Coronavirus

Floor Speech

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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, in his inaugural address, President Biden spoke about his desire to unify.

He said this:

Today, on this January day, my whole soul is in this: bringing America together, uniting our people, uniting our nation.

Admirable words, but words have to be met with action, and, right now, we are not seeing much of an attempt to unify from the President or his party. In fact, we are seeing pretty much the opposite. The Democrats have made it very clear they are determined to pass another COVID bill on a purely partisan basis, which is particularly disappointing because, up until now, COVID relief has been a bipartisan process. That is right. To date, Congress has passed five COVID relief bills, and every single one of those bills has been overwhelmingly bipartisan.

I might add, last year, when we were in the majority, Senate Democrats made it very clear that they thought the minority should have a voice in COVID relief and that any legislation should reflect the thoughts of both parties. The Democratic leader filibustered the CARES Act--our largest COVID relief bill--multiple times until he got a version that he was satisfied with, but now that the Democrats are in the majority, apparently, they have decided that it is their way or the highway. Forget the fact that the Senate is evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats. The Democrats are determined to ensure that the Republicans and the Americans they represent don't have a voice in this bill.

The Democrats' move to use reconciliation to force through a purely partisan COVID bill might be understandable--and I add ``might''--if the Republicans had made it clear that we opposed doing anything else on COVID, but that couldn't be further from the truth. The Republicans have made it very clear that we are willing to work with the Democrats on additional targeted relief. Just weeks ago, 10 Republican Senators put together a plan and met with President Biden for 2 hours to discuss a bipartisan agreement, but while the President certainly listened to them graciously, it quickly became clear that their efforts didn't matter. It didn't matter how willing the Republicans were to negotiate; the Democrats had no intention of reaching an agreement. They wanted to go it alone, and they were not going to let the Republicans stop them.

In a speech a few days ago, President Biden acknowledged that people have criticized his $1.9 trillion plan but asked:

What would they have me cut? What would they have me leave out?

Well, let me offer a few ideas.

For starters, it might be a good idea to cut out the sections of the Democrats' bill that have nothing to do with combating COVID. The Democrats are calling this a COVID relief bill, but in actual fact, much of this bill has little to do with the coronavirus. In fact, less than 10 percent of the bill is directly related to combating COVID.

If President Biden wants to know what sections of the bill to cut, I might suggest starting with the bill's minimum wage hike. The Democratic bill would more than double the Federal minimum wage at a cost of an estimated 1.4 million jobs--that according to the Congressional Budget Office. That would be problematic enough at a time when we are already dealing with substantial job losses, but it is even worse when you realize that the people most likely to lose their jobs as a result of this hike would be lower income workers.

I would also suggest that the President cut his $86 billion bailout of multiemployer pension plans, which has nothing to do with emergency COVID relief.

The President could also consider cutting his $350 billion slush fund for States and localities, which would be used mostly to reward States that shut down their businesses for extended periods and, therefore, have higher unemployment rates.

It has become clear the majority of States are doing OK financially despite the pandemic. A number of States actually saw higher tax revenues in 2020, and a majority of States have the resources needed to weather the rest of this crisis. Three hundred fifty billion dollars far exceeds projected State need.

And while we are on that topic, the economic stimulus provided by President Biden's bill, in general, far exceeds the economic need and may actually harm the economy.

Even without a dollar more of stimulus spending, our economy is expected to grow at a robust 3.7 percent in 2021.

The massive amount of spending that the President is proposing to inject into the economy runs the very real risk of overheating the economy and driving up inflation, and you don't have to take my word for it. Even some liberal economists have expressed their concern over the size of the Democrats' coronavirus legislation and the damage that it could do to the economy.

Then, of course, there is the money the bill includes for schools. Now, while children in some places, like South Dakota, are in school, we need to get all kids back to in-person learning. In-person learning is important for kids' academic, social, and emotional health, and as Republicans have demonstrated, we want to ensure that schools have the resources they need to get back into the classroom safely.

Our previous coronavirus bills contained more than $100 billion for education, and I think it is safe to say that every Republican would support additional dollars, if needed, but the fact of the matter is, schools still have billions of dollars from previous coronavirus legislation that remains unspent. And the Biden bill would appropriate an additional $129 billion for schools that schools would get--they would get--whether or not they get kids back into the classroom.

On top of that, most of that money would go to schools beginning next year and stretching all the way to 2028; in other words, long after the pandemic will be over. In fact, less--if you can believe this, less than 5 percent of the education spending would occur this year.

Ultimately, the Biden bill's school funding ends up looking less like a plan to get our kids back in schools and more like caving in to the teachers' unions.

So if President Biden would like to know what to cut, I would suggest he start with some of the things I have highlighted. And I would ask--I would ask that he and the Democratic leadership abandon their plan to shove through a bloated, partisan bill, paid for with all borrowed money--every single dollar goes on the debt--and to start trying for the unity that the President has talked about.

The President could show that he really meant what he said in his inaugural address by sitting down, in a serious way, with Republicans to develop targeted relief legislation.

We are ready to come to the table. The ball is in the President's court.

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