S7168 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE December 2, 2020 empower transportation workers Labor, the point of the Occupational would get hurt and salmonella would around the country and fight with a Safety and Health Administration, is spread. That is not even counting doggedness that would make him to protect workers. Yet this Secretary COVID. But to President Trump and proud. of Labor, this Department of Labor— his allies, more workplace injuries and WORKER SAFETY including from IBEW workers to steel- more grandparents hospitalized by sal- Mr. President, this spring I was talk- workers, to meatpacking workers—he monella are a small price to pay if it ing with a grocery store worker in refused to issue workplace safety re- means more profits for meatpacking Southwest Ohio, who told me: You quirements throughout the pandemic. companies. know, they call me essential, but real- He failed to get workers the protective Trump and his corporate lawyer Sec- ly I feel expendable. equipment and medical supplies they retary of Labor are pushing through a That grocery store worker and thou- need to protect themselves. He forced new policy to ensure that companies sands of others are on the frontlines of people back to work in meatpacking can continue to exploit workers by this pandemic. They risk their lives so plants around the country. classifying them as independent con- that Americans can keep food on their In South Dakota, we know, in a tractors. Go back to the childhood of a tables and get their packages deliv- meatpacking plant owned by the Chi- number of Members of the Senate who ered. They are changing linens in hos- nese Communist Party, 1,300 workers had parents who worked in factories pitals. They drive buses. They stock got sick in one plant, and 4 of them and parents who worked in construc- shelves in supermarkets and drug- have died that we know of. tion jobs, parents who carried a union stores. Then workers go home at night. The Trump administration fined this card. You know what that would mean They worry they are going to bring to multibillion-dollar meatpacking—Chi- to those workers and the threat that their home the virus and infect their nese Communist Party-owned they could get sick. family—always the anxiety they live meatpacking plant—fined them $10 a Think about it now. Corporations with. worker. Thirteen hundred workers got love this new business model. It is a We know that hundreds of thousands sick and OSHA, the government, the way to classify people as independent of workers have been exposed to the President, fined them $10 a worker. But workers. It is a way to pay people less virus on the job. Thousands have died. don’t worry, he and his wealthy con- for the same work, skirt labor laws, We don’t know exactly how many be- tributors who come for White House wash their hands of responsibility for cause the President hasn’t directed his tours without masks or social the workers who make their businesses government to make it a priority to distancing will get to look at some successful. keep track of these numbers. Think of sparkly ornaments. These workers aren’t working for a that. President Trump could crack down big insurance company that really does We know UFCW—United Food Com- on corporations like Smithfield. He have a public image they are trying to mercial Workers—reports that more could mobilize American manufactur- protect. These workers aren’t working than 16,000 grocery store workers have ers to get every American worker the for a hospital or a big bank that cares been exposed at work. More than 100 masks and the protective equipment about its public image. These workers have died. Sixteen-thousand exposed at they need. He could issue an OSHA are working for an entity hired by work. More than 100 have died. temporary standard, as we have asked these big banks or by these insurance National Nurses United has recorded him repeatedly, that would provide companies to prepare the food or to at least 1,700 deaths, and 58 percent of clear enforceable requirements for provide the security or to do the custo- those healthcare workers who died keeping workers safe. He could stand dial work—a company you have never were people of color. Seventeen hun- up for workers, but he won’t. heard of that has no public image be- dred have died; 58 percent, people of That is fundamentally why he lost. cause this company is all about being color. Eighty million Americans decisively hired by large corporations. They then In meatpacking plants, we know the rejected this President and his total can pay them lower wages. They can toll has been horrific. As of this sum- lack of empathy, his complete failure then protect them less on the job, and mer, 16,000 workers in meatpacking to understand the dignity of work. they can then not provide benefits. plants, including in the Dakotas, the There are a lot of Senators in this That is what happens with contract vast majority of them Black and body—not a lot. There are some Sen- workers—those