As China brashly tries to impose its own system of rules and order in the Pacific, the United States and our allies in the Indo-Pacific confront a time for choosing. We must choose to advance our vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific. We must choose to ensure the success of the principles of regional and global order that remain essential to our shared security and prosperity. These are difficult choices that will come at increasingly greater cost. Beijing will do its best to make sure that the right choice and the easy choice are never the same, but we believe Americans and our allies are up to the task. For instance, U.S. allies like Australia are already making the tough choices, while braving Beijing's bluster and bullying. By standing by its calls for an independent inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus and by remaining open to trade while refusing to trade away fundamental values, Australia has set a proud example for all the world. As Beijing lashes out across the region from the Himalayan Mountains to the South China Sea, Australia's actions serve as a reminder for our other allies that in a free and open Indo-Pacific, right makes might -- and not the other way around. Australia should not be alone in this effort. The United States stands with our allies, and we are prepared to make our own tough choices. In the United States, we have seen how even in the most rancorous political times, Republicans and Democrats have joined together to renew the country's commitment to the Indo-Pacific region, like when the Asia Reassurance Initiative Act (ARIA) became law in December 2018. As was stated in the U.S. Department of Defense Indo-Pacific Strategy Report, released in July 2019: "This legislation enshrines a generational whole-of-government policy framework that demonstrates U.S. commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific region and includes initiatives that promote sovereignty, rule of law, democracy, economic engagement, and regional security." In the coming days, the U.S. Senate will take the next step toward renewing the country's commitment to the Indo-Pacific region by passing the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021, which establishes a new Pacific Deterrence Initiative that will complement ARIA and implement its vision of a more robust U.S military presence in the Indo-Pacific. This initiative will enhance the security commitments set forth in ARIA, and help guide Congress and the Pentagon in making the tough choices necessary to prioritize the Indo-Pacific and extend critical deterrence initiatives to check our adversaries. Last year, a seminal report from the United States Studies Centre (USSC) at the University of Sydney provided one of the clearest explanations of why the need for the Pacific Deterrence Initiative is both real and urgent. The report shows how China is attempting to "undercut America's military primacy" and "sowing doubt about Washington's security guarantees in the process." In the face of this development, the report describes an "increasingly worrying mismatch between America's strategy and resources," especially in the Indo-Pacific. Even as "America's military services have started to implement much-needed changes," the report warns, it's not clear that America will have the "budgetary capacity or strategic focus to deliver these in a robust and timely way." We share these concerns, and the Pacific Deterrence Initiative is designed explicitly to address them. First, the Pacific Deterrence Initiative will enhance budgetary transparency and congressional oversight by organizing our defense budget around critical Indo-Pacific priorities. The initiative will make it easier to translate regional priorities into budget priorities, and ensure that security requirements are being matched with the necessary resources. Second, the Pacific Deterrence Initiative will focus resources on key capability gaps to give U.S. forces everything they need to compete, fight, and win in the Indo-Pacific. The initiative would focus new resources in many of the areas recommended by the USSC report, including a more distributed regional defense posture, resilient logistics networks, fuel and munitions storage, missile defenses for U.S. bases, and more experimentation to test and prove new operational concepts. Third, consistent with ARIA provisions, the Pacific Deterrence Initiative will prioritize cooperation with allies and partners across the Indo-Pacific. The initiative will increase security assistance for our regional allies and partners, and invest in interoperability. In the future, we expect the initiative will provide resources to support new mechanisms for deepening regional defense cooperation, including multinational fusion centers and joint training and experimentation. Fourth, and finally, the Pacific Deterrence Initiative will help preserve peace in the Indo-Pacific by bolstering credible deterrence. The initiative will focus resources on efforts to deny our adversaries the possibility of a quick, easy, or cheap victory. By injecting uncertainty and risk into the calculations of our adversaries, we can discourage them from choosing the path of aggression. The Pacific Deterrence Initiative is by no means a cure-all. After all, achieving credible deterrence in the Indo-Pacific region is not America's task alone. It can only be realized through a collective effort with our allies and partners such as Australia. Moreover, the challenges we face today are not limited to, or even primarily, military in character. As ARIA emphasized, we must also step up our diplomatic and economic security efforts while remaining true to our values. Nonetheless, we hope the Pacific Deterrence Initiative will serve as another demonstration to our mates in Australia, as well as our other allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific, that America's commitment to the region remains bipartisan and enduring.

