Ron Wyden

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I would like to offer a proposal that really is going to help working families and those who are trying to make rent, trying to pay for groceries, who every single day walk an economic tightrope balancing their food bill against their fuel bill. We just heard a little bit about how we really need to solve the problem. This does that because, under our bill, S. 4143, the American Workforce Rescue Act of 2020, what we wish to do on our side is tie these unemployment benefits to the actual conditions of the American economy on the ground. We have had this proposal for months now because, to some extent--and I see my good friend from South Dakota. He made an important point in this discussion. He is a member of the Finance Committee, and I saw an article in which he stated, you know, it is important for people who are really hurting in a tough economy--it is important for them to get benefits that let them pay the rent and buy groceries. Then my good friend from South Dakota made a point I agree with. He said: You know, when the economy gets better and unemployment goes down, then--in the words of the Senator from South Dakota--the benefits can taper off to reflect that. That is essentially what S. 4143, the American Workforce Rescue Act that I have authored with the Democratic leader, Senator Schumer, does is it ensures that we are not going to have millions of workers every month or every few months live in fear that Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell are going to pull the rug out from under them. We would have a benefit that would reflect economic conditions on the ground, and it would deal with this economic challenge for all the months until the economy recovers. That is what Senator Schumer and I put forward some time ago. The $600 would gradually phase down based on the State's average unemployment rate over 3 months. This would provide certainty for families and ensure the broader economy continues to receive the support it needs. And, especially, it doesn't set up artificial timelines. That is what the Senate ought to be avoiding, to just set arbitrary dates. What we need to do is make sure that politicians--and, certainly, Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell have been willing to pull the rug out from under the unemployed. We need to make sure that there is a plan going forward. That is what S. 4143 does, the American Workforce Rescue Act. It will provide certainty for families and ensure the broader economic recovery will be our focus, and there will be support until we see that kind of recovery. So I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be discharged from further consideration of S. 4143, the American Workforce Rescue Act; that the bill be considered read a third time and passed; and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, while my colleague is here, just a brief reaction--and I think my colleague knows that you don't go out and negotiate from the seat of your pants on the floor. First, I want to be clear on this proposal. This is a proposal the Democratic leader and I, as the ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee, worked very closely together on. It is a proposal that many Senate Democrats think could be the basis of reform, and lots of people who look at the future of these kinds of economic challenges find this idea attractive. That is No. 1. No. 2, my friend from South Dakota thinks that somehow the benefits can just be turned on with a snap of the finger. The National Association of State Workforce Agencies have said that the proposal offered by the Senator from Arizona would not get benefits that make rent and pay groceries to people anytime soon. The question is, Are you going to solve a real economic challenge here? The economy has faced, last week, a staggering economic contraction. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the last numbers, there are four unemployed workers for every job. This idea that unemployed folks don't want to work is just insulting. What unemployed people tell me at home is that if somebody offers them a job on Monday night, they will be there first thing Tuesday morning. What is really needed are solutions to this question of unemployment insurance that ties the benefits to the real world conditions on the ground. In fact, when you have unemployment like this--well over 10 percent--the $600 extra per week coverage is clearly what is necessary to make rent and pay groceries. But make no mistake about it--I see my colleague from South Dakota leaving the floor--I listened when he said that there ought to be a benefit for folks when unemployment is high and that when unemployment goes down, the benefits would reflect that. That is the American Workforce Rescue Act. If my colleagues are saying they want to back S. 4143, I would like to get that message in a direct kind of way. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President and colleagues, the only thing worse than what the Republicans have done here--cutting off desperately needed unemployment insurance to millions of American families and communities--would be to allow a bill to pass that promises money without actually delivering it. Even if this short-term extension were to pass, State agencies--the experts in this field--have told us and the ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee in very clear terms that States don't have enough time to reprogram their systems and avoid a lapse in benefits. The State unemployment systems are not equipped to flip these unemployment benefits on and off. Short-term extensions don't work and will not work from an administrative standpoint. No Senator has to take my word for it. The National Association of State Workforce Agencies has said what I have just said: A short-term extension isn't enough for the hard-working Americans relying on this lifeline who don't have jobs to go back to. What about next week and the week after that? The only responsible route is to agree to the extension with triggers that will lower the payments only when it is appropriate to do so, and that means when the economy is in recovery, not when the economy is in freefall like it still is now. Republicans wish to cover for the fact that they refused to come to the negotiating table for months. I looked at the record. Literally, for months--as the author of the $600 more each month and the expansion to cover gig workers and others--we asked Senate Republicans to join us in negotiations. The Democratic leader, Senator Schumer, and the Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, all made that request again and again, and Republicans were unwilling to do that. So Republicans are trying to cover for the fact that they refused to come to the negotiating table for months. Our country needs a long-term solution that ensures the extra $600 remains available for as long as this four-alarm economic crisis continues. I object.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, in 2008, Congress responded to rising reports of child sexual abuse material--CSAM--online by passing the PROTECT Act to direct the Department of Justice to combat these heinous crimes. However, in the decade that followed, DOJ failed to request the manpower, funding, and resources to combat this scourge, leaving both the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children--NCMEC--and law enforcement agencies uncoordinated, understaffed, and underfunded. As a result, though tech companies reported more than 45 million instances of CSAM to NCMEC in the last year alone, just a fraction were investigated, and even fewer were prosecuted and convicted. Yet, rather than confronting this failure by Congress and the executive branch, my colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee have put forth the Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies--EARN IT--Act, a deeply flawed piece of legislation that would revoke online platforms' intermediary liability protections with regard to not only Federal civil Jaw, but also any State law broadly related to CSAM. The EARN IT Act will not protect children. It will not stop the spread of child sexual abuse material, nor target the monsters who produce and share it, and it will not help the victims of these evil crimes. What it will do is threaten the free speech, privacy, and security of every single American. This is because, at its core, the amended EARN IT Act magnifies the failures of the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act--SESTA--and its House companion, the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act--FOSTA. Experts believe that SESTA/FOSTA has done nothing to help victims or stop sex trafficking, while creating collateral damage for marginalized communities and the speech of all Americans. A lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of FOSTA on First Amendment grounds is proceeding through the courts, and there is bicameral Federal legislation to study the widespread negative impacts of the bill on marginalized groups. Yet, the authors of the EARN IT Act decided to take this kind of carveout and expand it further to State civil and criminal statutes. By allowing any individual State to set laws for internet content, this bill would create massive uncertainty, both for strong encryption and constitutionally protected speech online. What is worse, the flood of State laws that could potentially arise under the EARN IT Act raises strong Fourth Amendment concerns, meaning that any CSAM evidence collected could be rendered inadmissible in court and accused CSAM offenders could get off scot-free. This is not a risk that I am willing to take. Let me be clear: The proliferation of these heinous crimes against children is a serious problem. However, for these reasons and more, the EARN IT Act is not the solution. Moreover, it ignores what Congress can and should be doing to combat this heinous crime. The U.S. has a number of important evidence-based programs in existence that are proven to keep kids safe, and they are in desperate need of funding to do their good work. Yet the EARN IT Act doesn't include a single dollar of funding for these important programs. It is time for the U.S. Government to spend the funds necessary to save children's lives now. In May of 2020, I introduced the Invest in Child Safety Act to do exactly that. My bill would drastically increase the number of prosecutors and agents hunting down child predators, require a single person to be personally responsible for these efforts, and direct more than $5 billion in mandatory funding to the folks who can actually make a difference in this fight. I believe this historic, mandatory investment in personnel and funding is necessary to truly take on the scourge of child exploitation, and I urge my colleagues to support my approach. Meanwhile, I intend to object to any unanimous consent agreement regarding the EARN IT Act.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, this morning showed why we need the Democratic approach to dealing with unemployment insurance and why the pain that was reported this morning would get even worse under the proposal offered by Senator Johnson. This morning, Americans learned that our economy cratered in the second quarter--essentially, GDP dropped by 9.5 percent from April through June. That translates to a 33-percent annual contraction of the American economy. So what you have with today's analysis is a gross domestic product in free fall. If Republicans slash unemployment benefits with this proposal, the gross domestic product is going to fall faster, and the economy will collapse. Folks, the economists, people who aren't political figures, told us this morning--this is a five-alarm fire. It is the biggest and fastest drop ever recorded, colleagues, wiping out years of economic gains in a matter of weeks. The fact is, when you take the kind of economic hammering that we learned about this morning, and you have the Democratic approach with respect to supercharged unemployment--what we wrote in the Finance Committee, that Secretary Mnuchin signed off on, the $600 per week, which finally included those people who nobody even talked about in the 1920s, gig workers and part-timers and independent contractors--they got a fair shake. The reason we thought it was so important to supercharge those benefits and why we feel so strongly about doing it now, with an additional $600 per week, is so that people can make rent and pay groceries, while all these folks are out of work. And we learned again about thousands and thousands of more workers in every part of the country getting hit again with layoffs. When jobless Americans receive unemployment benefits, it becomes one of the biggest booster shots for the American economy. When jobless Americans receive unemployment benefits, and they spend it on food, they spend it on car payments, they spend it on rent, and they spend it on medical bills. It is part of the gross domestic product. It makes no sense--it makes no sense, colleagues--to take that support away, as the Senator from Wisconsin