Protecting Individuals with Down Syndrome Act

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, as the new chairman of the Budget Committee, I wanted to take a few moments to talk about the $1.9 trillion budget resolution that I hope will be passed late tomorrow night.

I think sometimes our friends in the media make the political process much more complicated than it is. Real politics in a democracy is not that complicated. What it is about is assessing the problems facing the Nation and coming up with solutions to those problems.

One of the great tragedies that has occurred, in my view, in recent years is that for working-class people, middle-class people, lower- income people, these are folks who in a variety of ways are hurting and have hurt for many, many years. Wages in this country have been stagnant for decades. Young people are finding it increasingly difficult to go to college. Ninety million Americans are uninsured or underinsured. We have a political system which is significantly corrupt because big money can buy elections. And people look around them and they say: Who cares about me? Who is worried about me or my parents or my kids?

When that happens--when that kind of political alienation happens-- people can become prone to conspiracy theories and all kinds of big lies and everything else. Here is the simple truth, not complicated. Right now in this year 2021, we face more crises than this country has faced certainly since the Great Depression and maybe going back to the Civil War, when the very existence of this country was at stake.

As we speak right now, whether it is in the State of Georgia or my State of Vermont and all over this country, there are tens of millions of working families who have lost their jobs, lost their incomes, and they are worried tonight as to how they are going to be able to feed their families. They are worried about the back rent they owe.

We have a moratorium on evictions, but that moratorium some day is going to end. People say: How am I going to pay thousands of dollars in back rent? I am going to be evicted. I am going to be out on the street.

People are in the midst of this terrible, terrible pandemic, where we have lost over 400,000 lives--well over 400,000 lives. There are over 90 million people who are uninsured or underinsured and are having difficulty affording going to the doctor, and on and on it goes.

Kids. I have seven grandchildren. Kids all over this country have had their education disrupted.

As a result of the pandemic, people have become isolated from their friends and their families. Mental illness is soaring with increased numbers of depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation.

This country faces just terrible, terrible problems. I think we can agree that the year 2020 was the worst year in so many ways in our lifetime, maybe in the history of this country. And now, right now, it is absolutely imperative that the Congress of the United States understands that reality and keeps faith with the American people.

One of the reasons, by the way--and I say this to the Presiding Officer today, who is from Georgia and recently won his election--it is doubly important that we keep faith with the American people is because promises were made in this election in Georgia, which was not just a Senate race. It was more of a national race. President Biden was involved. Majority Leader Schumer was involved. I was involved. A lot of leading Democrats were involved.

We said to the people in Georgia and we said to the people in America: If we gain the majority, we are going to significantly improve lives for working people all over this country. Those are promises made that must be kept.

I want to just spend a few moments to talk about what is in this bill. We throw out numbers--$1.9 trillion. Who knows what $1.9 trillion is? It is such an unfathomable number. It is such a huge number. What does it mean? Who knows? Who understands that?

I want you to understand what is in this bill. For a start, what I believe and I know you believe is that when people are hurting, when they owe back rent, when they can't afford to feed their kids, when they can't afford to go to the doctor, we need to get cash into the pockets of those people as soon as we possibly can.

I was one of the people here a month ago when a whole lot of people were talking about it. I said we need direct payments. We need to get cash into the hands of people. I fought very hard. We ended up with just $600 in the last bill. It wasn't enough. It is a start, but not enough. We said our goal was $2,000. And in this bill, there will be an additional $1,400 for every working-class man, woman, and child.

So if you are an individual, a single person making $75,000 or less, when we pass this legislation you are going to get a check for $1,400. If you are a couple earning less than $150,000, and let's just say you have two kids, each person in the family, the husband, the wife, and the two kids get $1,400 apiece. That is $5,600.

Let me tell you something. For a struggling working-class family, that $5,600 is going to mean an enormous amount. It will allow people to pay the rent, allow people to pay off their debts, allow people to go to the doctor. That is what this legislation is about.

We made a promise. Some of us made that promise--I did--that we would make sure that in working-class families, each individual gets $2,000 and we

will keep that promise: $600 then, $1,400 now.

As a result of this pandemic, we have seen a horrific increase in unemployment. Unemployment is soaring all over this country. Millions of workers have lost their jobs. They have no income coming in. The extended unemployment benefits that were previously passed are going to expire in mid-March. What this legislation does--very importantly--if you are unemployed right now and you are worried you are going to lose your employment, when we pass this legislation, your unemployment is going to be extended through the end of September. And on top of the normal unemployment benefits you get from your State--and they vary State to State--you are going to get an additional $400 a week. We will not turn our backs on the millions of unemployed workers in this country.

