WASHINGTON—U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, on Wednesday delivered remarks on the U.S. Senate floor blasting the Trump administration’s response to the COVID-19 crisis and detailing what Congress should be focused on moving forward.

Murphy said: “The president didn't need to leave all the legislative leadership to Congress. He and his team could have laid out detailed new programs to combat the virus or save the economy and pressed Congress to pass them. But they didn't even do that.”

Murphy continued: …[M]y state, one of the hardest hit in the nation, has had to effectively fend for itself. When I talk to state leaders or hospital executives or food pantry directors, none of them talk to me about all of the help they're getting from the Trump administration. They talk about the programs that Congress has passed, but they don't talk about any meaningful, impactful responses to this crisis run by the Trump administration. You know why? Because they don't exist.”

“…[W]e need to get back into the game internationally. It was a fallacy from the beginning to think that we could just shut our borders and protect ourselves, that's not how viruses work. And in an interconnected economy today, there is no practical way to completely shut down your borders from individuals or products that move across international boundaries. And so, we have offers right now to engage with our partners internationally on ways that could end up helping save lives in the United States,” Murphy concluded.

The full transcript of Murphy’s remarks is below:

MURPHY: “Thank you very much, Mr. President. I think all of us are in awe on a daily basis of those that we have a responsibility to serve, the people of Colorado, the people of Texas, the people of Connecticut, doing just absolutely extraordinary things.

“And I hope that over the next several weeks, we get to hear more of those stories. I, at the end of last week, got a chance, with my governor, to go down to a health care facility in Bridgeport, Connecticut. A health care facility that has been designated to serve only COVID-19 positive patients. And the nurses and staff came outside into the parking lot area to have a socially distanced, masked conversation with us. And while they have struggles and while they need help, they have a sense of mission about them that is impressive. They're working double shifts, they barely get to see their kids, they know that their life is in danger every time they go into a facility where there are only patients that have tested positive for COVID. And yet they know that they are doing something with their life today that they will be able to tell their kids and their grandkids about, they are making a difference.

“I think about those individuals that aren't a first responder, that aren't a health care worker, but have found a way to do heroic things just in their neighborhoods. Luciana Lira was already making a difference. She was a bilingual teacher in the Stamford, Connecticut public school system, but she heard about a crisis that one of her students was having. One of her student’s mother’s had contracted the virus, had gone into a coma but was pregnant and delivered a child while she was in a medically induced coma. Her husband also had the virus as did one of their children. And so you know what, Luciana did, you know what this teacher did? She took the baby into her home. And while she taught her students online during the day, she warmed up bottles and fed that baby at night.

“Jerry Siccardi is 100 years old. He lives in Stratford, Connecticut. And even at 100 years old, he decided to get together with his daughter, Judy, and start making masks.

“We all have these stories from our states, just folks who started sewing masks and giving them out to people who needed them. Jerry gave them out to his neighbors, he sent some to the Bridgeport Correctional Center, he gave them to former students. And then when folks learned that Jerry was pretty good at making masks, they’d call and he made them on order.

“These are the stories that could frankly fill up the whole day from each one of our states.

“And while my constituents in Connecticut, who are as generous as that, would have undertaken those actions regardless of the effectiveness of the response from their government, their actions are all the more important given the failures of their federal government to do the right thing by them.

“And I want to spend a few minutes today talking about the Trump administration's response to the crisis that we are facing.

“If we're going to be here in Washington, I think it's important for us to talk about what is missing.

“There's been a lot of ink spent already criticizing the Trump administration's response to the crisis, that the strategy was wrong or the focus was in the wrong place or that the level of activity wasn't high enough, but I really think that this is the wrong paradigm. It's the wrong lens through which to have this discussion because the problem really isn't that President Trump's response to coronavirus has been ineffective, it's that he hasn't responded at all.

“For all intents and purposes, there has been no response to coronavirus from this administration. There had been press conferences, there's a social media presence, but they aren't running a national response.

“From the beginning, the response has been left to states, to cities, to counties, to hospitals, to school districts, to nursing homes, to shelters, to food banks, to charitable organizations, really to every public facing entity that isn't the administration.

“And we shouldn't lose sight of how remarkable that is. That in the face of the most serious national crisis since 2001, perhaps since Vietnam and World War II, the administration has effectively chosen to stand down and let others lead.

“Now I know that sounds like hyperbole because there's a taskforce, right? There's press events on TV every day, but hear me out.

“At the beginning, the president didn't do nothing. He fanned the flames. He called coronavirus, in the early days, a hoax perpetuated by his political opponents. He telegraphed to the country that this wasn't something we needed to be prepared for because it was just going to go away. Despite all the experts telling him differently.

