releases: https://www.portman.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/senate-floor-portman-calls-senate-pass-critical-legislation-respond
Data license: MIT · Data source: dwillis/congress-press
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| https://www.portman.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/senate-floor-portman-calls-senate-pass-critical-legislation-respond | On Senate Floor, Portman Calls on Senate to Pass Critical Legislation to Respond to Challenges of COVID-19 | 2020-12-17 | 2020 | 2020-12 | Republican | Senate | OH | Rob Portman | P000449 | www.portman.senate.gov | legacy | On Senate Floor, Portman Calls on Senate to Pass Critical Legislation to Respond to Challenges of COVID-19 December 17, 2020 | Press Releases WASHINGTON, DC Today on the Senate floor, U.S. Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) gave his 21st speech since March calling on Congress to pass legislation to respond to the health care and economic crises caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Earlier this week, Portman joined a group of bipartisan senators in introducing two bipartisan packages to provide as much as $908 billion in relief to American students, families, businesses, workers, and health care providers during the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. Congressional leadership is using most of the legislation for the basis of the final product they will unveil to create a bridge of support between now and when the COVID-19 vaccine is widely available. In addition, Portman pushed for the year-end agreement to include the Craft Beverage Modernization & Tax Reform Act, bipartisan legislation he has championed and cosponsored to make tax relief permanent for the craft beverage industry. Portman has consistently discussed the importance of supporting America's craft beverage industry, especially since brew pubs and other craft beverage retail operations have been hit hard by the COVID-19 economic slowdown. He urged his colleagues to support both the COVID-19 relief package and the upcoming end-of-year funding agreement so that Americans get the relief they need in time for the holidays. A transcript of his remarks can be found below and a video can be found here. Mr. President, I'm here on the floor today to talk again about the need for us to pass a legislative package which, I would call an emergency package, to deal with our COVID-19 crisis we have in this country. As we talk today on the floor of the Senate, there are negotiators working busily in a room nearby to try to come up with that package, and that's a good thing. I know they've run into some roadblocks, at least so I've been told. We need to work through those roadblocks. They're relatively small compared to the importance of the overall mission of helping the people we represent, helping those small businesses, helping those hospitals, helping those families who find themselves without a paycheck through no fault of their own, and my hope is that we can get there. The legislation that is being looked at today, which may be part of a larger package that we'll vote on either tomorrow or the next day, is, as I understand it, informed by work that a bipartisan group of us did over the past several weeks, and I appreciate my colleagues so much. I see Senator Murkowski is here on the floor today. She was one of those people. Senator Manchin was one of the people who helped organize it. In fact, I think the first meeting was because Lisa Murkowski invited people to have pizza at her place. And that resulted in a very positive interaction between Democrats and Republicans on a lot of detail, a lot of specific issues to be able to put together a package that will help our country right now to work through this crisis. I wish I could say that things are better, but when I look at my own home state of Ohio, I see just the opposite. In fact, over the past few weeks, we've had weekly cases that have increased, not decreased. Our number of daily cases is averaging around 10,000 a day now, every day. That's double what it was just a month ago. So at least in my state, the coronavirus crisis has increased, not decreased. By the same token, the economic crisis that is a result of the COVID-19 crisis has continued to grow. So we have seen people who have lost their jobs because their restaurant doesn't have any business, not because there is a government edict, although there are in some states. Some states have said you have to shut down. Some states have gone so far as to say you have to shut down outdoor dining, not just indoor dining -- of course those people have lost their jobs. But in many cases it is just because the virus is so prevalent, people aren't going out, they aren't going shopping, they aren't going to the movie theaters, they aren't going to the bowling alley, they aren't going to the restaurant and they aren't going to the hotels. So folks are losing their jobs. Again, not because of something they did or something they could control. It's almost like a natural disaster, and, therefore, they need some help and need it now. We really have kind of a k-shaped recovery here. People talk about a v-shaped recovery where you have a recession and then you come right back out the same way you