Like a ton of bricks and there are a lot of good things in here. Theres money for Healthcare Providers, hospitals, nurses and doctors. There are so many good things the country is under siege, and i was one of the first republicans, mr. President , to join my democratical colleagues, think of doctor senator durbin. We need to do something more of Unemployment Insurance. Income almost doubled in certain circumstances and i want to help people and i want to make sure if you lose your job. That we cover your wages, but under this bill, you get 23. 15 an hour baseded on a 40hour work week, know the to work. And if youre trying to hire somebody in South Carolina the next four months, youve got to compete with that wage. If youre working in a restaurant or probably not now, but if youre working anywhere from 15 an hour, somebodys making 23 an hour and youre working. Its just not fair. Its going to hurt the rubiocollins construct, restaurants that are out of business. We want them to be able to borrow money to pay the payroll to keep people connected to their employer. Now, what do you do when you make 23 an hour being on unemployment . How do you keep that waitress or bartender at 15 or 17 . Youve made it a nightmare for Small Businesses. Theyre being pitted against their own employees. To senator durbin and everybody else, the reason were doing this is because they tell me it takes six to eight months for unemployment commissions at the state level to figure this out. What are we asking you to do . To get unemployment, youve got it tell us where you work and how much you make and what we want to do is fill in the difference between the state unemployment benefit as your actual wages and stop there. We dont do that under this bill. There are people getting paid more not to work than they were in the work force. Its going to be hard to not incentivize people not to leave their job. You can be unemployed at 23 an hour in South Carolina. Thats more than a lot of people make. So im just urging my colleagues, we need to fix this now. No matter how wellintentioned youre going to make the next four months impossible for Small Businesses to hire. I promise you this, if you pay somebody 23 an hour not to work, theyre probably going to find a way to get there rather than staying in the work force where im sure theyd rather be. We have created a perverse incentive not to help the unemployed person, but to destroy the ability to stay employed. With that, i will say thank you to my colleagues trying to bring sense in the body, weve created pandoras box to the economy. And if we dont, then we need to keep trying and trying and trying, with that ill yield to my colleagues. Senator from florida. This bill as its written out the government will pay Many Americans more to be on. Under this bill as its written now the government will pay many more americans more to be on government assistance than if they were working at their regular job. I support expanding the unemployed insurance program, its the quickest way for them to get the quickest, but it shouldnt be higher than a salary. We cannot pay people more to not work than to work. This is basic common sense. More people would choose the bigger check, i dont blame them at all. No person that knows thinking about economics or human nature would create such a system. This bill for people to be unemployed for the next four months, fact. Without workers our economy cannot reopen. Fact. If our economy essentially remains closed for four more months we will be in a very deep recession, fact. May i ask how do i know all this . I grew up poor in public housing. My mom worked three jobs and my parents were struggling to find work. I know what its like to skip christmas, and i run business and this isnt conjecture, these are facts. There are many good things in this bill and many provisions i wholeheartedly disagree with, but the worst thing we can do right now is create a disincentive to work. We cannot get our economy up and running again, we cannot recover from this, but we can get our economy up and running again and we can recover from this, it will take a lot longer if we dont amend this bill to eliminate the perverse incentives. I yield the floor. Let me be clear, abundantly clear, i plan to support this legislation tonight, but i do want to fix it first. Our amendment is a very simple amendment, but first, it is our responsibility to the extent possible to take care of the American People. I want to provide 100 of the salary while an american is laid off because of covid19. 100 of the salary of someone laid off because of covid19. My goal is to do it the right way. The right way is that you get your income as if youre still working because youve been laid off because of covid19. Not a raise for not working. Not 200 of your income while on unemployment. The goal is simply to keep you whole while youre unemployed because of covid19. I cannot stress enough as a former employer and frankly, as a former employee, the relationship between the employer and the employee is critical. Our nation is built on the dignity of work. What this bill does, without fixing it, is it simply says, you can earn more money by being on unemployment than you can while working. That is an incentive that is perverse. We cannot have intended to encourage people not to work and make more moan than to go back to work and receive your normal pay. With that, i yield. Mr. President. Senator raskin. Thank you, mr. President. As senator tim scott just said and rick scott and Lindsey Graham just said, this amendment is really, really simple. All were trying to say is we should help everyone who needs to be helped without us accidentally creating a disensen tiff disincentive to work, were in the middle of two unprecedented crises, we have a Health Crisis and an economic crisis, and we dont know how long the valley is going to be. And i want to make sure that everyone