[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 62 (Thursday, May 6, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4982-S4986]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
EXTENSION OF EMPLOYMENT BENEFITS
Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I rise to talk about the unemployment
trust fund issue that has us basically stalled on Senate business; the
fact that several weeks ago we had an unemployment benefit amendment
that was part of the UC request for amendments to the FSC/ETI bill
done, and yesterday it was in the queue to be considered; then after it
was actually offered on the floor, after 10 minutes of debate and
discussion, basically the amendment was pulled. Somebody objected to
scheduling a vote on it.
For weeks we have been assuming there was a finite list of amendments
and it was agreed that this amendment was going to be voted on. I don't
even
[[Page S4983]]
know that we need to have more time to discuss it.
I know now that there are those on the other side of the aisle who
don't want to have a vote on it. Maybe leadership will be able to work
out an agreement to have a vote. But when we have moved toward giving
the American people some hope that we were going to discuss
unemployment benefits in support of those millions of workers who have
lost their jobs, they find out now there may not be a vote at all.
I don't think it is surprising that the Dayton Daily News last month
basically said the GOP leaders were still dodging the jobless. That
newspaper, in a State with high unemployment, thought we were not doing
our job here, that those on the other side of the aisle were still
trying to dodge the issue. I can tell you we are not getting a vote. It
certainly feels at this point in time as if somebody is dodging the
issue.
I wonder if my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, or my
colleagues in general, have thought about the circumstances of the
individuals in this country and the tough times they are facing. I know
we see the face of the Iraqi people every night on television. Maybe it
is too hard to put 1.5 million Americans who are unemployed on the 6
o'clock news. But they still exist. They, too, are still struggling.
They, too, are looking for our support and help.
I want to share with you a letter I got from a constituent. It is
posted to our Web site because we have had so many people responding
and telling their stories. This one individual from my State said:
I am a 41 year old, recently divorced, with a 5-year old
daughter. I had worked for Nordstrom for over 22 years, when
I was suddenly without a job last August, and my unemployment
benefits just ran out, which put me into a bankruptcy
position. I only have minimal child support and no other
income at the moment.
I was earning $47,000 annually prior to my job elimination,
and had existing responsibilities based on that income, which
I can no longer pay since my benefits have been eliminated.
Being a single parent with a home and a 5-year-old to take
care of, I have never been in a more desperate position in my
life.
I want to work very badly. However, I have not been
successful in getting hired back at Nordstrom or any other
company. The IT market has declined, and my job was
eliminated due to 7-year restructuring of the IT Department,
which included the company's initiatives and achievements in
job elimination and head count reduction. Their objective was
to bring in contractors from India and use offshore
outsourcing IT services as well. In fact, for the last 3
years, I have had to work with the offshore folks from India
that took the place of hundreds of my fellow employees who
were laid off over the last 7 years.
I don't understand how a company or a Government can say
that they are compassionate for the climate, but create it by
having Americans eliminated and replaced by foreign workers
in the U.S. workplace.
My constituent says:
If the benefits are not reinstated, then I will have to
seek getting other assistance until something comes up. All
the jobs I have applied for, I have either not been called
back, am under qualified, or over qualified.
This shows the humor of my constituent:
Most of the time, there are no numbers to follow up on,
since they are handled via an automatic online HR recruiter.
So I am not even sure if there are real people out there
really looking for someone to fill a position. I have between
2 and 3 viable job opportunities per week that I apply for.
So far, I have been interviewed only 5 times. At the time of
my unemployment, I thought it would only be a temporary
position. However, the jobs are just not out there and I am
required to make at least $30,000 annually, even after my
bankruptcy, to maintain my home and my daughter's day care
responsibilities.
I live in a small house that was built in 1947 and pay
roughly $1,100 in monthly payments on the mortgage. My car is
15 years old and in need of repair. My average bills are
$2,000 a month, which are hard to keep up with, health care
being so expensive. I don't want to lose my home, since that
would not be in the best interest of my daughter. Besides, I
don't think I could get much cheaper rent than what my
current mortgage is. My property is my retirement.
I am scared to death that I won't have anything to fall
back on after working this hard for the last 26 years of my
life. I don't quite understand why I can't get the extended
benefits until there are more jobs available, or at least
until the Government puts an end to the outsourcing of jobs
to foreign countries. I have even pursued reeducation to a
different field, but was told that I made too much income
last year, and it would take a cost of $10,000 for retraining
in the health care field.