independent contrac- Brown workers, and more than 230 have ators in this body whose mothers or fa- tors. We know they love this business died. We can only expect those num- thers carried union cards and knew model. They can pay workers less. bers to be higher. that was their ticket to the middle They can skirt labor laws. What is the President’s response? In class and understood that their moth- President Trump wants to make that the White House, they are putting up ers and fathers were protected by easier, partly, because he probably does holiday displays with a lit-up ceramic OSHA, protected by the Department of that in his business, and he has a whole post office and ornaments in the shape Labor that cared about the safety of lot of corporate friends—big contribu- of garbage trucks and nurses’ hats. those workers in the workplace. tors to the Trump campaign who make That is right. Workers are dying But all that the President did do to more money by doing that. around the country, and instead of ignore workers and didn’t do to protect Fundamentally, President Trump, doing anything at all to protect them, workers, none of that is stopping him Senator MCCONNELL, and their cor- the President of the United States is from trying to do more damage on his porate allies just don’t understand the decking the halls with ornaments. way out the door. The Trump USDA, dignity of work. They think workers Workers don’t need Christmas orna- the Department of Agriculture, is try- are always a cost to be minimized in- ments; they need fair pay, and they ing to race through a new rule—trying stead of the engine behind our coun- need protections on the job. to push through, in the last weeks, a try’s success. President Trump hasn’t lifted a fin- new rule that actually speeds up chick- Think back again to those Members ger to protect frontline workers. Let en factory processing lines; that is of the Senate whose parents carried me explain. I make a charge like that, right, not slow them down in the face union cards who cared about all this, I back it up. He spent 4 years in office of record infections at these plants but who had a chance—in a job like this, putting corporate lawyers in charge of speed up the line. who had a chance for opportunity be- the Department of Labor. The Sec- We know it is a trick. It is the oldest cause those workers carried a union retary of Labor made millions of dol- trick in the book. You make more card and were treated decently on the lars practicing law by representing cor- money if you speed up the line. You job. Because those workers carried a porations against workers—sometimes speed up the line, and workers are union card, their bosses couldn’t think union workers, sometimes unorganized more likely to get hurt. When you of them only as a cost to be minimized. workers. speed up the line during a pandemic, They did think of them as the engine The Department of Labor makes it more workers are likely to get sick. behind their country’s success. easier for corporations to skirt safety They tried to pass the rule earlier. It The American people rejected that— rules. The point of the Department of was held up over concerns workers the 80-plus million people who voted

VerDate Sep 11 2014 04:26 Dec 03, 2020 Jkt 019060 PO 00000 Frm 00026 Fmt 4624 Sfmt 0634 E:\CR\FM\G02DE6.044 S02DEPT1 rfrederick on DSKBCBPHB2PROD with SENATE December 2, 2020 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE S7169 for a new President. They voted tect him. He was essentially on his tion process for those with serious and against the President who treated own. urgent medical conditions. Under this workers as expendable. They voted for This pin was given to me at a work- Compassionate Allowance Initiative, the candidate who put workers at the ers’ Memorial Day rally by a steel- more than 200 diseases now automati- center of his campaign. worker who told me about this pin and cally make applicants eligible for expe- Joe Biden had the most pro-worker what it stood for. He knows that the dited review. campaign in a generation, and in Janu- labor movement changed this country But while the Compassionate Allow- ary we get to work to deliver results. for the better. It created the greatest ance Initiative shortens the determina- The new President, right now, on Janu- economy and the strongest middle tion process from an average of several ary 20 can immediately issue an OSHA class on Earth. It said the opposite of months to an average of 39 days, there emergency temporary standard forcing what MITCH MCCONNELL says to work- is still a lengthy 5-month waiting pe- corporations to take important, crit- ers all over the country: Sorry. You are riod to actually start receiving the ical, decisive steps to protect their on your own. What this canary pin rep- benefits, and in the case of urgent, workers from contracting or spreading resents is, we are all in this together. fatal diseases, that is still too long of a the virus in their workplaces. It means we fight for the dignity of