seeks to do. One point four million people have filed for unemployment benefits this past week. Before the pandemic, unemployment claims had never crossed 700,000 in a single week, not even during the great recession. They have now been at 1.3 million or higher for 19 straight weeks. So here the Senate is, a few hours after seeing the worst domestic product report ever recorded, and what is the response of the Senate Republicans? To slash unemployment even more than they originally proposed, yanking an economic lifeline from 30 million Americans and delivering an economic wrecking ball directly into our fragile economy. The last point I want to make--and we have Senator Stabenow, my seatmate on the Finance Committee, here--is to highlight the fact that from the beginning, Senate Republicans were hostile to the idea of trying to give a fair shake to these workers and these families who were hit so hard. Eugene Scalia--the first thing he said after we did that work in the Finance Committee--the first thing he said was not ``Oh, we have to do our job administering the benefits.'' The first thing he said was that his big concern is that unemployed people are going to be dependent on government. How preposterous. I see my friend Senator Brown here, who spends a big chunk of his waking hours talking about the dignity of work. So much for the dignity of work when you hear about what Eugene Scalia said. I hosted a nationwide townhall meeting just a couple of nights ago, and there were workers from the Midwest, and they said: People are saying we don't want to work. If I get a job offer at night, I will be there the first thing in the morning, ready to go. This is not about workers being unable to work; it is about scarcity of jobs, just the way those figures this morning pointed out. So I think that we are going to have further discussion on other issues, but I just want to mention one last point before yielding. Today we heard some remarkable comments about how Donald Trump--and I guess this was his musing, but whenever he muses, it actually sometimes is part of a strategy--he talked about putting off the election and that the problem being that people would be voting by mail. Now, there is not a shred of evidence--not a shred of evidence--that this is a problem. The reason it is not a problem--and I don't say it just because I am the Nation's first mail-in U.S. Senator; take the word of far-right conservatives--the late Dennis Richardson in our State, about as conservative as you get. One of the last things he did before he passed was he pointed out that there is no voter fraud in our vote-by-mail elections. He said it doesn't happen. A conservative. A rock-ribbed conservative. So we just heard that comment this morning, Leader Schumer. Of course, the law says that he can't change the election, but it shows again why it is so important to have the elections provision from the Heroes Act--which I was honored to work with Speaker Pelosi on--be part of the way in which people vote this fall because they shouldn't have to choose between voting or their health. Most of the poll workers in America are over the age of 60, they shouldn't be put at risk, which is obviously what Donald Trump would be willing to do. So the Heroes bill--we are now going to talk about, I believe, the nutrition part, which Senator Stabenow has championed so eloquently. But I wanted to take a moment to focus on the economic numbers that came out this morning and how the Republican proposal would make our ability to fight what was described a few hours ago worse and also talk about the fiasco of Donald Trump's efforts every single day to chip away at people's opportunities to vote-by-mail and in other ways. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that following the remarks of my Republican colleagues, Senators Brown, Murphy, and I be permitted to speak for up to 7 minutes each and that the previously scheduled votes occur following the remarks of those listed.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, Senate Republicans and the White House have finally come forward with an unemployment insurance proposal. The Republican proposal is not just misguided; the Republican proposal is a punch in the gut and a slap in the face for the 30 million Americans relying on lifeline unemployment insurance benefits. It adds insult to infection. Unemployment benefits--the ones we developed that ensure that people can pay the rent or buy groceries--are already expiring. The last payments went out Saturday. Senate Republicans and Donald Trump sat on their hands for months instead of working with Democrats, so now it appears that a lapse in benefits is inevitable. Republicans apparently have a proposal that is just unworkable. You don't have to take my word for it; the nonpartisan experts who run the State workforce agencies have told the Finance Committee that any changes, even simple ones, can take months to implement. Now Republicans are talking about cutting those lifeline benefits--the ones that actually made it possible for folks to make rent and buy groceries and cover the cost of medicine and car insurance. They are talking about cutting those benefits by two-thirds. They want States to make complicated changes to the unemployment insurance program that could hold up benefits until 2021. Some States are indicating that it is almost impossible to manage this altogether. The Republican proposal is cruel. In my view, it is legislative malpractice. For the life of me, I don't know how anyone could possibly look at the state of our economy and decide that what is needed is even more economic pain for 30 million Americans. It is especially insulting to America's unemployed workers that Republicans want to cut their economic lifeline in the same bill that is going to give a taxpayer subsidy to power lunches for lobbyists. My colleagues have been warned that State unemployment systems are already struggling to keep up. Some people who were laid off months ago are still waiting to receive benefits. I read about one today who is following all of this from their hospital bed, where they are suffering from COVID-19. There are news reports about people sleeping in their cars just to have a shot at being at the head of the line at the workforce agency. Now Senate Republicans come forward with a proposal that throws even more sand in the gears. They have been warned that this kind of proposal will be a disaster to implement. I know because I was in the Senate Finance room when they were told about it. My colleagues on the other side also are arguing that the biggest problem in America now is that there are all these lazy workers sitting at home collecting unemployment checks instead of going back to their jobs. There is no evidence--not a shred--that this is happening in large numbers around the country. Come to me with one single story about somebody turning down work, and I will tell you about a dozen out-of-work Oregonians I have spoken to, folks who cannot wait--cannot wait--to get back to work, Oregonians and Americans who believe in the dignity of work. There was a nationwide townhall meeting on Thursday last, with people who were unemployed, and people who were unemployed volunteered that, if they were told in the evening that they could work the next day, they would be there at the crack of dawn. It is insulting to American workers to suggest they are a bunch of lazy freeloaders looking for a handout, but we have been hearing that time and again from those on the other side of the aisle who were simply unwilling to write any proposal at all. I believe the Republican proposal is also a prescription for disaster for our economy. Supercharged unemployment benefits may be the single most impactful program that Congress passed in response to the pandemic. What does it mean to cut it? The Republican plan cuts unemployment benefits by more than $10 billion per week. That opens up a terrible economic wound. It will be a huge setback right when the recovery seems to be stalling, even going in reverse. One new analysis says cutting benefits down to $200 per week is going to lead to a loss of 3.4 million jobs. And Senate Republicans want Americans to believe that it is unemployed workers holding back the economy. I will close by saying it is long past time for my Republican colleagues to get serious about working with Democrats on a proposal that has a pathway to actually becoming law and to helping people. This Republican plan doesn't do that. Just as I said on Thursday, we have been ready for months. The other body, the House of Representatives, passed a bill 2 months ago ensuring that Americans have those funds to make rent, pay groceries, and pay for essentials. Leader Schumer and I introduced our plan: the American Workforce Rescue Act. So we were all set over here to go to work with Republicans before the majority leader sent everybody home on a 2-week recess, when we thought it was important to be here and to work on these crucial economic issues I have mentioned. Benefits have lapsed. Tens of millions of Americans now walk an economic tightrope every single week, balancing the rent bill against the food bill, the food bill against healthcare costs. There is no time to waste. Senate Republicans need to work with us now on a proposal that ensures that Americans do not face yet another economic hit, as I mentioned, with some of them actually sitting in hospitals suffering from COVID-19 and wondering how they are going to pay the bills. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, I want to thank my colleague for putting a human face--the face of Oregonians--on this Federal invasion of our State. And I want to talk just for a moment and ask my colleague a question because, yesterday, here in Washington, as our constituents were finding this horrific invasion of their constitutional rights--the moms and others, when they were peacefully protesting--what we saw in the Senate Intelligence Committee, I say to Senator Merkley, was an example of just how disconnected the Trump administration is from reality as they try to find these figleafs to cover up for their violation of the constitutional rights of our citizens. We had a nominee for a top legal position in the Trump administration--a top position, legal position, that is greatly going to affect the constitutional rights of the people we are honored to represent--the rights that are now being violated, as we have said repeatedly here on the floor. The nominee's name was Patrick Hovakimian, and I asked him a couple of basic questions, questions that our constituents are asking. I asked him: Do you believe that Federal forces can patrol American cities over the objections of State and local officials and away from Federal buildings? That is something you and I get asked all the time by our constituents. Then I also asked him: Do you believe that unidentified Federal forces in unmarked cars can drive around seizing and detaining American citizens? This is also something we are very familiar with. I pointed out American troops, our soldiers who so courageously fight the terrorists, wear their identification. Again, he just ducked and bobbed and weaved. At one point--and then he repeated it--he said: Senator, just give my best wishes to the people of Portland. I asked again for a responsive answer, and he wished us best wishes again for these people who are getting gassed, like Sharon Meieran-- whom the Senator and I talked about, a personal friend of our family, an emergency room doctor--getting hit with a tear gas canister-- ``sending best wishes'' to the people you and I represent. So it seems to me--and I would be interested in the Senator's thoughts because he has spent a lot of time thinking through where this is headed because we in Oregon were kind of the test tube. We were the people who were going to be first. The President has said that he is going on to other cities. Both of us share a great interest in healthcare. I sure as hell wish that he would attack the coronavirus with half of the intensity with which he has attacked our cities. We are going to talk some more about that. Let me get the Senator's reaction to what I think is the central question, and I really pondered this as we were listening to these nonanswers yesterday by a top Trump official. By the way, he is in a top position now in the Justice Department responsible for knowing about these legal issues that reflect the violations of the constitutional rights of our constituents, and then he gets a bigger job, a bigger role in these issues. I thought to myself, it seems to me, without drawing a line in the sand, America may be looking down the barrel of martial law in the middle of a Presidential election. I would be interested in the thoughts my colleague because I have been amazed at the number of Senators who have come up and said: You know, Ron, that really seems to be what it has come down to. My colleague is a student of history and has brought so much specific documentation, such as the cases he has been spelling out. I would be interested in my colleague's assessment of where he thinks this is going.