went in. I wish that were the case here. Instead it's kind of k-shaped. We do have some industries that are doing quite well actually, and some areas of the country that are doing okay. That's the top of the K. But the bottom of the K is those who are not. So, if you are in the hospitality business, the travel business, if you are someone who has a job that is no longer there because of this crisis, then you're in trouble. You're in trouble. I am told that I've now given 20 floor speeches on the need for us to do something. I think it ought to be targeted. I think it ought to be focused. What I have said is that we have got this wonderful new vaccine coming out. Moderna is about to be approved, I believe. Pfizer was just approved. I'm in the trial for the Jannsen-J & J, Johnson & Johnson vaccine, actually. And I think that's coming along well. We'll probably have AstraZeneca coming soon. So this is something that is very positive about this crisis. We actually finally have something that will help us turn the corner. I think it is important that we wear our masks. I think it's important that we social distance. I think it's important that we use the hand sanitizer, all of that, we need to keep doing it. But the difference between that and the vaccine is that the vaccine gives you the immunity we're all seeking. People talk about herd immunity and that that could come early on, people said, by so many people getting infected. We can't have that happen. Why? Because that will lead to a lot of pain, a lot more deaths. 300,000 people have already died in this country from this crisis. We don't want to bring herd immunity in that way. We want to bring herd immunity from the vaccine. And by the way, these vaccines are safe. They're effective. I mean, if you look at the numbers, 95 percent efficacy? Unbelievable. So do your own research and look at it and make your own decision. But this is not a situation where, as with the flu, actually, when you take the flu shot, I'm told only about a third of the time does it work. About two-thirds of the time it doesn't. And that's happened to my family members, probably to you or your family members where you take a flu shot and it doesn't really help. But here, 90-95 percent, 98 percent, the numbers are amazing, take a look at them. Efficacy, meaning that's how effective they are. Again, in the trial that I'm in, the initial numbers are quite positive. Also, it was done in a way that I think makes a lot of sense for the future in terms of public-private partnership. The government basically said to these companies, we'll provide a market for you if you get busy producing this lifesaving vaccine. And by the way, you can go ahead and start producing the vaccine even before it is approved so we don't have to wait four or five months after the approval to then get the production up and going. And if you don't get the approval, we're going to throw away the vaccine.' It was worth doing. It was probably the best expenditure of federal money we had here in the last package, the CARES package, because it ensured that we not only would get these vaccines quickly but we would get them distributed quickly. So as an example, even while the vaccines were being approved recently and these were the Pfizer vaccines, those vaccines were already on their way to my home state of Ohio. They were prepositioned there, and when the approval came, we could move quickly and people are being vaccinated today in my state and in your state -- primarily people who are on the front lines as health care providers. Next we're helping with regard to the nursing homes, people who come in and out of the nursing homes, which is where obviously most of this disease happens. Then the people in the nursing homes. Then our EMS and our other first responders, people who have health problems, preexisting conditions that make them more vulnerable to the virus, seniors. So this is really exciting and this is the answer. This is what's going to help us turn the tide. But that's going to be a ways off until that's widely available. So what I think in terms of this package, again, I think of it as a bridge. It's an emergency package to get us from where we are now to this period, probably in the March, April, May time period when the vaccine will be widely available and we'll be able to have that kind of herd immunity that we talked about earlier. We don't want community spread, we want community immunity. And that's the idea. The package that the bipartisan group put together was $908 billion. Six of the ten of us voted for that. All of us voted for a smaller package, which was $748 billion. It's important to note that of that $908 billion or $748 billion, we also repurposed a lot of money that's already been spent. So roughly $600 billion was pulled back from the PPP program that had not been spent yet and also from a program that the Treasury and the Fed had to provide loans that were not being used. That's the 13-3 program that you might have heard about. That program, fortunately, was not tapped into because the commercial banks stepped in and provided a lot of that lending that was necessary. Rates are at historic lows right now for mortgages, as an example and other loans, so they didn't need to step in. That money is being