And depression and fear itself. Once again america will prevail mr. Graham mr. President . The presiding officer the senator from South Carolina. Mr. Graham thank you very much. Much. Thank you very much i want to complement my colleagues today getting briefed about the beer is at me like a ton of bricks i know theres a lot of good things in their money for healthe care providers there is so many good things the country is under siege and one of the d first republicans to join my democratic colleagues and senator durbin we need to do something more with Unemployment Insurance because the collins rubio construct will help but never in my wildest dreams did i believe that what we have done is to pay people more not to work than to work under this bill the 600dollar payment on top of state benefits actually allows people to have an income almost double in certain circumstances. I want to help people that if you lose your job we cover your wages but you get 23. 15 an hour on a 40 hour work week not to work and if you try to hire somebody in South Carolina the next four months you have to compete with that wage if you are working at a restaurantng not now been anywhere 15 an hour somebody makes 23 an hour and you are working. Thats just not fair. It will help her to the rubioau collins construct. We want them to be able to borrow money and pay the payroll and key people connected so now what you do when you make 23 an hour on unemployment you made it a nightmare for Small Businesses competing against their own employees so the reason were doing this for theeason were unemployment commissions at the state level to figure this out to get unemployment tell us between the actual wages and stop there we dont do that under this bill. People are getting paid more not to work than they were in the workforce it will be hard not to incentivize people to lose their jobs you can be unemployed at 23 an hour in South Carolina thats more than what people think so i am urging my colleagues we need to fix this now no matter how well intentioned you will make it impossible and i can promise if you pay somebody 23 an hour not to work they will find a way to get there rather than staying in the workforce were im sure they would rather be we have created a perverse incentive not to help the unemployed yirson but to destroy to say employed so with that i say to my colleagues thank you to bring common sense back to the h body this bill does help a lot of people that we have created pandoras box wish we could fix it tonight and if not then keep trying. This bill as it is written now and on government assistance from regular job the Unemployment Insurance program is the best and with the higher than the salary we cannot people pay more per hour not to work it is basic common sense most People Choose a bigger paycheck i dont blame them at all. No person who knows anything about business that has an incentive to be unemployed for the next four months the economy cannot reopen. If it reopens or is closed for more months we will be in a very deep recession. How do i know all this . Because the Public Housing my mom worked three jobs i know what its like to skip christmas in of the family car repossessed at the other end of the spectrum i have ran businesses with Great Success thats exactly how i know these things not conjecture itthere are many good things in this bill that i wholeheartedly disagree with that the worst thing we can do right now is create a disincentive to work we cannot ilcover from this we can get it up and running again it will take a lot longer if we amend the bill to reverse these incentives. I yield the floor. Thank you mr. President. I want to be abundantly clear for this legislation tonight i want to fix it first the amendment is very simple but first it is our responsibility to take care of the American People. I want to provide 100 percent of the salary while american is laid off because of covid19. 100 percent of the salary laid off because of covid19. The right way is you keep your income as if you are still working because you been laid off because of covid19 not a raise for not working not a percentage of your income to file unemployment the bill is simplyr to keep you whole while you are unemployed because of covid19. I cannot stress enough is a former employer and frankly is a former employee the relationship between the employer employee is critical. Our mission is built on the dignity of work. What this bill does without fixing it is to simply say you can earn more money by being on unemployment then you can while working. That is an incentive. That is perverse we do not intend to encourage people not to work and make more money than to go back to work and receive normal pay. With that i yield. Mr. President as senator scott just said this is really simple all we are trying to say is we should help everyone without accidentally creating a disincentive to work not for anybody in the country or the country as a whole we have to unprecedented crisis we have a crisis and an economic crisis and we dont know how long the valley of this recession will be but i want to make sure every american watching tonight understands exactly what this debate has been about this afternoon. This debate isrn how you can be pro worker and kind and charitable and also simultaneously affirming the ongoing dignity of work and the necessity of work as our country rebuilds our economy. Nobody here is arguing if we should help workers. Everybody on both sides of the w aisle wants to help workers. This is a debate whether or not we will letter poorly drafted bill not the nation harder in the coming months to unintentionally increasing unemployment. Right now is the coronavirus takes the economy we know who the real heroes are not politicians a lot of people have been working all night that the heroes that will be the virus and rebuild america are not politicians but the men and women