Rob Portman: “I also want to talk this afternoon a little about the Heroes legislation, the HEALS legislation, and some of the…”

“I also want to talk this afternoon a little about the Heroes legislation, the HEALS legislation, and some of the commonalities I see between the two. On the floor of the Senate this week, there has been some discussion about the need for us to come together in a bipartisan way to put together a package to deal with the coronavirus. Some call it the COVID 5.0 package. It is really probably 8.0. We have done a lot of legislation already, but there are things that still need to be done and some urgent matters, including dealing with the expiration of the unemployment insurance. I am on the floor today to talk about how I see the opportunity for us to move ahead by looking at some of the commonalities between the Democratic support and the Republican support for different legislation. As we all know, the discussions over the past week have not moved forward as quickly as we would like. In fact, it is pretty discouraging. Despite the fact that many people thought the Heroes Act was really a messaging bill--POLITICO wrote a story, one of our news media sources up here--and said: ``a messaging bill that has no chance of becoming law.'' Others made the same comments. Why? Because it was a $3.5 trillion pricetag for legislation, which would make it by far the most expensive bill ever passed by either House of Congress.…”