Included in the legislation that we are fighting for is the need to raise the minimum wage in this country from the starvation wage that currently exists of $7.25 an hour to a living wage of $15 an hour. Now, we understand that restaurants and small businesses are hurting, and in this legislation, there will be a significant amount of money to make sure that small businesses will be able to afford that wage increase.

You know, when we talk about the economy, the media very often focuses on the stock market. That is important. We can focus on unemployment--terribly important. Yet what we don't focus on enough is that half of our workers in this country are living paycheck to paycheck. They have nothing in the bank, and they have to live off the paychecks they make. If they have an automobile problem--the car breaks down--or somebody in the family gets sick, they are in deep financial trouble. It seems to me that, in the richest country in the history of the world, it is not too much to demand that, if you work 40 hours a week, you don't live in poverty. Fifteen bucks an hour is not going to make anybody rich, but I have seen workers and talked to workers all over this country who are trying to raise their kids on $10, $12 an hour, and you can't do it. So $15 an hour is an important start in making sure that all working people in this country can live with dignity.

This legislation will expand the child tax credit from $2,000 to $3,000 and to $3,600 for families with kids under the age of 6. Now, what is not talked about very much in America--not by politicians, not by the media--is the fact that we have one of the highest rates of childhood poverty of almost any major country on Earth, and that is a terrible, terrible thing. You know, politicians give speeches of ``the future of this country is with our children,'' so forth and so on, but they have millions of kids living in poverty. Millions of families can't afford to send their kids to decent quality childcare. So expanding the child tax credit will go a very long way to reducing child poverty in America, and that is something that we must do.

It is no great secret that, as a result of the pandemic, our revenues going into State and local governments are in significant decline. The result of that is that, in the last year, well over a million State and local employees have been laid off. We are talking about teachers. We are talking about firemen. We are talking about police officers and other municipal and State employees. When you have those layoffs, not only is that a crisis unto itself for those workers, it means that State and local governments cannot provide the services that need to be provided in the midst of this terrible crisis. So this legislation would provide $350 billion to State and local governments, many of which are facing bankruptcy.

Now, obviously, the crisis that we are facing today is not only an economic crisis, it is clearly a health crisis. The good news is that, in a relatively short period of time, at least two manufacturers in this country--and more, I think, are coming on board--have introduced and created vaccines, which are now being distributed. That is the good news. The bad news is that we need to significantly increase the production of those vaccines. We don't have enough. Even more importantly, we have to do a heck of a lot better job in distributing those vaccines and getting those vaccines into the arms of people, and this legislation will provide billions and billions of dollars to do just that.

At a time when we are looking at the highest level of hunger in this country in decades, many billions of dollars are going to make sure that our children and our families do not go hungry. Clearly, one of the major crises facing this country is that schools in every State are either not open or they are open with irregular hours. Kids are trying to get an education online. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, but our goal is to make sure that we can reopen schools and expand after-school and childcare programs for working families and do it in a way that is safe. We want parents to feel good and know that the facilities they are sending their children to are safe, and we have a whole lot of money in this bill to do just that.

In this bill, in order to protect workers, there is a sizable sum of money to prevent the pensions of millions of workers and retirees from being slashed by 30, 40, or even 65 percent. A number of years ago, in the middle of night, in some big omnibus bill, language was put in that would destroy the promises made to millions of workers in terms of the pensions that they were guaranteed, and we rectify that in this bill.

Right now, in America, as I mentioned earlier, some 90 million of our people are either uninsured or underinsured, which speaks to the need, in my view, of major healthcare reform. My own view is that we need to put in a Medicare for All, single-payer program so that we are no spending twice as much per capita on healthcare as any other country on Earth despite so many people being uninsured or underinsured. Well, Medicare for All is not in this bill, but what is in this bill is a significant amount of money to expand healthcare, and we are still looking at the best ways to do that. One of the ways will probably be by expanding Medicaid and also investing significantly in community health centers and the National Health Service Corps. We have a crisis in terms of the number of doctors and nurses that we need, and the National Health Service Corps is a program which will forgive debt for doctors and nurses if they practice in underserved areas.

