[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 93 (Monday, June 21, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5194-S5196]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE AND COBRA
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Madam President, more than 57,000 Ohioans--that is
about the size of Elyria, OH, or Mansfield, OH, or twice the size of
Zanesville, OH--more than 57,000 Ohioans are estimated to have lost
unemployment benefits since the extension ended in May 2010, a month
ago.
If the Senate does not pass an extension, that number will increase
dramatically. More than 90,000 Ohioans could lose their benefits by the
end of June. That is more people than live in Youngstown, more people
than live in Springfield, OH, more people than live in Cleveland
Heights or Lakewood, OH. Madam President, 90,000 Ohioans could lose
their benefits by the end of June.
Nationwide, since the beginning of June, some 900,000 workers have
run out of jobless benefits. That number will surpass 1 million by next
week.
Now, those are numbers, and we can stand around here and debate back
and forth, and talk about 50,000 here and 100,000 here and a million
there. But later in my remarks I am going to share, as I often do,
Madam President--as you and I have talked about--letters from people in
Crawford County, Warren County, Pickaway County, and Hamilton County,
OH, where I was earlier today--letters from people, individuals who are
part of those 50,000 or 90,000 Ohioans who could lose their benefits.
Senate Republicans are denying tens of thousands of Ohioans--and
thousands of people in New Hampshire and hundreds of thousands of
people in California and Texas and Florida--the Republicans are denying
tens of thousands of Ohioans the unemployment insurance benefits they
have earned during years of hard work.
This year, this Chamber spent 9 weeks on the floor struggling to
extend unemployment insurance and COBRA. Over the past week, every
single Republican voted again and again to block a bill just to extend
unemployment insurance. They chose to vote against extending COBRA, a
critical benefit for workers who not only lose their jobs but also
their health insurance.
You know how this happens, Madam President. Someone is laid off from
their job. They lose their income. Then they cannot afford their
insurance. They lose their insurance--unless they are enrolled in
COBRA. COBRA is a bit of a cruel hoax. In order to keep your insurance,
you have to pay what you were paying as an employee when you had a job
and full pay and you have to pay the employer side of the insurance in
order to continue your insurance. That is why a year ago, in the
stimulus package, for the first time in American history, the Federal
Government helped people who had lost their insurance keep their
insurance by paying about two-thirds of the COBRA premium.
If you lose your job, you get a little bit of unemployment insurance,
although the Republicans have blocked that. Then you lose your
insurance. Then if you get sick, you are going to lose your house. When
I hear my colleagues on the other side of the aisle talk the way they
do about unemployment insurance, they act as if it is a welfare
program. Unemployment insurance, decidedly, is not a welfare program.
We do not call it unemployment welfare. We call it unemployment
insurance.
What does that mean? It means when you are working--if you are an
ironworker in New Hampshire, if you are a steelworker in Ohio or you
work at Burger King in Cleveland--wherever you are working, you pay
into this unemployment insurance plan. When you lose your job, if you
are full time, you get money back, some of the money you paid in. It is
called insurance. That is why we call it insurance. Yet my Republican
colleagues act as if unemployment insurance is welfare. Well, it is
not. It really is insurance.
I think it is important we think about someone losing their job and
not getting unemployment insurance, and then losing their health care,
and then, very likely, in many cases, losing their home. We do not know
many people like that because we dress like this and we make a good bit
of money here and a good many of our colleagues are pretty insulated.
They do not know a lot of people who have lost their job or lost their
insurance or lost their home. But think about it, we should try to put
ourselves in the position of someone who has lost their job, then lost
their insurance, then lost their home.
You are a family in Lima, OH, or Zanesville, OH, or Gallipolis or
Dayton. First the breadwinner loses her job. Then they cannot afford
the insurance. Then they get not really sick but sick enough that they
have bills that have piled up. Then they cannot keep up with paying for
their home mortgage. Then they get 3 or 4 months behind. Then they get
a notice from the bank that they are going to lose their house. Think
of what that does.
Say you have two kids. You live in Dayton, OH. You have lost your
job. You have lost your insurance. Now you are about to lose your
house. You have to explain to your son and daughter in Huber Heights, a
suburb of Dayton: Well, little Johnny and Jane, we are going to have to
move, and we are going to move to a really small, little apartment, and
we don't have any place to put all this stuff, and we are going to have
to sell it or give it away. I don't know where you are going to go to
school next fall because I am just really unsure of things.
