Covid Preparedness, Response, and Effective Planning for Advanced Requirements By the Executive Branch Act of 2020

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak on H.R. 7496, the COVID PREPARE Act of 2020.

The bill requires every Federal agency to report COVID-19 resurgent action plans to Congress. These plans will cover agency pandemic resurgence preparations to assure agency mission continuity.

The bill also requires agencies to outline their communication plans to necessary stakeholders, including Congress, States, and localities, and entities in the agency's jurisdiction. Finally, the bill requires quarterly updates on these plans through the end of the pandemic. This, of course, presumes a resurgence of the pandemic, which we hope will not happen.

In discussing this bill, we would be remiss if we did not commend the work the Federal agencies and their workforce have already done and continue to do combating COVID-19 across our Nation.

We should recognize the progress we have made as a nation in fighting this global pandemic. Thanks to this administration's leadership, we are seeing continual progress in the coronavirus fight.

The President's Cabinet and agency leaders have been constantly evaluating the pandemic and making decisions in real time, with the safety of the Federal workforce and the American public as their primary goal.

As our collective knowledge of COVID-19 evolves, Congress needs to ensure that the legislation we advance empowers Federal agencies to make these critical real-time decisions. Congress needs to be careful about continually laying on new reporting requirements to already- strained Federal agencies.

These agencies are currently responsible to congressional oversight, and new, broadly defined reporting requirements can have the unintended consequences of redirecting scarce agency resources during a national emergency.

H.R. 7496 requires, within 30 days of the legislation's enactment, that every Federal agency communicates plans to Congress for how they will handle the unthinkable; this pandemic worsening.

The bill's language is broad, and we didn't have the opportunity to fully engage in debate on what it means and what metrics we are using.

Legislation like this could have benefited from additional work in our committee to clarify its intentions.

Fortunately, the agencies already have plans in place, and we hope the resurgence action plans envisioned by this bill won't be needed.

Thanks to the administration's Operation Warp Speed, the American people are optimistic that the Food and Drug Administration will shortly announce a safe and effective vaccine.

In the meantime, we need to work in Congress to assure that Federal agencies are able to remain fully focused on handling their present work and challenges so that we can stop this virus.

Our constituents sent us here to work together, put partisanship aside, and ensure our Nation's government has the resources that it needs.

I look forward to working with my colleagues on legislation that helps our government remain effective at fighting this pandemic.

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Mrs. MILLER. Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers, and I am prepared to close.

Mr. Speaker, I have no further comments on this legislation, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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