P. P. E. And other medical supplies so they can adhere to the safety guidelines and provide a clean and safe environment. But it doesnt stop there. Im also working to assist our lowerincome families, those who rely on the Child Care Development block grants and those who simply need access to clean diapers. Just a couple of weeks ago i was in davenport, iowa, where i got to take part in a Diaper Distribution with the hiney heroes of the qadhafi at the quad city. The National Diaper bank donated 25,000 diapers to this important diaper bank. We know that during this pandemic the diaper supply has run short and ive teamed up with democratic senator chris murphy on this effort to include additional assistance for our diaper banks. Covid19 has also created challenges for our farmers. These hardworking folks are facing new challenges while working around the clock to make sure americans have adequate access to food and fuel. I was visiting with some farmers at the bloomfield livestock market in davis county not long ago and they described these hardships first hand and i hear the same from our ethanol and our biodiesel producers. Thats why i helped ensure more aid for our farmers and producers, including our ethanol producers and so many other important commodities in iowa. Our rural communities, like Montgomery County where i live, covid19 has only amplified existing financial pressures on our health care centers. Most rural hospitals rely on services such as elective surgery, keeping them financially afloat. But because of the pandemic and the response to it, many hospitals have had to cancel these elective surgeries as protective measures due to the pandemic. Additionally, the need for p. P. E. And other equipment has significantly increased. Lower revenue, combined with higher expenses, has made it incredibly difficult for these rural hospitals to stay afloat. We absolutely cant leave these folks behind. We need our hospitals to keep their doors open so that Quality Health care is accessible to all iowans, whether they live in the big cities like des moines and pope county or small communities like red oak, where i live in Montgomery County. As ive toured iowa over the last several weeks, i have also visited with many of our essential workers. Our nurses, Grocery Store clerks, truck drivers, child care providers, and so many more, have been working on the front lines of this pandemic rising to the challenge to care for and protect iowans. Thats why im pushing hard to allow these essential workers to keep more of their hardearned dollars by suspending federal income and payroll taxes. These folks deserve a reward for their tireless ef forts. Tireless efforts. Mr. President , no amount of Financial Relief will make this virus go away. But congress has a role to play in helping families get back on their feet. But its also every single one of us doing our part, wearing our masks wearing our masks, washing our hands, and social distancing as much as possible. And then together, with the help of every individual at all levels of government, we will get through this. Mr. President , i yield the floor. Mr. Blunt mr. President. The presiding officer the senator from missouri. Mr. Blunt mr. President , i want to talk about the portion of the bill that we have made available to our colleagues and the country this week after lots of input from our colleagues on the labor, health, and Human Services and education part of the bill. Its about 25 of the bill, almost 250 billion, and that money would be used to get us back on the track toward vaccines that work, toward treatments that work to provide Additional Resources for testing, for treatment, for care, to get us back to school, to get us back to work, to get us back to child care. These are all things that are critical for our economy to return and for families to return in the way they want to. And for those things to work the way that we would want them to work, as our colleague, senator alexander put it very succinctly, all things run through testing. If youre going to go back to school, if youre going to go back to work, if youre going to go back to child care, if youre going to go back to a nursing home between now and the time of vaccine, a test that you can take in 10 or 12 or 15 minutes and have an answer will make all the difference and we continue to push for that in this bill. In fact, there are about 9 billion in a fund that maybe should have been designated a little bit more specifically but hasnt been spent, it was designed to be a testing fund and that with another 16 billion makes Testing Available for those priorities for Nursing Homes in that statefederal partnership. We say in this bill this a priority for the federal government in that partnership is tests that work in Nursing Homes, tests that work in child care centers, test that s tests that work in colleges and universities that allow people to get back into those situations, in a residential campus to know that youre there and have a way not only to test people quickly but to get an answer quickly. Frankly, mr. President , President Trump is right when he says the current testing, the way it has been working, really doesnt do much but measure how many people had the disease. Not even how many people necessarily have the disease, but how many people had the disease. If you have a test and you dont get an answer for five or six or seven days, what good did it really do you to take the test . Certainly didnt do you much good in terms of not infecting others because you dont know that youve got it, particularly if youre that High Percentage of people that dont have symptoms but are still able to spread the disease, thats why, mr. President , a test that would give you an answer in 15 minutes makes all the difference in the world. Youre