By Cory Gardner When we have a tornado warning on the Eastern Plains, wailing sirens inform my neighbors and I when we need to take cover and when it is safe for us to emerge from shelter. Millions of Americans are now sheltering at home because they heard the dire warnings from our state and national leaders about COVID-19 and the dangers we saw in Washington, California, New York and Italy. Part of the anxiety caused by this pandemic comes from the absence of an "all clear" siren telling us it is safe to go back into our communities. I hear it in the voices of Coloradans on the telephone town halls I've held in every county: "When will this end?" "How long must we keep our businesses closed?" "How long can we go on like this?" There's no easy answer, and certainly not a one-size-fits-all answer from Washington, D.C. That's why I'm working with Gov. Jared Polis to support a phase-in approach that's right for Colorado. Communities all over the country will look ahead to the end of this hibernation from their own unique vantage point, with their own unique circumstances. But there are steps that Congress must make to mitigate the harm as much as possible and help the American people and the American economy prepare to bounce back. Congress can help pave the path back to prosperity that our local communities can take when it is safe. For instance, rapid, widespread testing for COVID-19 will be key to re-opening the areas that have demonstrated they have the virus under control. Congress must do what it can to make that testing as available as possible. I believe the nation needs to get to a point where coronavirus tests are widely available ? even at the nearest gas station for purchase. Congress must also make sure the Paycheck Protection Program, one of the most crucial elements of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, is fully funded and improved where needed to better support America's small businesses. The Paycheck Protection Program was created in order to keep employees on payroll and bills paid, so workers can keep their jobs, salaries and benefits, and small businesses can hit the ground running when they're able to resume operations. It costs valuable time and resources to lay off workers and later rehire and onboard employees. Some businesses may not survive the interim time period of uncertainty and lack of income, which is why the Paycheck Protection Program is vital to hold together the backbone of our economy. In the program's first two weeks, Colorado small businesses received 41,635 loans totaling more than $7.3 billion to keep workers on payroll and businesses open during the COVID-19 pandemic. We should do everything we can to make the Paycheck Protection Program and the Small Business Administration's Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program a success. I'll continue to work with Gov. Polis and the administration to push for better services and support for Coloradans during these challenging times. Anyone interested in finding more information about available resources and financing for businesses to keep the lights on and workers paid can visit my website at Gardner.Senate.Gov/COVID-19. With the foundation secure, we should then explore the immediate, shovel-ready opportunities for economic activity and employment the opportunities that will benefit every American and create the conditions for a quicker recovery. One way we can pave the path back to prosperity is by literally repaving. Our national infrastructure needed repairs long before the COVID-19 pandemic. Our roads need repaving, our airports need refurbishing, our rural communities need access to reliable broadband and our power grids need security updates. There's currently an approximately $20 billion backlog of maintenance projects on the public lands we own that are managed by the National Park Service and other land management agencies. I've already secured support from the president and a majority of the Senate on my bill to address this backlog, making it a ripe opportunity for bipartisan action. Has there ever been a better time to gainfully employ Americans and make these improvements to the property we all own than when the economy has been disrupted and Americans are looking for work? More than 232,000 workers in Colorado have filed for unemployment in the last four weeks. In the last week, more Coloradans filed unemployment claims that in all of 2019. COVID-19 caused roughly 22 million Americans of every walk of life to file for unemployment in the worst stretch of American job losses on record. This isn't a problem for only the left or the right wings of our politics. It's an unprecedented American challenge that requires bipartisanship and bold ideas. But big national challenges often bring out the best in Americans. It's understandable why Coloradans are eager to get back out there and enjoy our great state, and how mentally and emotionally draining it is to be isolated from the people, places and activities we love. But if we take these steps now to prime our economy for re-ignition, we can shorten the amount of time it will take to for our beloved state and our Colorado way of life to recover from COVID-19.