Now, without unemployment benefits, because my benefits
have been exhausted, a student loan would not be funded. Do
you have any suggestions how I can get food stamps or aid or,
in the meantime, how I can find any kind of time line when we
might actually get a vote? I don't understand why the
President would not want to help his own first, before those
suffering in other parts of the world.
I think that letter sums it up. This is not somebody who hasn't been
in the workforce. She was in the workforce 20 some years. This is not a
person who didn't have skills and didn't help her company actually try
to modernize and improve productivity. She did that. It is not somebody
who is sitting around not trying to find a job. She is doing that, too.
As she clearly stated, she cannot find a job. So now she has been
forced into a bankruptcy situation, is being threatened with losing her
house, all because we are sitting on the Federal unemployment benefit
account of $13.3 billion and basically saying, even though this is a
fund paid into by employers for this very purpose, in strong times of
economic downturn, we are not going to give her the assistance.
We are going to pass a FSC/ETI bill instead and give other tax breaks
to a whole bunch of things--$2 billion for a green bond initiative that
I say still probably will end up getting used for a Hooters Restaurant.
There is over $2.8 billion in here for another incentive program, a
credit for synthesized coal, which is a tax credit that is under
investigation by another Senate committee--$2.8 billion. That is
roughly the cost of what it could take to extend the unemployment
benefit program for another 6 months--a little more than $5 billion.
Yet we are very comfortable today in making a decision to give all
these tax cuts and tax breaks away, but we are not going to help the
American workers with a fund they have paid into. We are going to hold
that hostage as some sort of mark against our deficit, when it is a
trust fund they have paid into and, instead, we are going to pass a
bill called a ``jobs'' bill without actually taking care of people that
have not gotten the support.
I am amazed we are in this situation. I think the Dayton paper had it
right. People are dodging the jobless. They are dodging this issue.
Let's talk about the specifics. There are 1.5 million Americans who
are certainly without help and assistance. This is 1.5 million
Americans who, as of December 31, exhausted their benefits such as the
constituent I just mentioned. They are going through the same situation
she is going through. They are trying to figure out, now that the State
benefits have expired, and there are very few jobs created--certainly
not in a fast enough time period--that they are going to have to be
like my constituent; they are making very tough choices. Because we
don't see those choices on the 6 o'clock news doesn't mean they are not
happening.
Let's look at some of the toughest parts of the country that have had
to deal with this issue. You can say maybe not every State is in this
situation. Certainly different regions have been hard hit. Certainly
the Midwest has.
This chart shows the number of people in these States that have
exhausted State benefits. They are still unemployed and they would be
helped by our Federal program. They would be helped by the $13 billion
that exists in a Federal account--if only this body and the other body
would say, yes, you can have access to it.
Illinois has almost 70,000 people, who are like the constituent I
read a letter about, who need help and support. In other parts of the
Midwest, Michigan has 66,000; Ohio, 42,000; Pennsylvania, 69,000,
almost 70,000 workers who qualify for health and assistance.
I do not even know that these people understand that the debate on
this proposal is being considered. I know many of my constituents do
because they write to me all the time. These are not invisible people,
and their problems are not invisible. In fact, the Presiding Officer's
State of Texas has 95,000 exhaustees. That is the number of people in
that region of the country. In my part of the country, the Northwest,
we have one of the hardest hit economies, the highest unemployment
rates for the last several years. We have 33,000 people who would
qualify right now for this program if this body would just say yes.
[[Page S4984]]
What we really want to say is we know that job growth is going to
happen. In fact, last month there were 300,000 jobs created. The bottom
line is, we have lost over 2 million jobs, and it takes a while to
recreate them. By that I mean it takes a while for the economy to
recover.
The Center on Budget and Policy Analysis says it will take several
months more of robust growth to whittle down the number of unemployed
to a more typical size. The truth is, I think a lot of people are
saying: Oh, well, gosh, Friday we will have new numbers. Maybe we will
have another 300,000 jobs. Maybe we will have another 500,000 jobs,
maybe another 600,000 jobs created. To me, it does not matter if there
are 600,000 jobs created in the month of April. It simply does not
matter if we have 1.1 million people who have already exhausted their
benefits.
Even if we have 600,000 jobs created in April, we will still have a
million people who will not have access to the benefits they deserve.
To me, it is an issue of what are we going to do to sustain the economy
while we are waiting for the job creation engine to restart.
