Brown To Senate Colleagues: Shelton Failed, It Is Time to Focus On Fighting COVID and Save Lives
WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) – ranking member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs today took to the Senate Floor to urge his colleagues to move on from Judy Shelton’s nomination, and instead get to work to empower Americans with a real plan to fight the Coronavirus, as cases surge around the country. The Majority Leader needs to work with Senate Democrats to extend direct support for families while we fight this virus and get our country back on track.
Brown’s remarks on the Senate Floor, as prepared for delivery, are below:
Mr./Mdme. President,
The American people sent a clear message in this election: they want us to get to work to empower people with a plan to fight this virus, and get people back to work and back to school and back to their lives.
They gave Joe Biden a commanding, 5 million vote victory to do that. It’s time for us to get to work.
We’ve had more than a million new cases in the past week. And yet what does Mitch McConnell keep the Senate in session, and put essential workers at risk to do?
To try to ram through an unqualified nominee who has no business serving on the Federal Reserve.
Let’s be very clear what this is about:
Our outgoing president is trying to sabotage our economic recovery on his way out the door.
Luckily yesterday senators of both parties rejected that effort.
80 million Americans voted for stability in this election – Judy Shelton promises more Trump chaos.
You can’t say you support working people while putting someone in charge who has no problem threatening their jobs and their savings to push a bizarre intellectual agenda.
She has no idea how to handle an economic crisis like the one we’re in, and her positions aren’t conservative – they’re disqualifying:
For three decades she’s advocated returning to the gold standard. No serious person – left or right – still believes in a gold standard.
She’s said she opposes FDIC deposit insurance – the insurance that protects your money when you put it in the bank.
She’s flip-flopped on these issues several times during her nomination – the only consistent thing she stands for is doing what Trump wants.
But Americans have moved on from Donald Trump. 80 million people said we are ready for a new direction.
It’s time for the Senate to move on from this failed nomination and failed presidency.
This nomination was a waste of time, and every moment we spend on unnecessary, unqualified nominees like this is time the Senate isn’t spending saving lives.
It’s time to get to work delivering results for the people we serve.
We’re watching hospitals fill up again. Our health care system is getting overwhelmed. Gig workers and self-employed workers will lose their UI at the end of the year. Small businesses and local governments are running out of money.
It doesn’t have to be this bad.
I’ve had enough of this false choice between saving the economy and fighting the virus. We have to do both – and we can.
This is not an unsolvable problem. We have the resources.
We are the greatest, wealthiest country on earth. We have the hardest workers and the best scientists and the smartest doctors. We have manufacturing expertise and natural resources and the world’s reserve currency.
But Trump and McConnell want you to believe we can’t solve big problems:
That we can’t use our resources to help ordinary families,
That we can’t use our talent to produce tests and PPE,
· That we can’t use our ingenuity to figure out how to open businesses and schools safely.
They’ve essentially thrown up their hands and said, “you’re on your own.”
They want you to believe this is the best America can do.
In this election, Americans made it clear that they don’t buy that.
They’ve had enough of aiming low, of being told “we can’t do it, we can’t solve problems, we can’t govern, we can’t afford it.
We can do big things, and actually solve problems for the people we serve.
We did in the spring – we put $600 a week in the pockets of people who lost their jobs and we kept millions of people from falling into poverty and losing their homes. We put in place an eviction moratorium. We gave people stimulus checks to spend in the economy. We got support to small businesses.
It’s time to get to work to do it again.
We need to rise to meet this moment, and restore people’s faith in their government.
We cannot allow Trump to keep sabotaging our government and economy from within, creating chaos wherever he can, after voters decisively rejected him by more than 5 million votes, and sent a clear message for us to get to work.
###
Next Article Previous Article