wait. What is more important than pro- work. It means if you love your coun- The bill that we have before us today tecting workers, especially essential try, you fight for the people who make seeks to address this problem but only workers who deliver our food, who pre- it work. We can do that again. We can for the victims of ALS. Now, obviously, pare food, who do custodial work, who protect workers from this virus. We we should try and help the victims of do security work, who are helping peo- can build a better system centered on this tragic disease to the very best of ple in our country live every day? the dignity of work. our ability. They are not, however, the With cases rising and hospitals filling I yield the floor. only ones who need to be helped. Of the up all over the country, the end of Jan- The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Sen- list of compassionate allowance condi- uary isn’t soon enough. Workers put ator from Utah. tions, some are just as urgent as ALS themselves at risk in nursing homes ALS DISABILITY INSURANCE ACCESS ACT OF 2019 and some are even worse. There are, and hospitals. They deliver packages of Mr. LEE. Mr. President, it is nothing sadly, several for which there is no holiday gifts. They stock supermarket short of a tragedy when anyone suffers known cure and that have life shelves with supplies for holiday meals. from ALS. This is a progressive expectancies that are terribly short. Some of those workers are going to neurodegenerative disease, one that at- I want to cite some examples. For in- get sick. Some of them are going to tacks the nerve cells in the brain and stance, Creutfeldt-Jakob disease, a de- die. They are going to die because they the spinal cord of its victims and even- generative brain disorder, is among are essential workers, but we don’t tually affects control of the muscles, these. This particular disease leads to treat them like essential workers. We even the muscles that are needed to dementia and most often results in can do something about it now. We move, to speak, eat, breathe, and oth- death within 6 to 12 months. Trag- could pass a real plan that invests in erwise live. ically, there is no cure, and around protective equipment for them. We can Sadly, this is a disease that is always 1,000 Americans are diagnosed with it fatal. The average life expectancy is pass a real plan of testing and contact every single year, including a dear only 2 to 5 years following diagnosis. tracing. We could get money to small friend of mine in Utah who a couple of Not only are the people who suffer businesses like Liz Valenti’s business years ago passed away from this ail- from ALS robbed of time but also their in Dayton, OH, so they can protect ment. ability to work, imposing great hard- their workers—her two restaurants in Another is cardiac amyloidosis, also ships on them and on their families. known as stiff heart syndrome. This Dayton. The bill that we had before us today Well, what is Leader MCCONNELL disease affects the way electrical sig- to help these victims by reforming our doing? Ramming through more Trump nals move through the heart, leading Social Security Disability Insurance nominees like Mr. Hauptman and Mr. Program is a good cause, and it is one to abnormal heartbeats and faulty Waller, who keep stacking the deck in that I think we all support, but I think heart signals. For those diagnosed, favor of their Wall Street friends, try- it goes about the job in the wrong way. there is no known cure, and they typi- ing to hold on to their power even after It sets bad precedent, and it fails to in- cally face a life expectancy of only Americans said: No, we want some- clude other needed reform. about 6 months after the onset of con- thing different—80 million of them. We must remember that ALS, Lou gestive heart failure. About 4,000 peo- MITCH MCCONNELL needs to stop let- Gehrig’s disease, is one of many simi- ple develop this condition each year. ting Donald Trump sabotage our eco- larly debilitating and deadly diseases Take peritoneal mesothelioma, this nomic recovery on his way out the door that Americans are suffering from disease is a cancer that develops in the and get to work for the people he today. While not as well known, all of lining of the abdomen, usually leading serves. these victims are also deserving of the to death within 12 months of the first It is time to remember what makes same kind of special attention and ac- signs of illness. Around 600 cases are di- this country great. If you love this commodation in Federal policy. agnosed every year in the United country, you fight for people who make Let’s review some of the background States. it work—our workers who organized in of the program. The Social Security That is why I have been working for union halls and church basements and Disability Insurance Program, or SSDI, the past year with my colleagues to fought for workers’ rights, women’s was created, in part, to help people who broaden the scope of this legislation, so rights, and