Coronavirus

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, the CARES Act passed the Senate on March 27, 2020. It was a rare moment in bipartisanship--a legislative triumph that saved our country from disaster in the very early days of the pandemic. As you know, I sat and negotiated a great deal of that with Secretary of State Mnuchin. And we all agreed it did a lot of good--a lot of good. But, unfortunately, for the past 259 days, as the virus continued to spread--when we did the CARES Act, we thought, well, maybe COVID will be over by the summer. Everyone thought that, but obviously it wasn't. And so the virus has continued to spread. Thousands of small businesses have closed their doors for good. Tens of millions of Americans lost their jobs and livelihoods. As American families waited in 21st century bread lines, cars snaking for miles down American highways; as tens of millions of Americans fell behind on the rent and the mortgage and face eviction; as 15 million Americans got sick; and as 292,001 Americans died, the Senate Republican majority, led by the majority leader, made sure the Senate could not do anything of significance to help the American people.

May, June, July, August--pause; we don't need to do anything, said the leader. Let's wait and see what happens. Democrats didn't say that. The leader did. Waited and waited and waited. Now it is December, and we still, because of the leader's intransigence, have nothing of significance to help the American people during the worst economic crisis in 75 years and the greatest public health crisis in a century.

Why? Why can't we get together? Why can't there be the bipartisanship that Americans search for and yearn for? At a time of such great crisis, there is one reason why America's two major parties have not gotten together during the time of acute national emergency, and that is because the Republican leader has demanded a partisan poison pill--a sweeping corporate liability shield--be included in any legislation. Otherwise, he won't let it pass.

It sounds like an exaggeration, but that is what the leader has said. ``We're not negotiating over liability protection,'' the leader said, on July 28.

I'll be responsible for putting the final agreement on the floor. And as I said, it will have liability protection in it. We're not negotiating with the Democrats over that.

That is the fact. That is the history. There is not equality here.

Finally, yesterday, as the bipartisan group of Senators and House Members were closing in on a final agreement, what happened? Yesterday, the Republican leader's team told the other congressional leaders that the bipartisan group would be unable to satisfy Senate Republicans. Why? Because it might not grant the exact sweeping liability protections for corporations that Leader McConnell has demanded. It is an unconscionable position. No relief for the American people unless corporations receive blanket immunity from lawsuits.

That particular poison pill that has foiled bipartisan agreement for more than 8 months is the nub of the problem. If we could just get past that, if the Republican leader would only back off maximalist demands on corporate immunity, we could get something done. I mean it. We could actually get something done.

Now, I know the Republican leader will say: Wait a minute, Democrats have partisan demands of their own, like providing assistance to save State and local services. But to equate State and local aid--money for policemen and firefighters, busdrivers, sanitation workers--to complete corporate immunity is a false equivalence. We know the two policies are not equivalent.

First of all, there is broad bipartisan support for State and local aid. It is not a Democratic demand. Many Republicans support it too. There are bipartisan bills on the floor of the Senate demanding $500 billion in aid for the States. There are Governors--Democrats and Republicans--sending letters to all of us saying we need money; we need help. But the leader's corporate immunity provision doesn't have the support of a Democrat. Not a single person voted for it. It is expressly partisan. There is not equivalence.

I know the media likes to say, on the one hand, on the other. There is not equivalence here. One is helping people who desperately need help. The other is a partisan demand that has been around for a long time that simply does not get bipartisan support.

State and local aid is a solution to a real and urgent problem. Corporate immunity from lawsuits is not. They are not equivalent. State and local budgets are deeply in the red. Since the beginning of the pandemic, State and municipalities have laid off 1.3 million public employees--firefighters, police, first responders, teachers. We are talking about jobs--jobs--in red States as well as blue States.

The leader likes to cite one statistic about tax revenue in one blue State to argue that no State--no State deserves Federal aid, not Wyoming or Alaska, North Dakota, that have each seen sharp declines in tax revenue; not Florida or Nevada or Louisiana, that depend on tourism and face revenue declines of 10 percent or more.

State and local aid is a real and urgent problem. It is not abstract. It is people, and it is workers. PPP that helps small businesses--one of its main rationales, an important one, something I agree with-- prevents workers who work for small businesses from being laid off. What is the difference between a worker being laid off by a small business because they don't have funding or a worker being laid off from a State and local government because they don't have funding? There is no difference. There is no difference.

The leader's corporate immunity provision, on the other hand, is a solution, ideological, in search of a problem. Almost a year into this pandemic--15 million Americans infected, 290,000 lives lost to COVID- 19--there have been only 23 personal injury suits from exposure to the coronavirus--23 in the entire country, over the entire year. And that is why Senate Republicans can't reach a bipartisan agreement to help the unemployed, feed the hungry, fund a vaccine, or support our schools?

Corporations that want protection from a few dozen lawsuits is equivalent to millions of workers from State and local governments being laid off? Give me a break. Again, there are a few States that don't need the help, but many more States do--many more.

This is mind-boggling. The Republican leadership is blocking a solution for the entire country until they get a favor for corporations who don't even need it. The American people, all of us, are sick of this ridiculous gamesmanship by the majority leader.

We need to come together. We need to get something done. The American people deserve an outcome.

I, once again, thank the Senator from Oklahoma for his courtesy.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source