Providing A 77-Day Extension of Certain Authorities for Foreign Intelligence and International Terrorism Investigations
Floor Speech
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Mr. MANCHIN. Mr. President, I agree with everything that has been said. I agree that, basically, we should never have left here Thursday night. So many of us could, maybe, drive home. I was able to drive home and was able to drive back. Yet so many people were put in harm's way when they went home on airplanes. As you might know, we don't have the youngest crowd--I think our average age is about 62 here--so it is putting them and their families and, basically, the people they work with in danger also.
Let me tell you what we are talking about here. If we are going to come to the aid of the economy of this country, I have no doubt that Democrats and Republicans will come together to take care and help people. I hope they realize the people who really need help are the people who cannot make it from one week to the next, let alone from one paycheck to the next.
I was out last week just in DC, and I talked to a young waiter--a very, very nice, young man.
I asked: What happens if you have to go home for 2 weeks?
He said: I am finished. I can't make it. I can't make my payments. I can't make my house payment. I can't make my rent payment. I can't make my grocery payment.
He was done. That is how worried he was. He said no one had asked him that question. These are the people we have to worry about.
I want to bring to your attention one more thing. As of 2:30 this afternoon, my State didn't have one reported case. Now, that is great. That is wonderful. I pray to the good Lord that this is the case that we have none, but let me tell you the thing that scares me. I have the most at-risk population base in the Nation. The Kaiser report that came out showed the State of West Virginia as being the most in danger of all of the States with its having the most vulnerable people.
I have over 720,000 elderly. I have over 220,000 who are critically ill under 60 years of age. If you put all of this together, of the over 1.8 million people, I have over 1 million who could be absolutely, totally devastated by this virus if it hits, and we haven't shown one case yet. Of the 1.8 million people I have told you about and of the 1 million who are in vulnerable situations, we have had only 84 tests in my State as of 2:30. Now, 80 have come back negative, and as of 2:30, 4 are unknown.
I am surrounded by five States in this wonderful, little State of mine, West Virginia. These are the most beautiful people in the world, and they have worked hard. A lot of them have respiratory illnesses, and they will be the first to be attacked. If it hits my State and if we are not prepared for it because, basically, we won't even have the tests to identify who will be ill and who will need these treatments and will need the healthcare, the hospital care, what will we do? I don't have the ventilators, and I don't have the respirators. I don't have anything available to that many people who are that vulnerable. What do we do?
I know of all of the financial aid we are talking about and of all of the help that we are going to need. We had better concentrate on how we find a cure--on how we basically take care of the people who are the most vulnerable--and that would, first and foremost, protect the people of America. They are scared to death. I am scared. I am concerned. I am afraid that my State of West Virginia is falling into a lapse to where the people of West Virginia might think: Oh, we are protected. No cases have been reported, so we are in good shape.
I pray to the good Lord that this is the case, but my gut tells me that it is not. We just don't know.
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Mr. MANCHIN. I yield to the Senator.
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Mr. MANCHIN. This is out of 1.8 million people in the most vulnerable State in America.
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Mr. MANCHIN. Senator, if you have seen the map of the United States, West Virginia stands out and doesn't show anything. I think, how could that happen?
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Mr. MANCHIN. We have tested 84 total.
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Mr. MANCHIN. We should have been here on Saturday.
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Mr. MANCHIN. I will tell you what we were able to do on that. I sent a letter last week immediately to Sonny Perdue, and he answered immediately. We were able to get all of the kids--because we have so many children in West Virginia who rely on their breakfast and their lunch from the schools for nutrition, we are going to be delivering. The school is doing that.
The State is taking some steps to shut things down. Schools have been shut down. They have said no more community gatherings whatsoever. They have done all of the things they were told to do. We just don't know where the virus may be, if it is there, and how it is going to affect us.
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Mr. MANCHIN. The economics of this whole thing right now is, first of all, we should know who is infected, where the infection is going, and how rampant this will be. We don't know yet.
Next of all, who is the most vulnerable economically? The people who work day to day, paycheck to paycheck, and week to week. That is where the relief----
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Mr. MANCHIN. Exactly. We have to do some things and do them quickly. And if this thing doesn't come up, we should sit here and protest until it does come up. There is no reason we can't do it tonight.
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Mr. MANCHIN. Well, today he recognized it and came forth and basically said today in that press release that I listened to--he basically acknowledged the threat of what we are dealing with and the enormity of what we are dealing with. It was the first time I have heard basically the concern that we have that this thing is bigger than any of us, but all of us together can fight this.
But I would ask the majority leader: Mr. Majority Leader, we should have stayed here. Yet we are here now. Let's do it.
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Mr. MANCHIN. Let's do it. No blame. No blame. Let's just do it.
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