[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 41 (Monday, March 29, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H1617-H1618]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      RECORD NUMBER OF AMERICANS EXHAUSTING UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Well, congratulations to the Bush administration. They 
have set yet another record. This complements their previous record of 
the largest job loss and the worst job record since Herbert Hoover was 
President of the United States in the 1920s. But their latest is 
notable also: 1.1 million jobless workers by the end of this month will 
have exhausted their regular unemployment benefits without receiving an 
extension or additional aid. If we go all the way back, we have been 
keeping data on extended unemployment since 1971, 33 years ago, there 
have never been so many people who have exhausted unemployment benefits 
without successfully finding work.
  Now the Bush administration and the Republican leaders in Congress 
are refusing to extend unemployment benefits. Is that because we are in 
such a

[[Page H1618]]

deep economic hole? After all, their tax cuts have dug us into a $650 
billion deficit in the coming year, so maybe we just cannot afford 
unemployment benefits any more. No, actually there is $17 billion in 
the Unemployment Trust Fund, money paid in by workers and their 
employers, sitting on deposit, or actually not, they borrowed the money 
and spent it on something else.

                              {time}  2000

  But at least there is a credit for $17 billion; and, in fact, they 
are expecting that because of the taxes levied for unemployment 
benefits, that that fund will actually grow in the coming year, as 1.1 
million people exhaust their benefits, do not find jobs, and cannot get 
an extension.
  Now, the Republicans have a couple of arguments as to why they think 
this is a good thing. They think it is a good thing because the 
unemployment rate is low. Well, yes, actually, the way they keep the 
books, the unemployment rate is low. All of these workers, these 1.1 
million who will have exhausted their benefits will no longer be 
considered to be in the workforce, and they will not be counted as 
unemployed. It is sort of a beautiful thing they have created here. If 
everybody in America lost their job today, a year from today, when they 
had all exhausted their unemployment benefits and no one had gotten a 
job back, if they had all been outsourced to India or somewhere else, 
we would have zero unemployment, according to the Bush administration, 
the way they keep the books. So that is a pretty phony argument, and 
you do not have to travel very far in America to find people who want 
work and cannot find it. Certainly in my State, that is not hard at 
all.
  Then they say, now the Republicans have decided that unemployment 
benefits are welfare. Yes, that is true: an earned benefit for people 
who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own, most often 
through trade policies that exported their jobs or misplaced budget 
priorities on the part of this administration and tax policies and 
trickle down economics. Those people, they say, are just a bunch of 
welfare cheats, because they say that this would discourage people from 
going out and finding work if we extended unemployment benefits.
  Mr. Speaker, that is the most outrageous thing. I mean, I guess a lot 
of these Republicans and the Bush administration do not know real 
people and they have not gone out and walked the streets and gone into 
the malls and talked to people who have lost their jobs through no 
fault of their own, cannot find work, and just wanted a little bit of 
help so that they can keep their household together, so they can make 
the bare minimum payments on their house, their utilities, and put food 
on their table for their kids. The Bush people think, well, that is 
welfare. It is an earned benefit. People paid these taxes. There is 
money sitting in the unemployment trust fund. They should just give us 
a straight up-or-down vote.
  Well, that is sort of the third thing here, is the Republican 
leadership does not want a straight up-or-down vote on this issue. Why? 
Because if we had a straight up-or-down vote in the United States House 
of Representatives and in the United States Senate on an extension of 
unemployment benefits, to spend some of the money out of the trust fund 
to help these 1.1 million people who cannot find jobs and their 
benefits are exhausted, it would pass overwhelmingly. So they will not 
allow us a vote. We managed to attach an amendment to an unrelated bill 
and finally did trigger a vote on that, and it was amusing to watch all 
of the Republicans line up on the other side of the aisle after they 
had been beat to heck by their leadership to change their votes one 
after another after another after another, because they did not want to 
be on the wrong side of the issue.
  But then their leader got up at the end of the day and said, do not 
worry, that will never come out of conference. Why will that not come 
out of conference? Why will not the will of the people of the elected 
House of Representatives, who voted 227 to 179 in a tangential way of 
extending unemployment benefits, and who voted more overwhelmingly to 
up front extend those unemployment benefits, why will he not let that 
come out of conference? The money is in the trust fund, the suffering 
is real, people need some help. Let us have an up-or-down vote and 
extend unemployment benefits for all Americans.

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