Mr. WYDEN. Parliamentary inquiry, how much time does my colleague have on his hour remaining?

Mr. WYDEN. Thank you, I will take a few, and we are very pleased that our colleague from Illinois is here and has been a very significant ally in this. Senator Merkley, one of the reasons I so appreciate your taking this time is that it reminds me a bit of what Jews faced in the 1930s. My family fled the Nazis in the 1930s. Not all of our family got out. My father's great-uncle Max was one of the last gassed in Theresienstadt, and Jewish families saw that a democratically elected government can transform into a murderous regime before the eyes of its citizens very quickly. There isn't any bright line when it happens, no cinematic moment where everything changes--just a moment, as we talked about earlier, in which bureaucrats and lawyers and police begin to follow the bidding of their leader while perverting the rules of their Republic. This was not a singular event. From Europe to Asia to the Americas, democratically elected governments were undermined and replaced by authoritarian regimes--often while retaining the trappings of a democracy. Bureaucrats claimed they were just following rules, soldiers and police--just following orders. Then they just wished us best wishes. Rarely did these leaders start with majority support, but terror, combined with the abuse of the elections process--which we are also very concerned about--allows them to claim power from the ballot box. It seems to me you are laying out that it is our sacred duty to learn from this history, to bring this history to the floor and, as I tried to say with respect to the threat of martial law, to draw a bright line when a government, instituted to protect liberty, is being used to attack liberty. We shouldn't, we cannot, and we can't wait until we have a gun at our back to raise the alarm. The government isn't going to defend itself. The same Attorney General that has taken an oath to defend the Constitution will sit idly by while citizens are detained without charge and violently assaulted by the government. The same police officer charged with defending our citizens will commit those assaults if that is what they are directed to do. If the Executive and any government served by the bureaucracy will take all the power they can unless a brave judiciary and a strong legislature step up and, as you have outlined here on this floor, say: ``No more.'' This Congress has been way too pliant in yielding, and it has emboldened the executive branch, led by Donald Trump, to ignore the constraints that have traditionally protected our liberty. So my question is--it seems to me you are standing up for these kinds of core values of freedoms that are what we stand for as Americans and that this has been the beacon all around the world for over a century. I believe what you are saying--and I think it would be helpful for you to put it in your own words--what you are saying is that we have to be out here working on your legislation and working on these key kinds of measures because without this effort, there is a real danger, on our watch, that the light of liberty will fade away? And it seems to me what you are saying is that we are better than this. I would like your reaction to that because I think if you look at the march of history, which in the Wyden household is very, very personal-- to have lost family to Hitler's murderous regime. I would like to hear your thoughts about this kind of challenge we face and how important the work in front of us is to make sure that light of liberty doesn't fade away.

Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, how much additional time does my colleague have?

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, as if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be discharged from further consideration of S. 4143; that the bill be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I am going to get into the substance of my colleague's arguments in a moment, but I just want to be clear to all the people in America, the 30-plus million who are having problems making rent, having problems buying groceries, who in just 2 days--2 days--come Saturday, are going to be in a position where, based on what they tell me, they are telling their kids: Hey, you probably have to eat a little bit less because the unemployment is ending. The fact is, the other body passed a bill so that folks would be able to make rent and buy groceries. On this side of the aisle, the Democratic leader and I introduced legislation to tie the benefits to economic conditions on the ground. One of the reasons we did is my colleagues on the other side said that benefits ought to taper off if unemployment goes down. That is what our bill does. But here is the message that I think folks who are walking on an economic tightrope this weekend need to hear. On this side of the aisle, we have been ready to go for weeks--essentially, months--to have bipartisan negotiations to work this issue out. As of this afternoon, with benefits expiring in 2 days, the other side of the aisle has no piece of legislation on offer. Let me repeat that: no piece of legislation on offer. Let me repeat that--no piece of legislation on offer. On this side of the aisle, they write lots of bills to help multinational corporations--lots of bills to help the powerful and the special interests, but as of this afternoon, there is not a bill to help those folks who this weekend are going to be saying: We are not going to be able to make rent in a few days. We are not going to be able to feed our families, not going to be able to pay for the car insurance. People aren't spending this money on luxuries. They are spending it on essentials. To a great extent, they kept the economy afloat for the last few months. The other point I want to make is that this did not have to happen. Not only do we have legislation ready to discuss with our colleagues that incorporates some of their ideas, we have been reaching out again and again. Yet Mitch McConnell, who took all of July off when he could have been getting this piece of legislation together--those big 2 weeks, and he could have been getting the legislation together-- basically, actively--didn't happen by osmosis--actively gave short shrift to the needs of the unemployed and made no effort, none whatever, even though we reached out continually to Republicans, saying that this weekend--and the pain that working families have this weekend didn't have to happen. We wanted to do everything we can, working with our colleagues, to prevent it. Now, for purposes of this discussion, I want to make sure people understand what this discussion really means to working families in this country. I was at home, at food banks and the like--lines for blocks--people who had never needed to go to a pantry or a food program were waiting in line because they had been hit by this economic wrecking ball. There are people who are worried about losing their homes and losing their cars, being unable to fill their prescriptions. As I mentioned, think about what it means when you have to tell your kid you ought to eat less because they don't know whether they will have enough cash to stock the pantry next month. As I said, Republicans' response to this over the last few days--last few weeks--I went to school on a basketball scholarship, and I remember when you could basically play stall ball, go into four corners offense, basically run down the clock. And then at the end, as my distinguished colleague from Wyoming tried to do, say: Well, it is the fault of the poor people. It is the fault of those poor people. I am going to touch on what this really is all about. When we began the negotiations--and I was the point person for the Democrats--in the Finance room--I offered basic wage replacement as our position for dealing with this issue. Secretary of Labor Scalia said: It can't be done. The States can't administer it. Western civilization is pretty much going to end if we try to do this. And then he folded his arms, and, for days, basically refused to negotiate about alternatives. Understand that we started with the approach of basic wage replacement. Secretary Scalia said it can't be done. States are stuck with old technology. I didn't disagree with that. Gave a billion dollars to the States to help them update technology too. I said: We are not going to tell those workers, Mr. Scalia, to pound sand. I basically said we are going to average the benefit--$600. Some people will get a bit more than they would; some people are going to get a bit less, but families are going to have a chance, based on what the State employment offices told us, to actually get benefits. I know that it hasn't worked out too well in the State of Florida-- the President of the Senate, and I am sure he will want to talk about this in the debate--but at least millions of people in this country got a chance to make rent, buy groceries, pay medicine because we said we are going to take a sum of money that the States told us they can actually, for the most part, administer. The Finance Committee held a hearing on unemployment insurance this summer. I particularly wanted to know how we might look at administering these benefits in the future because I knew that we would all want to hear if there had been reforms and what the case might be for changes. During that hearing just a few weeks ago, the National Association of State Workforce Agencies--the experts on this issue on how the benefits are to be administered--said that--their words--any reduction or change in benefits will absolutely lead to a lapse in benefits. You would think colleagues on the other side would say: My goodness. We don't want that to happen. These State workforce agencies said there would be a lapse in benefits no matter what you cut, $100, whatever the amount was, there would be a lapse in benefits. The gap in benefits could last a week or two, potentially, up to a month. I have been pointing out to Senators you can't eat retroactivity. And yet, everything I have heard that colleagues want to do now--remember, they don't have a bill. They do not have a bill. They are taking the weekend off. We have a bill on this side. The Democratic leader, myself-- supported by our caucus--we have a bill. We are ready to talk. They don't have a bill to do anything for those people who are going to be hurting this weekend. After that hearing, you would have thought people--Republican Senators on the other side--would say, you know, we have to figure out what to do. We have to make sure that people aren't going to fall between the cracks, through no fault of their own. Remember, so many of them are at home because of government policies, the quarantine, and the--of course, the pattern is particularly ominous now because folks who were furloughed at the beginning, then got brought back, and now with the spike, they are getting laid off again. There you have it-- National Association of State Workforce Agencies says that any change can lead to a lapse in benefits. I guess my colleagues on the other side walked out there and said: No big deal. It is just a few weeks. Tell that to the people who aren't going to have enough money to make rent and buy groceries next week. Tell that to their face rather than just leave town and say: We will talk about it another time, and we will see about 2, 3, 4 weeks and what people are going to have to do without this lifeline, which I believe is going to be a disaster. The lapse that is being forced on this country right now is because Senate Republicans would not step up. They would not step up along the way--after the hearing, during the July break. They did not step up. The lapse is going to lead to eviction; it is going to lead to hunger; it is going to lead to desperation for millions of Americans. And the only way to avoid it is by acting now, by passing the American Workforce Rescue Act that Senator Schumer and I introduced. We just tried to pass it. If our bill had passed, the people who are going to be hurting this weekend, who aren't going to be able to make rent, who aren't going to be able to buy groceries--would have some sense of security. They would be able to go to bed at night this weekend, had our bill passed, knowing that there would be an opportunity to work with the other body and get this resolved and get it resolved quickly. Now those people know one thing, and that is that they better plan for yet more uncertainty and more pain. As my colleagues say, maybe it will get worked out in a few weeks--even though what they are talking about working out--and remember, there is no bill. We have never seen a piece of paper, but they are talking about cutting the lifeline over 50 percent. That is their proposal--cutting it more than 50 percent. At a minimum--at a minimum, I believe, that what the Republicans are now looking at is some kind of approach that after Secretary Scalia has told the Senate that the States can't do