I know sometimes we get consumed by numbers. It is going to be $2.1 trillion, $1.9 trillion, $1.7 trillion. That is not the issue. The issue is whether we are prepared to address the crises facing the American people. Will this bill solve all of the problems that we face? No, it will not. Will it go a long way to addressing many of the crises and easing the anxiety of so many working families? Yes, it will, but this should not be the end of the process. As soon as we pass this, we are going to come back with another major piece of legislation, and that will deal with some of the long-term structural problems our country faces in terms of a crumbling infrastructure and in terms of the need to deal with the existential threat of climate change. We need to create millions of good-paying jobs. That is something that this Congress has got to address. Too many of our people are unemployed, and too many of our people are underemployed. This we will be dealing with in the next COVID reconciliation bill.

Now, there has been some discussion on--and the media seems fixated on--the issue of partisanship. Oh, my God. We are being so partisan here. Let me remind everybody that, under the Trump administration, massive tax breaks were passed that went to the top 1 percent and large corporations. Eighty-three percent of the benefits in the Trump tax plan went to the 1 percent and large corporations. Do you know how bipartisan that bill was that passed in reconciliation? There was not one Democrat who voted for that bill. It was voted just with Republican votes.

Then, outrageously, as part of the reconciliation, the Republicans came forward and said: Hey, we think it is a brilliant idea to repeal the Affordable Care Act and throw up to 32 million people off the healthcare that they have. I don't know what people are thinking about when they propose to throw tens of millions of people off the healthcare that they have, but that was their idea to repeal the Affordable Care Act. By one vote by the late John McCain, that did not happen, but not one Democrat voted for that bill.

My point is that it is one thing for my Republican friends here to be talking about the need for bipartisanship, which all of us support, but the reality is they used exactly the same process to pass or at least try to pass major, major pieces of legislation.

So all that I want to say is that we are living in an unprecedented moment in American history. Again, it is quite likely that this Congress today and President Biden are facing more serious crises than any President--certainly, since FDR and maybe going back to Abraham Lincoln--has faced. We have a healthcare crisis. We have a pandemic. We have an economic meltdown. We have an education crisis. We have an infrastructure crisis. We have a criminal justice crisis. We have an immigration crisis. You name it, we got it. Either we are going to have the courage to address those problems or we are not, and I think now is the time to do it. We certainly look forward to the support from our Republican colleagues, but what is most important is that, at a time of massive pain and anxiety, this Congress acts boldly on behalf of working families.

For too long, we have seen the Congress give tax breaks to billionaires. We have seen lobbyists work to get hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate welfare for people who don't need it. We have seen a tax system in which major corporations like Amazon--maybe the most profitable corporation in America or one of the most profitable corporations and owned by the wealthiest guy in America--pay zero in Federal taxes, and, right now, the very rich have an effective tax rate which is lower than that of working families.

So I know it may sound like a radical idea, but the time is now for the U.S. Congress to begin to represent the vast majority of the people--the working class of this country, the middle class of this country, and lower income people--who are struggling. Let us work together. Let us crush this terrible pandemic. Let us get our kids back to school. Let us reopen our economy. Let us create a government that works for all of us and not just the very few.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, it is wonderful to see you in the Chair.

Mr. President, one thing you can say about Americans, we know how to meet the moment.

When the world was upended by a Great Depression and a quarter of our people were out of work, we took bold action. A brandnew President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and large majorities in Congress ushered in a New Deal that put folks back to work, stabilized our economy, and invested in America's future.

When freedom abroad was threatened by fascism, we again took bold action as a country. We used American ingenuity to build an arsenal of democracy, which, by the middle of 1944, was churning out B-24 bombers every 60 minutes at Ford's Willow Run plant in Michigan.

Now is the time again to take bold action on behalf of the American people. We are now a year into a pandemic that has claimed the lives of nearly 450,000 Americans--450,000 Americans--parents and grandparents and friends and neighbors and cousins and coworkers and community leaders. Almost 15,000 lives have already been lost in Michigan--dear souls lost to us.

And it is not just lives that have been lost. Businesses have closed, workers have been laid off, folks have been without paychecks for months and months.

Parents are struggling to keep food on the table and the heat on while troubleshooting the spotty internet their children depend on to keep their classes going on Zoom.

And grandmas and grandpas are missing out on seeing their families grow up. Babies born last March are already learning to walk and talk, and too many have not had a chance to be with them in person.

