first, let me thank Chairman Menendez, the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, for his advocacy in getting into this budget resolution the $10 billion for the global response to COVID-19. I just want to underscore what Chairman Menendez said from the beginning: This global response will not only save lives around the world, it will save lives here at home. In 1 year, 450,000 Americans have lost their lives to COVID-19; 2.6 million worldwide. The United States has the distinction of having the largest number of fatalities and infections of any country in the world. This is a challenge that requires the leadership of the United States of America. If we are going to beat COVID-19, America must be in the leadership to do this as quickly and as efficiently as possible. So what does that require? It requires us to take the right steps at home, and the budget resolution before us gives us the resources to do that with the production and distribution--fair distribution--of vaccines and dealing with the needs for testing, dealing with the needs of those businesses and individuals who have been directly affected by COVID-19, all that is dealt with in this package, but we also need to work responsibly in the global community, and that is what this $10 billion will allow us to do--to be leaders globally as well as what we do at home.…
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