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Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2021

Floor Speech

Date: Feb. 3, 2021
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Government Budget and Spending

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Mr. POCAN. Mr. Speaker, the American people are hurting, and they need our help now. Millions have lost their jobs over the past year through no fault of their own, and more than 100,000 small businesses have been forced to close forever due to COVID-19. The House has tried to do the right thing. We passed multiple relief packages last year that began to approach the scale needed to address the suffering in our communities, only to meet resistance from Mitch McConnell's Senate and the Trump administration.

Let's be honest, the Federal Government's handling of this pandemic has been largely inept. The previous administration said it was just the flu, that it would pass before we knew it, that injecting ourselves with unproven substances would take care of the problem.

Extend that magical thinking to testing and vaccine distribution and it is easy to see why the American people and the economy are in crisis today. Now those same magical thinkers tell us that more aid for people suffering across the Nation is not needed.

The Congressional Budget Office told all of us on Monday that the Nation's unemployment rate will not return to prepandemic levels throughout the rest of this decade. This decade.

Let's stop nickel-and-diming our response to this once-in-a-century pandemic. Let's follow the advice of almost every major economist who has urged us to act big. Doing too little is the real threat we face.

State and local governments have been providing tests and assisting in vaccine distribution, all while losing tax revenue. They need our help.

The unemployed are at risk of losing their homes, and working people are going hungry. They need our help. Small businesses have lost demand at a time they need it most to keep people employed. They need our help.

I am proud to support additional direct payments to individuals, aid for schools, aid for State and localities' public health programs. I am proud to support more aid for struggling small businesses, addressing our longstanding need for widespread broadband access, and minimum wage that ensures no full-time worker in America lives below the poverty line.

Let's do this. I urge all of my colleagues to support the resolution before us.

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