“On 12 different occasions, he praised the Chinese response, said that President Xi was doing an excellent job responding to the crisis, praised specifically their transparency at a moment when the international community was trying to get into China to find out what they knew so that we could start developing vaccines and treatments – the chief apologist in those early days for the Chinese response was our own president.

“Now, arguably the most significant action that the Trump administration undertook, really the only action that the president mentions to this day when pressed for tangible things that he has done, was the set of travel restrictions.

“But public health experts told the president that the restrictions wouldn't work, especially since they were filled with loopholes. And we now know that 400,000 people ended up getting to the United States from the countries that were subject to the restrictions list. The travel ban was feckless. It was a failure.

“And after that, the administration effectively gave up, they gave up. Now, what could they have done, as the travel ban started to prove ineffective at stopping the virus and cases started to mount, what could they have done?

“Well, they could have decided to lead a national effort to make sure that we had the supplies necessary to fight the virus.

“Members of Congress told the administration early on that we needed to appropriate dollars to make sure that we had things like masks, and gowns, and ventilators. They could have created a national effort to ramp up domestic production of personal protective equipment. They didn't do that.

“The administration could have come up with a national testing plan. They could have done an early assessment of how many tests were going to be needed, taking control of the supply chain necessary to make those diagnostic machines, the cartridges that go inside them. They didn't do that.

“They could have begun the work of building a national public health workforce. Every expert told the administration that it wasn't just the machines and the equipment, we were going to need public health workers to do the testing, to then trace the spread of the disease, to help support quarantines. They could have started to put together a plan to build that workforce at a national level – or at least a plan to help states build that workforce. But they didn't do that.

“They could have, early on, worked with states to create uniform standards for school and business closings. This didn't have to be left to states and municipalities and individual superintendents. The administration could have chosen to lead on the question of how and when we chose to close our economy and our school systems down. But they didn't do that.

“They could have joined with other countries to jointly produce a vaccine. And in fact, there was an entity set up at the beginning of the Trump administration specifically for that purpose, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations. They could have made an investment in that international organization after having refused to join early on during the president’s term, but they didn't do that.

“They could have increased aid for developing nations or refugee camps. They could have gone on the international offensive like President Obama did during the Ebola epidemic and made sure that we were helping every country beat the virus because, as we know, due to the failure of the travel restrictions, if you don't stop it everywhere, you're really not stopping it anywhere. But they didn't do that.

“They could have made sure that everybody in this country had insurance. The Trump administration could have stopped pushing junk plans, they could have at least temporarily put on hold the lawsuit to try to end the Affordable Care Act and the 20 million people who are insured through it. But they didn't do that.

“They could have worked to create a national commitment to make sure that every student has the ability to distance learn, has internet access, or they could have proposed a plan to ramp up special education funding to make sure that we're protecting kids with disabilities during this crisis. They didn't do that.

“And, finally, they could have proposed any of the various programs that Congress developed and passed: the PPP program, the state stabilization fund, the hospital relief fund, the national testing program fund. None of these were initiatives from President Trump. Early on, as negotiations were beginning on these relief packages, the president's only idea was a payroll tax cut, and frankly, it is still the president's only idea.

“The president didn't need to leave all the legislative leadership to Congress. He and his team could have laid out detailed new programs to combat the virus or save the economy and pressed Congress to pass them. But they didn't even do that.

“Now I'm not saying there aren't meetings. I'm not saying there aren't press conferences. But my state, one of the hardest hit in the nation, has had to effectively fend for itself.

“When I talk to state leaders or hospital executives or food pantry directors, none of them talk to me about all of the help they're getting from the Trump administration. They talk about the programs that Congress has passed, but they don't talk about any meaningful, impactful responses to this crisis run by the Trump administration. You know why? Because they don't exist.

“And even when the Trump administration tries to do something meaningful, they screw it up. Take, for instance the much heralded plan to reopen America. Now, that was a good idea, a serious set of guidelines for states to use to judge when the right time is to reopen. Now I may have quibbles with certain elements of that plan, but I thought they were generally on the right track, giving states some specific guidelines so that we can have some consistency across the country as to when states decide to reopen schools and businesses.

“The administration stuck with that plan for about a week. And now President Trump is calling on states to reopen regardless of whether any of the benchmarks have been met in his own plan.

“And now he's talking about health care workers and cafeteria workers as “warriors.” Apparently prepping them for a summer during which his experts tell him there will be 3,000 coronavirus deaths a day because of these early reopenings.