repurposed. So instead of $748 billion, it's more like $148 billion. Instead of $908 billion, if you went for the whole thing, it is more like $300 billion. So not that that's not a lot of money -- it is. But compare that to what was being talked about only a couple weeks ago and for the previous nine months, by the way, which was a package in the House of Representatives called the HEROES Act which was trillions of dollars -- $3.5 trillion initially. Then they agreed maybe $2.4 trillion. Then the last offer that was on the table that they didn't take was $1.8 trillion. We're not talking about those kind of numbers now. We're talking about a bridge on an emergency basis that's targeted and focused. And I'll give you an example of that. In this package, the bipartisan package which I hope is picked up, and I think it will be, by the package that the final negotiators are working on -- that would be Secretary Mnuchin, who has been very eager to get an agreement that helps the American people working for the president, but also the leadership here, the Democratic Leader, the Republican Leader, in the House, the Democratic Leader and Speaker, and the Republican Leader, that's the group right now -- What they're saying is, we want to get a package done' and I think, as an example, with the PPP program they'll end up picking up what this bipartisan group agreed to, which is to have a more narrow Paycheck Protection Program, PPP to help small businesses but to particularly focus on those businesses that are small businesses -- instead of under 500 people as an example, maybe under 300 --and those that are really hurting. In other words, those who are losing money relative to where they were last year. So when you do a quarter-to-quarter comparison -- fourth quarter this year, fourth quarter back in 2019, if you have a loss, let's say of 25 percent or 30 percent, that's significant. With the funding that we have, isn't it better to target that funding towards those small businesses that are really hurting? That I think will be in the final package. And again, I commend my bipartisan colleagues for coming up with some of these ideas and working out some of this stuff because there's some differences. And by the way, no one of the ten of us involved in this agreed with every part of this package. Trust me. There's a lot of things we would have done differently. I would have written a different package, as would have any of my colleagues. But it was necessary to get to yes', to get to a result. And we've done that. And I think, again, it will inform where we end up in terms of the package coming to the floor and the Paycheck Protection Program is a good example of that. We also provided in that program loan forgiveness for small loans, $150,000 or less, in a very simplified manner so you don't have to go through all the bureaucracy and the cost and the loops and hoops which small businesses just can't afford to do. I am proud of our work there as well. We also provided help for some of the hardest hit industries, including the airline industry. We want to keep a viable airline industry in this country. We don't want them to go bankrupt and planes to stop flying. We actually want over this bridge period between now and I mentioned March, April, May, we want to be sure that the economy can get back on its feet as quickly as possible. That's why we don't want these small businesses to go out of business and their employees to be put on the unemployment lines. That's why we want to be sure that our airlines can continue. They are having a tough time, but 90,000 jobs alone in this industry will be lost, we're told, unless we do something along the lines of what we did in the bipartisan package. 90,000 additional jobs lost. We don't want that. We want to be sure we are positioned for growth. And by the way, my view, for whatever it's worth, I think this economy is incredibly resilient. I know it's not going great right now, we still have 10 million people out of work who were working as of February this year, we have 10 million people who haven't found their way back to work yet. We still have relatively high unemployment compared to where we were. In my state it's probably about double where it was. But we've been resilient given what we've been hit with. And I believe if we can get to this period of time when the vaccine is readily available, we are poised for a takeoff. I think there is pent-up demand. I think among my constituents, they're going to be happy to get out and shop again and go to the restaurants and go to the hotels and travel and go to the movie theaters, go to the stages, the places where there's a performance that has to be canceled now and where people are struggling to keep these venues open. Those will be not just reopen -- people, I think, will flock there, but we have to get through to that period. It's worth in my view helping to be sure in the interim period that we don't have more pain and more loss of jobs and are prepared to move forward. On unemployment insurance, again, if you've lost your job not because of what you did, but because of what I said earlier, almost like a natural disaster of the virus, we should provide additional help and we do that in the legislation. The day after Christmas, the