Coronavirus

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I just heard the Republican leader speak out on the floor. Leader McConnell is busy giving partisan speeches while for the last 2\1/2\ hours Speaker Pelosi, myself, Secretary of Treasury Mnuchin, and Chief of Staff Meadows were sitting in a room working hard, trying to narrow our differences and come to an agreement. We all want to come to an agreement. We know the gravity of the situation demands it. We will continue to work and work at it.

We had a productive meeting. We narrowed some differences. Frankly, there are many that remain, but we must not give up. We must not resort to stark partisanship. We must come together and find a solution.

If I had to characterize the major difference between our side and the Republican side, we believe the gravity of the situation--the economic problems, the health problems--demands a bold, strong, vigorous solution by the Federal Government. We believe we must meet those needs. And it will cost money, but mark my words--if we spend less money now, it will cost us more money later.

We hear from our schools. They very much want to reopen. We hear from the parents of children. They very much want their kids to go back to school, but they want to do it safely. It costs a lot of dollars to make a school safe in this COVID crisis--not only the money for masks and PPE, but you can't sit two kids next to each other on a bus, so there have to be many more bus routes. Because some of the learning will be distant, you need hotspots, and a lot of the kids don't have them in their homes. You may need new ventilating systems because COVID demands it for a healthy classroom. You may need to convert gymnasiums and cafeterias into new classrooms. Teachers may have to teach longer, and we may even need more teachers. These are very important things we need to do to open schools safely, but they demand more dollars. As we sat in a room today, we discussed our views as to how many dollars are needed.

The same thing with food safety--we Democrats believe that during this crisis, children and adults should not go hungry, and we proposed money to ensure that there are SNAP benefit increases to help people to feed themselves, that there is enough money to feed the kids who used to get school breakfasts and lunches, and that there is enough money at food banks and other places so they can feed their families. That costs money. The Senate Republican proposal here proposed a tax break for a three-martini lunch and a $20 billion slush fund for big agribusiness but no money for these kids who need to be fed. That is a significant difference. There are many. There are many.

We Democrats believe strongly that we have to have free and fair elections and that the mail must be delivered in a timely way because so many more people are going to vote by mail. So many polling places need to be set up because, with COVID, you can't be close together.

There is a long list of things that are needed. The good news is, our Republican colleagues agree with a few of them, but some they don't agree with, and we are discussing why we think they need them, and they will counter with us in the room--Mnuchin and Meadows. But the discussion is necessary, the discussion is productive, and we will continue it.

Again, the anomaly of the Republican leader making a partisan speech on the floor while we--Speaker Pelosi, myself, Mnuchin, and Meadows-- are trying to negotiate and move forward is really a contrast that I think most people see.

So let's keep moving forward. There is a real crisis here. There are people who are unemployed, and they don't deserve a pay cut as they go forward. There are small businesses that need help desperately. There are schools that have to open. There are State and local governments that must have funding. This is not an abstract concept; these are firefighters, our teachers, our healthcare workers, our busdrivers and sanitation men and women. If the State and local governments don't get money, they are going to be laid off, and services will be much worse.

Again, we have a wide disparity on what kind of dollars and how to deal with treatment. It is our belief that this administration's program on treatment has been a failure, that we don't have enough treatment, and that we have to redouble our efforts to put more money into treatment.

These discussions are continuing because we hope we can reach an agreement. We will keep at it and at it and at it because the Nation demands a solution--a bold, comprehensive solution that will slay this awful virus and its consequences once and for all.

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