“If that's true, the president's so called “coronavirus warriors” would be dying at a daily total 10 times that of the warriors who fought in World War II.

“And not all of this was avoidable. China, where the virus started, bears serious responsibility for the global spread.

“But, the epidemic did not have to become the crisis of the magnitude we witness today. A normal president would have been able to take steps, early on and throughout, that could have controlled the spread. Our president effectively chose to stand aside and leave 50 states and thousands of cities and hospitals to manage the response instead.

“They were left largely helpless without significant federal support, competing against each other for scarce resources, and now our country is in desperate straits.

“So, once again, it is up to Congress to lead. And I agree with my friend from Colorado that there has been remarkable bipartisan support in this body in order to fill the vacuum that has been created by the refusal of our president to lead. And so we will have to do it again.

“And so let me leave my colleagues with a few suggestions as to the path that we should take going forward, to build upon those suggestions proffered by my colleague from Colorado.

“First and foremost, we have to admit what is true: the states in the cities are in charge of the response; the Trump administration is not.

“I've heard my colleagues talk about aid to states or municipalities that are fighting the virus as a bailout. That is nonsense. It is more accurate to talk about what the states and cities are doing as a bailout of the federal government.

“When the Trump administration refused to run a national response, it was the states like mine, cities like those in my state that stepped up to lead the response. All we are asking is that we share in the cost of the states’ and cities’ efforts to save lives.

“Second, our schools are going to be overwhelmed with need when they reopen. I'm one of the few parents of school aged children, public school children. My kids are lucky enough that they don't have special learning needs, and they've got two parents who are able to telework from home and support their distance learning. But there are millions of kids who have learning disabilities, who have needs totally unmet during this time, who are going to show back up at school way behind and in crisis. And we need to appropriate money right now especially for special education. So school districts across the country can start to do planning now, this spring and this summer, so that there are supports around those kids when they show back up. Every kid is going to have to catch up, but especially for kids with serious learning disabilities, they are going to need extra help.

“And states who are going to have expanded all of the money available to them to fight the virus and who have cratering revenues because of the shutdown of the economy are not going to be able to fund those special education needs themselves. It is going to have to be us, it is going to have to be us. And so why wait until the fall? Let's make a down payment on that assistance for kids with disabilities. Do it now.

“Food pantries in Connecticut are running dry. They're running dry. And we need more support in the next bill for nutrition assistance. And we start to we have to start thinking creatively about how to make sure that everybody has access to food. Right now, if you're on a SNAP benefit you have to go to a grocery store. Well, those aren't safe places for everybody on SNAP benefits. And some of the corner bodegas have closed down and so the only place that might be open is a long way away – and so restaurants can be a lifeline right now. Traditionally, we don't allow you to use your SNAP benefits in restaurants, but I think we should temporarily allow for that in the next package that we pass. And guess what? That would be a win for people who need more food options, who are on assistance – and would also be a win for the restaurants that are looking for customers.

“Fourth, we got to build that public health workforce. And again, states won't be able to afford it themselves. Every medical expert tells us that it's not just testing, it's tracing the contacts that that individual had, it's quarantining those that they had contact with and that can't be done just with an app.

“There have to be workers that help do that tracing, that helps support the quarantine. We've got to build that workforce. And again, there's just no conceivable way that states can pay for that by themselves. 

“And then lastly, we need to get back into the game internationally. It was a fallacy from the beginning to think that we could just shut our borders and protect ourselves, that's not how viruses work. And in an interconnected economy today, there is no practical way to completely shut down your borders from individuals or products that move across international boundaries.

“And so, we have offers right now to engage with our partners internationally on ways that could end up helping save lives in the United States.

“I mentioned the Trump administration's refusal to join CEPI, which is the international body working on a vaccine. Why? Why is Europe and Canada and Australia and Japan, and Saudi Arabia, and India, all working jointly on a vaccine and we're on the outside? It doesn't mean that we would have to stop doing our own congressionally funded work to develop a vaccine. But why not also join the international efforts so that we're not on the outside if they develop that vaccine? That's an easy thing that we can do in this next bill, make sure that we are both working on a vaccine domestically but also working internationally.

“When this crisis is over and life is returned to relative normal, there will be a grave, serious accounting of how badly the Trump administration failed this nation that it was sworn to protect.

“I'm grateful for my colleagues stepping up time and time again in a bipartisan way to try to fill that vacuum that has been created by the failure to lead by the executive branch. And hopefully when we do that accounting, it will allow us to learn lessons. But for now, this Congress has got to soldier on and do our best to muster a federal response that if not for our actions would be practically nonexistent. I yield the floor.”

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