Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, the Senate is here, open for business. The janitors and food service workers, police officers, and all the staff who operate the floor are here. They are all here. Capitol Police are doing their usual excellent job.

The Republican leader called us back despite the obvious health risks, but we are ready to do the business our country demands. So there is a question that looms: Why isn't the Senate focused on responding to the COVID-19 pandemic? There hasn't been a single vote here on the Senate floor related to coronavirus--not even a nominee related to coronavirus.

Rather than focusing on COVID-19 with laser-like intensity, the Senate Judiciary Committee today will waste precious time on the nomination of Leader McConnell's protegee, Justin Walker, to serve on the DC Court of Appeals, the second most powerful court in the country.

Mr. Walker is a 37-year-old Federalist Society disciple who has more experience as a cable news commentator than he does trying cases in court. Mr. Walker's qualifications pale in comparison to those of previous nominees to the DC Circuit--Democrat and Republican. Nominees by Democratic Presidents and Republican Presidents all were deeply steeped in the law--just about every one--and here we have this?

What Leader McConnell is doing to the courts is nothing short of disgraceful. The judges currently sitting on the second highest court in the land had decades of experience in Supreme Court advocacy, appellate work, criminal law, private practice, academia, and so on, prior to their nominations. Mr. Walker has been a district court judge for less than a year--less than a year. He had no trial experience prior to that.

Inexperience aside, bad enough as that is, Walker's views are way out of the mainstream. In 2018, he described Chief Justice Roberts' opinion upholding our healthcare law as ``indefensible'' and ``catastrophic.'' Meanwhile, he praised a dissenting opinion by then-Judge Kavanaugh as a ``roadmap for the Supreme Court'' to invalidate it.

Every Republican who votes for this nominee, Mr. Walker, will be voting to dismantle the ACA and take millions of people's healthcare away from them if his statements prove to be how he judges things, which seems very likely given previous experience of other nominees like this.

This week, legal briefs are due in the Supreme Court case that will determine the future of our healthcare law. In the midst of a global pandemic, at a time when our healthcare system has never been more important, Senate Republicans are preparing to jam through a judge who believes it should all be crashing down. Tens of millions of people would lose their health insurance, and protections for Americans with preexisting conditions would be eliminated.

Mr. Walker's nomination would be controversial in normal times, to say the least--less experience in the court than on TV. During this public health crisis, his nomination is nothing short of a disgrace. The Senate should be focused on helping the country--hospitals and doctors, nurses and healthcare workers, essential employees and small businesses and families suffering from huge financial hardship.

There are millions of newly unemployed Americans, but the only jobs issue the Republican majority seems to be focused on this week is the jobs of rightwing judges who wish to dismantle healthcare at a time when healthcare is needed more than ever. Let me say that again. There are millions of newly unemployed Americans, but in the Senate, the Republican majority is spending time giving jobs to rightwing judges.

Now, let's get back to what matters. Democrats are focused on helping workers, small businesses, and American families. In times of crisis and economic hardship, these average Americans, working people--they take it on the chin. That is where our focus needs to be--not on legal immunity for big corporations, not on big oil or gas companies, not on juicing the markets. The focus should be on average folks. That is who all of us in Congress should be focused on helping right now Trump Administration

Now, on the administration, Congress can only do so much. I have actually been very proud of how both parties have come together over the past few months to pass historic legislation 96 to nothing--96 to nothing--with a great deal of input and improvement by the Democratic minority. But to make this legislation work, we need a competent, steady, focused administration to not only implement our laws but coordinate our national response.

It is no secret that the Trump administration has been anything but focused, anything but steady, anything but competent. President Trump seems to spend more time deflecting blame, attacking others, pushing quack medicines, and hiding from the truth than he does actually leading our Nation's response to this crisis.

Last night, in an interview on ABC News, the President said that his failure to prepare our national stockpiles with medical equipment was because ``he had a lot of other things going on.'' The national stockpile for the vital PPE that our frontline workers need and other materials--the President failed to prepare our stockpiles with this equipment because he had a lot of other things going on? That is a President?

Vice President Pence yesterday confirmed that the White House was winding down its Coronavirus Task Force long before the disease has been contained, waving the white flag of surrender to COVID-19 long before the battle is over.

A report in today's New York Times details the failures of the administration and Mr. Kushner in particular to procure critical supplies at a time when we lack masks, gloves, and other protective equipment. Instead of appointing a military person with experience in command and control, as I suggested, Mr. Kushner recruited a team of consultants who had ``little to no experience with government procurement procedures or medical equipment.''

Now we are reading reports of a whistleblower from the Department of Health and Human Services who reports that there was ``pressure from HHS leadership to ignore scientific merit and expert recommendations and instead to award lucrative contracts based on political connections and cronyism.'' This whistleblower is scheduled to appear before a House committee next week. This whistleblower should come before the Senate as well. Senators have many questions to ask him. I believe Senators on both sides of the aisle would have those questions.

So this was and is a time when the American people need the executive branch to lead a coordinated response to this evil virus, to listen to medical experts, to heed their advice, to respect and listen to science, but President Trump seems unwilling and unable to handle the truth, and it is hurting our country each and every day.

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