on a college campus, you take that test, in 15 minutes, youve got the answer, and if the answer is you have this, then your next place to go is somewhere where youre by yourself. And i think almost every campus thats returning to residential Campus Living is setting aside some of their dorm space some campuses, all their dorm space is singlestudent dorm rooms, but in every campus that ive talked to, some rooms had set aside just so that student has a place to go. If you show up at the at the nursing home as a worker and in 15 minutes you find out you have covid, the last place you need to be is that nursing home. But if you dont know for five or seven days whether you had covid or not, really doesnt help out very much. And so what i think what the president has said on testing makes a lot of sense but doesnt mean that tests arent good, it just means we need better tests. We have put a lot of money and effort behind those testses. Think the National Institutes of health will announce some tests and doing what i suggested in the next few days. Put another 26 billion toward vaccines. My colleague, senator daines, has been very helpful in looking at this Organization Called barta that was designed a decade ago to be able to respond to a pandemic and never really has been effectively used in my view in that way but this time we are using it and intend to continue to use it to form those partnerships with the private sector early on to begin to produce a vaccine even when we dont know absolutely for sure that its going to be f. D. A. Approved but do know if it is f. D. A. Approved, we want it as soon as it possibly will be available, and if it is if it isnt f. D. A. Approved, it will never be used but if it is f. D. A. Approved the difference between a vaccine available january 15 and a vaccine available may 15 is worth the loss if it doesnt work out if that means say you went forward with five of these and three of them worked and youve got vaccines, maybe 300 million doses on january 15, and you had to destroy a couple 100 million doses because that didnt get through the full safety requirement, all the difference in the world. Lives saved, the economy restored, and were moving forward with that and putting another 27 billion 26 billion behind that. We also have language in our bill that requires an effort that was announced yesterday, which is for a group of scientific ethicists to Start Talking about what the priorities should be for that vaccine when we have it. Who should get it first, what our priorities should be, how do we distribute this in a way that seems fair and equitable . How do we distribute this in a way that somebody who cant get in a car and drive 100 miles for a doctor and cant get the shot as the same person who could do all of those things, our bill requires that. All of our discussions on this bill plus our public discussions in a hearing a month ago says we want the administration to have a plan as to how to distribute this vaccine before you have the vaccine. Everyone thinks that we might have a vaccine available by the end of this year, early next year. No reason to wait for that to happen before we have a plan. I want to see a plan before october 1, and i told the chief of staff of the president again yesterday. This bill will be sure that people who go to places Like CommunityHealth Center are going to have a Community Health center that can respond to what they need, 7. 6 billion to Community Health centers, fore 25 billion to Health Care Providers who lost income, which is almost every provider, during the last several months as our homents and our hospitals and our Surgery Centers and other places were told, heres what we want you to do. We want you to stop all your income. We want you to stop all the electivele things you could elective things you could possibly start and be ready for the greatest Health Care Crisis your facility could ever meet. Fully spending money to meet a crisis but try to stop income that you would normally have, were trying to do what we can not to exceed income they normally would have had but to replace some of that income. Also money for rural clinics that would step up and do that. Senator capito and senator collins, particularly vigorous in being sure we had the money we needed if for people who have Mental Health challenges, many of my have gotten worse during this isolation period and this jobloss period and this somebody or you and your family are sick period. And the Opioid Epidemic deaths the opioid deaths, the Substance Abuse deaths have gone back up for the first time in three years. Thats totally logical if you think about it. Have this headed in another direction, youve got a support system working that keeps you from returning to that habit, that dependency and then suddenly youre by yourself. And maybe youre not only by yourself, but maybe youre by yourself and you lost your job. Maybe youre by yourself and your mother is sick with covid and you cant see your mom or dad or somebody in your family and youre thinking, i wonder, surely i could do that thing that made me feel so good just one time and not be addicted, but we know it doesnt work that way. Our nation continues to face challenges and in those challenges weve asked the National Institutes of health to look one more time more closely at peoples underlying conditions that might make them more endangered by covid19, see whats happened with minorities with pregnant women, with children to begin to drill down and figure out what we can do. Bipartisan priorities should include school, as ive said before, frankly need to include child care. If youre going to get america back to work, youre going to have to have a child care system that works. And thats not going to happen on its own. About half of our child care