current relief ends in terms of the federal help on unemployment insurance. That is not something that any of us should want to see. If you're self-employed, if you're a so-called gig economy worker, then you are able to get unemployment insurance right now if you don't have a job. If you can't work because of this virus, you can get unemployment insurance. That's not typical in my state and that's not typical in most states, but because of our federal law we passed, the CARES Act, again, nine months ago, that has been permitted, but it ends on the day after Christmas. So I have people who are self-employed coming up to me back home and saying, I've got to know. I don't know if I can pay the rent, I don't know if I can make my car payment, I need to know, I don't know if I can make my mortgage. I need to know.' Well we're going to tell them, I hope in this legislation that passes, that indeed, they're going to get the coverage and the 13 weeks of the federal extension on the state unemployment that will also be extended. So that the day after Christmas, again, people aren't falling off the cliff. And then the federal supplement per week. Originally it was $600 per week, as you know. That $600 per week, I thought was relatively high. Meaning that many people were getting more on unemployment than they were in their jobs. And that was a problem for many employers, particularly small employers who were having a tough time getting people to come back to work as the economy started to improve after the March, April, May, time period when things started to pick up a little bit, it was tough. This compromise, I think will be $300. Maybe it will be $200. I don't know what exactly they are working out, but our proposal was $300, which was a bipartisan compromise, many Democrats would like to go back to the $600, some Republicans think it should be less than $300. But this is a compromise and it's a way for us to ensure that during this time period, and this is for 16 weeks only --so between now and the end of March -- during this period, this bridge, as we talked about, if people are unemployed through no fault of their own, they should be able to get a little help to be able, again, to put food on the table, make their car payment, make their rent. So that's in this package too. There is also funding in here for rental assistance. As you know, some people have been hanging on wondering if they are going to be evicted or not. Evictions make no sense right now for the tenants or the landlords or the economy. We don't want people out on the street -- landlords don't want to go through the pain of having to go through an eviction and then trying to find somebody else if they can get some help just to hold on through this period. So there is funding in here for rental assistance to help keep people in their homes with a roof over their head as we go through this period. The final one I want to talk about, and there are a lot of other provisions in here that I don't have time to go into, but one I want to talk about is one that is kind of a heartbreaker for me. Because for many years now we have been challenged with this drug addiction issue, particularly opioids. This would be prescription drugs and heroin and fentanyl, the deadly synthetic opioid. To the point that only four years ago we had the highest rates of overdose deaths in the history of our country, 72,000 people were dying a year, and a lot of us focused on that here. Over the past four or five years this Congress has spent money and changed policies to try to make it easier for people to get treatment and to get into longer-term recovery and more money in prevention activities to keep people from getting into the funnel of addiction in the first place, because this was at epidemic levels. In 2018 and 2019, we started to see a reversal of that for the first time in really three decades, so every year for something like 30 years, in my home state of Ohio, we would see more overdose deaths every year, every year. In 2018 we had a 20-plus percent reduction in overdose deaths. It was about a 22 percent reduction in Ohio. 22 percent reduction in deaths. That's because we all focused, at the federal level, state level, local level and we made a difference and we began to change this dynamic of young people and middle-aged people and across the spectrum, regardless of your zip code you lived in, you were being affected by this, we changed it so that people were actually getting the help they needed, getting out from under their addiction, getting back to work, back to their families. It was good news. The heartbreaking part of this for me is having made that progress finally, we now see during this coronavirus pandemic an epidemic underneath it and it's the epidemic of drug addiction. So there are new numbers out today I saw that don't surprise me as much as they discourage me, which is that this year instead of 72,000 people dying of overdose deaths in America from drug abuse, and this is not just opioids, but all drugs including psychostimulants like methamphetamine, the crystal meth from Mexico is cheap, powerful, deadly, this year it is expected that our overdose death rate will be the highest ever. Again, we're getting back to where we were, plus. Probably 83,000 is the