Public Health in Colorado estimates that those supplies will last for a single day of statewide operation--1 day.

Then the President comes out and talks about the tens of thousands of masks that are going to New York or California, as if that can make the difference. It won't make a difference when you need millions of masks.

Then, at the press conference yesterday, he suggested that the new commitments by private businesses will somehow be enough. He said: The numbers are quite large, and we have tremendous numbers of companies making equipment. We have respirators. We have ventilators. We have a lot of things happening right now. We have millions of masks that are coming.

Millions of masks, not billions.

They will be here soon, he said. They will be shipped directly to the States.

He failed to mention that soon actually means 18 months from now. That is not going to help us. We don't have 18 months. It is literally life and death.

It is for all of these reasons that we ask the President to invoke his authorities under the Defense Production Act, which gives him and him alone the ability to mobilize private industry so we can ramp up production in a coordinated and coherent way, so we can have a national approach to fixing this broken supply chain, to fixing the empty storerooms, and to putting these critical supplies and equipment on the frontline.

I was so pleased that he invoked those authorities 5 days ago, but instead of using them, he has equivocated. He said things like we have the act to use ``just in case we need it. But we have so many things being made. . . .'' He didn't finish the sentence, but he meant this voluntary effort--which I deeply appreciate, by the way. Don't get me wrong. Every single mask and every single gown and every single shield that can be manufactured and every single respirator that can be manufactured and lent to the people on the lines--that is important, but it is not going to solve this crisis. It is not going to keep us in a position where we can actually flatten the curve.

He said yesterday: ``We're a country not based on nationalizing our businesses. Call a person over in Venezuela, ask them how did nationalization for their businesses work out?''

As every Senator here knows, the Defense Production Act doesn't nationalize businesses. It is our tool. It is a mechanism to create a coherent strategy for our public sector and our private sector to produce goods based on an urgent national need. The government pays market value for those goods and has a strategy for how those goods will be distributed around the country as the epidemic moves from place to place.

It is unacceptable that we are in a situation where States are having to bid against each other, where the hospitals in Colorado are having to bid against each other. They said to me tonight: Michael, if you could just get us 5 million masks and send them to Colorado, we can distribute them. But it makes no sense for us to be looking up the yellow pages in China to buy masks.

I said to them: I wish that were enough. I wish that would be enough. But as long as Colorado is going to have to compete with New York, which is going to have to compete with New Jersey or compete with Florida or compete with Texas, it won't work.

It is not just the price, although that is shocking. The fact that there are people gouging at a moment like this is appalling. It is not just the price; it is the availability. The nurses and doctors in Denver, CO, or in any city in this country tonight should not be using one swab for a test. It takes two. They should not be wearing one mask all day long--a mask that is designed to be worn with just one patient.

The President said yesterday that he looked into this as a businessman. He was shocked at all the masks being thrown away. We ought to be able to sterilize the masks.

There are important reasons why we have those rules--to protect our healthcare workers and so we don't spread disease.

By the way, I asked: Does it solve your problem that the President has said we can use construction masks now in our healthcare facilities?

They said: We are grateful for the additional masks that we are getting, but it is not remotely helping fix the scale of the problem, and a lot of these masks actually aren't appropriate in a healthcare setting.

They will do anything. They are not looking down their noses at it. I had somebody say to me today--one of the people on the call said that they had gotten masks from a finger nail salon and that they had no idea what quality the masks were. There was Asian writing on the outside of the package. They don't know what it is, but those masks will be there when they run out of all the other masks. That is what they are going to use. That is what we are using in the United States of America tonight? That is what we are telling the people we are asking to save our lives, to save our parents' lives? That is what we are saying?

I am sure the other Senators have had the same experience that I have had, which is I have been in touch with companies all over my State that stand ready to help produce supplies and equipment.

The President said yesterday that one of the problems he had or one of the challenges he had was, you wouldn't have any idea where to begin. I don't know who makes ventilators. Maybe they made them a long time ago and they have forgotten how to do it. Surely he doesn't believe that we couldn't figure that out in a split second, where the manufacturing capacity is in this country to do what needs to be done. Yet these companies have said to me that nobody in the administration has been in touch to tell them what to make, how much to make, or where it should go.

I say thank you to my colleagues for their indulgence, but the truth is--and the truth needs to be understood--that I think this is a moment in time when we have to get this done, but we are getting it so wrong. The truth is, as much as we welcome all of the citizens and businesses that are stepping up on their own, it will not be enough.

Hanes can't produce 3.5 billion masks. It is a great company. As the President said yesterday, it is involved in cotton products, but it can't make 3.5 billion masks, and it can't do it in the time we need it done. GM and Tesla can't manufacture 40,000 ventilators. As for the 2 million masks the Vice President trumpeted yesterday from Apple, we appreciate it, but it is an infinitesimal amount. It sounds like a big number. That is why the President actually said yesterday that the reason he came out and read those big numbers was so that you would know they were sending out lots of stuff. He said that, and I think that gives a complete misimpression that, somehow, this is being handled or that we have it together.

We are one nation under God for a reason, and that is to respond to a challenge just like this one. It cannot be one hospital at a time, one State at a time, or one business at a time. That will not work. It is not a strategy. In fact, it is making matters worse because not only are we not fixing the supply chain, but the pricing is getting completely distorted, and people are competing with an incredibly scarce number of goods.

This is not a substitute for a coherent national strategy to figure out how we are going to meet these critical supply and equipment shortages across the country, and every single day, it gets worse. You can hear the panic in the Governors and in the people who are working in our hospitals and in the people who are working with people who are having to go into unsafe conditions, who are willing to do it. They are on the frontline of this war with no ammunition.

As much as the President may not want to make these hard decisions, for whatever reason--because he hopes for the best; because maybe the medical thing will work itself out; because maybe, instead of 18 months, it will be shorter for a vaccine; because maybe the hot weather will make things better--he is literally the only one with the authority to call America to this challenge. The President is portraying himself as a wartime President, but he is leaving it up to Hanes to plan D-day. It will not work. He needs to give the frontline of this war the ammunition it needs, and he is the only one who can do it. No one else can do it. This Senate can't do it.

There has been a lot of back-and-forth today about a brief delay in passing this economic package. As I said, I hope very much it will pass. I hope very much we will have a deal soon. I hope very much it will be bipartisan. We should do our work, and we should get that done. Yet I beg of you--I beg of you, my colleagues in the U.S. Senate--for every Member of this body to call on the White House and ask why, after weeks, there is still no plan to make sure our doctors and nurses have the gear to protect themselves; why our hospitals still don't have the ventilators they need to treat people; why it is not obvious where those ventilators are going to come from; and why we still don't have a clear strategy from this administration to arm the frontline that is waging this war while we are here tonight.

This is, perhaps, the greatest challenge our country has faced since the Second World War. It probably is, and it is scary. We have risen to challenges before, and I think we can rise to this one. I may not have voted for the President, and I may not agree with much of what he does, but I urge him to act. I urge him to use the authority that is granted to him uniquely in America. Out of 330 million Americans, only the President of the United States has that authority. He won that election. He has that authority. We can't do it without him. Lives are literally at stake in Colorado and across the country.

We need him to lead, and I beg of all the Members of this Chamber to do whatever they can, if they have influence on him, to get him to understand the gravity of the situation we are facing, the scale of the situation we are facing--the scope that we are facing--and the lack of preparedness that needs to be addressed by his invoking his authority under that statute.

I thank my colleagues for their patience and their indulgence.

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