Americans know how to meet the moment, and it is time for us to do it again. It is time to pass a rescue plan bold enough to stamp out this pandemic, get families the immediate help they need to weather the economic crisis, and get our children safely back in school.

That is just what our American Rescue Plan will do, and we need to get it done as soon as possible. American families have waited long enough.

There are a lot of good things happening right now. A home COVID-19 test was just approved. Soon we will have three effective vaccines available. We know that we can't get back to normal, though, or revive our battered economy unless we get vaccine off shelves and into American arms.

That is why our plan will increase the number of people being vaccinated, boost our testing capacity, and ensure that our healthcare professionals and other frontline workers have adequate protective equipment.

The plan will also provide additional funding for rural health infrastructure through the agriculture portion of our bill, which I am so pleased to lead.

Our rural hospitals are struggling to survive right now like places where I grew up in Northern Michigan. This funding will help them keep their doors open, purchase necessary supplies, vaccinate more people, and treat more patients via telehealth, which has become so important.

In the meantime, we know that American families need help to survive during this pandemic. They need help. They need to know we have got their backs. They have got to know that, in all of this, somebody has got their back.

The American Rescue Plan will give working families direct checks, extend crucial unemployment programs, boost the child tax credit and earned-income tax credit, which will lift half of American children out of poverty this year.

Can you imagine? We have an opportunity here in Congress, working with our wonderful new President and Vice President, to pass a policy that will lift half the children in poverty out of poverty--not 10 years from now, not 5 years from now--this year. What an exciting prospect. And we need to get it done.

This means struggling families will, with all of this help, be able to cover the rent or the mortgage, pay their bills, keep food on the table. And keeping food on the table is especially crucial in a time when so many of our neighbors are going hungry.

In fact, we know that 50 million Americans across the country--moms and dads and children--right now are facing hunger every day. We are better than this as a country.

We have all heard stories about seniors waiting hours in lines for a box of food or parents skipping meals so their children can have a little more to eat.

The agriculture and nutrition funding in this American Rescue Plan will tackle hunger head-on by extending pandemic EBT for the duration of the pandemic. What does that mean? This is about children. This is about feeding children--children who otherwise may get fed at school but aren' able to do that to be able to have the resources they need from moms and dads to feed them while they are not in school, as well as in the summer.

It will also provide more fruits and vegetables for moms and babies and make sure that families who are eligible for help are getting it. People who need help in this country need to get that help. They need to know we have their back.

We know that two-thirds of SNAP benefits--the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program--two-thirds of it goes to families with children. By extending the bump-up in SNAP funding through the end of September, we can make sure families aren't running out of food and going hungry at the end of the month.

That is especially important for children because it is hard to learn--it is hard to learn how to read and write, and it is hard to focus when your stomach is rumbling, when you have got a headache because you haven't eaten. Our children need to be fed, and they need to be back in class as well.

We can't get our economy moving again if parents can't return to work, and parents can't return to work if they are worried that their children aren't safe at school or one of the parents or the only parent has to be home with the children. What do they do?

So all of this fits together, and this American Rescue Plan will provide the support needed to safely reopen the majority of K-12 schools within President Biden's first 100 days.

How important is that? What a great goal for us to have, and we can do that.

We are just days away from working together and being able to get that done, and it will serve all students, no matter how, no matter where they learn.

And for our farmers, speaking as the incoming chair of the Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee, our farmers who have been directly affected by the ups and downs of the pandemic, the plan addresses the break in the food supply chain, and it enables us to buy and donate their products to food banks.

You know, we had so many selling to restaurants and big enterprises, the food supply chain stopped. They have excess food. I know dairy farmers in Michigan; it breaks their hearts to think of the idea of dumping milk when we need that.

So the efforts that are in this bill will help them be able to move from a bulk supply chain to be able to get gallon jugs, put the milk into the hands of families, and stop the wasting of precious, valuable food that our families need. This is going to help farmers' bottom lines, and it feeds families in need.

Our agriculture provisions also provide critical funding for PPE for farmworkers and workers who labor every day in food processing plants so we have the food that we need--protective equipment that they need and that they deserve.

The plan also targets help for farmers of color who have been hit especially hard by the pandemic, on top of the historical challenges and discrimination they have faced in accessing land and capital. The plan provides critical debt relief to help them weather the storm and keep their operations going until the next growing season.

Vaccinating Americans, providing economic help for families, getting our children back to school safely, those are the three main goals of this plan.

