Chris Coons: “I rise to join my colleagues this afternoon in asking: Is this just another Thursday--is this just another afternoon in…”

“I rise to join my colleagues this afternoon in asking: Is this just another Thursday--is this just another afternoon in a week, in an average year, or in an average August--when it is fine for all of us to simply head to our other commitments and concerns? Sometimes here in Washington it is awfully easy to feel and be disconnected--disconnected from the daily concerns and grinding anxiety of the pressing issues that make the lives of the folks we represent so different. I want to start by reminding us of something a Senator--a Senator from Minnesota--once said in the 1970s. It was Hubert Humphrey who said: The moral character of a society can best be gauged by how they treat those at the dawn of life, its children; those in the shadows of life, the disabled, the disadvantaged; and those in the twilight of life, senior citizens. Well, if that were the measure of this place in this day and this time, then we are failing. I think every person here, every person listening or watching knows that we are in the midst of three crises at the same time: a global pandemic, the COVID-19 pandemic, in which a highly transmissive disease has spread rapidly across the world.…”