who stock the shelve shelves, pick up trash, drive trucks delivering take out converting restaurants and to take out restaurants and putting food on the table for theirhe neighbors. Americans are keeping pharmacies open daycare workers to watch other er doctors kids. Those are the heroes the americans a across all 50 states across every village in tasuburban and the ordinary jobs under extraordinarily painful circumstances they are the heroes and the doers and we them and celebrating affirming them once we get to the crisis to get back to work. This bill has lots of good stuff and i intend to support it as well but there are pieces of the bill that areca broken that we can fix tonight but if we dont it will exacerbate then problem will be back in a month trying to fix these problems. These are the americans who will get us through and keep the supply chain alive and that is the lifeline for lots of americans it threatens to cripple the supply chain for many different categories of workers some with food prep and food delivery it has a perverse incentive for those who are sidelined and those who come back to work for Many Employers who should want to maintain the employer employee relationship this severs that relationship. Many instances of this bill tackles in a constructive way and it tries to build programs to help employers and employees to remain connected the Unemployment Insurance piece to what the bill is about in the overall argument. Nobody has a problem with the generous Unemployment Benefits nobody has a problem with the benefits in this bill. They should be generous with the National Crisis we are in. But we dont want this piece of the bill to create an incentive for folks to stop working and have their employers push them away when they should try to rally around together through the crisis. Just receiving e working. It should not be some b things i u. S. Congress does to create an incentive where you get paid more by not working then you do when working. That is pro recovery legislation that tries to keep it humming and helps keep us together, 325 million americans to beat this thing. We should vote for workers and vote for her recovery and votes to beat this thing and come out stronger on the other side. Mr. President. The senator from illinois. Id like to address this issue to address where we are today and how we reached this point. Senator graham across the aisle a week or so ago perhaps started talking about Unemployment Insurance and his goals with Unemployment Insurance. It sounded consistent with the language i heard on our own side of the aisle, our own caucus to reduce the Unemployment Insurance as a way to make sure people are able to really weather the storm when it came tobe the Public Health crisis we face. A number of people who were filing for unemployment has gone up dramatically. 2 million new unemployment claims filed last week, compared to 218,000 nationwide and previously is. So we know that the number of people whove lost their jobs, leadoff, for love, fired is growing in a fashion weve never seen before. Ive seen it reported in my state and im sure youve seen the same. What gets down to the bottom line and i ask my colleagues to bear with me for a minute. What they were describing is what wwhat they initially setup, the representatives in the United States. I was in one of the task force is in the Senate Finance committee, and i sat there as a representative for the department of labor they said senators, you dont understand 550 different states Computer Systems when it comes to Unemployment Benefits. We can tell you point blank only a few can do what you want to achieve. They tell us it will take months to reprogram the computers to make a simple calculation or what appears to be a simple calculation that says you never get paid more than you were making on the job. That was the reality. We didnt make that up. This wasnt a democratic dream to idea, this was thdot idea, tp Administration Department of labor telling us when they look at the state department of labor they couldnt achieve what you want to achieve with your amendment. In other words, if you go ourward and you are successful, i dont believe you will be, but if you are successful, woul whae would end up with is basically a deadlock. No increase in Unemployment Insurance. Let me tell you beyond this admin is a problem, which wasnt our creation, it was identified by the Trump Administration, john did this, there are two or three more things i want to say at the bottom line. First, we are determined to make sure workers compelle come out s terrible experience they are going through. The notion they would come out better is not unique to the democratic side of they aisle. The cash payment proposed by the Trump Administration, 1200 per adult and 500 per child for some will be a benefit and may even be a small but important windfall that comes their way, so be it. Working families across america would end up with a cash payment from the administration and i dont object at all but the democrats have saithat thedemocs one and done. That a is in air drop of cash to people. What about the next week at the next month. Thats why we brought a Unemployment Insurance. The 600 figure we came up with was an attempt to make sure everyone was for the end of the day. I would concede your point. Some workers, sometime in the endco of comin up coming up ahee of this calculation of 600 a week. They may come out ahead. Im not going to say i feel badly about that, i dont at all when less than half of the people in america have 40 400o savings, the notion we might end up giving people another 1,000 or 2,000 at the end of formal is, to me that isnt something that we ought to be ashamed of or run away from. That is a possibility. And it may have been. Support that just as i supported the trumpas i Administration Cash payment to the same family. They are going through tough times and they