All of these goals have one thing in common: It is about investing in people. It is about putting people first--the American people first. Over our Nation's history, the policies that have truly been lifting people out of poverty and moved them forward have invested in people, from our land grant universities to social security and Medicare and Medicaid, to the Civil Rights Act, to the Children's Health Insurance Program, to increasing the minimum wage. And these are all policies, I am proud to say, created and supported by Democrats.

Investing in our people helps American families, and it helps our economy too. We have seen these Democratic policies create more jobs when you look at the numbers. When we look at the numbers, under which policies and which Presidents have we seen more good-paying jobs? And over and over again it is Democratic Presidents because of the way that we invest. It is what we do, how we invest, to create opportunity to give everybody a fair shot to succeed, to invest in people and opportunity. Those things have created better economies and more jobs.

So, broadly, we are committed to making sure everyone shares in the prosperity of our country, and these policies create the conditions necessary to help people dream big dreams and actually achieve them.

It is a new year. It is a new Congress. It is time to act. It is time to end this pandemic, give families the economic support they need, and get our children safely back to school. This is the moment. This is the moment we need to think big. We need to be bold. We need to lean in on policies that we know work--because they have worked before.

Americans know how to meet the moment, and our moment is now.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I am here today to speak in favor of the underlying resolution and urge my colleagues to support it. I will be very brief.

I would like to tackle three topics, amongst many, in this package. I would like to talk a bit about the crisis that stands ahead of us with respect to summer learning and summer programming for kids all across this country. I would like to talk a little bit about the importance of expediting the pace of vaccinations and then, lastly, about the global fight that lies ahead of us to make sure that we are building a pandemic response infrastructure around the world that makes sure this never, ever happens again.

Before delving into those three topics, let me just say that we have an opportunity to pass programming to meet this moment that is wildly popular. There was a poll out yesterday that suggests that many of the most important programming in this package enjoy 70 percent support amongst the public. The relief checks, which will total $2,000--$600 from last year, $1,400 in this package--have 74 percent support among the American public. Only 13 percent of Americans oppose those checks. Increased Federal funding for vaccinations--69 percent favor that increased funding; 17 percent oppose it. Those are difficult numbers to get on any major area of policy in the United States today. To have 74 percent in favor of anything is pretty impressive.

But it speaks to the moment. It speaks to the expectations that Americans have. But it also speaks to the

fact that there is unity in the American public about what we need to do.

President Biden rightly talked about unifying the country around an agenda to build back this country better, and these polling numbers show that he has done that because you don't get to 74 percent support for an initiative without a whole bunch of Democrats, Independents, and Republicans supporting that measure.

So we hope--we want to get to a place where we have bipartisan support in the Senate, but we know we have bipartisan support for this agenda out in the American public. These polling numbers and polling numbers to come will prove that. The reason is that the crises we are trying to address don't really care what your politics are.

Let me talk about these three distinct areas.

First, I want to talk about what is happening in our schools. Others have done that in a far more articulate way, so I want to drill down specifically on what is going to happen this summer.

Schools are in crisis right now. I know that because I have two kids in public school--in a big, urban public school. They haven't been back in the classroom at all. They have continued to learn from home the entire time. But they have all the support that they need around them-- two loving parents who are willing and able to help in any way that we can. Not every child has that. So schools have been scrambling just to make sure that they are doing instruction right, that they are opening schools safely, that they are building support systems around students.

But come this summer, you are going to have all sorts of kids who aren't going to have programming ready for them, aren't going to have a safe place to go, and are going to have tremendous amounts of learning loss.

You are also going to have kids who are in need of a really healthy, safe place to be this summer. Some kids will need deep academic experience, but others kids are just going to need some emotional growth, are going to need something fun to do so that they have the ability to restart and be ready to reenter what will, hopefully, be a much more normal-looking classroom.

In this bill is over $100 billion for schools, to support the safe reopening of schools. And what we do in this plan that the President is proposing to us is to allow for some of that money to be used for summer programming.

I am going to make a pitch to have a set-aside, a portion of money dedicated to summer programming. But what we all agree on--those of us who support this package--is that the challenge ahead of us is not just how we keep schools open and open those that have had their doors closed, but what we do to support kids for 12 months of the year, not just 9 months of the year.

This is going to be a tough summer for a lot of kids, and we have to have a specific focus--as this plan does--on meaningful summer programming for kids--programming that is emotionally healthy, that addresses some of this learning loss.