full wage replacement for individual workers; that they are not capable of doing it; the technology is too old; it can't get the math; it can't get individually tailored benefits out in a timely way--apparently, my colleagues are using that model for their so-called idea that they want to talk about. I have already mentioned the fact that they believe the argument for this is that it could be done in a few weeks. People are going to be hurting for those few weeks. Nobody has an answer to that. Everybody ought to understand that I was the first one to offer full wage replacement--I would say to the President of the Senate--and it was Secretary Scalia who said it couldn't be administered and has never changed his mind on that point. My view is, the proposal that adds a whole lot of complexity to the unemployment system is a proposal designed to fail. That, apparently, is what Senate Republicans are talking about. At a minimum, this delay in the Senate is going to cause a lapse in benefits. On top of that, it has been reported the Republicans could attempt to cut the benefit by well over 50 percent. I just ask, how can anybody look at the State of the country and how powerful people and special interests can be doing so well and then decide to cut the economic lifeline for working families by well over 50 percent when the country is in the middle of a pandemic, when there are 60- or 70,000 new COVID cases every day and climbing, when there are 800, 900, 1,000 COVID cases every day and climbing, when the number of new unemployment claims, which before this year had never crossed 700,000, has been 1.3 million or higher for 18 straight weeks, and, in fact, the number of new claims went up this week for the first time since April--a sign that the recovery is going in reverse. As I mentioned, what I am hearing about at home are businesses that reopened in May and June and are laying off their workers for a second time. One-third of Americans couldn't make their last rent payment. Parents who lost their jobs are wondering how they are going to feed their children. I just say to my colleagues who may be who may be following this, this is an unthinkable level of pain and suffering and uncertainty to needlessly inflict on 30 million Americans. It is not just about those who have already lost work. It is about the millions of others who are worried that their pink slip might come in August or September or October. They need support too. In fact, the papers are full of stories of small businesses closing and closing permanently. I expect that all those people are worried that they haven't been laid off yet, but a pink slip may be coming their way in August or September or October. They may have a word or two for their Senators who are able to find plenty of time to write bills to help multinational corporations but can't find the time to stand up for unemployed folks who are hurting. Before I wrap up this afternoon, I want to touch on this argument that Republicans have been flogging away on for months now that these unemployment benefits are way too generous, and, somehow, they are convinced that it makes sense to insult the American worker and say that all these workers are sitting around lazily at home instead of going back to work. That argument does not pass the smell test. I am going to be very specific about why that argument trotted out again by my friend from Wyoming is way off base. First of all, the same Republicans who celebrated the May and June job reports are now talking about how lazy workers are by refusing to go back to their jobs. You simply cannot have it both ways. Second, not one of my Republican colleagues brought forward real evidence to suggest that workers across the country are turning down work. These anecdotes just don't hold water. According to one recent analysis, more than two-thirds of workers who were hired in June went back to jobs that paid less than supercharged unemployment benefits. Third, it is an insult to American workers to say that they would rather sit at home than to earn their pay at work. If any one of my Republican colleagues were to go out and meet the Oregonians I have spoken to and who have been furloughed or laid off during the pandemic, they will hear from people who desperately want to go back to their jobs when it is safe. These are people who believe in the dignity of work and people who want to provide for their families. It is an insult to call them lazy. I want to inject a note of reality into this because my Republican colleagues have been so fixated on this argument. I have talked to a lot of unemployed workers. I said: Back east, the Senate Republicans say all unemployed folks are lazy, and they don't want to work and all the rest. So many of the unemployed look at me incredulous, and they say: Ron, ask them how in the world have they came up with that completely wrong idea. They usually say: If I am given a choice between unemployment or the chance to have a job in the private economy, where I have a future and where I can build upward economic mobility--they usually say: Ron, tell those Republicans in Washington, DC, it is a no-brainer; of course, I am going to take the job that gives me an opportunity for a future, the chance to work in the private sector and climb the ladder of economic mobility. I am going to take that every time, rather than unemployment, which has been uncertain. That is my response to the off-base kind of argument presented by Senator Barrasso. If Republicans want to go home this weekend and insult the work ethic of millions of Americans who believe in the dignity of work, that is their constitutional right. The country, obviously, is nowhere near the end of this pandemic. Businesses are going to keep closing--some temporarily, others permanently. We are looking at the worst unemployment crisis since the Great Depression. The benefits we put together initially, the supercharged unemployment benefits--and I am especially proud that we said that as for the law, which really hadn't been updated since the 1930s, that we would modernize the law and allow gig workers and the self-employed and independent contractors and part-timers to be brought into the system. Those supercharged benefits that we negotiated in the Finance Committee room--which, by the way, were signed off by Secretary Mnuchin. This was not done in the dead of night with only one side going along with the effort. These were negotiated with Secretary Mnuchin, who actually endorsed it at a press conference. These supercharged unemployment benefits have been the one thing that has kept millions of families-- millions of families--from being in a position where they couldn't feed their families, couldn't make rent, and, literally, facing the kind of despair, the kind of fear that has made the number of requests for mental health services go through the stratosphere because people are so worried. And this question of their economic future is just one reason. Supercharged unemployment benefits have helped keep the economy afloat and have helped prevent true economic meltdowns. And even with the lifeline, so many are barely hanging on. They fall behind on their bills. I mentioned the threat of hunger. Senator Brown just talked about how important it is to act on housing assistance. It would be a historic failure, morally and economically, to slash this lifeline that is so important to getting workers through a pandemic. The Democratic leader, Senator Schumer, and I listened carefully to all sides. We thought about the need, given the fact that there are predictions of high unemployment for some time to come. We said: Let's come up with a dependable safety net that provides some measure of predictability with respect to how the government is going to approach these issues in the future. My colleagues have said that they want a system that has the benefits taper off as unemployment goes down. Well, what the Democratic leader and I have proposed does exactly that. I believe that yesterday there was a story in the Washington Post where, I think, they were talking about unemployment at 15 percent. When unemployment reaches those kinds of levels--and we saw that story of people waiting and waiting for hours. In fact, I don't have the exact percentage. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the story about the unemployment calamity in Oklahoma be printed in the Record at this point

Mr. WYDEN. I close by way of saying that I came to the floor some time ago to ask unanimous consent to make sure that this weekend, when millions of people are hurting--remember, the suffering starts in 2 days. It starts on Saturday--2 days in Florida, in Oregon, in Wyoming, and all over the country. Mitch McConnell's response was: Let's take a break; we can take off. He didn't seem to see those hurting people in Kentucky. Maybe they will have something to say to him this weekend. I will tell you, I think it is a big mistake for Senate Republicans to have frittered away weeks on end, when we could have had a dialogue and we could have talked about ideas. The Presiding Officer has talked to me a number of times since he has been here about healthcare. I enjoy talking to my colleagues and working on ideas to try to find a way to address concerns and solve problems. There wasn't one single effort--not one--to pick up on any of the ideas that I have been discussing here. In fact, I tried to reach out to colleagues on the other side and told them that I heard them say repeatedly that benefits should taper down as the unemployment rate goes down. Well, that is the heart of our bill on this side. The hurt and pain that working families are going to face this Saturday and Sunday--2 days from now--did not have to happen. It didn't have to happen. Our side has a bill to work on. The other side, I gather, has some ideas. We have not seen a single piece of paper, but I know that all those people who are hurting can't eat retroactively. They can't eat all the Republican theories about delay and haggling. I believe these working families deserve a whole lot better. They deserve some predictability and certainty that when they are hurting-- through no fault of their own--their government isn't going to turn its back on them and say: We don't care if your kids can't eat and you don't have a roof over your head. Our country has always been better than that. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, I thank my colleague this afternoon because he speaks today with passion and facts and clearly outlines what our constituents told us at home this past week, and I thank him for this partnership that Oregonians are seeing again on the floor of this great Senate. Madam President, Donald Trump has deployed a paramilitary squad to our hometown in Portland. His secret police are terrorizing my friends and neighbors. People across the country need to understand that yesterday Donald Trump announced to America that your friends and your neighbors are next. There are unmarked vans full of armed men in military gear snatching people off the streets. They take people away. They hold them. They interrogate them without justification and ultimately without charges. Over the weekend, a very close personal friend, Sharon Meieran, an ER doctor and a mom, was protesting peacefully and was tear-gassed without provocation. She felt like she was seeing democracy pass right in front of her eyes. Millions of Americans have seen the video of that local Navy veteran who was repeatedly beaten and pepper-sprayed and left with broken bones. People ask me: Ron, what was his offense? I am sure Senator Merkley gets exactly the same question: What did he do wrong? He was standing motionless, hands by his side, speaking up for the liberty that he served to protect. People are stunned that this is happening on the streets of our hometowns. We have seen reports of agents ripping a mask off of a protester who is obeying commands, with hands in the air, only to pepper spray the protester's face. The secret police even threw flash bombs and tear gas at a ``wall of moms.'' Here they are. Here they are in our hometown. You can see them, over the last couple of days: Moms and dads and now their kids are going to peacefully sing songs and protest for justice. Oregonians are just standing up for what is right. Only the cowards of the Trump administration would try to convince America that these peaceful protesters, the ``wall of moms,'' represent some kind of anarchist threat. It is nonsense. I condemn violence by anybody--always--and I spent much of last week working for nonviolent solutions in my hometown and fresh approaches to reduce tensions on our streets. The fact is, the protests in Portland have been overwhelmingly peaceful. Crime in Portland and across Oregon was down before Donald Trump sent in his secret police. Donald Trump did not send that paramilitary force to keep people safe. Donald Trump is doing it to create an image of chaos, to air it on far-right television, scare