facilities have closed since the first of march. The other half that have been open have struggled trying to stay open. Many have benefited from the p. P. P. Program. But at the same time when they stay open or others reopen, social distancing, reluctance of people to send their kids back to a place where there are lots of other kids, probably no more than 50 occupancy. Not going to make up for that by doubling the amount that families are paying for child care. So you need to make up with that with the kind of grants and assistance that are in this bill. Getting students back to school, getting people back to work, getting child care facilities to work, and senator ernst who was just on the floor an have been g advocates to make child care a priority. School needs to open safely based on state and local criteria. This bill includes money for schools to do that. Elementary and secondary schools, about 70 billion. Where exactly, frankly, were a little bit ahead of where the house was in the heroes act. If you get into a bidding war with the house, youre never going to within a bidding war. But if you get into a realist ition discussion, only 90 days or so, the house thought they needed 100 billion to reopen schools. We suggest 105 billion. I read in some report they then decided well, maybe it was 400 billion if it the senate was willing to spend 105 billion. We should be able to figure this out and figure this out quickly. With some of that money being available only if you go back to school in person and some of it available if you go back to school as others will do virtually, depending on again their situations locally. Were ready to move forward. Answers to these important questions are in this bill. I look forward to talking about it not only our democrat colleagues in the senate but our colleagues in the house. And, mr. President , with that id yield the floor. A senator flpt . The presiding officer the senator mr. President . The presiding officer the senator from north dakota. A senator thank you. I rise today on the relief that the heals act will provide to those in farm country and Rural America as they weather the challenges of covid19. Its so important. Theyre out there for us every day producing that food supply. Mr. Hoeven they had incredible challenges before this covid19 started. The president is from an ag state. You know the kind of challenges they were facing. So obviously we need to be there for them as we go through this coronavirus fight. And i want to start by thanking them. They provide us with the lowest cost, highest quality food supply in the world. Think about it. Every single American Benefits every single day from what our farmers and ranchers do with food, fuel, and fiber. Just the food piece alone means that americans have the highest quality, lowest cost food supply in the world in the history of the word, thanks to our farmers and ranchers. So rarely if ever has there been a more appropriate time to say thank you to the men and women who provide us with that food supply. And the resilience of our ag producers in the face of tremendous hardship caused by the Global Health pandemic serves as a real testament to their grit and to their determination. And thats why weve worked to provide Additional Support for farmers and ranchers and processors in this heals act. And the legislation includes 20 billion in direct appropriation which will be used for our farmers and ranchers along with other funding that we were able to secure in the cares act. So were trying to also do it in a Cost Effective way recognizing that weve got a debt and deficit we have to be mindful of. What were trying to do is actually utilize funding that we put together in the cares act for the c. C. C. , taking 14 billion of that and combining it in this legislation to make sure that we have Adequate Funding which would total about 44 billion to address the needs in farm country. Prior to the coronavirus, farmers entered 2020 after seven years of rural recession caused by low commodity prices, trade disruptions and some really tough weather. . Al disasters. Our farmers and ranchers are the eternal optimists. They have to be. So they go in every year with that grit and determination and continue to provide that food supply that we all rely on. But now, of course, you add the covid19 into the mix, store fronts have closed. Restaurants have shuttered their doors. Processing plants have limited and in some cases shut down operations and of course ag prices are down. So they farmers and ranchers came into a tough situation and now theyre facing further challenges with the pricing and the other challenges created by covid19, as i said. Though it will take some time to quantify those losses, the reports we have right now indicate losses in the ag sector could be near 42 billion. And just, for example, in the cattle industry alone could total as much as 13 billion. So, you know, we need to be there for them. Again, theyre not only out there producing the food, theyre doing other things to help out as well. For example, just a couple of stories about our farmer groups making an effort to help others. In one of our nations premier Potato Growers in north dakota donated 30,000 pounds of frozen potato products to the Great Plains Food Bank. North Dakota Stockmens Association and their foundation donated 20,000 to the same food bank to purchase beef from north dakota ranchers. North Dakota Farmers union and farmer Unit Enterprises teamed up to donate 30,000 pounds of pork ribs to the Great Plains Food Bank as well and those type of stories go on. While the farmers and ranchers of america are out there fighting their own challenges, theyre helping others at the same time. And i think that that is truly, truly remarkable. In the cares act we took the first import