Majority Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On The Need To Pass Another COVID-19 Funding Package

Washington, D.C. –  Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor on the need to pass another COVID-19 funding package. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:

Over the past few weeks, our country has made major strides in the fight against COVID: cases, deaths, hospitalizations are coming down and staying down.

Schools and communities are opening up and staying open.

But in order to preserve this Congress, Congress must now act to make sure that our communities, our health care workers, and our families have the resources they need to keep our country open. Sadly, public funding for COVID health response is in critical danger of actually running out.

That’s why right now I am working with my Republican colleagues to reach a bipartisan agreement on another COVID-19 package. The White House been unambiguous in saying they need more funding with all due haste, so that’s what we’re working to secure A-S-A-P.

A new bipartisan bill will help pay for all the tools we know work best against new variants: it will ensure we have enough vaccinations, enough testing, enough therapeutics which do amazing things if you get them in time, and support our schools to stay open in a safe way. We also need to do more to boost global vaccination efforts and support cutting-edge research into new vaccines.

We already know what to do in order to keep life going as normally as possible should another variant threaten to unravel our progress; now we simply need to secure the funding to make sure we can keep schools open and our communities safe as possible. If you don’t go for the funding and a new variant hits and it gets bad, shame on you. Everyone should be for this.

Over the next few days, we’ll keep negotiating with our Republican colleagues in good faith. While we’re not there yet the talks have been encouraging and I hope we can reach an agreement very soon.

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