number I saw today. I remember I mentioned 72,000 people dying only four years ago, now we're back to 83,000? So this is a crisis within a pandemic, and we need to deal with it. There's lots of different opinions out there as to why this is happening. I believe strongly a lot of it is just from the isolation that comes with this pandemic. People haven't been able to go and meet with and talk to their recovery coaches which is one way we were changing this dynamic, people were able to meet with people who were recovering addicts themselves to be able to help them get through it. Longer-term recovery was working for a lot of people. And yet, some of these longer-term recovery places where people can be, a home, say a sober home, they've had issues with the pandemic and not been able to have the group homes that provide that care. Also people have not been able to just go see their doctors or their treatment providers. Telemedicine has helped, and that's one reason in our package we put more funding into telemedicine because that's the way you can get to people both with regard to behavioral health, mental health issues and with regard to addiction. But it hasn't filled the gap. Also, a lot of people are feeling a great deal of stress, and even despair and joblessness. And obviously, if you go to the foodbanks in Ohio, you see people who are in their cars waiting three, four, five, six hours at a time. There's something going on here folks. These are people who are feeling desperation to wait in line for six hours to get a box of food means that you've got a real problem in your family. By the way, some of these people because I've talked to them, I've gone to these foodbanks, some have never been in a foodbank in their lives. They've just found themselves in a tough situation. Again, not everybody. Remember the k-shaped recovery. For some people it's been fine. If you're a white-collar worker and you can telework from home. Maybe you're in the finance industry or maybe you're in the tech industry, you might be doing great. But your neighbor who's got a job at that restaurant or perhaps in another business like the travel business, the motor coach business, they don't have the opportunities to get that job and so they are the ones in the foodbank line. So by the way put more funding into the foodbanks as well and into helping people to be able to afford food is obviously a big issue right now. So the notion here is with this legislation that we're going to provide more help for people who are suffering from addiction with the thought of trying all we can to try to reverse this trend. Ultimately, again, the best way to reverse it is to have this coronavirus pandemic behind us so that people can socialize again, gather again, aren't feeling the despair, aren't isolated, and that is coming. But the bridge to there, it is important that we save as many lives as we can. So there's $5 billion in our legislation, the bipartisan bill, to do just that. My hope is, again, that will be in the final package, and I believe it will be. I believe what the negotiators are working on is very similar to what's in the legislation that we came together with as a bipartisan group. My only disappointment in the group is that we couldn't end up with this combination of state and local funding targeted towards need -- by the way, not the way it was done last time by per capita, but targeted toward need --- and also liability protection for these small businesses, for these private nursing homes, for these EMS personnel, the emergency medical people, who are concerned, they are concerned about it. What we tried to put together was a package that said, okay, if you're a bad actor, if you didn't follow the rules and the rules were pretty clear, you aren't protected, you're accountable. But if you followed the rules and you were trying your best to deal with ever-changing standards,' and let's face it, they've been quite different, in March and April people were saying, don't wear a mask, we know now that was a mistake, but at the time we didn't. The notion is to protect people from frivolous lawsuits who were doing their best. By the way, there was a survey done of people saying, do you think there should be protection for people that are doing their best versus people who are grossly negligent, that was the word used, gross negligence, would not be protected. They would be accountable. 79 percent of the American people agreed with that. There's also been polling out there with regard to the small businesses from the NFIB, saying that 70 percent of small businesses are very concerned and worried about this. So again, think about the business, revenue has crashed, profits have crashed, they are hanging on, the PPPs going to help them, because we're getting more PPP money in, that's the Paycheck Protection Program we talked about earlier. Hopefully it'll get them through this. But if they're facing a lawsuit, whether they win it or not, whether they can prove that they were doing the right thing, just the cost of that lawsuit could well mean the difference of that small business continuing in operation or not. Or a nonprofit. And the nonprofits in Ohio are very interested in the liability reforms, as is the education community, the higher education