By U.S. Senator Cory Gardner Early last December, people in Wuhan, China began showing symptoms of an unidentifiable respiratory disease in increasing numbers. Today scientists have identified the source of this outbreak as a novel coronavirus that causes the disease now named COVID-19. They believe it was transmitted from an animal to a human. Once the first people in Wuhan became sick, the coronavirus appears to have quickly evolved so it can be transmitted from human to human, making it a highly infectious pathogen. Only four months since the start of the outbreak, the new coronavirus has created a pandemic. It has infected more than 1 million people around the world that we know of, killed tens of thousands, and ground the global economy to a halt. The more we learn about COVID-19 and its origins, the clearer it becomes that much of the death and suffering could have been avoided had the Chinese Communist Party taken this threat more seriously. Doctors in Wuhan began sounding the alarm early on, as patients with serious symptoms began filling Chinese hospitals in December. Dr. Li Wenliang, a doctor in Wuhan, began alerting his former medical school classmates in December about COVID-19 and its similarities to another disease that caused a global crisis in 2002: Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). Instead of heeding these warnings from experts on the frontlines, the Chinese Communist Party concealed information and punished Dr. Li. He was reprimanded by Communist Party officials at his hospital and forced to write a letter criticizing himself for leaking information. On Jan. 1, before much of the world would learn of COVID-19, the Wuhan Public Security Bureau summoned eight doctors to publicly admonish them for spreading "rumors" surrounding the new disease. Dr. Li later died after contracting COVID-19, as did numerous Chinese health care workers who bravely fought to save their compatriots. In response, the U.S. Senate passed a bipartisan resolution I sponsored honoring Dr. Li's courage that included some of his last words, that "there should be more openness and transparency" in China. Meanwhile, Chinese Communist Party officials desperate to avoid embarrassment put their own citizens at risk by making every effort to maintain business as usual. They duped the World Health Organization (WHO) into complicity, as the WHO announced that Chinese officials found "no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus," despite testimony from the Chinese doctors demonstrating otherwise a month earlier. On Jan. 21 -- the same day the U.S. confirmed our first COVID-19 case and after Thailand and South Korea confirmed their own cases -- the Chinese state-run People's Daily newspaper acknowledged an epidemic was occurring. The same day, without an ounce of shame or irony, the Chinese Communist Party stated: "Anyone who deliberately delays and hides the reporting of [virus] cases out of his or her own self-interest will be nailed on the pillar of shame for eternity." Nevertheless, Chinese leaders allowed hundreds of millions of people to travel across mainland China during the Lunar New Year in late January, spreading the virus further throughout the country. A new study highlights the extent of the Chinese government's failure to contain this disease. It discovered that had the Chinese Communist Party taken steps to contain the virus "one week, two weeks, or three weeks earlier, cases could have been reduced by 66 percent, 86 percent and 95 percent respectively -- significantly limiting the geographical spread of the disease." Instead, the Communist leadership of China publicly disregarded the threat of the coronavirus, falsely claimed there were few signs of human-to-human transmission, and waited until Jan. 12 to release genetic information about the virus to other governments. Even now, the Chinese Communist Party refuses to admit fault and instead proclaims itself the model of how to contain the virus. Chinese leaders have spread venomous propaganda that COVID-19 originated in the U.S. -- even though the vast majority of the evidence indicates the disease originated in a "wet market" in Wuhan. We have no reason to believe the number of COVID-19 cases reported by China is accurate. Now the health of every individual and economy around the world is threatened because of Chinese attempts to hide the truth. This is why I've called for the formation of an interagency task force under the aegis of the National Security Council with the purpose of countering the sinister propaganda campaign coming from the Chinese Communist Party related to COVID-19. Here at home, COVID-19 has touched all 50 states and upended our very way of life. As I write this, nearly 250,000 people have tested positive for the coronavirus in the U.S. and nearly 6,000 have passed away here. A record 9.9 million Americans have filed for unemployment compensation as our economy buckles and the American people have changed every aspect of our daily lives to guard against the spread of COVID-19. We will come together in this time of need and we will persevere through this crisis as we have many others, but we would have never faced this if not for the Chinese Communist Party's ineptitude and deceptions. The Chinese Communist Party's record is clear -- it chose to sacrifice thousands of its own citizens and threaten the health and economy of the entire world to try and save face. For that, the Chinese Communist Party "will be nailed on the pillar of shame for eternity."