The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“AMERICAN RESCUE PLAN” mentioning Mitch McConnell was published in the Senate section on page S909 on March 1.
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.
Senators' salaries are historically higher than the median US income.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
AMERICAN RESCUE PLAN
Mr. McCONNELL. On another matter, at about 2 a.m. on Saturday morning, House Democrats rammed through the bonanza of partisan spending they are calling a pandemic rescue package. Only Democrats voted for it. Both Republicans and Democrats voted against it.
Last year, under a Republican Senate and a Republican administration, Congress passed five historic coronavirus relief bills--five of them. Not one of the five bills got fewer than 90 votes in the Senate or less than about 80 percent over in the House.
Ah, but alas, this time Democrats have chosen to go a completely partisan route. Even famous liberal economists and liberal editorial boards are saying their half-baked plan is poorly targeted to what families needed.
We have gone from passing public relief with 80 percent and 90 percent bipartisan supermajorities last year to the Speaker of the House ramming this through with just 50.7 percent of the House on Friday night. The bill contains all kinds of liberal spending on pet projects with no relationship whatsoever to pandemic relief.
Remember, we are almost to the 1-year anniversary of a leading House Democrat admitting they see this whole crisis as ``a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision.''
So, sorry to all the American families who have just been hoping to get their jobs back, their schools back, and their lives back. Democrats are more interested in some restructuring. That is why only 1 percent--1 percent--of this huge package goes directly to vaccinations--1 percent for vaccinations. That is why it proposes another 12-digit sum of Federal funding for K-12 schools, even though science shows those schools can be made safe right now. About 95 percent of that funding won't even go out this fiscal year. Ninety-five percent of the school funding in this bill won't go out this year. And this is an emergency package?
That is why they are pushing economic policies that would drag down our recovery--like the House's vote for a one-size-fits-all minimum wage policy that would kill 1.4 million jobs or continuing to pay laid-
off workers a premium to stay home that would extend well into a recovery where job growth and rehiring will be pivotal.
Whenever their long-term liberal dreams came into conflict with what Americans actually need right now, Democrats decided their ideology should win out.
Well, it doesn't have to be this way. We could have built more practical policies to help the American people move forward. Some Senate Republicans literally went down to the White House and proposed that both sides work together, like we did five times last year. The administration declined. So this is where we are: a bad process, a bad bill, and a missed opportunity to do right by working families.
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