Coronavirus
Floor Speech
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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, we are fast approaching nearly 200,000 deaths from the coronavirus. But the moral and physical injury done to our country during the pandemic will never be contained in just one number. As that number continues to climb, so too do the frustration and the pain and the outrage of the American people.
We know that Donald Trump recognized the threat of the coronavirus and deliberately downplayed it for his own political gain. He is in large part responsible for these deaths.
We now have 31 million workers who have either received or applied for unemployment benefits. Since March 15, Massachusetts alone has seen more than 2 million claims to our unemployment programs. In Massachusetts, we have the highest unemployment rate in the United States.
Families across the country are facing devastating choices. Cities and towns are struggling to keep programs running and employees at work. We know the Republicans recognize these threats, and they are choosing to ignore them. They are, in part, responsible for the suffering.
After 4 months of callous calculations, when they chose to respond, the Republicans put out on the floor a coronavirus package that was insulting to Americans who have been awaiting relief. The extent of the misery facing our families is unimaginable. Yet Republicans and Leader McConnell responded by designing a bill so intentionally weak and insufficient that it was destined to fail.
It is all just a game to the Republican Party, but for Americans, this economic and public health crisis is a matter of life and death. We need a robust, comprehensive response right now that matches the scale of this crisis, and we have an opportunity to deliver some real justice to working Americans and their families.
First, we need to give Americans a monthly cash payment of $2,000 so that they have the funding to able to pay their bills. A single check is not sufficient for households. Families need more than just one payment.
Providing recurring monthly payments is the most direct and efficient mechanism for delivering economic relief to those most vulnerable, for lower income families, immigrant families, and our gig and service workers.
I see these families suffering today. They are the same kinds of working families I grew up with in Malden. I know that $2,000 each month would mean the world to them--so that they can sleep at night; they can pay the rent; they can pay the electricity bill; they can buy the medications they need.
A monthly payment is the kind of big policy that provides relief on the scale that is needed. Our government needs to tell our families: We are here for you. We will not let you down during this crisis.
Second, we need at least $4 billion for my E-rate Program to connect every student to the internet at home. The pandemic has shown a bright light on the homework gap being experienced by the 16 million students in this country who do not have internet access at home and are unable to complete their homework. This is unconscionable and a threat to our country's future.
We cannot allow this homework gap to become a larger learning gap, which ultimately is going to become an opportunity gap for these young people. Research shows that the homework gap affects students in both rural and urban areas and disproportionately affects lower income students and students of color. Trump and the Republicans are blocking this investment in education, but we can't let them. We will not leave these students behind.
Third, we need to extend unemployment insurance, the weekly $600 benefit, through January of 2021. This is not just a line in the budget; it is a lifeline for workers who cannot go to work through no fault of their own. This crisis will be solved only by investing in workers. We cannot simply cut them off when we know harder days lie ahead for those workers in our country
Fourth, we must continue a national evictions moratorium and provide $100 billion in emergency rental assistance. No one should have to suffer the indignity of being escorted out of their home by the police. A country that allows evictions during a pandemic--because of a pandemic--has failed its people.
The same goes for electricity and energy shutoffs. We need a national moratorium that keeps the lights on, ensures drinking water, ensures that wastewater services aren't disconnected or interrupted during the emergency period due to nonpayment. We cannot cast families into the dark as they are struggling to stay afloat.
It is wrong to allow a pandemic that has not been created by these families to result in catastrophic conditions that will look like the Great Depression in terms of their impact on families in the same way that it impacted my family during the Great Depression. We owe these people more. They have worked hard. They have worked constantly throughout their lives. Now, through no fault of their own, the pandemic has hit them, and they are unemployed.
Finally, we need $1 trillion in funding for State and local governments so that our teachers, nurses, postal workers, and other dedicated public servants are not laid off--the essential workers who drive the buses, pick up the garbage, fight the deadliest of fires, educate our young people. Despite providing the services we rely upon every day--including every single one of us in this Chamber--our municipalities are aren't getting any money because Republicans refuse to provide it. State and local governments have been pushed to the brink to support their residents and are in desperate need of relief.
To my Republican colleagues I say that this funding isn't blue or red; it is green. And all of our mayors and Governors and city councilors--whether Republican or Democrat--need that money right now.
I have been traveling around my home State of Massachusetts talking to families. They tell me the same thing: They want a livable future for their children. That means they need the government to do its job effectively in managing this COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of making excuses, they need a government that works on solutions, even if the problems are unprecedented, and they want that government to recognize the rights and dignity of everyone.
Our families want something so basic and so simple, they almost shouldn't have to say it: They want their children to dream about the future instead of fearing about the future.
They need political leadership from us right now--not political games, not the political calculation of just 20 Members of the Senate Republican caucus.
To my colleagues I say that the gravity of this crisis requires us to respond right now. We know we have a President in the White House who is irresponsible. The President knew. It turns out he knew the virus was deadly. He knew it as well as we knew it, but he lied to us. He told us it would magically disappear. He said it was no worse than the flu while on tape we hear him say that it is lethal. On February 10, he said: You know, a lot of people think it goes away in April with the heat, when the heat comes in. That is what the President said in February about the coronavirus.
He also tells us that climate change is a myth. He tells us that our planet is not in grave danger. He makes fun of the science of climate change the way he makes fun of wearing a mask.
Now the ``Denier in Chief'' says when it gets cooler it will go away, that the fires in the west coast will just go away. His answer to coronavirus is that when it gets warmer, it will go away. When he deals with the science of climate change, he says: When it gets cooler, the fires will go away.
The west coast of the United States is on fire, and 10 percent of Oregon is under evacuation order. A warning--that is half a million people. We have dozens of wildfires burning right now in California, including the largest in the history of that State. It has blotted out the sun for hundreds and hundreds of miles. The Southwest is shrouded in a horrifying, constant twilight.
We can keep looking at these things in isolation, as if somehow or other they are not connected. Each fiery conflagration, each hurricane, each devastating flood, each ungodly windstorm that wipes out a whole year of crops--we can say they have nothing to do with each other or we can look at the truth and listen to the science and say enough is enough.
We can lie to ourselves and say, as Trump does, that one day these things will just ``magically disappear,'' depending upon whether the heat or cooling will solve the problem. But we all know better. We know that unless we act now, the fires will happen annually and burn hotter and larger each summer, each fall in our country. We know that the hurricanes will get worse and more frequent. Two made landfall at once this year. We know that they will disrupt and destroy the economies of the gulf and the eastern seaboard.
How many times can we ask our people to rebuild? We know that midwestern floods will grow each year, drowning out a whole way of life and making refugees of our farmers. We know that the windstorms like those this year will continue to destroy crops. Iowa lost 43 percent of its corn and soybeans this year.
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Mr. MARKEY. No, it will not magically disappear. We need a Green New Deal. We need a solution that matches the magnitude of the problem.
I yield back to the Presiding Officer. I appreciate his indulgence.
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