A lot of people say: Oh, gee, the economy is actually getting better;
productivity has gotten better. My constituent helped her company be
more productive. Guess what. That, I am sure, added to the bottom line
of that company. It probably added to the bottom line that got passed
on to shareholders. But did it help my constituent actually get a job
or get a new career? No, it did not. She is not asking for us to give
her a job. She is only asking for what she and her employer already
paid into, an account that was created for these tough economic times
only to get some of those funds in the interim until new job growth and
new job availabilities are out there. I do not think it is an
unreasonable request.
Some people have said: If you have 1.5 million people, and they have
exhausted their benefits, what is the rate by which those people will
actually find jobs? The Joint Economic Committee and the Center on
Budget and Policy Analysis came up with a formula. Basically, they said
about 3 percent of those 1.5 million people would find a job each week.
Some people say: Maybe we will think about unemployment benefits for
7 weeks. Maybe we will say let's give people 7 weeks of benefits for
another 60 days, and let's figure out how that helps. We did the
calculation. After 7 weeks, using this 3 percent of people finding a
job each week, which is the number that is used in both good and bad
economic times, it is an average, after 7 weeks of benefits, 458,000
people would find jobs. So after 7 weeks, those 1.5 million
exhaustees--those are people who have already exhausted their State
support but are still jobless--how many of these people would have a
job? Basically, 450,000 of them would have a job.
The issue is, after 450,000 of them would get employed after 7 weeks,
we still would be looking at 1.1 million people without a job, without
support, being in the same situation as my constituent of bankruptcy,
potentially losing her home and in a desperate situation.
Let's be realistic. We are not going to solve this by saying here is
7 weeks of unemployment. It is not going to happen. This economy will
get better. It will. But it is going to take a while. You cannot
recreate 2 million jobs overnight. You cannot.
The good news is, when you have a Federal program, which the UI trust
fund is, at $13 billion, you can use a little bit of those funds to
help those people in the meantime and actually generate stimulus in the
economy. For every dollar we give these unemployed workers, it
generates $2 of stimulus. Who is helped by my constituent basically
having to declare bankruptcy and maybe not able to make mortgage
payments? Who is helped by that? She is not, but neither is the bank
and not the businesses with which she does business. Certainly her 5-
year-old daughter who would rather have a home is not receiving any
benefits.
If we adopted my proposal, a 6-month extension with 13 weeks of
benefits, after that 6 months, the account, which was $13.3 billion,
would still have $9 billion in it. So the account will be a very
healthy account at the end of that period. Yes, we would pay money out
to those individuals, but the account is continually paid into by other
employers. That is the way it works. That is why it is a healthy
account today, and it will remain healthy under the Cantwell-Voinovich
proposal.
This is a bothersome debate to me in the sense of why are we having
this discussion when we have a healthy account? We know what the
individual problems are. We know people need to have support and
assistance. We know even after a short plan, 1.1 million people will
still be unemployed. Why don't we just do this? Is it because we are
using the money for something else, and we do not have it available to
us? Is it that we believe the economy is so much better that even a few
trickling of jobs at 300,000 or another 300,000 announced on Friday is
somehow going to solve our problem?
I do not think that is what other people have said. In fact, Alan
Greenspan said recently before two different committee hearings that
the unemployment extension benefit is a good idea largely because of
the size of the exhaustees, the number of people who exhausted the
benefits, those 1.5 million people. We have the chief economist for our
country basically saying this is a good idea based on the fact we have
1.5 million people, and they are not going to be back in the workforce
tomorrow. They are not going to be back in the workforce from the April
numbers or the May numbers or the June numbers. So who are we kidding?
The economy is not going to be that red hot to take care of 1.5 million
people tomorrow.
The question is, What do we want to do about it? I think BusinessWeek
said it best. They basically said the Senate must act. The Senate must
bridge the gap that will help the economy cross over this extended
valley of almost nonexistent hiring. They just said that on March 22--
nonexistent hiring. Let's not fool ourselves. Americans know it; that
is, if you poll them and ask them the question, Is the country going in
the right direction or the wrong direction, they say the wrong
direction because they know that we do not have job creation happening.
So it is up to us to make a decision. I know my colleagues are saying
we do not want to have a vote. Somebody, in one of the afternoon
journals, basically said, on the GOP side, that even having a
standalone vote on my amendment is a nonstarter.
I am hoping wiser heads will prevail and that people will come to
their senses and say: Let's have a vote on this issue. Let's find out
where the Members of the Senate stand on getting their constituents'
support in tough economic times.
Let us see where the Members of the Senate stand on following the
advice of Alan Greenspan who says doing unemployment benefits would be
a smart idea given the number of exhaustees. Let us find out where the
Senate stands on having a solution to the issue of whether individuals
should have access to the money they have paid into a $13.3 billion
account through their employers.