the country, turn them into campaign ads, but these are the people Senator Merkley and I are honored to represent. These are the people Donald Trump's paramilitary forces attacked and terrorized. He calls it a ``great success.'' As we have indicated, he has a game plan to basically make Portland an experiment and to do it in other cities, especially, by his accounts, those with Democratic leadership and voters. This kind of abusive exercise of power by a rogue President would have horrified our Founding Fathers. They wrote a wonderful Constitution to prevent exactly this behavior because democracy cannot survive in a nation that tolerates it. These tactics were used throughout the world a century ago to turn elected politicians into tyrants. The President's first and most important job is to keep Americans safe. Residents of Portland are less safe and less secure since Donald Trump deployed the secret police to our streets. The same thing--and I say this to colleagues wherever you are from--the same things will happen in your communities where Donald Trump will send his paramilitary forces. Frankly, when Donald Trump always talks about targeting Portland and other cities, I say to Senator Merkley, I wish he would target the coronavirus. I wish he would put a fraction of his passion for going after our cities into dealing with the coronavirus because while Donald Trump's secret police are out terrorizing Portland's moms and doctors and other peaceful protesters, we face a raging pandemic and record- high unemployment. I want us to renew the supercharged unemployment benefits that people are going to lose this weekend. Donald Trump isn't doing any of that work. What he is doing is making Americans in cities less safe and not dealing with the coronavirus on top of it. He is attempting to cut resources for COVID testing and treatment. His administration is covering up data that the public health professionals rely on to do their job. He does it repeatedly, anxious to cut the lifelines of 30 million jobless Americans, sending them tumbling off an economic cliff right in the middle of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. He is not doing his job. He is ignoring his responsibilities. Both on the streets of Portland and in Washington, DC, when he walks away from dealing with the coronavirus, he isn't keeping Americans safe. He is putting them in more danger. As I have said repeatedly, Donald Trump ought to attack the coronavirus pandemic and not the people of Portland. So that is why, very shortly, Senator Merkley and I will offer an amendment that will block Donald Trump from using these paramilitary forces in Portland or other cities where they are unwanted. What we are seeing in our hometowns is these paramilitary squads brutally unleashed against peaceful protesters--moms and veterans, doctors and activists. All they want to do is speak out for liberty and justice. What Donald Trump is now doing is incompatible with the fundamental principles of democracy laid out by our Founders and expanded throughout the generations. I believe what Donald Trump is doing, in light of his statement yesterday, to America, that he is going to go after one city after another, is totally out of control. The Senate cannot allow this to happen. That is why Senator Merkley and I are calling for the Senate to act. I thank my friend and colleague for his leadership. He has made it clear that 100 percent of Oregon's U.S. Senators are going to keep pushing and fighting until this changes. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, today I am introducing the Water for Agriculture and Conservation Act to help expand critical water conservation infrastructure that helps improve water use efficiency, fish and wildlife habitat, and agriculture productivity. Throughout the West, communities are experiencing high levels of drought that are hurting agriculture and conservation efforts. The Water for Conservation and Farming Act aims to help communities better plan and prepare for the increased demand for clean water by funding projects that improve dam safety, create more resilient watersheds, and benefit agricultural and urban water users. States, Tribes, and local communities are working diligently to upgrade crumbling water infrastructure but have lacked the critical resources to make meaningful improvements that last. The Water for Conservation and Farming Act would provide $120,000,000 over three years for disadvantaged communities to increase environmental protections, support agriculture, and make significant steps to improve the water supply for their communities. The Water for Conservation and Farming Act would create a Bureau of Reclamation fund of $300 million to support water recycling projects, water-use efficiency projects and dam safety projects, as well as expanding existing programs, like WaterSMART, to get more bang for the conservation buck. The bill would establish several new programs at the Bureau of Reclamation, which are designed to help disadvantaged communities plan and implement water conservation projects, a program to help farmers improve migratory bird habitat, and programs to implement aquatic ecosystem restoration projects. At a time when the nation is suffering increased droughts, when farmers and ranchers are asked to do more with less, and critical habitats are suffering from less and less water, this bill will make needed investments in water conservation infrastructure that reduces demand for water, improves biodiversity, and helps farmers and ranchers plan and prepare for droughts. I look forward to getting this bill across the finish line.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I thank Senator Stabenow, my seatmate on the Senate Finance Committee. We are a bit more socially distant now, but we still have spent this time plotting and thinking and trying to imagine a future that provides the kinds of priorities that we have been talking about today. Senator Stabenow's reports particularly--these wonderful reports that document the cost of inaction--I have almost made them a reference tool on my desk so, when I have to look at a particular area, I can turn to one of those Stabenow reports. They are always understandable, always cutting right to the heart of the issue, which is this: How are you going to give the opportunity for everybody in America to get ahead-- not just the people at the top but everybody in America the chance to get ahead? I am not going to take but a few minutes. I do want to note that I believe that Oregon is the only State to have produced 100 percent of its U.S. Senators on behalf of the cause tonight. This is something Senator Merkley and I enjoy doing when there is an opportunity to speak for justice. I want to reflect for a minute on how the day started, because I guess it was almost 12 hours ago our Democratic leader, Senator Schumer, stood right there; I stood where I am; and he outlined the Schumer-Wyden proposal for the next steps on dealing with this crushing unemployment we have in our country--30 million people. The number is almost so large that the experts can't get their arms around exactly how many people are unemployed, but what we know is that every week it goes up far more than that kind of similar period during the great recession. We talked about what is going to happen July 31. July 31, if the Senate does not act, we are going to have a tsunami of evictions. We are going to have families, just as Senator Stabenow said, basically sitting in their living rooms, sitting in their kitchens, and trying to figure out how they are going to make ends meet that month. Without supercharged unemployment, without the SNAP benefits that Senator Stabenow is talking about, without the help Senator Brown is talking about with respect to housing and evictions, there are a lot of people who are just going to fall between the cracks. I thought, it being 12 hours since we began this, that I might just connect the dots for a few minutes. In the face of this historic public health emergency, we know that millions of Americans have their health on the line, and because Donald Trump has failed to get the COVID-19 virus under control, we have now got jobs on the line. Now many people are being forced to choose between feeding their child or paying the rent to keep a roof over their head. So you have housing, you have healthcare, you have unemployment, and we are trying very hard to be creative. I know, for my colleague from Michigan, hardly a day goes by when she doesn't talk to me about the benefit of Work Share, a creative way to make unemployment dollars stretch. By the way, Senator Merkley talks about it almost as much as my friend from Michigan because he feels very strongly about it. So as we connect the dots, as we have over the last 12 hours, and we talk about housing and healthcare and unemployment, I also want people to understand that those challenges were serious last week and the week before. We ought to put in context what we heard yesterday from Tony Fauci, who said that the trajectory as of right now is one where our country may possibly see 100,000 new cases a day. So let's picture what that means for the SNAP program and how hard Senator Stabenow's work is going to be, because we have heard Chairman Roberts--and you all have worked very well--and the like, and hopefully we can get that worked out because I don't even want to begin to imagine how much hunger and unemployment and housing challenges we are going to face with 100,000 new cases a day. So the work that Senator Stabenow is doing is urgent business. It really also brings us back to this: How can it be, in a country as strong and as good as ours, that we have all these kids going to bed hungry at night? In our home State--the State Senator Merkley and I have the privilege to represent--one out of every four Oregonians worries about putting food on the table. Our Oregon Food Bank, run by the inimitable Susannah Morgan, is doing a fabulous job. But the fact is--and I was really struck by this--the Oregon Food Bank has told my office that demand for emergency food has doubled in Oregon over the past 2 months at Oregon Food Bank's five branches. Recently, I was home. Whenever Senator Merkley and I are home, we try to get out and talk to a variety of community groups. I was helping distribute food baskets. I was struck because we were all being socially distant. They were handing me the bags, and I was putting them in the back of the cart. I got a chance to have a little bit of a conversation with those people. The cars were backed up for blocks and blocks on the east side of our community, where Senator Merkley and I both live. There were people who had not faced this kind of challenge before. You looked at them, and they looked at you, and you could see in their faces that they never expected this, particularly the seniors. My colleague has heard all the Gray Panthers stories. Senator Merkley heard them 50 times; you only heard them 25 times. But a lot of those seniors going through in their cars, it was clear, also, that was the big outing for the day. They didn't get really dressed up, but kind of, and the car was perfectly clean. They came through, and they wanted to visit. But you knew that, without that food, they wouldn't have a chance to make it through the day. What this comes down to is what Senator Stabenow is basically doing, is being in the Tikkun Olam business. That is a phrase Jews often use; it is about perfecting the world. It is about the moral obligation we have in America to do everything within our power to make sure that kids and families do not go hungry. Susannah Morgan was real clear about the things she wanted Senator Merkley and I to talk about on the floor of the Senate and make sure they got out. She wants to make sure that people can get assistance through a regular EBT card. The Trump administration, of course, has pushed to impose strenuous work requirements, which don't make any sense--particularly in a public health crisis--in workplaces and can be dangerous. We want to expand ways to get food to SNAP participants, like home delivery, curbside pickup. We want to extend what has come to be known as the pandemic EBT through the summer and any future school closures. This is so important because, even before the pandemic, I often would go to various kinds of programs run by community groups, and they would be serving a lunch. I would shoot baskets with kids for a bit. I would see the kids drift away, and they would take at least two lunches--at least two. I would go and visit. It was clear that they were just ravenous; they were incredibly hungry. This was pre-COVID. I would ask: What did you have to eat since you were here yesterday to shoot baskets with a Senator? They would look at you and say: Well, I had a Milky Way. That is what we are dealing with in America right now. What Senator Stabenow is doing with these programs is so incredibly important. When we have our priorities