Mr. President , this is a commonsense piece of legislation. It does not saddle Small Businesses, American Business with a new mandate that they dont have a great deal of confidence and then they would actually be funded 100 by the federal government. By the way, the house bill doesnt fund this 100 , it leaves gaps, and it would definitely be temporary and utilize an existing program in the states, sitting on top of it providing federal support for the workers that are going to actually need it as we go through this unprecedented event in our nations history. With that, mr. President , i yield the floor to the senator from pennsylvania. The presiding officer the senator from pennsylvania. Mr. Toomey thank you, mr. President. And i want to thank the senator from wisconsin for leading on this effort. I rise in strong support of this amendment, mr. President. The two of us, and i expect most everybody in this chamber, fully support the idea, the goal, the need to provide relief to workers who have been affected by this pandemic. Thats not whats in dispute here. There is a legitimate and serious concern about the mechanism that is provided. The house bill imposes a very significant Administrative Burden on the very Small Businesses struggling to survive. Weefer all taking these phone calls from all across our states, men and women who are operating a business, and they are on the edge and trying to figure out out how do we stay alive . How do we keep this business alife until we come out the other side . They are struggling with tough decisions that they are having to make for the First Time Ever in completely unchartered waters. And then this legislation comes along and says, by the way, now youre going to have it to navigate through a new system you have never heard before. And you are going to have to go through the books, regulations and consult your lawyer and figure out how you comply with this complex new mechanism so you comply with the law and get the reimbursement thats intended. Thats a huge problem for these folks who are struggling to stay alive. And so what senator johnsons amendment does is it just shifts the substantial administrative cost and burden off the back of the Business Owner and operator and allows it to be managed by the state unemployment systems who are in the business of providing compensation. And we plus it up and we waive the waiting periods so that the individual workers who are adversely affected by this covid19 pandemic will still get the benefits that we all want them to get. Its just a better way to deliver this, mr. President , and so i hope my colleagues will vote in favor, and i yield the floor. A senator mr. President. The presiding officer the senator from in. Mrs. Gillibrand i strongly disagree with both my colleagues statements. In fact, there is no Administrative Burden given to the Small Businesses. In fact, our bill is doing exactly what the Small Businesses want which is direct payment to the businesses, not a tax credit that they get many months in if the future, but direct payments to them. I dont think Unemployment Insurance to be given to the states is going to result in immediate relief for the employees that need it, and again, you are creating a false structure requiring people to quit their jobs so they can care for a child whos been sent home from school is absurd. It is far better to have a National Paid leave program in this country and unlike what my colleague said, it is not permanent. It is temporary and there is no Administrative Burden. I yield the floor to my colleague, senator i yield the floor. The presiding officer all time has expired. The question is on the murray amendment. Is there a sufficient second . In appears to be. The clerk will call the roll. Vote vote vote vote vote the presiding officer are thrp any senators in the chamber wishing to change their vote or to vote in if not on this vote the yeas are 47, nays 51. Under the order requiring 60 votes for the adoption of this amendment, the amendment is not agreed to. The question occurs on the Johnson Amendment. Is there a sufficient second . There appears to be. The clerk will call the roll. Vote vote vote the presiding officer does any senator in the chamber wish to change his or her vote . If not, the yeas are 50. The nays are 48. Under the previous order requiring 60 votes for the adoption of this amendment, the amendment is not agreed to. The clerk will read the title of the bill for the third time. The clerk h. R. 6201 an act making emergency supplemental appropriations for the fiscal year ending september 30, 2020, and for other purposes. The presiding officer the question occurs on passage of the bill. Is there a sufficient second . There appears to be. The clerk will call the roll. Vote vote the presiding officer is any member in the chamber wishing to vote or change their vote . Seeing none, the ayes are 90, the nays are 8, the bill is passed. Under the previous order, the motion to reconsider is considered made and laid upon the table. Mr. Mcconnell madam president. The presiding officer the majority leader. Mr. Mcconnell we just passed this bill that came over from the house. Its on its way to the president. A very important first step which we are calling phase two. Well continue to work on the next bill to respond to the crisis, and i want to repeat again the senates going to stay in session until we finish phase three, the next bill, and send it over to the house. Republicans hope, shortly, to have a consolidated position, along with the administration, and we intend to sit down with our democratic colleagues, see what we can agree to, and i would recommend senators stay around, close. Just how long it will take to get through these steps is unclear, but as everyone knows, we are moving rapidly because the situation demands it. Mr. Lankford madam president. The presiding officer the senator from oklahoma. Mr. Lankford i ask unanimous consent that the senate be in a