have for a long time. How many of us have given speeches on the floor of income inequality in america and the hardest working people still unable to make it paycheck to paycheck and week to week. Lets give a hand if not apologize. We are standing with the workers and families and i think you want to as well. The way you want to calculate if we are told cannot be done and cannot be done in a fashion that brings relief to the families when they need it right now. With the gentleman yield. I will when i finish but i want to make this point as i can. This is not a windfall. Lets assume 600 a week at the calculation would make it 450 a week or so times 1, sometimes 1r this for months, how much does that come out two, 2,400 . Is that going to mean someone becomes lazy and wont go back to work . I dont think so. I think a lot of people will use the money and needed h the money and are given a helping hand and well put it right back in the economy. That is what this is about 20 families can keethefamilies can, pay their utility bills, put food on the table and put money back into the economy. That is what we are trying to achieve. If we err on giving the hardworking family an extra 2,000 because of the approach, so be it. No apologies. We didnt design the system. We were told we had to work with in the design, we tried to do that and we think that 600 a week is a reasonable way to do that and i will yield to s the question. 600 a week if i do the math quickly times 16 is 9600 on top of thedi additional 1200 per person or 2400 per family, thats an important number we should consider. I think that you hit on the point we should all be willing to agree upon that the system of unemployment throughout the country, and perhaps to working on antiquated equipment that we need to be updated so that we can in fact keep people hold during the unemployment. I would love for us to work in a bipartisan fashion to figure out efe department of labor and how to fix the problems with those folks who deserve the benefits get all that they deserve that we actually have a system that is nimble enough for us to meets theg need statebystate without exceeding the need to so that when we are in the position again and looking at phase four and phase five we are not asking for a conversation about systems that are so antiquated or perhaps even obsoletes that we are doing something that was unintended. Im not suggesting we can get tonight or we can get that done over the next few months. I am however concluding we should work to get it done. I dont disagree with my friend from South Carolina at all. I agree completely. We are in the midst of a national emergency. Thats not my announcement, its announcement of president trump. When you look at the people filing for unemployment and the hardships that they are facing a come of the lifestyles they tend to live to try to comply with shelter in these and all the rules going on, the number of people filing the Unemployment Insurance claims, they tell us the reality of the situation. The notion, 9,600 times three, three times for months, basically comes out to 30,000 a year roughly. Ed that is with a 600 as calculated to meet on an annual basis. So im a fourmonth basis if we end up giving people an extra thousand or 2,000, it is not inconsistent with what the Trump Administration says they want to do with their cash payment. In the meantime come if we are going to move forward and i hope this comes to an end quickly, if we move forward into a new phase, phase four or five, whatever it is, lets Work Together to upgrade the system to make them work the way we want them to work. But then in the meantime, wouldnt we want to air on the side of standing with families and their employees and to do so in this first effort . And i think it is a reasonably thoughtful way to do it. Happy to answer that question if you would yield. Thank you, sir. I would say that on both sides of the isle, we are both trying to get to the place where we are in fact keeping the average class people hold as we ponder and discuss the amendments of course. My final thought is my goal wasnt to come down here and have a disagreement come as much as it is to illuminate a very important part of the problem that is throughout the country as we tackle these issues in the future, more folks on both sides the aisle will have a greater confidence in getting these give resources to the states so that people can be whole. Want to say. No disagreement they would say to my friend from south souh carolina and disagreement but the department of labor says we cannot do that at this moment coming at this moment when people are hurting so badly, when they lost their jobs, for a low, they are laid off and worry about paying their bills, the Trump Administration says we will send a cash payment, we say and i hope it is a bipartisan, we are with you. It isnt going to end with a cash payment. We are going to make sure the Unemployment Insurance benefits are going to keep you and your family together and if by chance you come out a little bit ahead in the process with a cash payment or the calculation of the formula, so be it. At this moment in history facing this national emergency, we would rather err on the side of you being able to pay your bills and keeping your family together. The future needs we can discuss and debate and see what to do with the state systems. But for the time being, no apologies. 600 a week from where i stand is exactly what democrats are committed to. I hope republicans as well. Because our belief is this is the moment we need to stand with these workers. I might say i support rubio in efforts to help Small Businesses. I think that is the right thing to do. By partisans from the start coming in really without much controversy. If we ask any of the businesses to produce net worth statements before they receive the benefits, no. We are not doing that. This is an extraordinary