straight, kids who are eligible for free or reduced-cost meals would be able to get that food. I know that my colleague from Michigan has worked hard to make sure that those meals include more fresh fruits and vegetables. I heard her talk about it. She is trying to reach out to so many communities where often--and Senator Klobuchar talked about it--it is kind of a food desert. If you don't have the program Senator Klobuchar is working for, you are just going to have a lot of people like those kids I met going hungry. I am going to close with one last thought that is important to us in our part of the country. The reality is that, for many years, none of this was at all partisan. We have all heard about Bob Dole and George McGovern and the history books, and they made their common cause with respect to agriculture, and they would round up urban legislators. We read about that, various historical figures from the East, they weren't partisan. In our part of the world, when we talk about the practical, commonsense ideas that Senator Stabenow is offering for feeding hungry people, we just call them the Oregon Way. People always ask: Well, where is this Oregon Way, Ron? Where is this thing? Is it on the top of the capitol dome or Pioneer Square in Portland? I say: No, it is what we have tried to do for years. I want to thank Senator Stabenow for bringing heart and a pragmatic approach to this. We saw how you just reached out to Senator Roberts. By the way, I am on the Intelligence Committee. I am not going to give out anything classified, but Senator Roberts walked by, and he said: We are going to get this worked out. We are going to figure this out. I am going to end on a little bit of an upbeat note because that happened maybe only half an hour ago, and having watched my seatmate in action with Chairman Roberts often pull together agreements where nobody thought an agreement was possible--no pressure, don't feel like we are singling you out, but just know that a lot of us are going to be your allies in this fight because it is a fight for fairness, it is a fight for kids, it is a fight for families that are hurting, and it is a fight for an America where everybody gets a chance to get ahead. Thank you for doing that

Mr. WYDEN. Because a lot of my colleagues have been so thoughtful, I will have some brief remarks, and then I would ask unanimous consent that Senator Cortez Masto could follow me because she is facing a tight schedule as well. I know all of my colleagues are.

Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, I join my colleagues this afternoon in appreciation of Senator Brown, who has been relentless--absolutely relentless--in prosecuting this cause of trying to get a fair shake for millions of Americans who are walking on an economic tightrope. Every single month, they balance the food bill against the rent bill against the energy bill, and Senator Brown--whether it is supercharged unemployment benefits, whether it is housing, whether it is taking on the big pharmaceutical companies--is there again and again and again to stand up for people who don't have power and don't have clout, and I want to thank him especially for giving us this opportunity to focus on the avalanche of evictions that I believe will be headed in our direction in weeks if the Senate doesn't act. Yesterday, Dr. Fauci talked about soon possibly seeing as many as 100,000 new coronavirus cases a day. You simply cannot have a healthy economy in a country suffering from mass illness and death. There are already tens of millions of Americans out of work as a result of a pandemic that is only continuing to spread, and it has hit the whole affordability of rent for millions of Americans like a powerful storm. According to the Census Bureau, 40 percent of Black and Latino renters are worried they will not be able to make the rent this summer due to the pandemic. That in and of itself is an outrage and an injustice. My question for our Republican colleagues today involves this frightening day at the beginning of the month--the frightening day when families sit around a kitchen table, all across the country, and you can see the anguish in their faces when you talk to them because, around that kitchen table, they are saying to themselves: What am I going to spend our scarce dollars on this month? Is it going to be the rent? Is it going to be groceries? What about that big pile of medical bills that is off in the corner that we have to pay? It is July 1, and the rent is due. Our question for our Republican colleagues is, What is your plan? Senator Brown has been leading us every day--day in, day out--with a set of sensible policies that respond to what those families are saying around their kitchen tables. We fought for the moratorium on evictions that was included in the CARES Act, but it goes poof in a few weeks. Already this week my Republican colleagues have blocked funding for State and local governments that could have been used to help people who are walking that economic tightrope. This morning, Leader Schumer and I laid out a plan that I think is a path to a dependable safety net in America and, specifically, an extension of supercharged unemployment benefits, which ties the benefit to economic conditions on the ground. It will be a financial lifeline for millions and millions of people. Republicans have been opposed to that. Those benefits are going to expire in a matter of weeks, and as I said to colleagues: Better know what you are going to be looking at when you go home in August if there hasn't been action on our legislation to make sure that there are supercharged unemployment benefits so that people can pay the rent and buy groceries. If they are home all August long, in the heat with families, and they are going to have nowhere to turn in terms of paying for a roof over their heads and groceries, this is going to be a long, long, hot summer that will never be forgotten. So let's be clear what is at stake. Long before the pandemic hit, housing cost too much. Homelessness was way too common, and, in my view, the rate of homelessness among children is a true national scandal. In the wealthiest Nation on Earth, no child should be without a home. But even before the COVID crisis, 1.5 million children were experiencing homelessness--1.5 million youngsters living outside, living in cars, sleeping on floors, sleeping on the ground. Colleagues, in my home State, they have said that school buses have had to go to the parks. They have had to go to the parks to pick up kids who are living outside with their families. It rains once in a while in Oregon. It is cold in Oregon. And to think that kids in the richest country on Earth are spending the night in the parks and the school buses have to come and get them while we have huge tax cuts for those who are powerful and have lobbyists shows that things are really out of whack. What I describe as it relates to those kids living in the parks-- those kinds of conditions exist for youngsters all over America, and that was before the joblessness crisis hit and threw so many more working families into economic hardship. If the Senate doesn't step up to help families stay in their homes, it is going to get much, much worse because there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of kids facing this recipe for disaster. They are out of school. They are isolated, and they are more exposed to neglect and abuse. I am so pleased that my friend from Nevada has been talking about those families and talking about those kids. They are hungry. Their families are facing the threat of eviction. If the Senate just sits back and allows these children to fall into homelessness, they may never have a chance to get ahead. So what it comes down to is that the Senate has an obligation to help, and Senator Brown is on target in saying that this is the time to pass his Emergency Rental Assistance Act. I am with him. I think we have a lot of colleagues here in the queue because they, too, want to speak up for the radical idea--what a radical proposition--that in the richest country on Earth, the vulnerable ought to have a roof over their head. Senator Brown's proposal is a vital step forward. I think we all agree that much more needs to be done. I am very interested in the proposal I call the DASH Act, the Decent, Affordable and Safe Housing for All Act. I hope we will be able to get serious about that in 2021. The step to take today is to pass Senator Brown's bill, and I look forward to being back with our colleagues day in, day out, focusing on this crisis and making sure that nobody thinks we are going to skip away until the Republicans act. This country faces a truly horrific eviction nightmare if action is not taken soon, and I am very pleased that my friend from Nevada is here I yield the floor to her.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, it is a pleasure to be with Senator Schumer to advance the Schumer-Wyden legislative proposal today, and I am very pleased that we are joined by Senator Bennet, a particularly valuable member of the Senate Finance Committee, who has worked on these issues for many, many years. As Senator Schumer outlined, we are talking about a fresh approach as we look to extending supercharged unemployment benefits for as long as our economy suffers under the COVID-19 pandemic. As the ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee that produced the $600 extra benefit each week until July 31 and the breakthrough to cover for the first time gig workers and the self-employed and part-timers and others, I am going to take a few minutes to explain why this next step to create a dependable safety net in America is a no-brainer. We know that tens of millions of Americans are out of work due to COVID-19. The pandemic is, in fact, getting worse. Dr. Tony Fauci yesterday talked about the prospect of having 100,000 new confirmed cases per day nationwide. We don't even want to imagine what the unemployment situation is going to look like with 100,000 new coronavirus cases every day. You cannot have a healthy economy in a country suffering from mass death. I know the President got up in the Rose Garden and celebrated the last jobs report like it was the greatest news since the end of World War II, but you have to be living in a country club fantasy land to believe this economic crisis is anywhere close to ending. Tens of millions of Americans today are out of work in States with COVID hotspots. There are reports that people who went back to work in the spring are getting laid off for a second time. The numbers show that it disproportionately harms Black and Hispanic people suffering in this crisis, and the layoffs are hitting those Americans especially hard in industries that pay modest wages. This is a recipe for injustice and for long-term economic hardship. Our proposal is desperately needed because the country is not on a straight line to recovery. Democrats demanded the supercharged unemployment benefits because workers are not to blame for the crisis. Doctors don't yet have a cure for COVID-19, but the Congress does have a way to address the financial strain of joblessness. That is why Democrats demanded full wage replacement during the negotiations on unemployment benefits in the CARES Act. Secretary Scalia told those of us negotiating this issue that State UI systems--unemployment systems--were too outdated to make it work anytime soon. These are Federal benefits, but under employment law, the States administer the program and get the benefits out. We knew that there would be some challenges, and we proposed a simple solution: $600 extra per week across the board, adding up to full wage replacement for the typical worker. It was clear that was the only possibility of getting the supercharged benefits out to millions of workers quickly. It hadn't been easy. In a number of States, the unemployment systems run on Bronze Age technology. In some other cases--and Leader Schumer and I are inquiring into these right now--it is a case of Republican sabotage. That is why, for the long term, it is certainly worth looking at a Federal approach for administering unemployment benefits as a better strategy. But in today's economic conditions, dealing with the suffering we are seeing right now--the suffering that Tony Fauci talked about yesterday that could hammer this country from sea to shining sea--if you are dealing with today's conditions and you want to get full-wage benefits out on time, there is no alternative to $600 per week across the board. Furthermore, there is no good argument for cutting or eliminating benefits as long as the pandemic is raging and getting worse. On the one hand, we heard Secretary Scalia and other Republicans repeat the old line. They have been talking against unemployment for ages, and they always say the problem is lazy workers dependent on government are going to drag the economy down by collecting unemployment instead of going back to their jobs. On the other