period of morning business with senators permitted to speak for up to ten minutes each. The presiding officer without objection. Mr. Lankford three months ago no one in the country, in fact, no one in the world had heard the term covid19. The term coronavirus was around but most folks didnt use that because it was connected to sars or to mers in the past. In december of 2019 an infection started in china and it spread rapidly through the wuhan region. And by january there were thousands of people affected before most of the world even knew it existed. Now almost every country in the world has infections. We have hundreds of thousands of people that have had contact with this virus, and normal and normal weve lost unfortunately weve lost thousands of people worldwide. In the United States the numbers continue to increase. The vast majority of the people who get this virus have little to no symptoms. Its a cold, its a mild flu to them. But for a vulnerable population, our elderly populations, those with heart issues and lung issues, smokers, diabetics, this can be a very, very serious thing. The challenge we face in our health care is that for every person that walks in to get tested, theyre facetoface with one of our Health Care Workers especially in rural areas of our state that may be the only Health Care Professional for that entire county. And if that person who has not been vaccinated as well, because there is no vaccine yet, if that person is not able to serve the rest of the population, a bad Health Situation becomes even worse because of diminishing care. We as americans have taken this seriously, as we should. Were paying attention. This younger population is spending time trying to be able to gelt away from other individuals, to be able to selfisolate, selfquarantine, to be able to get social distancing, the new term. To be able to find a way to not get close to someone else so you dont accidentally pass the virus on because if the virus may be in them and they are not affected much, the effect to someone else can be pretty dramatic so out of respect to others try to maintain distance. There has been multiple action tion from the federal government in the past several months. Travel bans we know about, starting with china and now multiple areas of the world. Lots of encouragement to be able to limit gatherings. First to 250 and then to 50 and now to 10. Now a series of keep social distancing. Theres been emergency declarations that have been done. C. M. S. Changed coverage yesterday on dealing with issues like telehealth, making sure that individuals that may have other care needs dont have to actually go into a Health Care Professional for their fear of who else is sitting in the waiting room. But they can get academies get access to telehealth. The f. D. A. Has been aggressive in giving access to different states to be able to do their own testing regiments. C. D. C. Has been active to get to a point where they can get a testing system that can get out to the entire country. The challenge was early on many other countries did tests and developed tests with a high false positive rate. C. D. C. Was very focused on trying to get as accurate as they could. It meant they took longer and we dont have the tests out. The tests are mott accurate but more accurate but we dont have the testing numbers that we need when we needed it which was last week. So now were still struggling to be able to catch up on testing all over the country. Multiple labs, multiple universities are also coming on board. Its interesting, multiple other countries are also developing their own testing processes. In the days ahead we will be able to catch up on the testing that any american could be able to get testing but for now its limited. In states like my state, in oklahoma where the virus is beginning acceleration, we were late to get the virus coming to oklahoma but now the virus is there, it starts to accelerate, and testing is exceptionally important to us as it is to everyone else. The department of transportation is en engaged on hours of service to allow for movement of goods all over the country dealing with livestock and food. There has been a move from just about every retailer in the country doing hours early in the morning for those in the most vulnerable population so theyre not shopping with people that may have the virus and dont know. Theres been a shift around the country to encourage people to telework or to be able to find ways to be able to separate out in their place of work. All of these things have occurred just in the last few months, beginning again to say three months ago none of us knew this term or this virus existed. All this is happening extremely rapidly. Three weeks ago congress and the president agreed on a proposal that was a wide bipartisan proposal to be able to deal with additional funding for testing, additional funding for the vaccine development, additional funding for state and local departments of health to be able to make sure theyre taking care of that. In my own state of oklahoma, has already received along with 7 million to be able to help with whats happening in our county and we are in desperate need of those dollars to be able to get that done. Vaccine development is already in human trials now. Its in phase one. It will take multiple months to be able to get that done, but we have already begun that process. And thats important to us. The bill that was on the floor today dealt in multiple helpful things. It expands snap, food nutrition, an expansion of that. It also deals with Unemployment Insurance benefits to be able to make sure those are staying consistent and get extended out to people that are going to need it because in the past week unemployment has dramatically increased all over the country. In the days ahead when were able to see the numbers well see the difference of what happened this week versus the week before versus the week before that. The struggle is my