In a typical year, middle-class kids--kids with families that have some means--are five times as likely as those living in poverty to attend a summer camp, twice as likely to visit a museum or go to a performance. We can't allow for that disparity to be present this summer, not this summer. We have to have funding in this bill. We have to pass funding through Congress to make sure that every kid in thi country, especially kids coming from limited-means backgrounds, can get into quality summer programming. This summer we have to make that promise to them.

Second, let me talk about vaccines. I know my colleague from Connecticut is going to talk about this as well.

We did well this past week. There were 1.36 million doses administered. I say ``well'' because that is 20 percent more than we did the following week, but it is not good enough.

In this plan from President Biden is $10 billion to operationalize the Defense Production Act. Senator Baldwin and I have been working on this issue for the better part of a year. If you want to produce more vaccine, if you want to produce more testing equipment, more PPE, then you have to organize America's industrial base better than what was happening under the Trump administration. You have to go out and find every potential manufacturing partner who can help Pfizer and Moderna and Johnson & Johnson and any vaccine maker that comes after them be able to make more and make it faster.

We are standing up capacity in Connecticut. We are doing well--No. 3 nationally in terms of the percentage of shots that we get into people's arms--but we can do a lot more. We just need that production to be ramped up. In this bill is specific money to operationalize the Defense Production Act so that we can make more vaccines. That is one of the most important parts of this bill.

Finally, I wanted to talk about the global challenge that we have ahead of us. This virus didn't start in the United States. But, man, it moved quick--from a wet market in China to the west coast of the United States to today, with 400,000 lives having been lost. And the question is: Why? Why was this virus able to move so quickly? Why weren't we able to contain it? Why didn't we learn more about it earlier? Why wasn't the world ready for this moment?

Now, China has a lot to answer for. But, frankly, the whole world has to understand that we didn't allocate resources properly. The United States didn't allocate resources properly. We spent, last year, $740 billion on hardware for the Department of Defense and $12 billion on global public health. Nobody today, living in the United States, would tell you that that was the correct allocation. So inside President Biden's package is funding to start to rebuild the global pandemic prevention infrastructure.

I won't go into the details of how we do that today, but there are estimates suggesting that we are going to need over $20 billion globally in order to stand up greater capacities. That means more resources at a reformed WHO. That means more U.S. diplomats who are working in the public health space. That means doing partnerships with developing nations in which we put some money on the table in exchange for public health reform so that they can strengthen their own systems of pandemic detection and prevention.

But even if you drive this thing down in the United States, so long as there are outbreaks that exist on the other side of the world, we are still at risk. And there may come along a virus down the road that is even more contagious, that spreads even faster than this one, so shame on us if we don't, at the same time, lock down this virus domestically and set up a system of defense internationally to make sure that we are ready for the next one.

We can walk and chew gum at the same time. And President Biden's focus on rebuilding our alliances comes at the right time because we are not going to be able to do this by ourselves.

We have to meet the moment. We can't go small right now. The problems are too big.

Senator Blumenthal and I have spent lots of time at food banks in Connecticut. We have never, ever seen the desperate need that exists today in our State. Shame on us if we don't use the power that has been granted us to both take on this virus and deliver economic prosperity to people who have had it robbed from them through no fault of their own.

I urge my colleagues' support for the budget resolution.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, reserving the right to object, this measure, essentially, is a pretextual, ideological, and extreme step that really detracts from what should be our primary purpose at this moment in our history.

Literally, we are fast approaching 450,000 deaths in this country, and people continue to die at the rate of more than 3,000 per day. Our economic progress continues to be stalled. In fact, it is declining, with joblessness increasing across Connecticut and the country. People are struggling to stay in their homes, put food on their tables, and pay for the medicine they need. Our goal should be making sure people have vaccines and the economic support that they need. Instead, we are here on a measure that would, essentially, take away rights, burden rights, for people--women--who need that right.

We ought to be focusing our energy and attention on winning our fight against this pandemic, but, instead, we are here, debating a pretextual and ideological bill, another anti-choice bill--yet another attempt to restrict a woman's right to choose about when and whether to have a child. This bill purports to be about protecting individuals with Down syndrome, but it is merely a pretext for requiring healthcare providers to scrutinize women for their decisions to seek an abortion. The pretext is to take away those individual rights.

