Coronavirus
Floor Speech
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Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I had an opportunity to listen to my friend and colleague from the State of Ohio outline in great detail the efforts that a bipartisan group has been working on for just a month now.
It was just a month ago, I was reminded--November 17, apparently-- that I had an opportunity to invite some colleagues over to my house for dinner and conversation. And while it wasn't pizza, it didn't make any difference what we were eating. It was all about the conversation and what we could do to be responsive to the urgency of the need.
As my friend from Ohio has said, people in Ohio are suffering. People in Alaska are suffering. People around the country are suffering. And they are looking to us for answers and for hope.
I felt on Monday that there was that sense of hope that we could offer. It is not the end-all and be-all in terms of a legislative proposal, but it was a dozen Members, bipartisan--Republicans and Democrats from this body, as well as Republicans and Democrats from the House--coming together over the course of a month, hours on Zoom, digging into the details and the issues in a way that, as someone who has been part of this body now for 18 years, I have not had the opportunity to be as engaged in every level of the debate and aspect as we were in these conversations.
The Senator from Ohio, while he might not have been at that dinner, was with us every step of the way and was truly leading on the negotiations when it came to the liability provisions and the input in so many other areas.
But what we were able to outline, given a framework of how we can be responsive to the pandemic and the economic crisis at hand, focusing on the most vulnerable--those who have lost their jobs, those who have a small business that is open but just barely open because there are no customers or because the limitations on your restaurant are so small you can barely even afford to keep your doors open--to be responsive to those who have lost their jobs, to those who are looking at the first of January and wondering if they are going to be able to stay in their home or in their apartment, to those families who have children at home who haven't been in a classroom since March of this year, for those rural healthcare providers that have been struggling as they have tried to meet the crush of demand and need within their small hospitals.
What we tried to do was build a package that was responsive to the emergency at hand. And as Senator Portman has noted, this was not designed to be a stimulus bill. This is not designed to be the end-all, be-all for how we move forward. It is targeted emergency relief.
What we were able to present on Monday, which I felt was so hopeful, were not only the debate and the contours of the framework but then to actually put that into legislative text--5 or 6 inches of legislative language, a bill--a bill for this body to consider, a path to move us forward at a time when it is so incredibly critical.
Also on Monday, we were met with hope because the vaccine--the long- promised vaccine--has come about in extraordinarily short order, historic efforts by so many to get the development to this point, to get the approval, the safe approval, and now moving forward to distribution.
The headline in our largest newspaper yesterday was ``Morale gets a boost'' as vaccine arrives. And, boy, do we need a morale boost.
This is a dark time in Alaska right now. The sun sets about, I don't know, maybe about 3:45 in the afternoon right now, so it makes for a short day. But we are used to short days because we know that in the darkest times of winter, there is going to come that time when things start to change and the days actually begin to get longer; the sunlight is with us more and more.
And as Alaskans are considering the very deep, deep economic strife that we are in right now, we know that there is light at the end because the vaccine is arriving; that is coming.
But in the meantime, they need to get from here to there. So what we have outlined in this proposal--this bipartisan, bicameral proposal--is just exactly that. It is that lifeline that can get them from December to March, to April, when hope really starts to return.
So I know that there is a great deal that is being considered right now. As I have shared with folks, I say: Well, we were able to advance the ball significantly with this effort that we have made. But when we presented that multihundred-page package to the public, to the administration, to leadership, we basically said: Here is a gift. Take it.
So we have kind of lost ball control, if you will. That is good. That is fine. That is what this process is all about. But I am just urging that we commit with every sense of expediency and urgency to do our business quickly and fairly, with the politics aside, because the last thing that folks back home need, whether it is in Ohio or Alaska, is to know that we might have wrapped up our business here, and we didn't hear them. We didn't respond to their need. We left them hanging. That is not an option for us, and that will not happen.
We are all pledging to make sure that we resolve this before Christmas or we are not going home. But we can do better than that. We don't need to draw this out. We have an opportunity, working together, so I encourage those who are negotiating. We have provided not only a template and a framework, but we have really given you considerable meat in terms of this legislation.
My hope is that we are going to have good news very, very shortly that will allow us to not only address the urgency in response to this COVID pandemic but also be able to resolve our end-of-year appropriations and other matters that we have had working before this body.
But as they say, we are running out of daylight, so let's get moving with it.
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