phones have been filled with one other element thats in that bill, and that deals with a mandate on Small Businesses for sick leave. Small businesses in my state are closed. Many retailers and restaurants, many Small Businesses are really struggling with how theyre going to pay for this when they have no income coming in right now. Theyre hearing the promise of a federal reimbursement coming to them but they dont know when thats coming and theyre literally teetering on the edge right now and their struggle is please dont do something that pushes us over the edge. We need help. But we dont need a bureaucracy thats going to be slow to respond or a way thats actually going to get us some help but help that comes to us too late. In these terrifying words that ive heard from multiple employers, i cannot make it with that structure. Im going to to have to lay people off and hope to be able to hire them back when this all ends. For those families that are laid off and on unemployment now, this is a very different day for them. And my fear is some of what pushed some of those individuals over the edge into unemployment was a nudge to say were going to add one more mandate to you at your worst possible economic moment. The first principle that we should have as a congress is do no harm. We need to step in and help those folks that need help. Theres lots of ideas being bantered around in the senate and the house from both sides of the aisle to try to figure out how we can get help as rapidly as we can to as many people as we can. This is a moment unlike what we have seen before. Its not that the economy is crashing because of some Economic Foundation thats not there. It is fear and panic thats global, that literally were struggling with what if and the c. D. C. And our own governments saying to employers it would be best if you closed for a season. And they being good citizens and good neighbors, quite frankly, are complying with that for fear of their own business and of their own employees. I finished my day yesterday late last night talking to a small Business Owner in oklahoma. Who relayed to me what hes going through right now. And the struggles that hes having keeping the doors open. And quite frankly, he was fairly blunt with me to say the things that are being passed in the bill tomorrow will affect me but my competitors that are big companies, it doesnt affect them. And so its already hard enough for me as a Small Business to compete with them. Now i have a new mandate on me thats not a mandate on them. And it makes it even harder, and i dont think ill have the cash flow to be able to make this work. Towards the end of the conversation he paused and literally began to cry, and he pulled himself together and said im having to call people and tell them i dont have hours for you next week. And these are people i care about. We need to take action, but we need to take action that helps people keep their jobs, helps people stay employed and helps us deal with the dip in the economy right now to help them pull back out. My fear is we didnt do that just now. We might have just made it worse. There are important things for us to do and many of those things were working on this week e. We have got to get help to as many people as we can as fast as we can. And it is my hope the senate will continue to stay in session as the leader has already said and promised that it would, until we actually come to some proposals where we have wide bipartisan agreement that could help rapidly to people that need the help the most those workers, those individuals that are struggling, those folks that are hourly, folks that are waiters and waitresses, folks that work in the coffee shop and own the coffee shop, folks in Retail Locations that are shut down. They need us to stand with them, and this is our moment to do it. Lets do it together. With that, i yield the floor. The presiding officer the senator from massachusetts. Mr. Markey thank you, madam president. Madam president , i want to start my remarks by saying to the people of massachusetts and families all across the country country, many of you are making big sacrifices, quarantining yourself, postponing or canceling major events, dealing with closed schools and day care. We are grateful. Right now our primary goal needs to be to slow the spread of this virus, and we all share in that responsibility. And so we thank you for everything you are doing to keep your loved ones and everyone elses loved ones safe at this time. We are at war with the coronavirus, and we need a massive wartime manufacturing mobilization for coronavirus testing kits and personal protective equipment for medical personnel and emergency responders. That is why last weekend i was the first to call on President Trump to immediately use existing authorities under the defense production act to bring all of the power of the federal government to bear in mobilizing industry to meet this crisis. Its why i had authored the Senate Resolution calling on him to do so and its why i spoke directly to Vice President pence yesterday to urge the administration to take this critical action. And i am glad that they are doing so. The defense production act allows the federal government to direct supplies of Critical Materials and equipment that our hospitals and First Responders need. It allows us to mobilize industry top expand production and gives us the power to coordinate industry to respond to this crisis. We need to fully use all of those powers that are provided under this law, and that is why i am so glad that President Trump has today invoked the power of the defense production act to respond to the coronavirus crisis. Im glad that he is exercising it and im glad that after my conversation yesterday with Vice President pence, that they decided to put this on the agenda for our country. We need to massively increase private production of the lifesaving personal protective equipment, medical supplies and devices an