Coronavirus

Floor Speech

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Mrs. CAPITO. Mr. President, I would like to thank, first of all, the preceding speaker, Senator Klobuchar, for her efforts to help those venues in those entertainment areas that at this point have been left out. We certainly have some of those in West Virginia, and I am pleased to say that the coronavirus package we are putting together today will help those folks and hopefully get them over the hump.

Before I begin, I would like to wish everybody, as much as they can, a happy holiday and a joyful new year. Turning the page of 2020 is something I think we are all pretty anxious to do. Sometimes it seems like the longest year, and sometimes it seems like the shortest year, but it definitely seems like ``Groundhog Day'' a lot of the year.

I am very pleased that we have this relief package in front of us. While I am glad an agreement has been reached, we certainly should have done this earlier and could have done this earlier. We have been working since July to deliver targeted additional relief through efforts such as we put forward in the CARES Act, and it has been voted down twice--once in September and once in October.

To date, we, the Republicans, have offered targeted relief legislation, voted in favor of enhanced employment benefits, more money for our schools, which would have been great to have had in early September and should have had in early September. We voted in favor of stand-alone emergency funding for the Paycheck Protection Program, which we know is exceedingly important, and more dollars for vaccines and testing so that we could get the great news of the vaccine that we see coming forward out to everybody in this country. We offered all kinds of ideas to the other side, but they blocked it--all of it. I am glad to say that after all this, we have finally joined together, realizing that, yes, a deal is better than no deal.

Last week, unfortunately, a very good friend of mine passed away after battling coronavirus. At one point in her life, she was a small business owner. I thought so much about her over the last several weeks. I thought, what would she say if she knew that months ago, as a small business owner, we could have delivered the same help to her that we are delivering today.

We have to do better by the people we represent. It is disappointing that politics has gotten in the way. It is disappointing and, quite frankly, insulting, in my view, when I see the Speaker of the House admitting to holding out on this relief because she thought it would be beneficial politically in the end. We can do much better than this.

I am also a proud member of the Appropriations Committee. We have worked hard to get these funds and resources where they are most needed, especially in a year like this one. But due to delays, critically needed resources to combat the opioid epidemic have had to wait; investments to improve broadband have had to wait; research dollars into Alzheimer's have had to wait; and the list goes on. This is so frustrating to me, as it should be to every American, and I know they are frustrated because they tell us they are.

But here now, we were able to include funds for things that are important to me in my State of West Virginia, such as fossil energy research, our universities, and the many Federal facilities that call West Virginia home.

I encourage my colleagues to support this important legislation that reflects our Nation's priorities and funds the government, which is our responsibility as Members of Congress.

Within the Omnibus appropriations act is the fiscal year 2021 Homeland Security appropriations bill. I chair that subcommittee, and it is with great pride that I can report to the American people and to West Virginians that this title invests billions of dollars to protect our homeland.

We maintain our commitment to border security through a border wall system to include physical barriers and enhanced technologies.

We avoided a drastic cut to our cyber security capabilities that we see we need now more than ever after all of the reports and the vicious cyber attack that we uncovered that has been launched against many of those in our country, not just the government but the private sector as well.

We continue our commitment to use every resource at our disposal in the effort to prevent those opioids that are killing our people. We see overdoses going up and deaths from overdoses going up during this pandemic. We tried to get the resources to our Homeland Security folks to prevent those drugs from entering into this country at all.

The men and women at the Department of Homeland Security work constantly against threats both old and new, traditional and emerging, and deserve the support this legislation gives them.

So while this is great news in the end, I will repeat what I said earlier, and that is, Congress can do better. We could have done this earlier, and it should have been done earlier. So there is no reason we should be standing here several days before Christmas discussing the items that were ready to go several months ago, but we are where we are. As we turn the page gleefully into 2021, I think we should all pledge to one another and to the country that we will do better, that we will work better with each other and prevent politics from infecting every decision that could positively impact so many people in this country.

Lastly, I give a hat tip to my friend, whom I will miss seeing and who was a great friend to our family, a longtime friend of our family. Godspeed. I know she is dancing up there with her mom and dad because they loved to dance.

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