civil rights. suffer from conditions like ALS, pro- that Congress doesn’t waive the SSDI In closing—I know that Senator LEE viding monthly cash benefits to those waiting period one disease at a time. It wants to speak. I have worn for my who become disabled and therefore un- should not matter which fatal, rapidly time in the Senate and before that, I able to work. progressing and debilitating disease an wore this pin on my lapel. It is a depic- One challenge with a program like American is suffering from—all fatal tion of a canary in a birdcage. You may this is that the agency administering diseases with no known cure should remember the old labor story of the the program, that is, the Social Secu- have access to disability benefits after worker, the coal miner who took the rity Administration, has to verify an their Social Security Administration canary down into the mines. If the ca- applicant’s eligibility for benefits be- determination. nary died by suffocation or lack of oxy- fore they can start sending out the The men and women who suffer from gen or some contaminant in the air, checks. Today, eligibility determina- those conditions and the family mem- the mine worker got out of the mines. tion takes an average of 31⁄2 months. bers affected by their ailments have He had no union in those days to pro- For some people and for some diseases, precious little time left, and they are tect himself, and he had no government including ALS, 31⁄2 months can be a just as worthy of help. They are cer- that cared enough, that was strong dangerously long time. tainly no less worthy of help than enough to protect him, and he had no So, in 2018, the SSA established a those with ALS. There is always hope government that cared enough to pro- new policy to fast track the applica- that a cure can be found for them or

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Mr. President, as if in legis- The embodiment of a public servant, moving the waiting period for those lative session, I ask unanimous consent ROB began his career as a high school with one specific disease, we should re- that the Committee on the Judiciary teacher at Ben Lomond High School move the waiting period for those who be discharged from further consider- and Box Elder High School, teaching suffer from any of a small select group ation of H.R. 1044 and the Senate pro- courses in German, AP U.S. history and government, and coaching debate. of conditions that have no cure and ceed to its immediate consideration. have the shortest life expectancies. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The He notoriously had one rule in the There is no reason we cannot help clerk will report the bill by title. classroom: I am never wrong. That those who suffer from ALS and these The bill clerk read as follows: might tell you something about ROB other conditions. We can walk and BISHOP. A bill (H.R. 1044) to amend the Immigra- An avid lover of musicals, he was ac- chew gum at the same time. We can tion and Nationality Act to eliminate the protect victims of ALS and these other per-country numerical limitation for em- tive in community theater, where he conditions as well. ployment-based immigrants, to increase the happened to have met his wife The bill, as written, sets the stage for per-country numerical limitation for family- Jeralynn. They first met on the pro- duction of ‘‘South Pacific’’ at the Pal- only those diseases that have the most sponsored immigrants, and for other pur- poses. ace Playhouse, and they later starred recognition and, to put it bluntly, the together as the prince and princess in a most fundraising backing to fund bill The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there production of ‘‘Once Upon a Mattress.’’ sponsors, and it would set at a dis- objection to proceeding to the meas- In their real-life love story, they have advantage the conditions that are far ure? five children—Shule, Jarom, Zenock, more rare and underfunded. Who will There being no objection, the com- Maren, and Jashon, with spouses Me- be the voice for the men and women mittee was discharged, and the Senate lissa, Kristin, Shalise, and Courtney, as who suffer from those diseases? Who proceeded to consider the bill. Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I ask unani- well as nine grandchildren. will fight for them? Adding similarly Inspired in his public service by cruel maladies to this list takes noth- mous consent that the Lee substitute amendment at the desk be considered Barry Goldwater, he was also involved ing away from ALS, and it can make in local politics from a young age, all the difference in the world for and agreed to; and the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time. working at various levels of govern- Americans suffering from similar dis- ment and of the Republican Party. He abilities. