It’s time to set the record straight. The American people are wondering what Congress is going to do to help folks who are still struggling from the effects of COVID-19 on their health and on our economy. They see little movement in negotiations, and I’ve had folks back home ask me, what are you all doing up there?
Sadly, the answer is not much because Speaker Pelosi prefers to play political games. In May, the Speaker used a public health crisis as an excuse to try and give new legislative life to several extreme partisan ideas that, on their face, have zero effect on COVID-19. For example, in the first HEROES Act, the word “cannabis” was used 68 times, more than the words “job” or “hire”. Speaker Pelosi did everything she could to shut Republicans out of bipartisan negotiations and bring a COVID-19 relief bill to the floor that she knew had no chance of passing.
Last week, Speaker Pelosi brought HEROES 2.0 to the floor which is a $2.2 trillion package containing another laundry list of far-left policy items including cutting new funding for police and extending untargeted federal unemployment insurance, making it harder for small businesses to hire back workers. Additionally, the bill lacks liability protections for businesses, churches, and schools trying to reopen, and makes it easier for Planned Parenthood to access taxpayer funded PPP funds. Speaker Pelosi knows that the bill had no chance of becoming law yet decided to bring it to the floor anyway.
Despite these facts, Congressional Democrats claim that it’s Republicans who have no solutions on COVID-19. Nothing could be further from the truth. This week, Congresswoman Jaime Herrera Beutler filed a discharge petition to force a vote in the House to free up $138 billion in unspent Paycheck Protection Program loans until December 31st. Even though these loans are a lifeline for small businesses, Nancy Pelosi refuses to bring the bill to the floor.
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Speaking for myself, I have introduced more than a dozen bills with my colleagues that apply time-tested conservative principles to help people impacted by COVID-19.
I’ve introduced bills that expand healthcare access, support workers, incentivize telework, ensure safe public housing, simplify PPP loans, stop stimulus payments to dead people, explore temperature checks at airports, establish flexible funding for states and localities, hold China accountable, and help incentivize a safe reopening of our country, and much more. Each and every one of these bills has been denied a vote in this House.
Now, I understand the politics of being a few weeks from an election. And I get the political calculation that’s been made. But the Speaker started this year by ripping up the President’s State of the Union speech, and she seems intent on ending it by smearing Republicans as “enemies of the state” and blocking any meaningful bills to help hard working Americans.
To that end, the American people deserve to know that my Republican colleagues and I stand ready to govern and ready to pass common-sense conservative policies that will help people make it through this pandemic. Fundamentally, I believe that a smart and safe reopening would be the best relief that we could provide to job-creators and workers and our legislative efforts should be focused on fueling a great American comeback. We are in this fight against the virus together and I believe that with perseverance, hard work, and the application of conservative principles; we can very soon get our lives back to normal.
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