Coronavirus
Floor Speech
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Mr. MARKEY. Madam President, this is our historic moment. We can see the suffering across our country. We can see how desperate people are. We can see how during this holiday season, the people are looking at the prospect, in the words of Tony Fauci, where the worst may be ahead of us for these families. The worst may yet to have been actually inflicted upon families and our country. Yet the Republicans are refusing to allow for a vote on giving each individual $2,000 in order to make it through the rest of this pandemic.
Senator Sanders today speaks for the millions of Americans who are suffering through a devastating health crisis, an unemployment crisis, an eviction crisis, a hunger crisis, and a crisis of faith--faith that their leaders in this country will stand up and provide for Americans in their hour of need.
Meanwhile, we here in Washington must confront a moral crisis: Why can't we keep working families from starving even as we stand ready to approve a massive defense bill?
That is why I am here with my colleague Bernie Sanders to call for a simple vote to provide $2,000 in direct cash payments to Americans across our country. It is this simple. Just like they did in the House of Representatives, the Senate should have a vote--up or down, yes or no--on providing these increased cash payments to desperate Americans. We can get this done quickly and before the holiday if Leader McConnell will simply agree to do it. They already had this vote in the House, and 44 Republicans voted for it. Give the Republicans in the Senate the same opportunity to vote. We already know that many of them have already said they will vote for the $2,000 if they get a chance to vote. It is this simple.
We can do this because a simple vote will just say that you want to provide a grand total of $2,000 to Americans who need it to pay the rent, to keep the electricity on, to buy diapers, to pay for lifesaving medication--just to survive this devastating pandemic. There are 44 House Republicans who voted for the $2,000 checks. I believe that the Republicans in this Chamber will do so as well, and President Trump has already made it very clear that he will sign the bill. So we can see where the opposition is. It is with the leadership of the Republicans in the U.S. Senate.
People across our country are falling ill and falling behind on their bills, and for the families of the hundreds of thousands who have died from coronavirus, the medical and funeral expenses are compounding their grief. They need money in their pockets.
In Massachusetts, this past Sunday, we hit 100 deaths in a single day--the highest death toll our State has seen in a 24-hour period since the very beginning of this pandemic. In the week before Christmas, 21,000 new people in our State applied for unemployment benefits just as Donald Trump let these protections lapse before millions of Americans lost their benefits, and that is a tragedy.
A $2,000 check is the most direct and effective mechanism for delivering economic relief right now to those who are barely holding on throughout this crisis, particularly low-income Americans, immigrant communities, and our gig and service workers--our essential workers. They need help. They have been helping our families, and we need to help their families. Right now, these checks would help 158 million people across our country pay for housing, put food on the table, and make sure that grandma and grandpa have their diabetes or heart medication.
That is why Senator Sanders, Senator Kamala Harris, and I introduced legislation to provide every person in our country, regardless of immigration status, with $2,000 monthly recurring payments in order to help weather this storm. We knew then, 7 months ago, that a single $1,200 relief check was not going to be enough to help families get by, and the $600 payment in the latest coronavirus package is a crumb to the working people who have faced economic hardship through no fault of their own. It won't even cover a month of rent, let alone heating bills, food bills, Wi-Fi bills for students who are learning from home, and all of the other expenses that are piling up for these families.
Now, some of my Republican colleagues have said that providing $2,000 would be too expensive. Well, here are some other costs they seem to have forgotten. If our proposal to increase stimulus checks to $2,000 is soaring, the overall cost of the stimulus bill would go from $900 billion to $1.36 trillion. Yes, that is a $464 billion increase over what we were currently projecting for this bill, but it is only a fraction of the $740 billion Defense bill that this Chamber stands ready to approve again this week.
I hate to say this, but my Republican colleagues seem to be more interested in funding defense than in funding the defenseless, and that is what this debate is all about. What do we do to help these defenseless families? In this moment of national crisis, we were able to afford spending three-quarters of a trillion dollars on a bloated defense budget--spending that was supposed to protect our country yet did nothing to inoculate against the most profound public health emergency in a century--but we can't give hungry and suffering Americans $2,000? That is a moral failure for our country. Give Americans this money.
Most of my colleagues support this defense budget. They got to vote on it a few weeks ago, and I know they stand ready to override President Trump's racist, belligerent veto. We are here today, asking the same thing for $2,000 payments--a simple up-or-down vote. Let's bring the House bill up for a vote. Leader Schumer is committed to bringing it forward. We can get this done before the holiday. We can do this for Americans before the year is out.
We must remember that what makes America the envy of the world is not simply the strength of our defense and military but the strength of our people--people like Ahmed Jaya, a parent of three, who was laid off from his job as a doorman at the Omni Parker House in Boston this past March. Ahmed receives $400 a week in unemployment benefits, but it is not enough to cover the bills that keep rolling in as he now faces expiring health coverage as well. It is people like Tanya DiStefano, from Spencer, MA, who gave birth to a beautiful baby boy on Halloween, to return from the hospital to find an eviction notice taped to the front of her door. These are the stories that should be driving our fights. These are the people who need relief now. And these checks will go right back into our economy because people will spend this money. They need it for the necessities that are confronting their families right now.
Last week, Donald Trump used these people as political pawns. He stalled signing the coronavirus relief package, claiming that he wanted to give $2,000 checks to every American. By delaying, President Trump may have stiffed unemployed Americans out of $300 this week in unemployment benefits--benefits that they will not get back. So let's now hold Donald Trump to his word. Let's bring this to a vote, and let's pass $2,000 relief checks for every person in our country and put that bill on Donald Trump's desk.
This pandemic has laid bare the tragedy of two Americas--one in which billionaires have grown their wealth by $931 billion over the course of this pandemic, an America where the rich continue to get richer, and the other America that has seen unprecedented economic uncertainty, Great Depression-level unemployment rates, and devastating losses. It is one in which Blacks and LatinX workers suffer disproportionately higher rates of unemployment and their families suffer higher rates of coronavirus infection and death; where workers get laid off while CEOs get raises and companies engage in stock buyback plans; and where residents get evicted or their electricity shut off but major corporations barely pay taxes.
For those workers and families and struggling households in America-- for the very vast majority of America--$2,000 is a lifeline, and it is time for Leader McConnell to bring this legislation to the floor for a vote. The American people have a right to know where every Member of the Senate stands on this issue. They now know where President Trump says he stands, and they now know where every Member of the U.S. House of Representatives stands. The American people have a right to know, in this desperate time that we are living through, who was on their side to give their families the help they needed.
Senator Sanders is right. We should have a vote--it should be yes or no--and we should do this before the end of this year.
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