Source: United States Senator for Delaware Christopher Coons
In case you missed it, Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.), chair of the Senate State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs (SFOPS) Appropriations Subcommittee and a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, joined CBS Face the Nation on Easter Sunday and discussed the urgent need for Congress to pass international COVID funding as part of any upcoming pandemic assistance package. You can see the whole interview here.
SENATOR CHRIS COONS: Well, Margaret, I was so disappointed that we in Congress could not come together and deliver critically needed global help to deliver the vaccines that we’ve already invented, developed and purchased, and to make sure that the nearly 3 billion people around the world who haven’t yet had a single vaccine dose get some protection against this pandemic. As we were fighting over this additional payment, this additional funding for COVID relief globally, one of my colleagues memorably said, “well, my constituents are done with this pandemic”. Margaret, just because we’re done with the pandemic doesn’t mean it’s done with us. And the best way to protect the American people from the next variant that might kill more Americans and more people around the world is to ensure that the rest of the world has access to America’s vaccines. Last point, there’s dozens of countries that had to rely on Chinese and Russian vaccines that don’t work.
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SENATOR CHRIS COONS: I think this is critical to our national security. Look, we’ve already lost a million Americans this weekend as families gather to celebrate Easter Sunday or to celebrate Passover or during the holy month of Ramadan. We have folks from all three major global faiths, from Islam, from Judaism, from Christianity that jointly have their roots in the Middle East millennia ago. All of these great faiths have a common principle to do unto others as you would have them do unto you and to care for those in need around the world. I think we can and should justify this additional spending as critical for our national security or as teaching our values, showing to each other the best in the human spirit and the most central tenets of the faith that inspires so many Americans.