SMART Act

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BOOKER. Madam President, I thank Senators Cassidy and Menendez for leading on this extraordinary bill and the broad bipartisan support that it has.

I know Senator Menendez and I have both been mayors in our communities, and when there is no crisis, we know intimately the challenges that so many of our public servants face. In times when we do not see pandemics, our firefighters put their lives on the line, our police officers put their lives on the line, and our teachers extraordinarily work above and beyond the call of duty. Indeed, our communities are strong because of these dedicated public workers.

At a time of crisis, we see that our teachers are rising to the challenge, working to keep their students engaged, even though they are now miles apart. I hear stories of teachers riding around, going out to visit students, keeping their distance but ensuring that the students get the support they need.

Our firefighters are out there now, putting their lives even more at a risk, putting themselves on the line to help their communities.

Police officers are answering calls without hesitation, despite the great risk that puts on them and their families when they go home.

So many of our other public servants are working diligently to keep our communities running, to keep our States strong to meet a crisis, and to try to help folks stay healthy and stay safe. Without hesitation, across New Jersey--across all of our 50 States--we are seeing more clearly the heroic actions of people who are leading in a time of crisis.

But as was said by my colleagues, across the country, States are being hit by significantly declining revenues and extraordinarily increasing costs. We are already seeing early projections, as discussed by my colleagues. Even independent rating agencies like Moody's are talking about hundreds of billions of dollars in deficits for our State and local governments.

My own Governor has estimated New Jersey's protracted gap caused by those declining revenues--those extremely rising costs--to be somewhere between $20 and $30 billion.

Due to these shortfalls, without immediate action from Congress, State and local governments will be forced to make deep cuts to public services, including laying off folks who are not just essential in word but who often make the difference between life and death, safety or crisis in our communities. These would be the workers who would be laid off at a time when we need them the most.

Not only do we need these vital public servants on the job, protecting our communities, educating our kids, and supporting our neighbors, but cuts like these actually will aggravate and deepen the overall economic crisis facing our country. Independent rating agencies and others say that cuts like these will actually prolong our economic crisis and the time needed for recovery. This is not the time for half measures. This is the time to act at the scale that the crisis demands.

The Federal Government needs to be providing a robust, accurately tailored response to this crisis by funding our State and local governments in a way that prioritizes those areas that have been hit the hardest. The SMART Act does exactly that. It is a bipartisan bill. It is thoughtful. It is tailored narrowly to fit this crisis.

The SMART Act is a commonsense approach that will make sure that the help is going to where it is needed most--to our hardest hit communities and States--and to help ensure that those workers whom we hail with our words--firefighters, police officers, and teachers--we support with our actions, as well, for they are out there right now supporting us.

No State should go bankrupt fighting this virus, because of this virus. No State should go bankrupt because we in the Federal Government refuse to support them. No essential public worker should lose their job because of this crisis and because Congress was not stepping up to lead through it.

There is no time to waste. As was said by my colleague, we have folks in my State who are putting together their budgets right now. As we heard from my colleague from Louisiana, they are already accounting for the need to make cuts. We have already seen hundreds of thousands of public workers being laid off. The delay has costs, and when you are talking about first responders, the delays can have costs that are hard to imagine.

I encourage my colleagues to see this as what it is. It is an accurately tailored response. It is a bipartisan bill. It is what our Nation needs right now. I encourage my colleagues in the Senate to work to get this to the floor so that we can vote on it, pass it, and get it through Congress to the President's desk, so we can avoid the storm that we are in and, ultimately, overcome the severity of its ravages

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source