MIDDLE CLASS HEALTH BENEFITS TAX REPEAL ACT OF 2019--Motion to Proceed
Floor Speech
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Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, we have heard a lot of passion here on the Senate floor this afternoon, a lot of anger, a lot of frustration. It stems from the anxiety, the anger, and the frustration that are being felt across the country right now as Americans from Alaska to Arkansas are faced with the reality of this new day--a Monday that they thought they could just never imagine. Last week, they had a healthy business and going concern, and now that business has been ordered shut down. It is a Monday where we thought the kids were going back to school after spring break, and now it has been announced that not only are they not going back after a longer spring break, but right now in my State, it has been extended until May 1, the kids go back to school. I understand today from my assistant that in Virginia, schools are not going to be going back in. They will not go back in before the end of this school year. That is pretty shocking. Here we are on a Monday that nobody could have imagined.
About 4 hours ago, we were here on this floor to conduct a vote on a motion to proceed to cloture--a motion to get on to a bill that had been worked through by good men and women on both sides for days now. It hit bumps. We do that around here. That is the nature of legislating. But this is not a time for the bumps to derail us. This is not time that we have that is unlimited to extend debate, to extend a process when we have folks back home whom we answer to who are angry, frustrated, and anxious. At the end of that vote, you heard anger from colleagues saying this was a type of political gamesmanship, brinksmanship--call it whatever you will. This is not what the American people deserve, and this is not what we should be doing as a Senate.
Our leader asked us: So where are we? Where are we right now? I think he was speaking more of where are we in the process. We can ask that question in this body and say: Are we mere hours away from being able to reach agreement here? Where we are in the views of so many who are watching this right now, where the Republicans are saying ``We must move on this now. We don't have time to wait. Daylight is a-wasting'' to a response that ``We are still working. We are still working. We are going to try to get this done''--no, we can't just try to get this done.
I was asked about what I thought about the failure to come together on a vote last evening, and I said failure is not an option. Plain and simple, failure is not an option. So we are continuing to work, but as we work, let's think about where the people we work for are right now.
We may say that we are stuck on some matters. We have people who are stuck in places that they never could have imagined on this Monday. We have about 19 Alaskans who are stuck in Peru, trying to get out of a country that has literally gone on lockdown. We were in a long conversation yesterday with the folks at the State Department, trying to figure out how to help them and how to help their families who are back home in Alaska, who are calling my office every day--sometimes multiple times a day--saying: What are you doing to help? What are you doing to help not only those 19 Alaskans get out of a place like Peru but the pregnant woman with several children, the minor exchange student, and the families who are over there.
Many of my colleagues were part of that call who were not only interested in those who were stuck in Peru but those who were in Guatemala and Honduras and El Salvador and other parts. We got a good group out of Morocco. We are getting calls from Alaskans who were seeking to leave the State for other services. They get on the Alcan Highway, and they are dealing with the reality of a Canadian border closure to all nonessential traffic. So we get the calls: What happens if we are going down to Seattle for medical? Is the veteran who is in the car, who is going down for medical purposes--is this an essential trip for him? They are saying: What about the spouse in the car? Maybe. We don't know. The uncertainty then comes to those individuals about being stuck.
We are not stuck here. Those are the people you think about. What are we doing to help them? This talk doesn't help them. It is not giving them any degree of certainty or any degree of relief or any belief that we can get anything done. They are looking to us to help them.
Right now, my hometown, Anchorage, is under a hunker-down order. Our mayor decided he didn't want to call it a stay-at-home order or just a stand-down order. It is a hunker-down order, and that hunker-down order went in place last night. It will go through the end of the month here.
Last week--last Monday--I got a call from the mayor, who said: I am going to be closing down all the bars, all the restaurants, and the entertainment facilities. We have to work on containment because, here in Alaska, we are kind of at the end of the supply chain, and it is a pretty scary place to be right now. So what defense do we have? We are going to be really aggressive on this shelter in place.
My son is a small businessman who provides to the restaurants in town, so when the order comes out that the restaurants are shut down, what does a small businessman, like my 26-year-old son--where does he go? How does he move forward from that Monday to this Monday? It is pretty scary.
We went from a situation on Monday of last week, when it was just one municipality that ordered the closure of restaurants and bars, to the following day--the entire State has a full-on closure. We are a State that is isolated from everybody else in the continental United States. We fly to get home. It is a fact of our lives.
We had a letter signed by multiple emergency room doctors just last week, urging the Governor to ban nonessential air travel. Think about what that means. It is pretty debilitating for a State like mine. You might say: Well, that is not going to happen.
