12anhour job. Weve put in that position. Senator mcconnell, whose office is down the hall, can make that unilateral decision on whether we stay and actually do the right thing. Congress has no business leaving. We shouldnt leave town until we pass the house package to help workers and support our communities. And President Trump needs to sign f we need to do our jobs, take care of the workers who are going to need help paying their mortgage, paying their rent, taking care of their children, if schools closed or they get sick. It is really, really simple. Its why we need to pass paid sick days now and shore up Unemployment Insurance funds immediately. We know that hundreds of thousands of who knows millions of people are going to get laid out, the airlines, restaurant, hotels, communities where they depend on these businesses to pay property taxes. We know there are going to be lots of layoffs. Im not an alarmist. Im not panicky. I think were going to deal with this right but we need the majority leader, senator mcconnell, who sits right here and runs the senate, who makes the decisions on whether we work or dont work, whether he sends us home or keeps us here working, senator mcconnell needs to make the decision to bring us to keep us here as soon as the house passes this bill, that the senate takes it up. Paid sick leave is one of the most important things we can do to stop the spread of this virus. We know already that our economy is going to get hurt. We know the president of the United States judges the economy by the stock market. We know the first president ive ever seen do that but thats beside the point. But we also know that the stock market is up and down and mostly down and investors are uneasy at best. They want more predictability. Theyre not getting it. But we know the most important thing, mr. President , is to deal with the spread of the coronavirus. If we cant contain that, if we cant do anything about that, if we cant if we cant stop the spread of this virus, the other stuff just doesnt matter as much. People should but you start so you start with the spread of this virus. The best way to stop the spread of the virus is to say to people if theyre sick, you can stay home and you can get sick pay. Every other country in the world, every other every other rich country in the world provides sick pay for people who cant go to work because theyre sick. Its as simple as that. And if we dont if we dont pass the sick day policy, if we leave town right now, even if we come back next week which were not scheduled to, again senator mcconnells decision, even if were only gone a week, thats five more work day, of sick people going to work when they shouldnt, getting sicker, infecting others with coronavirus or the flu or anything else or staying home and giving up their pay which they need to meet their rent payment. The house package takes care of this. Senators shouldnt be leaving this building until we get this help to the people we serve. People in ohio, in indiana and the presiding officers state, people are scared. Theyre angry and im angry. Many of us have been sounding the alarm for years warning President Trump and leader mcconnell who always does President Trumps bidding as if he doesnt even represent a state, he represents the president in this body. Weve been sounding the alarm warning the president that hes made us less prepared to handle a crisis like this one. President trump tried to gut the centers for Disease Control and National Institutes for health. Think about this. The United States of america as recently as ten, 15 years ago, we had the best Public HealthPublic Health infrastructure, the best Public Health safety net in the history of the world. We had the centers for Disease Control. We had the National Institutes of health. In cincinnati we have the National Institutes of Occupational Safety and health, only one of its kind in the world. We have our county Public Health departments in each of ohios 88 counties and all over the country. We had the best in the world until President Trump began to try to gut the c. D. C. And the n. I. H. He refused to fill key Public Health positions. Most importantly, this is just unbelievable when you think about it and i know senator young, the presiding officer, had concerns about that. He got rid of the white houses entire Global HealthSecurity Team two years ago. Let me repeat that. For two years President Trump left us without the team thats supposed to manage pandemics. Now, you know what that means . It means there were about 40 people at the white house led by an admiral who is an m. D. And also a doctor. His job was to survey the world and look around for potential illness outbreaks, to look around for potential pandemics. It might have been sars. It might have been ebola. It might be resurge ens of resurgece of polio. We do this. We care about the world. Protect our own people. If we dont, we see what happens. His job was to continue to look rn a the world and look around the world and look out for these kind of pandemics. The president fired him. The president fired the whole office. The president has never replaced him. I sent him a letter, more than 600 days ago back in may of 2018 telling him to stop dismantling our health care infrastructure. Now were all paying the price for President Trumps decision. We see the real time consequences. This was unilateral disarmament. We disarmed. We unilaterally disarmed against the worlds infectious diseases. We know that International Tuberculosis is a problem. We know that international hif aids is a hivaids is a problem. We work against those. You know what . When i think about one of the things im proudest about in our country is what weve done about Public Health. We led the harnlg to eradicate smallpox. Smallpox killed hundreds of million, of people over time in this world, hundreds of millions. We led the charge to eradicate smallpox, this country did. Then we led the charge to eradicate polio all over the world. Im old enough to remember children, not