Usa Freedom Reauthorization Act of 2020
Floor Speech
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Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I am honored to follow my friend, the senior Senator from Illinois. I enjoyed his comments very much.
As the Presiding Officer knows, this Congress has passed, I think, four bills to provide money to the American people, to the American healthcare delivery system, and to businesswomen and businessmen throughout our country to fight the coronavirus and the damage it has done to our public health and also to our economy.
We have spent and will spend--because all of the money is not yet spent--about $3 trillion. That is $3,000,000,000,000. That is $3,000 billion. We don't even take in that much money in a year. We take in, in revenue, about 90 percent of that. So we borrow the money.
I voted for the bills. We had to do it. The Federal Reserve, through its lending facilities, including but not limited to its 13(3) lending facilities, will probably spend at least another $3 trillion.
I asked one of the senior officials at the Federal Reserve yesterday, and he told me that in the past 2 months the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve has doubled.
Now, many of the transactions conducted by the Federal Reserve, of course, are loans, but we know that all of the loans aren't going to be paid back. And since the Federal Reserve can't lose money, we are going to have to appropriate probably even more money than we appropriated in the CARES Act to backstop those losses.
So we are up to $6 trillion, let's say. Speaker Pelosi, as the Presiding Officer knows, has introduced a new bill that would spend another $3 trillion that, of course, we will have to borrow. Some Americans think we just print the money. We don't. We issue Treasury securities, which is just basically a bond. We borrow the money from people--from many Americans, many foreigners, including but not limited to China, and we have to pay that money back.
So now we are up to $9 trillion--that is 9,000,000,000,000--and our total debt is--that is going to put us at about $28 trillion. I am not going to repeat the zeroes again. I think I have made my point.
Now, Speaker Pelosi's bill is not going to pass the U.S. Senate in its present form. You don't have to be a senior at the University of Georgia to know that. It has provisions in it--for one thing, it costs $3 trillion, as I just pointed out. For another thing, it will expand the Affordable Care Act, which, of course, is controversial in the Senate.
It will change our election laws dramatically. Some have suggested that Speaker Pelosi's bill will basically federalize elections, take them away from our States, which is certainly not contemplated and I think is forbidden by the U.S. Constitution.
Speaker Pelosi's bill will dramatically change our immigration laws. It will provide amnesty for people who are in our country illegally during the coronavirus pandemic. It will provide a lot of money-- hundreds of millions of dollars--to people who are in our country illegally. Some will like that. Some will not like that. But the point I am trying to make is it will be controversial.
Speaker Pelosi's bill will release many of our Federal prisoners during the coronavirus unless the Bureau of Prisons can affirmatively show that those prisoners are not going to go out and commit a violent crime. In other words, the Bureau of Prisons has to prove that John Doe, the prisoner who is being released, is not going to go out and commit a violent crime. That is an impossible standard, of course, to meet.
Speaker Pelosi's bill is very pro-cannabis. I don't know how the Presiding Officer feels about cannabis--that is your business--but it is controversial in the U.S. Senate. I think it mentions cannabis something like 28 times.
Finally, Speaker Pelosi's bill addresses, in many respects, the subject of race. For example, it directs every Federal agency to keep deposits in minority-owned banks. I am not suggesting that that is good or bad. I am just suggesting to you it will be very controversial. And, for that reason, the bill is not going to pass this body in its present form.
Now, that sets up three scenarios. One scenario is that Speaker Pelosi, of course, she knows her bill isn't going to pass, and she doesn't intend for it to pass. It is what we call a messaging bill: She is sending a message on behalf of her party with an eye toward the November elections. It is done around here all the time. So one scenario is it is just a messaging bill, and it is political pageantry.
There is a second possibility; that this is her opening bid and that the leadership in the Senate on the Democratic side and the leadership in the Senate on the Republican side and the Republican leadership in the House and Speaker Pelosi and probably Treasury Secretary Mnuchin will then sit down and negotiate, without much input, quite frankly, from Members of the Senate. I don't know how it works in the House.
They will sit down and come up with something, and then they will come back to us. I am in labor, not management. They will come back to us and say: Here it is; take it or leave it--without much input from us individually. That has happened before. It has happened a lot before.
Then we have a choice. We can either say, geez, you know, we weren't a part of this process, or we can moan and groan and grumble and then just follow our leaders into the chute. We can moo and follow our leaders into the chute like cattle and vote for it.