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? has gone from being a precinct chair to I had hoped to offer my broader ap- Without objection, it is so ordered. a member of the Republican National proach as an amendment, but after The amendment (No. 2690) in the na- Committee and from being vice chair months and months of working with ture of a substitute was agreed to. of the Davis County Teenage Repub- the Social Security Administration (The amendment is printed in today’s lican Club to the adviser to the Utah and with the Congressional Budget Of- RECORD under ‘‘Text of Amendments.’’) Teenage Republicans in 1996. Starting fice, I was, unfortunately, given incom- The amendment was ordered to be in 1997, he served two terms as chair- plete information at the time an agree- engrossed and the bill to be read a man of the Utah Republican Party. ment was reached on scheduling a vote third time. At just 25, he was elected to the Utah on this bill. I appreciate Senator COT- The bill was read the third time. House of Representatives when he was TON’s and Senator BRAUN’s patience in Mr. LEE. I know of no further debate known for always wearing sweaters and allowing me to work towards a fix on the bill. no socks. He served in the State legis- while they remain committed to ad- The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there lature for 16 years and, during the last vancing their legislation, for which I further debate? 2 years, having been unanimously commend them. Hearing none, the bill having been elected, served as speaker of the house Additionally, while I would have read the third time, the question is, of representatives. hoped that my work with the Social Shall the bill pass? In 2002, after serving in the State leg- Security Administration and the Con- The bill (H.R. 1044), as amended, was islature and having spent 28 years of gressional Budget Office could have passed. teaching, he decided to serve at the na- gone more quickly, I do appreciate Mr. LEE. I ask unanimous consent tional level. As ROB BISHOP said in one their efforts to address my questions that the motion to reconsider be con- of his most popular campaign slogans: and compile the necessary information sidered made and laid upon the table. ‘‘Utah has plenty of Bishops—send this and tools to estimate my amendment’s The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there one to Washington!’’ ROB has faithfully devoted his life to fiscal impact. objection? representing Utah’s First Congres- While I was pleased to see Senator Without objection, it is so ordered. sional District, and he has been doing GRASSLEY’s amendment, which at least TRIBUTE TO ROB BISHOP that ever since making that critical de- would have paid for the removal of the Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I rise today cision to run for Congress. waiting period for ALS, I will continue to honor my friend and colleague, Con- I remember one of the first times I to work on legislation that will remove gressman ROB BISHOP. After 18 years of worked with him when ROB was a rel- the waiting period for diseases that service in the U.S. House of Represent- atively new Member of Congress and I meet a set of criteria—no known cure atives, he has decided to hang up his was serving at the time as general with a life expectancy of less than 5 gloves and embark on his well-deserved counsel to then-Governor Jon Hunts- years—while not further jeopardizing retirement. man. At the time, a private fuel stor- the solvency of the disability insurance ROB BISHOP has served Utah’s First age organization was trying to store program. It will be ready for introduc- Congressional District with integrity, spent nuclear fuel rods in above-ground tion soon. tenacity, humility, and humor, and it storage casks along the Wasatch Front My concerns and efforts have not is my high privilege to have worked corridor, just miles from Utah’s major been about waiving the SSDI waiting with him over the last 10 years and, in metropolitan area and just under the period for those who tragically suffer the process, to have become his friend. low-altitude flight path of fighter jets from ALS. I certainly agree that we Born and raised in Kaysville, UT, flying between Hill Air Force Base to ought to improve the time that they ROB has been a lifelong resident of the Utah Test and Training Range. have left. But picking and choosing fa- Utah’s First Congressional District, Out of all of the Members of Utah’s vorites among those with comparable with the exception of the 2-year mis- congressional delegation at the time, conditions is not the right way to go sion where he lived in Germany while all of whom, I would adhere, were simi- about it. The lives of the men and representing the Church of Jesus larly opposed to this proposal to store women who suffer from other very Christ of Latter-day Saints. He grad- spent nuclear fuel in this particular similar conditions are just as valuable, uated from Davis High School with place in this particular way—our con- and we should be a voice for them, too. high honors and later graduated magna gressional delegation was united in

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