watching understands what this debate is this afternoon. This debate is how you can be both pro worker and pro recovery. To be kind and charitable and simultaneously affirming the ongoing dignity of work and the necessity of work as our country battles through this virus and ultimately rebuilds our economy. Nobody here is arguing about whether or not we should help workers. Everybody on both sides of the aisle tonight wants to help workers. This is a debate about whether or not were going to let a poorly drafted bill knock this nation still harder in the coming months by unintentionally increasing unemployment. Thats what this debate is about. Right now, as the coronavirus is threatening our economy, we know who the real heroes are, the real heroes are not politicians. A lot of people have been working all night, five and six nights in a row, but the heroes that are going to beat this virus and rebuild america are not politicians. The heroes are the men and women who are stocking shelves, the men and women picking up trash, the men and women who are driving trucks and delivering takeout. Many of them converting restaurants which used to be sitdown into takeout restaurants. Putting food on the table for a lot of their neighbors. The americans who are keeping the pharmacies open, theyre the heroes. The daycare workers who are doing stuff to watch other e. R. Doctors kids, those are the heroes. The heroes are the americans across all 50 states, across every town and village and suburb and city that are doing the work, the ordinary jobs, but now under extroeaordinarily painful circumstances. We should be supporting them, affirming them and once we get through this crisis to get back to work. This bill has lots and lots of good stuff in it. I intend to support it as well, but there are pieces of this bill that are broken and that we can fix tonight. And if we dont fix them tonight its going to exacerbate our problem and we will be back here in a month and two months trying to fix these problems. These are the americans who are going to get us through. The other people who are going to keep the supply chains alive and those supply chains are keeping the americans. And here is whats wrong. Its threatening to cripple different category of workers, some in health care, some in food, and creates is perverse for men and women to not come back to, would for Many Employers who should be wanting to maintain the employee and employer relationships, creates a perverse incentive for them to suffer that relationship. Many other pieces of this bill try to tackle this program in a constructive which, 350 billion for the Small Businesses administration, trying to build bridge loan programs that help employers and employees be connected and remain connected through this down turn. The unemployment piece of this should not work at crosspurposes to what the bill is about in the overall argument. Nobody has a problem with the generous Unemployment Benefits that are in this bill. Nobody has a problem with the generous Unemployment Insurance benefits that are in this bill. They should be generous amid the National Crisis that were in, but we dont want this piece of the bill to create an incentive for folks to stop working, to have their employers push them away, when the employer and employee should be trying to rally around and together to help us go through this comprise sis. So we want to do something really simple, we want to fix whats broken here by saying that Unemployment Insurance benefits should be capped at 100 of the pay you had before you were unemployed. This isnt just about people who have already been made unemployed. This is about people who are going to be made unemployed in the coming weeks. All this amendment says that were voting on in a few minutes is that we should cap the Unemployment Benefits at 100 of the wages you were just receiving while working. It should not be something that the u. S. Congress does to create an incentive where youll get paid more by not working than you get by working. Thats pro recovery legislation that tries to keep our supply chains humming and tries to help us together, 325 million americans come together to beat this thing, we should vote for workers, we should vote for recovery, and we should vote to beat this thing and come out stronger on the other side. Thank you, mr. President. Mr. President. Senator from illinois. Mr. President , id like to address this issue because i think its important that we explain where we are today and why weve reached this point. I can recall when senator graham crossed the aisle a week or so ago, perhaps, and started talking about Unemployment Insurance and his goals were Unemployment Insurance. It sounded consistent with the language and conversation id heard on our own side of the aisle, our own caucus to use the Unemployment Insurance system as a way to make sure that people were able to really weather the storm when it came to the public Health Crisis we face. The number of people who are filing for unemployment has gone up dramatically. Two million new unemployment claims filed last week, compared to 218,000 nationwide in previous weeks. So we know that the number of people who have lost their jobs, laid off, furloughed, fired, is growing just in a fashion weve never seen before. Ive seen it reported in my state and im sure each of you have seen the same, but lets get down to the bottom line and i ask my colleagues to just bear with me for a minute. What you are describing is what we initially set out to do and then we met with the representatives of the United States department of labor. I was in one of the task forces for the Senate Finance committee and i sent there as a representative from the u. S. Department of labor came in and said, senator, you dont understand 50 different states Computer Systems when it comes to Unemployment Benefits. We can tell you point blank that only six or eight