Political Quotes

“I thank my good friend from Oregon for his excellent and eloquent words. I want to thank him for being such a leader on this issue and so many others. I thank my colleague from New Hampshire, who will speak after me. I think Senator Menendez is expected here, as well, to say a few words before the unanimous consent request that will be made by my colleague from Oregon. We are a long way off from beating COVID-19. Our communities need Federal relief as soon as possible. The disease continues to spread in an alarming rate across much of the South and West, and our country is facing probably the greatest economic challenge since the Great Depression. Yet, for over 2 months, the Republican Senate has chosen to delay, delay, delay. First, Leader McConnell said another COVID relief bill was ``likely'' in June. Now, the earliest it could happen is late July, and, even then, the Republican leader said he wants to ``assess the conditions in the country'' first before writing a bill ``in his office.'' I will make two points. The conditions in the country are terrible. You don't need to wait to assess them. We must act now. Second, if the leader thinks writing a bill in his office will produce results, I ask him to look at COVID 2, 3, and 3.5, where, in each case, he wrote a bill in his office without Democratic input. We insisted that we be included by not going forward, and we got a much better bill.…”