{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ID=F00C6AD6-8591-47DD-B6E3-C53B74363344", "McConnell: Democrats Have Little to Show for 11 Months Running Pandemic Response", "2021-12-22", "2021", "2021-12", "Republican", "Senate", "KY", "Mitch McConnell", "M000355", "www.mcconnell.senate.gov", "mcconnell", "https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases", "scraper", "LOUISVILLE, KY \u2013 U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) released the following statement today regarding the Biden Administration and COVID-19:\n\n\u201cEvery American is rooting for our country in the continued fight against COVID-19. But 11 months into the Biden Administration, we need an honest accounting.\n\n\u201cIn 2020, then-candidate Biden promised he would \u2018shut down the virus.\u2019 Now new cases in our major cities are breaking records. When the virus had killed 220,000 Americans, then-candidate Biden said \u2018anyone who\u2019s responsible for that many deaths should not remain as President of the United States.\u2019 Now we have lost 800,000 and counting.\n\n\u201cLast week, Vice President Harris said their Administration was surprised and caught off guard by new variants such as delta and omicron. But new variants were public knowledge before this Administration took office.\n\n\u201cDemocrats\u2019 springtime \u2018rescue plan\u2019 spent just 9% on the health fight and 91% on other issues. The Biden Administration has also taken hundreds of millions of dollars from COVID testing and the Strategic National Stockpile and diverted it to their border crisis.\n\n\u201cAs a result, eleven months into this Administration, we are still woefully short on rapid and affordable testing. Americans seeking tests before the holidays are facing massive lines and empty shelves.\n\n\u201cEleven months in, we are still short on important treatments such as monoclonal antibodies.\n\n\u201cEleven months in, a promising new antiviral pill was only belatedly approved today by the FDA and the Biden Administration preordered too little, too late.\n\n\u201cEleven months in, with a predictable seasonal surge threatening hospitals, the Administration has inexplicably only just begun releasing funding that Congress set aside for health providers.\n\n\u201cMonths ago, Senate Republicans wrote the Biden Administration asking why they were limiting important treatments and if they had any plans to guard against future variants. They never responded.\n\n\u201cWashington Democrats spent 2021 chasing unrelated far-left ambitions and largely sleepwalking through the pandemic.\n\n\u201cA million Americans per day were getting vaccinated before President Biden took office. What new tools have Democrats added to the fantastic vaccines they inherited? Where is their sequel to Operation Warp Speed? What do they have to show for 11 months?\n\n\u201cI continue to urge everyone to take advantage of the safe and effective vaccines which the Biden Administration inherited. They offer fantastic protection against hospitalization and death.\n\n\u201cAt the same time, it is clear that vaccines will not completely halt transmission or new variants.\n\n\u201cThis makes it even more unacceptable that the Biden Administration is only producing illegal mandates and angry, confrontational speeches about vaccines. This Administration\u2019s careless and confusing rhetoric has stoked an avoidable culture war around these lifesaving tools which they inherited.\n\n\u201cThe coronavirus will not simply disappear. Angry speeches about vaccines are not a strategy.\n\n\u201cDemocrats must quit the distractions, get focused, and move toward a future where the coronavirus is not a perpetual crisis, but a fact of life that we manage and mitigate. More and cheaper tests. More and better treatments. More vaccinations, but with unity, not bitter rhetoric. No more lockdowns. And no more Big Labor veto over children\u2019s in-person educations.\u201d", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T20:37:48Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ID=F00C6AD6-8591-47DD-B6E3-C53B74363344"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.7817130535840988, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}