people, the school teachers. As are the people in the health care industry, across the board, in nursing homes and hospitals. My hope is that we can get back to work on that, perhaps after this legislation is passed. As we look at what we do next, let's be sure that we are providing that protection in combination with providing that help to our state and local governments who need it where they can demonstrate the need. I don't think it will be in this package, but it should be in the next package. I will say, this legislation on COVID-19 is needed and we ought to move it now. We cannot go home for the holidays without passing COVID-19 rescue legislation. Again, to me, it's a rescue package. It's not a stimulus package as much as it is getting us through this period. Providing that bridge between now and when the vaccine is readily available. This legislation is likely to be part of a broader bill that will include a number of things, including spending for the year so we don't have a government shutdown, which is a good thing not to have a government shutdown, but also it's likely that it will include some tax provisions which are so-called tax extenders. I would say one thing that I hope it includes is permanent extension of tax relief for our craft beverage industry, this would be craft breweries, craft vintners, craft distillers. We passed legislation a few years ago that was very important to them that allowed them to have a deduction in the excise tax they pay on certain volumes, relatively low volumes of their product. As a result many of these businesses have been able to expand, hire people and now they have the possibility of this expiring at the end of the year and having a big bill due that they cannot afford. We're proud in Ohio to be home of a craft beer production industry that is now number six in the country. It supports 81,000 jobs. It's a business that has been hurt for two reasons, one you think about it, the restaurants aren't doing the business they used it to do so if you're providing your product to a restaurant, you're hurt, but also a lot of these craft distillers or craft brewers or craft vintners have their own tasting rooms or their own brew pubs and those, in some cases, have been shut down altogether and in other cases their revenues have crashed. So it would not be the time for them to be facing a big tax bill. And that's what the excise tax would be. Income tax you pay later in the year, excise tax you would have to pay right away. So my hope is that that would be extended permanently. More than half of the members of this body joined me and Senator Wyden on a letter to our leadership about this urging that this extender, which has worked so well to increase jobs and opportunity to America, can continue on a permanent basis going forward. So my hope is that that's part of the package as well. That will help in terms of the economic stimulus part of this, which is also important. So I thank you for what you are doing if you are one of those people out there who is promoting the vaccines and talking about the importance of us getting the vaccine. If you're not, I hope you'll look at the research. I hope you'll look at the fact that we should be encouraging everyone to get vaccinated, unless someone has a health problem that makes it difficult for them. The polling data is not encouraging on this. The last Gallup poll shows that only 58 percent of Americans are comfortable being vaccinated. That needs to change. I've heard some people say, Well, when you look at the polling, it shows that Democrats are concerned because this happened during the Trump administration, this vaccine development.' This is not political, take the politics out of it. These are scientists that have been working around the clock over the past nine months, ten months to get us to this point. These are scientists who are now working around the clock to look carefully at these vaccines to determine whether they are approved or not. These are the scientists making the decisions, not the politicians. It's the people in the white coats. We need to trust them, for the sake of our country, because we need to reverse this terrible virus and the pandemic that is causing all of the issues that we talked about earlier today to our communities, to our families, so the way to do that is to ensure that we do in fact not just have this vaccine available but that people take advantage of it and are willing to be vaccinated. So I hope that if you're listening this evening, that you pass that word along. And that you again do your own research, look at it. But my hope is that the conclusion will be to get to the period where we want to get, which is to have people feel like they can reengage in the economy, they feel like they can be back with their loved ones and congregate, they feel like they can go back to church or their other place of worship, they feel like they can send their kids back to school, they feel like they can get back to a more normal life. That will happen through the accessibility and the ability to actually get that vaccine. So my hope is that those listening tonight will do that and do their part in spreading that message instead of spreading the virus. ### | 1 | 2026-03-30T12:14:52Z | 2026-03-30T12:14:52Z |