states out of the 50 could possibly do what you want to achieve. They tell us it will take them months to reprogram their computers to make the simple calculation what appears to be a simple calculation that says you never get paid more in unemployment than were you work r making on the job. That was the reality. We didnt make that up. This wasnt a democratic dreamed up idea. This was the Trump Administration, department of labor, telling us that when they looked at the state departments of labor, they couldnt achieve what you want to achieve with your amendment. In other words, if you go forward and youre successful, i dont believe you will be. If you were successful what we would end up with is frankly a deadlock. No increases in Unemployment Insurance benefits, now, let me tell you beyond this administrative problem, which was not our creation, it was identified by the Trump Administration, beyond this administrative problem there are two or three things i want to say as a bottom line. First, we are determined to make sure that the workers come out at least whole, if not better through this terrible experience theyre going through. Now, this notion that the workers would come out better is not unique to the democratic side of the aisle. The cash payment proposed by the Trump Administration, 1200 per adult, 500 per child, for some will be a benefit. May even be a small, but important windfall that comes their way. So be it. That working families across america would end up with this cash payment from the Trump Administration. I dont object to at all, but the democrats have said thats one and done. And thats an airdrop of cash to people. What about the next week and the next month . Thats why we brought up the Unemployment Insurance. Now the 600 figure we came up with was an attempt to make sure that everyone was whole at the end of the day. I will concede your point. Some workers, some, may end up coming up ahead because of this calculation, the 600 a week and they may come out ahead. Im not going to stand here and say i feel badly about that. I dont feel badly about that at all when less than half of the people in america have less than 400 in their savings, the notion that we might give them another this has the ebbed ends of two months, and the Cash Payments to the same family. Theyre going through a tough time, have been for a long, long time. How many have given speeches about income inequality in america and hardest working people still unable to make it paycheck to paycheck, week to week . So lets give them that helping hand and apologize for it for a minute. Were standing with these workers and their families and i think you want to as well. But the way you want to calculate it, were told cannot be done. It cannot be done in a fashion that brings relief to these families when they need it right now. Senator yield i will in just a minute. Ill be happy to yield as soon as i finish. I want to make this point as clearly as i can. I believe this is not a windfall. Lets assume instead of 600 a week, your calculation, makes it 450 a week, 150 times 16 weeks, four months, how much is that going to come out to, 2400 . Is that going to mean that someone now becomes lazy and wont go back to work . I dont think so. I think a lot of people will use that money and need that money and are given a helping hand, and will put it right back in the economy. Thats what this is about. That these families can keep their homes, pay their utility bills, put food on the table, and put the money back into the economy. Thats part of what were trying to achieve here. If we err on the side of giving a hard working family an extra 1,000 or 2,000 because of our approach, so be it. No apologies. We didnt design the system, we were told they had to work within the design of the system. We tried to do it, we think the 600 a week is a reasonable way to do it, ill yield for a question. Thank you, senator. The 600 a week, i think, if i do the math correctly times 16 is 9600 on addition to 1200 per person for 2400 per family, and is an important number we should consider. I think you have hit on the point that we should all be willing to agree upon, that the systems of unemployment throughout our country perhaps are working on antiquated equipment that may need to be updated, so that we can, in fact, keep people whole during their unemployment. I would love for us to work in a bipartisan fashion to try to figure out through the department of labor how to fix the problem so that those folks who deserve the benefits get all that they deserve, but that we actually have a system thats nimble enough for us to meet the needs state by state, without exceeding the need so that when were in this position again, as were looking at phase four, phase five, were not again having a conversation about systems that are so antiquated or perhaps even obsolete that were doing something that was not that was not intended. Im not suggesting that we can get that done tonight. Im not even suggesting we can get that done over the next few months, i am, however, concluding that we should work to get it done. I dont disagree with my friend from South Carolina at all. I agree, but completely. Were in the midst of a National Emergency, thats not my announcement, thats the announcement of president trump. When you look at the people filing for unemployment. When you look at hardships theyre facing, the life styles which theyve had to live to try to comply with shelter in place and the rules going out here, the number of people filing these Unemployment Insurance claims, they tell us the reality of the situation. The notion, as you said, 9600 dollars times three, three times four months, it basically comes out to about 30,000 a year, roughly. Thats what the 600 is calculate today mean on an annual basis. So, on the four month basis if we end up people giving people an extra thousand or 2,000, its not inconsistent w