Economic Recovery

Mr. President, let's turn the clocks back to the end of 2019. A novel coronavirus is detected in the city of Wuhan. Little is known about the pathogen, aside from the fact that it is highly contagious and magnitudes more lethal than the flu. In just 3 months--3 months--that virus causes a global pandemic, the likes of which none of us has seen in our lifetimes. It grinds the global economy to a halt. Stay-at-home orders become the new normal, and supply chains are disrupted at nearly every stage in the production process.

Tragically, because of delay and denial by the former administration, the United States experiences the world's highest rates of COVID infections and deaths for all of 2020. Then comes a new year and a new administration. Today, thanks to the Biden administration's competence and the scientific community's relentless pursuit of a vaccine, America is finally turning a corner in the fight against COVID-19. But the damage was deep, and our scars are still fresh. While the coronavirus raged, people lost their loved ones, and millions lost their livelihoods.

Now, as we restart the engine of our economy, our Republican colleagues would have you believe that the reason America's economy hasn't bounced back fully is because American workers are lazy; they would rather collect unemployment benefits than work. Republicans would have you believe that the American people would rather binge-watch ``The Office'' than return to it. They must not know many American workers well--because Americans work longer and harder than workers in nearly every advanced economy. And for the workers who have been laid off over the past year, unemployment assistance has been lifesaving.

Here is what enhanced unemployment benefits have meant for my constituents in Illinois. One Chicago resident reached out to my office, saying that ``my sister has been out of work since the pandemic hit Chicago . . . her husband works a full-time job during the day five days a week and cleans offices three to four nights a week just to make ends meet . . . unemployment assistance is essential.''

That constituent wrote to me out of concern for her family, not herself--her sister, her brother-in-law, and her nieces and nephews. Tell me, does that father--working a full-time day job and cleaning offices at night--sound lazy to you? Does that family sound like they are coasting through this pandemic on Easy Street? Not to me, they don't.

Another constituent wrote to me out of concern for his wife. Because of the pandemic, she was laid off from the job she had for 20 years. He wrote, ``She is actively looking for work but so far there are hardly any openings in her field.''

That sentiment was echoed by another constituent, who wrote, ``My 35 years of experience and outdated master's degree in marketing mean nothing in this job market.''

I also heard from a single mother of three who lost her job as a banquet server due to the pandemic. She has emptied her savings and is 3 months behind on mortgage payments. She worries that at 58 years old, it will be difficult to find new work.

And one more story, my office received a letter from a 63-year-old woman living with an autoimmune disease. She thought the job she had before COVID-19 would be her last job ever. But then she got laid off. Now, she relies on SNAP benefits to put food on the table and on Medicaid for the doctors and medicines she needs to control her disease. She wrote, ``What a horrible thing to rely on the government, but we have no choice.'' Let me say that again: ``We have no choice.''

Do these sound like calculating con artists or loafs trying to scam Uncle Sam for a quick buck? These are Americans, our neighbors, and they are barely making their way through an unprecedented public health crisis. And they made it because of unemployment assistance. And jobless benefits don't just help the workers and families who receive them. They help communities. They keep money circulating during hard times. People are spending their enhanced unemployment benefits on groceries, rent, mortgage, and other necessities.

Now, as we begin to recover, let's not bash the workers who have borne the brunt of this pandemic. Let's focus on what is actually holding our economy back. Let's look at the facts. On Thursday, the Department of Labor published a report showing that new claims for unemployment insurance have fallen to their lowest level since the pandemic began. As more and more people get vaccinated, as we start bringing this virus under control and the world starts opening up, it is clear that Americans want to get back to work. They want to earn a living. So what is preventing more Americans from returning to the workforce?

For one, people are still concerned about safety. It was only 2 weeks ago--May 13, to be exact--when the CDC announced that it is now safe for fully vaccinated people to take off their masks and resume activities that they had put on hold--May 13. The jobs report that our Republican colleagues have been so eager to cite as proof that unemployment benefits are keeping people from working was based on data from early April. Remember what was happening in April? Lethal new COVID variants were tearing through the U.K., India, and other nations, and they were starting to show up in this Nation, too. Scientists weren't yet sure whether the COVID vaccines would protect against the new variants. Thankfully, we now have an answer. But back in April, is it any wonder that some workers might have been uncertain about returning to work under those conditions?

And then there are the continued challenges facing caregivers in America.

Many parents--especially mothers--of young children still can't return to work because so many schools and childcare programs remain closed. You can't leave little kids home alone. Harry Truman used to say that what he really needed was a one-handed economist because all of the economists he knew told him, ``On one hand, this . . . and on the other hand, that.'' A new report coauthored by an economist who formerly worked in the Obama administration questions to what extent the lack of childcare is preventing parents from returning to the workforce. I expect to hear a lot about this report from our Republican colleagues.

So I would point out that Mr. Furman and scores of other economists continue to warn that our failure to invest in high-quality, affordable childcare will undoubtedly impede America's future economic growth and global competitiveness. There is no ``other hand'' about that. If we want to cultivate the world's most educated, skilled workforce--a goal I am sure we all share--we need to ensure our children are cared for-- because cultivating that workforce begins before kindergarten. Yet the United States is the only advanced economy in the world that doesn't guarantee parental leave for working parents.

And we are one of the only advanced economies that doesn't provide some form of universal early childhood education. If you want to have a child in America, guess what? You are on your own. This is a structural problem in our economy that has existed for decades. The pandemic just brought it into sharp relief.

The pandemic has also highlighted another structural problem for our economy. While last month saw big job growth in the leisure and hospitality industries, as restaurants, bakeries, and coffee shops started opening back up, those gains are just one part of the story. Jobs in manufacturing declined. Supply chain disruptions may account for some of these losses.

But there is a bigger problem. Employers in high-skilled manufacturing companies have had difficulty for years filling positions. As a nation, we simply are not doing enough to train American workers for the manufacturing jobs of the 21st century, jobs like assembling electric car batteries or wind turbines. Workers who want to make a career change and learn these skills often have to take on thousands, even tens of thousands of dollars in student debt. We treat worker training as a personal problem rather than a collective good from which we all benefit.

As I said, America's childcare crisis and a shortage of high-skilled workers existed long before COVID. Enhanced unemployment benefits have been an economic lifeline for millions of Americans families during this pandemic.

Severing that lifeline prematurely won't solve the long-term structural challenges facing our economy. It will only make things harder for already struggling families.

But we can address the challenge of childcare and take steps to help workers develop new skills. In fact, President Biden and Senate Democrats have a plan to do it. It starts by investing in our children.

With the American Families Plan, we can make childcare more accessible and affordable, like nearly every other advanced economy in the world.

With the American Jobs Plan, we can invest in workers. It would direct billions of dollars toward helping dislocated workers develop new skills and secure stable, well-paid jobs building wind turbines or electric vehicles or making other American-made goods that will be in high demand for years to come. The American Jobs Plan and the American Family Plan are blueprints for building a sustainable, prosperous economy that will create good jobs for decades to come. I commend President Biden for meeting with my Republican colleague in hopes of moving the country forward and urge Republicans to work with Democrats to achieve these shared goals instead of rejecting our proposal immediately.

We can remain the strongest, most dynamic economy in the world and make the 21st century another American century, but we have precious little time and a lot of competition. We can't waste that time wagging our fingers at Americans who are struggling or ignoring the structural challenges that have existed for decades and have only gotten worse during the pandemic.

The American Rescue Plan saved our economy. Now, let's build it back better than ever before with the American Jobs Plan and the American Families Plan.

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