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“AMERICAN RESCUE PLAN ACT OF 2021” mentioning Gary C. Peters was published in the Senate section on pages S1043-S1044 on March 4.
Of the 100 senators in 117th Congress, 24 percent were women, and 76 percent were men, according to the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
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The publication is reproduced in full below:
AMERICAN RESCUE PLAN ACT OF 2021
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, since we have a few minutes here--I think Senator Sanders is supposed to be next--I just thought I would take a few minutes to talk about President Biden's coronavirus bill.
Let me see if I can explain why so many of my Republican colleagues--
and I am a part of that--are disappointed in the bill. This bill will be our sixth coronavirus bill. I don't think anybody, any fair-minded person, can accuse the U.S. Senate, both Democrats and Republicans, of not trying to respond to this devastating virus and the economic problems it has created.
I have been very proud, within the first five bills, that we did it on a bipartisan basis. We spent a lot of money, about $4 trillion. That is 4-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0 taxpayer dollars. And, of course, we don't even have 5 percent of that. We borrowed every bit of it. It is a staggering sum. But we did it because we had a crisis. We had to deal with it. That is what we were sent up here to do. We did it on a bipartisan basis. But this, the last bill, President Biden's most recent bill--we call it the $1.9 trillion bill--we haven't done it on a bipartisan basis. I am disappointed in that.
I understand politics. The Presiding Officer does too. But I listened very carefully to President Biden throughout the campaign and in his 6 weeks of this administration, and he said very clearly and repeatedly: You know, I want to work with everybody. What I heard him say to the Republicans was: You know, I want to meet you halfway.
I don't mean any disrespect, but if that is the case, either he or the people around him are not very good judges of distance.
It has been made very clear to us that there would be no negotiations on this bill and that President Biden decided to proceed to reconciliation, which only requires a majority. And I think we both expect there to be 50 Democratic votes in favor of this bill and 50 Republican votes against it, and Vice President Harris will break the tie. That is not a bipartisan bill, and I regret that, and I think it could have been different.
You know, we can debate about whether we need $1.9 trillion, and I understand there are good arguments on both sides. I have heard the arguments, and I have listened carefully to my Democratic friends explain why they think we need it. There is another side of the story, and that is that, thank the Lord, we enjoyed 4 percent GDP growth last quarter. Most economists reckon that we will have about 6 percent GDP growth this year. The American people have about $1.6 trillion in excess savings. We have all this liquidity that, as soon as it is allowed to be released, is going to stimulate our economy substantially, in my judgment.
Everyone involved is doing a wonderful job on the vaccines. President Trump's team did a wonderful job. President Biden's team is doing a good job. The Governors seem to be doing a great job. People are getting vaccinated. We know that we have a lot of people in America who had the virus and didn't even know it. We are rapidly approaching the point where, either through vaccination or people who had the virus and therefore have the antibodies, we are going to have way over the majority of American people protected.
So one point of view is that we don't need to spend $1.9 trillion, but there was a middle ground here, and I am disappointed that the President took the position that, look, we need to spend $2 trillion right now, even though there is $1 trillion at least in previously appropriated funds that we haven't spent yet.
Now, a reasonable approach would have been to say: Do we really need to spend $2 trillion? Maybe we ought to spend the other $1 trillion and see if that will do it. Another reasonable approach would have been to say: Maybe we ought to reprogram some of the $1 trillion that hasn't been spent. For example, we appropriated I think about $70 billion to our elementary and secondary schools. They have only spent $4 billion, so why are we giving them another $160 billion in President Biden's bill? Maybe--I am not saying it is the case, but we ought to explore it--maybe the schools didn't need the full $70 billion we gave them if they have only spent $4 billion or $5 billion. So maybe we can reprogram some of that money.
Now, if we had this money sitting in a checking account, I would still think--because it represents a scarce resource, I would still think that we need to take a look at the money we have already sent and either spend it, if it is well placed, or reprogram it before we go out and spend $2 trillion. But we don't have the money in a checking account. We will borrow every penny of this money, $2 trillion. That is going to bring debt up to 27, 28, 29 trillion dollars, and we know that right behind it is going to come a green infrastructure bill. I am hearing that could be $2 trillion to $3 trillion more. At some point, we are going to run out of digits. I mean, at some point, we are going to have to change the name of the Department of Treasury to the
``Department of Debt'' because there is no treasury left. It is all debt.
