Sen. Roberts urges bipartisanship in coronavirus legislation

U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, took to the Senate floor Monday to urge his colleagues to put partisanship aside and work across the aisle to pass coronavirus legislation.

“I’m tired of the partisanship, I’m tired of all this work we’ve put together to address what everybody understands is a national pandemic, a world pandemic,” Sen. Roberts said. “Here we are, messing around trying to say, ‘Oh no, we can’t vote for cloture and address some of these things with the now five working groups to produce a product.’ That’s wrong, that’s really wrong. I have to warn my colleagues.

“This so called blanket of comity that we always have in the Senate is pretty thread bare, I hope we can get past this and I hope we can vote to get to cloture and get to a bill as soon as we can.

“Agriculture has been hit hard. The best thing we can do for all sectors of agriculture is to work together now to provide much-needed and overdue relief as COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc across the country.”