Political Quotes

“I rise today to address the healthcare and economic crisis facing our Nation because of COVID-19. According to Johns Hopkins University, more than 1.5 million Americans have tested positive for COVID and more than 90,000 have died. And 1,509 West Virginians have tested positive for COVID, and 68 have died, according to our State's Department of Health and Human Services. We mourn each one of those lost lives and remember the families who grieve for them now and the friends who have lost a loved one. All of us join together, and we thank all of the heroes who are on the frontline performing lifesaving and life-sustaining jobs during this pandemic. The economic consequences of this pandemic have been devastating as well, but the health devastation is what really, I think, breaks all of our collective hearts. On the economic front nationally, the unemployment rate is 14.7 percent, and 36.5 million Americans have filed for unemployment since mid-March--an incredible number. In our small State of West Virginia, 164,000 unemployment claims have been processed since March, and the unemployment rate is over 15 percent. With these terrible facts and the urgency of them, it is right for Congress to come together to take bold action. We have enacted four major pieces of bipartisan legislation to help ease this crisis. Most significant of those, of course, was the CARES Act, which passed this body 96 to 0.…”