children anymore, children i went to grade school with who had had polio. They were they were recovered but they still limped. They still had signs of polio, not crippling signs but signs of polio. We did that. We took on tobacco in this body. Senator durbin and senator blumenthal and senator merkley and i and others went 50 years. People smoke at half the rate today than they did 50 years ago. Its starting to go back up because of ecigarettes but weve had huge Public Health victories in this country. You know what . We have a president of the United States now and we have a Senate Republican leader, mitch mcconnell, who well, he certainly tried to help tobacco but i wont even talk about that. We have a president and we have a Senate Majority leader that simply arent they dismantle, they did all they could to dismantle the centers for Disease Control and n. I. H. They left us prepared when the president fired the global Security Team at the white house that looked out for illnesses. And now what . We have a Global Pandemic on our hands. President trump needs to stop pretending he can lock out a disease by putting up walls at the border, that hes already allowed to spread and start making up he needs to start making up for all the lost time hes wasted and so does senator mccon. We need to make sure we mcconnell. We need to make sure we dont end up with a financial crisis on top of the Public Health crisis. For some of us it feels like deja vu. Weve been in moments like this before. We have seen the markets drop. We bailed out the banks but didnt do anything for the workers. Thats what this body always does. Im certain senator mcconnell will get around to and President Trump helping corporations that have been hurt. There have been corporations that have been damaged badly. Hotel chains, transportation companies, particularly airlines. Theyve been hurt badly by this. That part is going to get worse. Im sure that they will open the public checkbook to make sure their billion, of there are billions of dollars for these industries but we shouldnt do it until we take care of the workers. If were going to give x number of dollars to the airlines as we probably should, we better most of the money better end up in the pocket of the flight attendants and the pilots and ticket a littles and ticket agents and mechanics, baggage handlers and all the people that work for the airlines that this body forgets about. They serve us when we fly. We dont even know their names. We probably know the c. E. O. s names and we always help them but we ought to be helping the workers. Right now we have a chance from stopping to stop this if spiraling out of control. We dont have another 2008 on our hands yet but we have to act now. We dont go home for a week or two or three because senator mcconnell has some whatever it is that would send us home. We need to act now. We need to make sure we focus our efforts on preventing this virus from spreading and we dont have one crisis, the Health Care Crisis stacked on top of an economic crisis making the Health Care Crisis worse. We know that job is harder because of all the ways that President Trump and leader mcconnell have undone the many protections we put in place after the last crisis. They backed away from wall street reform safeguards. The president had a chance to get ahead of this virus and other Public Health threatses and he failed. He had a chance to get ahead of the financial risk and he failed. But luckily, senator mcconnell and the president havent succeeded in getting rid of all of our wall street reform protections. They havent succeeded in repealing the Affordable Care act. Because of that, because of the work we did a decade ago with president obama, were in a better position now than were in in 2009. But we have to come together. We have to rise to this challenge. Corporate America Needs to, too. One way we can do that is to suspend these stock buybacks. Now, Congress Gave a huge tax cut to the wealthy in this country. Three years ago two years ago. 70 of the benefits went to the wealthiest 1 . I sat in the white house with the president and about ten senators. The president said everybody everybodys pay is going to go up 4,000. Some as much as 9,000. Those were the book end numbers he used. And he said that if we do this tax cut, the corporations are going to its going to trickle down and workers are going to get these raises. Well, it doesnt exactly happen that way but you know what did happen . After they got this tax cut, the executives started to do stock buybacks. We need to suspend taking money that should have been invested in workers, taking money that should have been invested in technology and upgrading their company, but it went to executives. Not exactly a shock to most of us. Thats what happened. Banks need to invest in their communities, not investing in their c. E. O. Stock portfolio. Right now j. P. Morgan is in the milling of an ongoing 30 billion in stock buy wakes. Their executives in all of their criminal naturalty and bad decisions, as if theyve earned it, it would be better spent in Small Businesses and medical research and relief for people who need help. The reason big banks are supposed to have that money is so that they keep lending and keep communities afloat when we have crises like n. Its time for all of us to come together in the senate, in the white house, in the communities across the country and yes, on wall street. That means, mr. President , we dont leave this building until weve done everything we need to do to put this epidemic under control, to get this epidemic under control, to get our communities the Testing Capacity and tools they need to manage this crisis, to support the workers who are going to get hurt. And leader mcconnell, his responsibility i dont care how he votes in the end but make the decision to put the house bill on the floor so we can vote on it. And President Trump, the day he gets it needs to sign it. Lets get help to the people we serve, not next week, not two weeks from now, not