As a matter of fact, this bill has nothing to do with protecting people with Down syndrome, and it has nothing to do with addressing discrimination. If my colleague would like to genuinely help people with Down syndrome, he would ask for unanimous consent on legislation that the disability community actually has supported. The National Down Syndrome Society wants increased funding for medical research at the National Institutes of Health. It wants better educational opportunities and settings for people with Down syndrome. It wants laws and policies that ensure economic self-sufficiency and better workplaces and a fight against discrimination.

Those are the legislative priorities of this disability community, but what this bill actually does is it essentially requires healthcare providers to interrogate women about their decisions to seek an abortion. Healthcare providers who might violate this bill, if it ever became law, would incur fines, imprisonment, or both.

In conclusion, people have a right to make these kinds of deeply personal decisions. Those rights are protected under our Constitution. We should be protecting people with Down syndrome, and we should be expanding their opportunities and fighting discrimination, not using them as a pretext for restricting and burdening a woman's right to choose.

Therefore, I object.

Mr. President, I am really pleased to follow my colleague Senator Murphy after that very articulate case and to build on the case for keeping our promises to America. The Presiding Officer knows that promises made must be kept, including another $1,400 in stimulus payments to every individual, bringing that total to $2,000, which is what we promised; to make sure that vaccines are available broadly across this country and that schools become places of learning again, in person for students and teachers in a safe learning environment.

What we are doing in this package, which is big and bold--and it has to be--is to put money in people's pockets, put vaccinations in people's arms, and put children back in schools safely. And I emphasize ``safely.''

Now, I was very excited over this past week or 10 days to travel throughout the State of Connecticut and visit clinics where vaccinations are being

provided to thousands of people in Connecticut, raising our rate to one of the highest in the country--about 10.3 percent.

I saw nurses and doctors at Danbury Hospital, led by John Murphy, making promises real for people.

I visited Rentschler Field, a former runway turned into a vaccination site for people receiving those shots in their arms from the Community Health Center, headed by Mark Masselli.

I saw vaccinations at Griffin Hospital, a wonderful team headed by Pat Charmel. But here is the story at Griffin Hospital. Last week they did 6,000 doses. This week it will be 2,000, not because of any lack of skilled vaccination person power, not because of any lack of determination--because of lack of vaccine.

Shortages in Connecticut and around the country are impeding and setting back our effort. They are lengthening the tunnel. There is light at the end of the tunnel, but it is longer as we delay the vaccine that is necessary to do the job.

There is not enough. It is not reaching the people who need it in enough supply, and it is not being delivered equitably. The numbers in Connecticut show that people in communities of color are nowhere near as likely to receive that vaccine--in fact, perhaps three times less likely.

We need to make sure that delivery is fair and effective in this country, or we will never conquer this pandemic and put America back to work. Using the national Defense Production Act is absolutely necessary, but so is the commitment of $160 billion in this big and bold relief program.

It has to be big and bold. It also has to be done now. Time is not on our side. I have no tolerance for delay or dithering. I have no patience for cuts in this package; $1.9 trillion ought to be our floor, not our ceiling. And if there is a need for targeting those stimulus payments, the money ought to be reallocated to vaccines and to creating safer environments to work and to learn.

Vaccines are important to our schools. Teachers are essential workers. They are on the frontlines. They are putting their lives at risk. They have been demonstrating the courage and conviction to come to school, but they should receive this vaccine.

A safe learning environment means also personal protective equipment, barriers such as we are seeing in restaurants and other public places-- plexiglass and other kinds of dividers. These kinds of essential equipment are the reason that we are advocating $130 billion for our schools.

There are many other steps that must be taken to ensure not only that our learning environments are safe but also that students have the connectivity they need remotely because for some period of time, that will be the way they learn.

More than a third of communities of color in the State of Connecticut, which is thought to be a very sophisticated and advanced State, still lack that connectivity--a third of our seniors. Safe and fair learning environments mean broadband, and that is also another reason for that $130 billion in this package.

Many of these students face serious gaps--1 to 3 months and even longer for some students who have lacked that connectivity--up to 6 months in basic skills: reading, writing, and arithmetic. These kinds of gaps have to be filled.

We need a major effort to focus on our students who have been left behind, and that is why this kind of package is a moral imperative. It is a social obligation. We will lose talents and skills, but students will also lose their future.