The other thing that bothers me about the bill is President Biden--
and, again, I understand politics. He has marketed this bill as an emergency. It is an emergency. We have to do it now. Right now, we need
$1.9 trillion to deal with the economic crisis caused by the lockdown. And I understand that argument and that there currently are some Americans who need help, but if what the President is saying is accurate, then why is so much of the money not even going to be spent until a year from now?
I look at the bill, and I say, if all that is true to deal with an immediate crisis, why are we giving money to States and local governments that have actually seen their revenues go up? Why? There is no crisis. And I look at the bill and I ask myself, you know, why are we giving money to bail out pension plans? Can we talk about this? And I look at the bill and I say, why, as I just alluded to, why are we giving $160 billion--I think that is the figure--$160 billion to our elementary and secondary education institutions when we have given them
$70 billion in the past and they have only spent $4 billion? Where is the fire? They have $65 billion or so left. This is real money. There is no money fairy.
I look at the bill--I mean, I want to help the American people. Gosh, many of them do need help. But should we really be sending stimulus checks to people who have never missed a paycheck out there? Do they really need the money if they haven't been laid off and if they have been paid the entire time of the lockdown? Why are we doing this?
Couldn't that money--first of all, one option is not to spend it if there is not a need. We can pay down our debt or at least not increase our debt. Another option would be to spend it on something that we really need.
I come to the conclusion--I am not trying to be mean-spirited, but that is why I say calling this a coronavirus bill, you know, it is like calling Harvey Weinstein a feminist. This isn't a coronavirus bill, not the way it has been portrayed.
Now, the American people still have needs. We still have some folks, primarily in the leisure industry and in the travel industry, who need our help. They do need help.
We have a lot of folks who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own. They are on unemployment that is about to run out. They need our help, and we ought to help. But the right way to do this is to sit down as a body--Democrats and Republicans--and go through our needs, not our wants, because that is another problem with this bill; it is more ``wanty'' than needy. Let's go through our needs, and let's discuss how much money we should appropriate to those needs in light of the facts that we have already spent $4 trillion and we have a bunch of money left over. And that is not the way this is being done.
This is just being rammed down our throats. This is just raw gut politics, which I understand. I have been around it. You have, too, Mr. President. We have both been around the block a few times. But that is not how you allocate scarce resources.
The final point I will make is, I know when we did the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act--``we,'' meaning the Republicans--we went through reconciliation. We did. And so a fairminded person might be thinking, well, Kennedy, you know, how can you criticize your Democratic colleagues for using reconciliation if you did it? And that is fair, except when we did the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, we asked our Democratic friends in leadership: Can we sit down and see what we can put together? And we were told: No, we don't want to reduce taxes.
That is not what happened this time. Ten of my colleagues--I wasn't invited, and that is OK. But 10 of my colleagues went to the White House and visited with President Biden for 2 hours and came back and said: You know, I think he may want to put a bill together. And we were excited. We were going: Yay, that is great. Wonderful.
Then, the next thing we knew, the White House issued a statement and said: Our idea of unity is to do what we say and don't ask questions.
Both of us know that is not unity.
So all of this could have been avoided. It all could have been avoided. And I think we are going to end up spending money that doesn't need to be spent right now. I think we are going to end up spending money where we don't need to spend it.
I am so glad that Senator Schumer withdrew his bridge project and that Speaker Pelosi withdrew her Silicon Valley subway. That is just spending porn as far as I am concerned.
But, in any event, I wanted to get that off my chest. We are going to go through a vote-arama, where we all offer amendments. Maybe together we can make this bill better and get rid of some of the spending porn, as I call it, and do the job that the American people sent us here to do.
Thank you.
I don't see Senator Sanders. I'm sorry.
With that, I yield to my good friend Senator Peters.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.
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