Well, let me tell you what is happening. Right now, nonessential travel is--there is a strict advisory against nonessential travel to the State and within the State. We have villages in the interior part of the State, predominantly, that are banning outsiders from coming into the village by airplane. So that might mean visitors coming in; this time of year, it is pretty tough to have a big tourism industry in the interior part of the Alaska, but the reality is, that also means those planes that would be bringing your supplies--now, if there is a medical emergency, they would ask for relief.
This is how extreme the actions are because, in Alaska, we fully felt the impact of the Spanish influenza that took out whole villages a century ago. Our Native communities, as remote and isolated as they are, are absolutely fearful that we will see a repeat of that Spanish influenza. So if we have to shut off all economic activity, we are doing that.
This weekend, a huge effort was made to move our homeless populations out of the crowded shelters into the shut-down sports arena and hockey arena so that we can put them in an area and a place where there is, hopefully, sufficient 6-foot distancing.
The hotels around the State--I have listened to our colleagues. We are all in the same situation with the impact that is happening to our businesses as we are shutting down, and these business owners are making the difficult decisions that they are.
This morning, the faxes that I got--the Quality Inn in Kodiak, AK, is laying off 13 jobs. This is from the Baranof hotel in Juneau--most of us who have ever spent any time talking to our legislators know this is our most significant hotel in our capital city--laying off 45 hotel positions.
This is a reality that for them, as they are watching what is happening here in the Senate--or perhaps the inaction that is happening here before the cameras--they are saying: Do I have alternatives to these layoffs? Will there be the level of support for me to keep my employees retained and to keep our community moving forward?
I received a text from a friend who owns Chena Hot Springs Resort. He has owned that resort now for 22 years. It has never closed since he has had it in operation, but he is in a position now where he has told all 90 of his employees: You can stay here; we are not open; we will feed you.
My hope is that Bernie is going to be able to keep those 90 employees and that he is going to be able to pay them through the proposal that we have built into this legislation that we have an opportunity to move, if we can only do so.
His ask to me in that text was not ``Make sure that it is a $150 billion'' or ``It has to be at $1.5 trillion.'' Do you know what he ended his text to me with? He said: We need to make America kind again. He wants to take care of his family, his work family, and he wants to know we are going to be responsive to that and that we will show that kindness that we would all hope would come.
I am so discouraged as I listen to the nature of the partisan words that are on this floor today because that is the last thing this body needs. That is the last thing this country needs. They need assurance from us. They need to have confidence that we get the urgency, that we hear their cries, and that we are not just sitting back here bickering because I haven't got my No. 1 project or if we are going to make this even-steven--if there needs to be one Republican priority, then there needs to be another Democratic priority over there.
Do you know what? We all represent people of different political persuasions. My job as a Senator from the State of Alaska is to represent all those Alaskans, and I would like to think that all Alaskans think protective equipment for our medical providers is a priority for all of us. I would like to think that it is a priority for all of us, for all Alaskans, that we say it is best to keep those employees as part of your business, to keep that held in place until we can get on the other side of the immediacy of the health crisis so that we can work together to avoid a further economic crisis.
But, instead, this Monday, the American public and Alaskans who are counting on me back home--instead of being able to see this hope from their elected leaders that we have it and that we understand the urgency, what they see are the partisan words. What they see is an empty Chamber. What they hear is as much a measure of dysfunction as everything they see in their world around them right now.
One of the things our Governor has done--and, man, he has made some hard choices in the past week to 10 days. He has made some decisions that will have significant and serious economic impact on a State that is already on its knees.
One of the things he did was put together what he is calling the Alaska economic stabilization task force. This conservative Republican Governor has appointed two cochairs. One cochair is a former Republican Governor, Sean Parnell, and the other one is one many of my colleagues here in the Senate know, former Senator Mark Begich.
Politically, you couldn't have two more different guys who are at the head of this task force, but it sent a signal to Alaskans: Look, we are all in this together. There are no Republican solutions; there are no Democrat solutions. They are just solutions, and we better figure them out. The State of Alaska is working really hard to do that.
I was just visiting with some of our Alaska labor leaders, and in addition to the issues we are talking about, they are telling me their members are out making personal protective equipment. They are getting the sewing machines out; they are getting the fabrics at JOANN Fabric, and they are just making things. They are doing what needs to be done.
We are reminded that so much good can come together if we just kind of lay down our partisan arms and say: What do we need to do for this country? What do you want for Arkansas? What do we need for Alaska? What do we need for one another? Right now, we don't need the words that just further separate us as Americans.
I haven't talked about the contents of the bill that we have in front of us because so many before me this afternoon have. I think we all share the desire--I hope we all share the desire to get this done readily and to get it done quickly because right now--right now-- Americans are losing hope.
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