Let us find out where the Senate stands on giving a solution on
whether they think the economy is recovering fast enough or whether
they want to help people in the times when economic recovery is still
slow.
I hope we come to some resolution of this issue. I hope my colleagues
will listen to their constituents and heed the words they are saying
about the tough economic times we are seeing. It may not be on the 6
o'clock news, it may not be on the front page with four or five other
stories as is the situation in Iraq and the Middle East, but there is
still a struggle for Americans and their struggle deserves the help and
support of the Senate.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Burns). Who yields time? The Senator from
Nevada.
Mr. REID. We are not under any controlled time now, are we? Is that
right?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is correct.
The Senator from Nevada.
Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed
to speak as in morning business for up to 15 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. President, I rise to address some of the comments
that
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were made by the Senator from Washington State. The proposal to extend
unemployment insurance benefits is something the Senator from
Washington has been attempting to have passed for some time now. The
arguments have been that there are a lot of people unemployed in the
country who have been unemployed for long periods of time and therefore
we need to have not just normal unemployment benefits but we need to
have extended unemployment benefits.
For the last several months, I have gotten up on the Senate floor to
refute some of the arguments that have been made by the Senator from
Washington, and I want to not only reiterate some of those points but I
want to go a little bit further today.
One of the points I have been making is that back when the Democrats
controlled the House, the Senate and the White House, the unemployment
rate in the country was almost a full percentage point higher than it
is today. At that time, the three bodies working together, in control,
once again, by the Democrats, thought that the economy had come out of
the recession and had recovered to the point where the extension of the
unemployment benefits was not necessary. So they terminated the
program.
Well, the unemployment rate in the country is almost a full
percentage point less today--now when Republicans control the House,
the Senate, and the White House. We have recovered from a recession and
today, enjoy an unemployment rate that is almost a full percentage
point lower than what it was back in the 1990s when the Democrats were
in control, when they stopped the temporary extension program. That is
the situation we are facing today.
Nationwide, unemployment is 5.7 percent. Economists used to argue
that this kind of an unemployment rate was full employment. I am one of
those people who believe we can do better than we are doing today. In
fact, in my State we are at about 4.4 percent. In some of our counties
in our State we are at about 3-percent unemployment. So I think we can
do better. In fact, in the JOBS bill that we have before us today, we
have provisions in the bill that would create a couple of million jobs.
The one I authored, called the Invest in the USA Act, according to
independent economists, will increase the GDP of this country by 1
percent and will produce 660,000 jobs. This is a conservative estimate.
So I believe in creating jobs. It is not that people do not feel bad
that people are unemployed, but instead of giving them a check for
being unemployed we want to give them a job so they are no longer
unemployed.
The Senator from Washington has an amendment that she has been trying
to get enacted, and she changed her amendment slightly. Her State was
one of the highest unemployment States in the country. So my colleagues
could understand why she was pushing for this. In the last couple of
months, her State's economy has improved. Her State's unemployment rate
has been dropping precipitously, so much so that to qualify as a high
unemployment State for some of the extra funds under her amendment, she
had to redraft her amendment to adjust the figures in such a way that
her State would qualify. Under her previous amendments, the State of
Washington would not qualify because the economy is improving in her
State.
When President Bush was elected, he inherited an economy that was in
recession. There is no argument about that. We had three straight
quarters of negative growth. By anybody's definition, that is a
recession. It takes time to come out of that. We have had economic
policies put into place, including two rounds of tax cuts, that have
helped spur our economy onward to where we are creating jobs and to
where the economy is starting to fire on all cylinders.
We still have work to do, and I think all of us in this body would
agree that. But let's look at some of the employment figures.
This chart shows what I was talking about earlier in the State of
Washington. Starting in April of 2001, their unemployment rate was a
little above 6 percent. We can see, over the last couple of years, it
has gone up fairly significantly. It plateaued in October 2003, and
since then it has fallen drastically. This is the home State of the
author of the amendment, and that is why her State, under her old
amendment, would basically no longer qualify as a high unemployment
State.
I want to address the issue of the two surveys that measure
unemployment. One is called the household survey and the other is
called the payroll survey. The household survey measures not only
people on payrolls but it is a better measure of the economy because it
also measures those who are self-employed.
For instance, in the last 2 years we have seen this incredible
phenomenon known as eBay. I think most people are familiar with eBay.