The third scenario, with respect to the Speaker's bill, would be that the second scenario happens but the Members of the Senate and the Members of the House bow up and say: Uh-uh. Not this time. We are not going to moo and follow our leadership into the chute like cattle. We don't agree with what they did.
That is a particular danger in the House because, again, you don't have to be in Mensa to understand that Speaker Pelosi has drafted a bill to address the interests and concerns of the leftwing of her party in the House.
So I can see a third scenario, where the powers that be negotiate what they see as a compromise and that compromise is taken back to the House and the liberal Members of the House--I don't use ``liberal'' and ``conservative'' in a pejorative sense--the liberal Members of the House say: The short answer is no. The long answer is hell no; we are not going to vote for that.
That could also happen in the Senate on my side of the aisle. Our leaders could negotiate a package and come back and say: OK. Here is the deal. The liability provision is going to cost you $1 trillion in extra spending.
I can see some Republicans--one of them is standing right over here. I don't speak for him, but he is my good friend from Florida who is going to have some heartburn if that happens.
And then nothing happens. We have appropriated, as I mentioned--I don't want to belabor the point--$3 trillion, another $3 trillion if you add the Federal Reserve. Some of that money went to States and local governments--$150 billion. My State got about $3 billion.
Many of the States need that money. I am not saying that we aren't going to have to share, sacrifice here. I am not saying that we shouldn't ask our State and local governments to submit to us revenue estimates. I am not saying that we shouldn't ask them to pare down their budgets. We ought to pare down ours as well.
But, to me, it is undeniable that States and local governments have sustained damage from the coronavirus. For God's sake, their economy has been shut down. If you are a State that relies on sales tax, nobody has been buying anything--or at least not like they did before. If you are a State that relies on income tax, income tax hasn't been coming in because nobody has been open.
Now, some of my colleagues believe that we should not give the States any latitude to use any of that $150 billion to address revenue shortfalls. And I understand that point of view. I do.
You take Florida, for example. In a few moments, Senator Scott is going to speak. He was Governor of Florida for 8 years, did an incredible job, balanced their budget, grew employment dramatically. And I can understand--I am not speaking for my good friend, the Senator, but I can understand how someone in the Senate would say: Well, no. Every Governor needs to go reform his entire State government.
But that is not going to happen--at least not within the next year. In the meantime, I believe that State and local governments have sustained damage, and I think that is just a natural fact. They have.
I have a bill, S. 3608. It is called the Coronavirus Relief Fund Flexibility for State and Local Government Act. Senator Sullivan has another bill that does somewhat the same thing as mine. I think Senator Rounds has a bill.
All my bill would do is this. That $150 billion we have already spent, which now has been given to the States and local governments, says it can only be used for coronavirus expenses.
My bill will change that. My bill would not spend a single, solitary new dollar.
Let me say that again. My bill will not add to our spending. It just says that the Governors have additional flexibility to spend the $150 billion that we have already given them. They can't spend it to bail out their pension systems. My bill prohibits that. They can spend it to address a revenue shortfall, which many of them have.
We will never agree in this body about which State is well-managed and which State is not well-managed. One person's trash is another person's treasure. I have personal feelings. Senator Scott does. I see my good friend Senator Warner is here. He was a very distinguished Governor of Virginia. He will probably have a different point of view.
There is one thing we can agree on. There is real danger that Speaker Pelosi's bill is not going to pass. It is not going to pass today, and it may not pass tomorrow, and it may not pass in June.
The second thing we can agree on is that our States and our cities have sustained debt, and we can take off the handcuffs and allow the money we have already given them to try to help them repair that damage as we recover from this horrible pandemic.
For that reason, I am going to ask for unanimous consent not that we pass the bill. I am going to ask in a second for unanimous consent that we just vote on my bill. We don't vote enough around here. I came up here to deliberate and decide. I didn't come up here to issue press releases and participate in delay and stultification. I want to do an honest day's work for an honest day's pay. Instead, we want an honest week's pay for an honest day's work.
All I want to do is have a vote on my bill. If you don't like it, you can chew it up, spit it out, step on it, and vote no in front of God and country. But if you like it, you can vote for it, and let's be Senators again.
3608--that is my bill--and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration. I further ask that there be 2 hours of debate--see, we will have plenty of debate--equally divided between the proponents and the opponents of the bill; and that upon the use or yielding back of that time, the Kennedy substitute amendment No. 1581 be considered and agreed to, the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time, and the Senate vote on passage of the bill, as amended, with a 60-affirmative-vote threshold for passage with no intervening action or debate; finally, if passed, that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
Let my people vote.
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