We should come together on a bipartisan basis. There is nothing wrong with cooperation, and I hope that my colleagues across the aisle will join with us as we move forward, but we will move forward. We cannot repeat the mistakes of the past when efforts to wait meant unconscionable delay. We have no such luxury in this humanitarian crisis. We must move forward, and we will.

I yield the floor to my colleague from Nevada.

Thank you. The actions of my Democratic colleagues this week make it clear that they do not have any intention of working with Republicans on a bipartisan COVID package. There is no other explanation for the budget resolution that was introduced this week.

We are not considering this budget resolution for the usual purpose of establishing overall spending and revenue levels for the fiscal year. That has already been done. The sole purpose, then, of this budget is to establish reconciliation instructions whereby the majority can pass a partisan COVID package on a party-line vote, quite contrary to the inaugural address of President Biden where he said he was going to be reaching out to Republicans.

I know there has been some discussion with Republicans but not a serious effort to compromise. Embarking down this inherently partisan path of going the budgetary reconciliation route now poisons the well for any fruitful bipartisan negotiation. And you can't say it too many times that it is completely at odds with President Biden's call for unity and bipartisanship during the campaign and told to the people of the United States in the inaugural address.

It doesn't have to be this way. My Republican colleagues and I stand ready to engage in bipartisan discussions to reach an agreement to provide targeted COVID relief. A consensus package could be done very quickly, just as happened with the bipartisan CARES package back in March of last year. The relief package Congress passed in December came together very quickly once both sides agreed to set aside partisan poison pills. Republicans did that for things we wanted, and Democrats did that for things they wanted.

Now, hardly 6 weeks later, here we are back on a partisan approach to helping the needy people because of the pandemic and helping the healthcare crisis because of the pandemic. In the past year or so, we have done a lot. We have been able to come together in a bipartisan way to pass around $4 trillion in COVID-focused relief, and we did that all--you can't say it too many times--with strong bipartisan support. Why not now? There is no reason we can't come together for the American people and do it once more and probably have to do it again after something would be passed the early part of this year.

Instead of wasting our time with a weeklong partisan exercise, we could be working together today to forge a bipartisan compromise. If this was the course that the majority were to take, I think there is much that we could agree to with near universal support and do it in short order. Everyone recognizes we need to get control of the virus as a first priority. That is necessary to save lives and get back to anything close to resembling a normally functioning economy.

Rapid deployment of the vaccine is our best hope for our getting there to

get the economy functioning. I doubt a single Member of this Senate body would object to additional funds for vaccine distribution if it will get more people vaccinated sooner. I am also confident that many on my side could agree to additional relief for individuals and small businesses that have been hardest hit by the pandemic. I am sure of that because we have done it twice in the past. We can have a discussion on unemployment assistance, rental assistance, funds for reopening schools, and additional grants to small businesses to help them keep the lights on. I can say that very positively because we have done it twice in the past.

But any relief, from our point of view, ought to be targeted and focused on the task at hand. At $1.9 trillion, the President's proposal is far from being targeted and far from being focused. It includes permanent, liberal, structural economic reforms. This is using a crisis to enact long-term Democratic policy priorities rather than addressing the immediate needs of the day.

It also includes a bailout of fiscally irresponsible States at the expense of States that have managed their budgets very wisely, like my home State of Iowa. This is fundamentally unfair to the taxpayers in responsibly governed States.

The President putting forward his proposal should have marked the beginning of the discussion, not the end. If my Democratic colleagues would abandon this partisan exercise, bipartisan discussions could start in earnest. In fact, 10 Republicans made an attempt to do that by spending 2 hours with President Biden at the Oval Office. They reached out, obviously, and President Biden listened and discussed in good faith, but it doesn't seem like anything can come of it. This may mean that you have to compromise on some priorities. That is a simple part of life here in the U.S. Senate if you want to get anything done.

The excuse that there isn't enough time or the need for relief is so urgent that bipartisanship must go out the window is just that--nothing but a simple excuse. By following the current path, this entire week is being wasted on partisan theater, with no tangible benefit for the American people. At the end of this week, the Senate will be no closer to drafting actual relief legislation.

We should instead be working together to iron out our differences, to get bipartisan relief to the American people, and that can be done sooner than using the reconciliation process that turns out to be a partisan approach that is needless to do based on the fact that twice in the last 11 months, we have passed bipartisan virus relief packages to help fight the pandemic, to help people who are hurt by the economic consequences of that pandemic, and also to give confidence to the American people. Let's move in a bipartisan way.

I yield the floor.