“At every turn, Democrats have blocked our path. They’re keeping us stuck, and America stuck, in this coronavirus crisis by demanding funding for things unrelated to coronavirus.”

Click here to watch Sen. Barrasso’s remarks.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) spoke on the Senate floor about how Democrats keep blocking a path forward on coronavirus relief and all other important legislative items that the Senate needs to complete by the end of the year.

Excerpts of Senator Barrasso’s remarks:

“I come to the floor today to talk about what the voters of America told the elected representatives in Washington in the election earlier this month.

“There has been a lot of analysis about what happened this year in the elections.

“Who got what right. Who got what wrong. We’ve had the pollsters and the prognosticators and the pundits they’re already taking a beating for their many wrong predictions.

“The American people, in states all across this country, and certainly in Wyoming, rejected this far left agenda.

“They saw what Democrats were offering, and they said, ‘No thank you.’

“Voters looked at the violent left-wing protests that have wrecked large cities and small cities across the country. People saw the death, the injuries, the destruction of property. Americans went to the polls and said, ‘No, thank you.’

“They rejected Democrat calls to defund the police, rebuffed Democrat threats to pack the Supreme Court and said no to one-size-fits-all government run health care.

“They snubbed the Democrats’ embrace of the Green New Deal, rejected this far-left plan to end American energy production and basically, Americans said ‘No.’

“Many Democrats ran on this far-left agenda. They lost, despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars to try to convince Americans otherwise.

“Democrats must be saying to themselves, ‘What did we get wrong?’

“No matter how much the Democrat party pushes, and their candidates push, America is not a far-left country.

“Americans don’t want to blow up the Senate or the Supreme Court.

“They don’t want to add more States to the Union or more Justices to the Court.

“They don’t want to kill our energy economy and the good jobs it provides. People do not want to pay $10 a gallon for gasoline when they fill up under the Green New Deal.

“They don’t want more government meddling in their personal health care decisions.

“I know what the people of Wyoming want, and members ought to know this, Americans want jobs and security.

“They want to get back to work in a free enterprise economy, not a socialist one.

“They want their kids back in school safely to make sure they don’t fall further behind.

“And people are smart enough to know that free stuff for everyone means the American taxpayer will be left footing the bill.

“Between now and the end of the year, we have very important things to do for the nation in this body, the United States Senate.

“We need to fund the government. We need to pass the National Defense Authorization Act. We need to confirm well-qualified nominees to the federal judiciary.

“Senate Republicans are ready to get that work done.

“There is also work to be done in our fight against the coronavirus.

“The Democrat House has played politics with American lives and livelihoods for months now.

“With the election behind us, I hope that they’ll take a more sensible approach to this nation’s most pressing problem right now.

“For months, Senate Republicans put forward targeted proposals, first in September, again in October, that provided comprehensive coronavirus relief, focused on coronavirus.

“52 Republicans came to the floor of this Senate and voted in favor of the proposal. Not a single Democrat voted for it.

“It’s our plan to get people back to work, to get kids back to school safely and to put the disease behind us.

“Just last week, Pfizer announced a vaccine that could be 90 percent effective in the fight against coronavirus. This morning, they found out with more testing and more time that it’s actually 94.5% effective. Now Moderna and the National Institute of Health have developed a vaccine that is almost 95% percent effective as well.

“There are four other vaccines in the trials. One of the members, and our colleague, of this body, the senator from Ohio, is part of the trial with one of those, and I believe additional vaccines will be coming down the pipeline.

“It was the front page story in every paper in America, major paper, yesterday. The good news about vaccines, and that the light at the end of the tunnel of coronavirus is upon us. Today it was announced an at home test for coronavirus, very, very promising.

“When we think about the vaccine and why this all happened, Congress wisely invested $18 billion for vaccine treatment, for research, and it’s paying off.

“The governor of New York, astonishingly, called this bad news. He said this is bad news. Had to do with the fact that this is coming out now, and he wanted it to wait for a couple of months after a presidential inauguration.

“Why is it bad news that through innovation and the work of the Cures Act that came out of this body under the Republican majority, and then accepted by unanimous consent in the House, why is it bad news that we may be able to save millions if not tens of millions of lives all around the world?

“Why is it bad news, as the governor of New York calls it, why is it bad news that American invention and innovation and an investment by this body has brought such a tremendous, what I would call as a doctor, a modern medical miracle.

“We still need to provide additional funding for vaccine distribution. There is going to be a briefing tomorrow for all of the senators, on both sides of the aisle, with the Operation Warp Speed, to talk with the heads of research and distribution about how to make sure we can continue on this path to success.

“A path that the New York Times yesterday described as one that could lead to 20 million people being vaccinated before the end of this year.

“Bad news says the governor of New York because it came this year rather than after January 20th.

“It’s distressing that an elected official would behave that way, in such a callous manner, towards the lives as well as the livelihood of so many Americans.

“We still have work to do. At every turn, Democrats have blocked our path. They’re keeping us stuck, and America stuck, in this coronavirus crisis by demanding funding for things unrelated to coronavirus.

“I heard the Speaker of the House say she wanted this $3 trillion for all sorts of things unrelated to coronavirus. She has more money in that bill to send direct paychecks to illegal immigrants, people in this country illegally, than she does for coronavirus vaccine.

“That’s the kind of opposition and leftist thinking that we’ve been running into here in this body, and that the American people rejected on election day and said, ‘No we want a path forward. We want to continue the great American comeback. We want our jobs. We want that path forward.’

“There’s still more work to be done, and we are ready to do it.”

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