American Rescue Plan Act of 2021

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, on a completely different matter, yesterday, our Democratic colleagues had planned to begin ramming through their partisan spending spree, but it seems they have had some difficulty getting to the starting line. After all, Senate Democrats, including committee chairs, are essentially being jammed with text from over in the House. Their own Members have barely been able to read this thing, let alone shape it.

So let's think back to where we were 1 year ago. Eleven-and-a-half months ago, the Senate was also discussing a major spending package. In fact, it was the same size as what is being proposed right now--about $2 trillion--an appropriate pricetag back at the start of the crisis, but that is where the similarity actually ends.

Last March, the Senate was working overtime, in a bipartisan fashion, to craft good policy from the bottom up. I assembled bipartisan task forces. We had Republicans and Democrats and staff working around the clock to build the policies that would save our health system and our economy.

The CARES Act sustained us for almost a year of shutdowns. It funded the healthcare fight, saved small businesses, and funded Operation Warp Speed, which helped pave the way for these pioneering vaccines and preordered hundreds of millions of doses for Americans. The law sent so much relief to households that, even as the GDP declined, personal incomes and savings actually went up. Even liberal economists say President Biden has inherited an economy that was already primed for a swift recovery. It was the largest American rescue package ever. Yet it passed the Senate without one single dissenting vote because it was built the right way.

That was last March. So what about today?

Instead of heading into a dark tunnel, we are accelerating out of it: incredible vaccines, a rebounding economy. That is what the Biden administration inherited thanks to what we did last year.

Yet Washington Democrats are trying to exploit the last chapters of this crisis to pass what President Biden's Chief of Staff calls ``the most progressive domestic legislation in a generation,'' and they have told Republicans: Take it or leave it. No openness to meaningful bipartisan input. Ten Republican Senators approached President Biden and proposed cooperation on the order of hundreds of billions of dollars. They were refused. All that interested the Democrats was a partisan hodgepodge of, largely, non-COVID-related items.

Last year, the Democratic leader said:

Sitting in your own office, writing a bill, and then demanding the other side support it is not anyone's idea of bipartisanship.

As recently as last November, he said:

We need a true bipartisan bill--not ``this is our bill, take it or leave it.''

Another time, our friend from New York told everyone to ``go look up in the dictionary what `bipartisanship' is. It's both parties working together, not your party doing a bill and then saying it's bipartisan.''

In less than 4 months, we have had two completely different versions of the Democratic leader. The two of them could have a fascinating debate with each other.

But look, the real tragedy here is not Senate process; it is how ill- suited this bill is to what Americans need right now. There are no policies to get schools reopened right away and no smart solutions to directly spur rehiring. Less than 1 percent of the money goes to the vaccines that will end this nightmare--only 9 percent to the entire healthcare fight altogether.

I guess it has become a rite of passage for a new Democratic President to begin with a poorly targeted spending spree that doesn't give Americans what they need.

We already laid the foundation for a roaring comeback. The Biden administration inherited a tide that was already turning, but they have chosen to ignore the approach that got us this far

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source