Tim Kaine: “I rise in opposition to the nomination of Judge Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court. This process shows how misplaced the…”

“I rise in opposition to the nomination of Judge Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court. This process shows how misplaced the priorities of the Senate are at a critical moment in time. There is an epic national crisis that we should be addressing--a pandemic that is raging and causing unprecedented death and economic distress at a massive scale. Yet the Senate has been sitting on its hands since late April when we passed our fourth and final piece of COVID legislation then, reinfusing dollars into the small business protection program. The death toll in the United States was approaching 63,000. We have done nothing since, and the death toll is now approaching 230,000. Here are a few of the many Americans we tragically lost to COVID-19: Benigno Hurtado-Andrade, Amalia Pasqua, James Shanley, Verna and Clarence Cuyler, Betty Damato, Keith Mitchell Jacobs, Ward H. Harlow, Jr., Kyong He Park, James Norton, Charlotte Marie Sims, Guus Smeets, Charles Krebbs, Dr. Gaye Griffin-Snyder, Hugh Freyer, Marcel Borg, Nancy Standage Borbon, Albert Garcia, Helen Flores, Dean Pryor Perkins, Darrell William Jones, Paul Abramson, Everett Pike, Grant D. Ross, Isabelle Papadimitriou, James Hughston, Jose Antoniao Reyes, William D. Shilling, Jr., Ronnie ``Bro'' Baldwin, Larry Singer, Leone (Kitty) Harriman, Sarah Roth, Sara Rose Varela, Kenneth E. Zwick, Sr., Pik Chi Chan, Melinda ``Nina'' Wernick, Roger Diethelm, Alan Zundl, Irvin Umberger, Dr. Kirk Barnett, Danielita Brown, Jose Sanchez.…”