On the recordOctober 22, 2020
every day we see more Americans dying from COVID-19 and more Americans contracting this virus. As of today, we have hit the awful mark of over 220,000 Americans dead from COVID- 19, the highest death level in the entire world, and, with that, we are also experiencing the economic fallout and pain that has come with it. It did not have to be this way. President Trump knew about this deadly virus early on, and he could have and should have acted. But even at this moment, there are things that this U.S. Senate can be doing to both stop the spread of the virus and ease the economic pain. We could be taking up and voting on the legislation that passed the House of Representatives called the Heroes Act, which is a comprehensive emergency relief package for the American people--both addressing testing and contact tracing and other issues to stop the spread of the virus and providing essential economic relief to American families, workers, and businesses that are struggling from the fallout. But we haven't even had a chance to vote on that bill here in the U.S. Senate. The Heroes Act was passed by the House more than 5 months ago, and then, recently, the House passed a revised version called Heroes 2.0. We tried to get a vote on that just this past Tuesday here in the U.S. Senate. It was blocked by the Republican leader, Senator McConnell, and here we have 12 days to go until the election.…