hand, Republicans have repeatedly said the economy is roaring back to full employment so there is no need for extending benefits any longer. You can't have it both ways. You can't have it both ways, that these workers are dragging the economy down and then talk about how everything is booming. Regardless of how these arguments conflict, neither one holds any water to begin with. I believe it is an insult to American workers to say they would rather sit at home than work hard and earn their pay. Our workers have a strong working ethic, and how could anybody believe in the greatness of America, as the President is always talking about, and think so little of its workers? Second, it is time to quit pretending to know whether the crisis is anywhere near over. The number of people filing new unemployment claims every week, even now, is two and three times higher than the worst single week of the Great Recession. Senators have a right to stake out whatever ground they want on this issue. I will tell you, the American people overwhelmingly support extending supercharged unemployment benefits. You see it in polls-- polls done by centrist organizations. But more importantly, you hear about it when you are home. Americans don't buy Secretary Scalia's line about lazy workers or dependence on the government. I can tell you, based on the conversations I had with Oregonians, they don't want any handouts. They understand the country is facing a severe historic crisis of joblessness, and they want the Congress to act. You cannot have a healthy economy in a country suffering from mass debt, particularly in the middle of a pandemic. It would be an act of sabotage and, I think, unthinkable cruelty to slash these benefits and send all these jobless families into destitution. That is why Senator Schumer and I have outlined this proposal to extend these supercharged unemployment benefits in a manner that is tethered to economic conditions on the ground. We always hear our colleagues talk about policies and the need for policies that really mirror what is going on in the real-world economy, in the private sector. That is what this proposal does. This proposal says we are going to tie the economic benefits; we are going to tether them to economic conditions on the ground. I saw our colleague from South Dakota, a Member of the Republican leadership, Senator Thune, say that maybe the benefits ought to taper down when unemployment goes down. I looked at that, and I said that Democrats share that view. That is what our trigger proposal is all about. You have to have them in a way that is going to make sure people can pay rent and groceries, which is what the $600 benefit made possible and will in the future. But when unemployment tapers down, then, under our proposal, we make an accommodation for that. What we are going to do is common sense. It provides certainty and predictability for American workers, but it will also send a message across the country that there is a policy that will make a more dependable safety net. Yet it will also do what the head of the Federal Reserve just said, which is to make sure that family budgets, which are the ones that drive the American economy, are ones where people can pay the rent and buy groceries. The bottom line is we have a moral obligation to not turn our back on those who are suffering. I am telling you, the Senate is going to go home here in a day or so for several weeks, and Senators are going to hear loud and clear that workers are concerned about whether, after July 31, they are going to be able to pay the rent and be able to buy groceries. I think they are worried, and I hear it from all parts of my community--about a tsunami of evictions and people simply not being able to feed their families. I think those who disagree with the Schumer-Wyden proposal ought to come out here and say what they going to offer those people who are hurting. Influential objective thinkers about the economy, like Jerome Powell, are saying that these kinds of benefits are absolutely key to making sure that the family budget, which drives the American economy, is going to be positioned to pay the rent and buy groceries. I gather from Leader Schumer's remarks that I can yield to our Senator from Colorado, a particularly valuable member of the Finance Committee, who has been working on safety net issues for many, many years.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, it is a pleasure to be with Senator Schumer to advance the Schumer-Wyden legislative proposal today, and I am very pleased that we are joined by Senator Bennet, a particularly valuable member of the Senate Finance Committee, who has worked on these issues for many, many years. As Senator Schumer outlined, we are talking about a fresh approach as we look to extending supercharged unemployment benefits for as long as our economy suffers under the COVID-19 pandemic. As the ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee that produced the $600 extra benefit each week until July 31 and the breakthrough to cover for the first time gig workers and the self-employed and part-timers and others, I am going to take a few minutes to explain why this next step to create a dependable safety net in America is a no-brainer. We know that tens of millions of Americans are out of work due to COVID-19. The pandemic is, in fact, getting worse. Dr. Tony Fauci yesterday talked about the prospect of having 100,000 new confirmed cases per day nationwide. We don't even want to imagine what the unemployment situation is going to look like with 100,000 new coronavirus cases every day. You cannot have a healthy economy in a country suffering from mass death. I know the President got up in the Rose Garden and celebrated the last jobs report like it was the greatest news since the end of World War II, but you have to be living in a country club fantasy land to believe this economic crisis is anywhere close to ending. Tens of millions of Americans today are out of work in States with COVID hotspots. There are reports that people who went back to work in the spring are getting laid off for a second time. The numbers show that it disproportionately harms Black and Hispanic people suffering in this crisis, and the layoffs are hitting those Americans especially hard in industries that pay modest wages. This is a recipe for injustice and for long-term economic hardship. Our proposal is desperately needed because the country is not on a straight line to recovery. Democrats demanded the supercharged unemployment benefits because workers are not to blame for the crisis. Doctors don't yet have a cure for COVID-19, but the Congress does have a way to address the financial strain of joblessness. That is why Democrats demanded full wage replacement during the negotiations on unemployment benefits in the CARES Act. Secretary Scalia told those of us negotiating this issue that State UI systems--unemployment systems--were too outdated to make it work anytime soon. These are Federal benefits, but under employment law, the States administer the program and get the benefits out. We knew that there would be some challenges, and we proposed a simple solution: $600 extra per week across the board, adding up to full wage replacement for the typical worker. It was clear that was the only possibility of getting the supercharged benefits out to millions of workers quickly. It hadn't been easy. In a number of States, the unemployment systems run on Bronze Age technology. In some other cases--and Leader Schumer and I are inquiring into these right now--it is a case of Republican sabotage. That is why, for the long term, it is certainly worth looking at a Federal approach for administering unemployment benefits as a better strategy. But in today's economic conditions, dealing with the suffering we are seeing right now--the suffering that Tony Fauci talked about yesterday that could hammer this country from sea to shining sea--if you are dealing with today's conditions and you want to get full-wage benefits out on time, there is no alternative to $600 per week across the board. Furthermore, there is no good argument for cutting or eliminating benefits as long as the pandemic is raging and getting worse. On the one hand, we heard Secretary Scalia and other Republicans repeat the old line. They have been talking against unemployment for ages, and they always say the problem is lazy workers dependent on government are going to drag the economy down by collecting unemployment instead of going back to their jobs. On the other hand, Republicans have repeatedly said the economy is roaring back to full employment so there is no need for extending benefits any longer. You can't have it both ways. You can't have it both ways, that these workers are dragging the economy down and then talk about how everything is booming. Regardless of how these arguments conflict, neither one holds any water to begin with. I believe it is an insult to American workers to say they would rather sit at home than work hard and earn their pay. Our workers have a strong working ethic, and how could anybody believe in the greatness of America, as the President is always talking about, and think so little of its workers? Second, it is time to quit pretending to know whether the crisis is anywhere near over. The number of people filing new unemployment claims every week, even now, is two and three times higher than the worst single week of the Great Recession. Senators have a right to stake out whatever ground they want on this issue. I will tell you, the American people overwhelmingly support extending supercharged unemployment benefits. You see it in polls-- polls done by centrist organizations. But more importantly, you hear about it when you are home. Americans don't buy Secretary Scalia's line about lazy workers or dependence on the government. I can tell you, based on the conversations I had with Oregonians, they don't want any handouts. They understand the country is facing a severe historic crisis of joblessness, and they want the Congress to act. You cannot have a healthy economy in a country suffering from mass debt, particularly in the middle of a pandemic. It would be an act of sabotage and, I think, unthinkable cruelty to slash these benefits and send all these jobless families into destitution. That is why Senator Schumer and I have outlined this proposal to extend these supercharged unemployment benefits in a manner that is tethered to economic conditions on the ground. We always hear our colleagues talk about policies and the need for policies that really mirror what is going on in the real-world economy, in the private sector. That is what this proposal does. This proposal says we are going to tie the economic benefits; we are going to tether them to economic conditions on the ground. I saw our colleague from South Dakota, a Member of the Republican leadership, Senator Thune, say that maybe the benefits ought to taper down when unemployment goes down. I looked at that, and I said that Democrats share that view. That is what our trigger proposal is all about. You have to have them in a way that is going to make sure people can pay rent and groceries, which is what the $600 benefit made possible and will in the future. But when unemployment tapers down, then, under our proposal, we make an accommodation for that. What we are going to do is common sense. It provides certainty and predictability for American workers, but it will also send a message across the country that there is a policy that will make a more dependable safety net. Yet it will also do what the head of the Federal Reserve just said, which is to make sure that family budgets, which are the ones that drive the American economy, are ones where people can pay the rent and buy groceries. The bottom line is we have a moral obligation to not turn our back on those who are suffering. I am telling you, the Senate is going to go home here in a day or so for several weeks, and Senators are going to hear loud and clear that workers are concerned about whether, after July 31, they are going to be able to pay the rent and be able to buy groceries. I think they are worried, and I hear it from all parts of my community--about a tsunami of evictions and people simply not being able to feed their families. I think those who disagree with the Schumer-Wyden proposal ought to come out here and say what they going to offer those people who are hurting. Influential objective thinkers about the economy, like Jerome Powell, are saying that these kinds of benefits are absolutely key to making sure that the family budget, which drives the American economy, is going to be positioned to pay the rent and buy groceries. I gather from Leader Schumer's remarks that I can yield to our Senator from Colorado, a particularly valuable member of the Finance Committee, who has been working on safety net issues for many, many years.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry: Has this bill passed now on UC?

