American Rescue Plan Act of 2021
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, less than 2 months ago, at his inauguration, President Biden spoke about his deep commitment to bringing Americans together.
Today, the Senate will consider the first major bill of his Presidency, an intensely partisan piece of legislation. Why is the bill before us today so partisan? It is not because Republicans were unwilling to cooperate with Democrats on COVID legislation. In fact--in fact--Republicans made it very clear that we were willing to work with Democrats.
No, the bill before us today is so heavily partisan because Democrats didn't want to work with Republicans. Democrats saw an opportunity to use the COVID crisis to advance a whole host of liberal priorities, and they were afraid that allowing Republicans to participate in the process would mean that some of their pet projects would be excluded or that they would have to pare back some of their more profligate spending.
So Democrats decided to use reconciliation to ensure that Republicans wouldn't be able to interfere with their Democratic legislation. And let's be very clear about the nature of that legislation. Democrats would like to present this as a COVID bill. It is not. Yes, there are a handful of true COVID priorities in this legislation, such as more money for vaccines and coronavirus treatment, something that I think everybody here on both sides of the aisle supports. But the bulk of this bill is either non-COVID-related or ostensibly COVID-related but, actually, either unnecessary or excessive.
On the non-COVID front, there is the $86 billion bailout for multiemployer pension plans, the billions for climate change and other environmental policy issues, a new taxpayer-funded leave program for government employees with no requirement that it be used for COVID-19, and I could go on.
The version of the bill that came over from the House contained such non-COVID-related measures as $100 million for an underground rail project in the House Speaker's home State and $1.5 million for a bridge in the Democratic leader's home State, plus a massive increase in the Federal minimum wage that would cost an estimated 1.4 million jobs, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and potentially-- potentially--devastate small businesses already reeling from the effects of the coronavirus.
Then there are the ostensibly COVID-related measures, such as $350 billion for States. So what is the big problem there? Well, States don't need anywhere near that much money to weather the rest of the pandemic. The vast majority of States are not in crisis, and rescuing those States that are not in crisis would not take anywhere close to $350 billion. Democrats are going to spend hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars on an unnecessary giveaway to States, and on top of that, that giveaway is heavily, heavily weighted in favor of blue States. That is right. The distribution formula is designed to heavily favor Democratic States.
Well, then there is the money for schools. Now, Republicans have been very willing to give schools money to help them reopen. In fact, last year, when Republicans were in the majority--which, by the way, during that time we passed five COVID-19 relief bills, all with bipartisan cooperation and support, at the 60-vote level that we use here in the Senate for most legislation that we take up under regular order--but we put a lot of money into giving schools money to help them reopen. In fact, Republicans voted for $68 billion for K-12 schools.
At this point, that money is sufficient. Schools have spent just $5 billion of the $68 billion that we have already provided. Let me repeat that. So far, schools have spent just $5 billion, or less than 10 percent, of the $68 billion that has already been given to them.
Yet the Democrats' bill would appropriate an additional $129 billion for schools, 95 percent of which would be spent after this year--the year of the crisis, the year of the emergency, the year of the pandemic. You would think that, if this was a crisis, the funding would be made available to be used this year, but it is not. It is spent in the years 2022 to 2028.
Do Democrats really expect Americans to believe that school dollars that won't be spent until 2027 or 2028 are urgently needed coronavirus response dollars? This is the pattern with this bill, though.
We just passed a large coronavirus relief bill in December, the fifth coronavirus relief bill that Congress has passed, and a lot of the money from that bill hasn't been spent yet. In fact, a lot of money from earlier coronavirus bills has not been spent. Yet Democrats are throwing massive additional amounts of money at various recipients with no idea--no clear idea--of whether or not that money will be needed or, in some cases, when we know very well that that money isn't needed
Republicans will be introducing amendments to the Democrats' bill. I am introducing an amendment to undo the Biden administration's freeze on the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program, which has provided support for farmers and ranchers who have been hit hard by the pandemic.
I hope some of my less extreme Democratic colleagues will join Republicans to advance some of our amendments, such as Senator Graham's amendment to change the distribution formula for States to the formula used in the bipartisan CARES Act, which passed unanimously here in the Senate, so that both red and blue States would get a fair shot at funding, or amendments to remove those provisions that are in no way related to COVID relief.
Unfortunately, Democratic leaders have made it very clear that they are not willing to entertain Republican ideas. So I don't have a lot of confidence that Republican amendments, even if adopted, will end up in the final bill.
It is deeply disappointing that pretty much the first thing Democrats did this Congress was to take a bipartisan process--the coronavirus relief--and make it partisan. All five--all five--of the coronavirus bills that Congress has passed to date--last year, when Republicans were in the majority--were bipartisan. This bill could have been bipartisan, too, but Democrats decided that Republicans and the Americans that they represent should not have a voice in this legislation.
Is this what the rest of the Biden Presidency is going to look like? I sure hope not, because it is going to be really hard--really hard--to come up with solutions that are durable and that represent the middle of the country--those people whose voices are not heard in the legislation that we will be taking up today.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source