On the recordJuly 22, 2020
the legislation that Senator Alexander is talking about probably is something we ought to look at in connection with this legislation that we are likely to pass here in the Congress in the next week or so regarding the COVID-19 crisis that we face. I am here on the floor today to talk about that--to talk about what the next steps ought to be and how we should be responding as Congress to this unprecedented challenge we have of the pandemic. We are now about 5 months into it, and for much of April and certainly in the month of May we were seeing pretty good progress on the coronavirus pandemic. The situation was improving, and many of us thought we were turning the corner. Unfortunately, as we have moved into June and July, we are now trending in the wrong direction in much of the country. Over the past week, the number of hospitalizations, for instance, has risen in many of our States, and there is concern that the situation could worsen when the weather begins to cool. Today, in Ohio, our Governor announced a statewide mask mandate, as an example. We have not had that yet. He did so because he is concerned about some of the numbers. Ohio is not in as bad a shape as some of the States, but we are not seeing the progress we hoped for. The past few months have been a somewhat better story for the economy.…