Mr. WYDEN. The Paul bill passed that my colleagues are discussing.

Mr. WYDEN. All right. Well, I will just tell my colleagues--and I made it clear I was on my way here--I think that this is a flawed approach to a very serious problem, and the reason I feel this way, as the ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee, is this gives Social Security more responsibilities without any additional resources, and it comes at a time when I think there are going to be real challenges for Social Security as it tries to pay benefits. Around here you always have a chance to take another crack at it. I was on my way over here to offer to work with my colleagues--the Senator from Louisiana, the Senator from Delaware--but apparently it was so important that I couldn't come over here and make that offer, and I think the Senate will regret this. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I thank you. I thank Senator Klobuchar. I thank Senator Coons, an absolutely invaluable member of this alliance, ensuring that we are going to be able to get the resources for this. My mother would say, if she looked around, ``Dear, you're running with the right crowd.'' It is a pleasure to be able to team up with both of you. I want to put this in some kind of context to begin because my colleagues have all done such a good job. I also got a chance to listen to the Senator from Virginia, Senator Warner. He and I serve on the Intelligence Committee. I can't get into classified information, but certainly we are very much aware of some of the challenges to protecting the integrity of the votes of our citizens from a national security standpoint. I just want to start with a kind of basic, commonsense proposition. When you do something like making sure, in 2020, that citizens don't have to have a notary to vote, what you are doing is just common sense, and that is what expanded in-person voting is all about. That is what you do when you support voters with disabilities. That is what you do when you make it easier for communities where there are people of modest income, communities of color, to vote. It has been a pleasure to be able to work with Senator Klobuchar in particular, who is passionately committed to adding those kinds of priorities. I would only say that when you add these kinds of commonsense steps to enhance the ability of Americans to vote safely, only Donald Trump and Majority Leader McConnell could call it a liberal conspiracy. This is just basic common sense in government 101. I am particularly concerned because all of us know what is coming. In other words, we have been out here talking about these priorities now for months. We saw it in Wisconsin. We saw it in Georgia. We now know what is coming. If anything, we get additional news every day about what the challenge is. I don't know whether anybody has touched on it this afternoon, but just today, Dr. Tony Fauci said he would not be surprised to soon see 100,000 new coronavirus cases a day. The Presiding Officer of the Senate is a physician, and he knows this well. He comes from a State that has faced a lot of challenges. Who are the people who are most vulnerable? It is seniors. It is people who are over the age of 60. What I would say to my colleagues is, when I introduced the first bill to vote by mail--and that was a full 20 years ago--to give everybody in America the chance to vote the Oregon way--they wouldn't have to vote the Oregon way, but they would all have a chance to vote by mail, a ballot. We knew that this would be a big breakthrough in terms of our special system of government. Our military has always looked to innovative ways to make sure that our courageous men and women in uniform would have a chance to be counted in every election. We knew 20 years ago that vote-by-mail would be an important innovation because we had been doing it for years and years in Oregon. All the arguments that have been thrown out recently--these arguments about fraud--our late secretary of state, Dennis Richardson, who was very conservative, before he passed--he passed shortly after Donald Trump took office--he wrote the President, Donald Trump, and said: This fraud issue is nonexistent in Oregon. Every election, there are virtually no instances, but a lot of people believe they got a chance to be counted, and they got a chance to do it in a way that was convenient for them. There are a lot of challenges, certainly, today with the coronavirus. What we do with vote-by-mail, as my colleagues have been talking about, is we need to make it easier to empower voters to vote the way they would like to be able to vote--safely and at home. Right now, voters are worried about infection. Sixty-six percent recently said they were concerned about going to polling places--and for good reason. We just had our primary in Oregon, and nobody had to worry about infection in the State of Oregon. We voted safely in the middle of a pandemic--no long lines, no interactions with older people and multiple poll workers, often putting several people at risk of the coronavirus, not just one person. Yes, if you have the possibility of touching a machine used by hundreds of people, there is certainly reason to be worried. Since 66 percent of poll workers are over the age of 60, many of them are staying home to avoid getting sick. I think my colleagues on the other side of the Chamber know at least some of what I have said this afternoon. I believe they know what is coming this fall because we have already seen a kind of snapshot of it over the last couple of months in terms of the challenge of voting during the era of the coronavirus. In 2016, we saw what happened when a foreign power tried to interfere with our election. The concerns of 2016 are now magnified in 2020. I put forward the Resilient Elections During Quarantines and Natural Disasters Act, and I would like to think we have been trying to get the facts out to Senators on both sides of the aisle for years now. It was a pleasure to team up with Senator Klobuchar on the Natural Disaster and Emergency Ballot Act and with Senator Coons, as he was our point person in securing the funds that are a prerequisite to doing this job right. In other words, you have to have funds, and you have to have the reforms. We don't really think that it is a revolutionary proposition that what you ought to do is everything possible to make sure that every eligible American can vote safely in a pandemic. Nobody I know in this Chamber is offering the proposition that the Federal Government should just run elections. What we are trying to do is give States and local governments clear guidance about the best way to keep elections running during the pandemic and the resources in order to use that guidance, as Senator Klobuchar and I have talked about--two sides of the same coin--not running the election but giving good facts and clear guidance about how to prevent the pandemic and the dollars to make it possible to carry it out. If a million members of the military, five U.S. States, and tens of millions of Americans across the country can vote by mail every election, then every voter ought to be able to vote by mail. It is now online, and I hope my colleagues will look at the wonderful discussions ``60 Minutes'' had about vote-by-mail in Oregon just a couple of days ago with our secretary of state, Bev Clarno. She, too, is a Republican. There are real bipartisan roots on this. I am the first U.S. Senator ever to be elected by mail. I am a Democrat. The second U.S. Senator to be elected by mail, our former colleague Gordon Smith, was a Republican. You see Democrats, and you see Republicans. You watch ``60 Minutes.'' You hear from our secretary of state, who is a longtime Republican. You heard what I had to say about the late Dennis Richardson, who I would venture to say was just about as conservative as any Member of the Republican caucus. We are going to keep doing everything we can to get the facts out and make sure that people understand these arguments about, for example, fraud. We have to say, so people really see how strongly we feel about it. A few years ago, a poll worker tampered with two ballots. We put that person in jail for 90 days and fined him $13,000, and they were barred from ever working in an election again. That is the way to show you are serious about making sure you are sending a strong message about the integrity of every person's vote, addressing the safety questions, and avoiding the proliferation of insecure, overpriced electronic election equipment--something that the voting machine lobby has been pedaling for years and years. Those, again, are not partisan kinds of positions; they are just plain common sense. I realize that Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell are going to keep doing everything they can to block vote-by-mail on legislation, but I believe that when we really get into negotiating the nuts and bolts of the coronavirus package in the Senate when we come back, I believe, particularly because Senators are going to be home, they are going to hear from voters, and voters are going to say: Don't put our health at risk. Give us the ability to vote in a safe way. That is what we have tried to do. I will just say to my colleagues, there really is no plan B. The choice is either vote by mail or through the expanded options that we are offering in our bill, or huge numbers of Americans will not be able to vote at all. We are better than this, and it is time for Senators to look again. As I said, there is no plan B here, colleagues. The choice is to take advantage of our options for citizens to be able to vote safely, or huge numbers of Americans will not be able to vote at all. I think, to close for our side, the lead sponsor, the senior Democrat in the Rules Committee, may have something else to say. As a Senator who has worked on this, as I say, for two full decades, I knew that we were going to face challenges along the way. Back when we started, it was kind of a debate among political scientists. Now it is fundamentally a question of keeping our citizens safe as they exercise the franchise. I think it is very fitting that Senator Klobuchar close for our side