There are 430,000 people who now make a full-time living on eBay. Try
to conceptualize that. Ten years ago, we could not even have imagined
it. The payroll survey, the most common one that people quote about
jobs being produced or eliminated, does not reflect a single one of
those people who are now supporting themselves full time by doing
business on eBay. The household survey does count them.
Anybody who goes out and starts their own business, once they hire
somebody that individual is counted in the payroll survey. Well, even a
lot of the small businesses are not counted for some time under payroll
but they are counted in the household survey. It is a more accurate
reflection of the current employment situation in our country.
In the past, the payroll survey and the household survey, the reason
we did not worry about really talking about the differences between
them is because they paralleled each other. For the last 20, 30 years
they literally went up and down at about the same rate. Over the last 2
to 3 years, though, our economy has been changing. Today we are living
in a high-tech information age. Things such as eBay didn't exist
before. Thus, over the last 12 to 24 months the payroll survey has
showed a loss of jobs while, according to the household survey, a
couple of million jobs have been produced.
We hear the other side saying under President Bush a couple of
million jobs have been lost. Well, that is if you include only the
payroll survey. If you include the household survey, we are at the
highest level of employment in the history of the United States--the
highest level of employment in the history of the United States. We
have the most people actually employed, self-employed or employed by
somebody else, that we have ever had in the United States.
Unemployment insurance was set up to be a hand up. The longer and the
more generous the benefits are, the less incentive there is for
somebody to go out and get a job. We know that and can prove that.
During times of high unemployment, during times of recession, we
extend the Federal program so those who have fallen on hard times in a
tough economy, can get assistance. Those jobs may not be out there, so
we extend the program an extra 13 weeks, sometimes 26 weeks, and we
allow the States to extend it even further.
But when the economy is growing, is it really necessary to extend
those Federal unemployment benefits? Not only is it not necessary, does
it, in fact, inhibit somebody from taking the initiative, No. 1, to
either create their own job, to become that entrepreneur on eBay or
wherever else they are going to create the job, or, No. 2, to do what
it takes to go out and find a job?
By the way, sometimes that requires moving. We have a very fluid
economy today. Sometimes it requires changing careers. Today, the
average American changes careers--not jobs, careers--three times.
Again, a reflection of our changing economy. That is one of the
reasons, if the other side of the aisle is so interested, as they say
they are, in helping people, let's make sure the Workforce Investment
Act that was passed unanimously in the Senate actually is finalized
into law instead of using procedural maneuvers to block it. That would
train an additional 900,000 people in the United States to help find
those new jobs that are being created.
In most places that you travel around the United States, if you would
ask how the economy is, a year ago there was a lot of pessimism. People
were really unsure. You go out there now and there is a lot of
optimism.
[[Page S4986]]
People are hiring and manufacturing orders are up. All the economic
indexes we see in virtually every category are up, including the
payroll survey for the last 3 months, and we expect to have fairly good
employment numbers coming out tomorrow. The jobless claims that came
out today were the lowest level we have seen since the year 2000,
again, another good piece of economic news.
That is why I think it is the right thing to do, to not further
extend the temporary extended unemployment benefits program. It already
expired in March.
We have heard a lot from the other side of the aisle about deficits
and how much of a threat deficits are to the current economy and the
future economy of the United States. I agree with that. In fact I, by
the National Taxpayers Union, was rated No. 1 as the biggest deficit
hawk in the Senate. I am very concerned with deficits. My votes match
my rhetoric.
Extending the unemployment insurance benefits cost $1 billion a
month, which is added to the deficit. That is deficit spending. A few
of the proposals we have heard from the other side would make it a $2
billion-a-month program. So if people care about the deficit, if they
believe that it is something we should not be adding on to, as the
Senator from Washington is trying to do by adding back in the extension
of the unemployment benefits, then they should not support her
amendment.
To sum this up, the facts are, the economy is growing, and growing
strongly. Yes, we can do better. I will admit that. I want to see us do
more. Pass the JOBS bill that is in front of the Senate today that the
Senator from Montana, the ranking member on the Finance Committee, and
the Senator from Iowa, the chairman of the committee, have put
together. They put together a bill that will create jobs in America.
That is part of doing better. There are many other things we can do.
I believe it would actually do harm to the economy, by adding $1
billion a month to the deficit and discouraging those people who are
currently on unemployment, if we were to continue extending the TEUC
program for weeks and weeks, and months, instead of giving people the
incentive to go out and find the jobs that are being created in
America.
I yield the floor and yield the remainder of my time.
Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
____________________