The son or daughter says: Well, mom, what about my friends? Where are
we
[[Page S5195]]
going to school? She says: I don't know yet because we don't have an
apartment. I don't think my colleagues, particularly my Republican
colleagues--who vote no on unemployment insurance benefits, who vote no
on COBRA and helping people with their insurance and are unwilling to
do anything about these foreclosures--I do not think they think about
these individual situations. They look at statistics, like we do. They
look at numbers, like we do. They debate this stuff. But I do not think
they think about what it would be like if someone they knew or they
themselves had to lose their job and their health insurance and their
benefits.
It is pretty simple in so many ways. As I said, employees pay into
the unemployment fund when they are working. When they are laid off--
they did not ask to be laid off--they receive help from that fund. But
when it comes to helping middle-class Americans, Republicans too often
look the other way. They start talking about deficit spending. I am
empathetic with that because I think we have to get our budget house in
order.
But all I can think of is where was this concern, where were my
Republican colleagues, where were they when they voted for two wars--a
war with Afghanistan and a war with Iraq--and did not pay for those
wars? They took the cost of those wars, which is $1 trillion, which is
1,000 billion. That is 1,000 billion. A billion is a thousand million.
So it is a thousand million: a trillion dollars. I know that is a
little confusing. But they are spending $1 trillion. They are just
charging it to our grandkids for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They
do not worry about that being added to our grandkids' tab.
Then where were these Republicans, where was the concern of the
Republicans when they passed George Bush's tax cuts for the rich? That
is why we have this huge budget deficit.
In 2000, as the Presiding Officer knows, we had a budget surplus in
our country, and then George Bush and the Republicans took over. Two
wars; did not pay for it; charged it to our grandchildren. Tax cuts for
the rich; did not pay for it; charged it to our grandchildren. A
giveaway to the drug and insurance companies in the name of Medicare
privatization; did not pay for it; charged it to our grandchildren.
Now, when it is not giving money to the drug companies or paying for
a war, or giving tax cuts to the richest people in America, now, all of
a sudden, when it is unemployment insurance, a bunch of people who are
laid off--or it is a bunch of people who have lost their health
insurance--middle-class families, then, all of a sudden, they are
concerned about the budget deficit. They did not care when it was
shoveling money--hundreds of billions of dollars--for a war. They did
not care when it was shoveling out money, hundreds of billions of
dollars, for tax cuts for the rich. They did not care about the budget
deficit when it was just shoveling hundreds of billions of dollars to
the drug companies and the insurance companies. That did not matter.
They did not care about the budget deficit then.
Now, Republicans tell us: Oh, we can't extend unemployment benefits
because it would add to the deficit. We cannot help with COBRA. We
cannot help give some assistance to people for health care because that
would add to the deficit. We cannot help the States with what is called
FMAP, helping the States deal with their Medicaid costs going to many
previously working families who have lost insurance. We cannot do any
of that because all of a sudden the budget deficit is the most
important moral question of our times. Where was this important moral
question of our times when they added $100 billion--hundreds of
billions of dollars--to the deficit for a war, for tax cuts, and for
the giveaway to the drug insurance companies?
I was in the House when the so-called prescription drug benefit, when
they created that huge doughnut hole and gave all those subsidies to
the drug companies and insurance companies. That vote took place in the
dead of night while most Americans were asleep. Literally, that vote--
the rollcall--started at 3 o'clock in the morning. I was down the hall
working there then. The vote started at 3 o'clock in the morning. An
overwhelming number of Democrats opposed it. Some Republicans who
actually believed that deficit spending was a problem--a few of them--
not very many voted against it. So the vote started at 3 o'clock.
Usually, a vote in the House of Representatives takes 15 or 20 minutes.
Three hours later, they woke up the President of the United States
and had him start calling Republicans--George Bush then--to change
their vote and vote yes. Finally, after 3 hours--history-making because
the House of Representatives never took 3 hours ever; when my colleague
from Oklahoma or my colleague from Maine, who are sitting here, were in
the House of Representatives, they never saw us do anything like that--
3 hours later, finally, President Bush twisted two arms--a Congressman
from Idaho and a Congressman from Oklahoma--to change their votes, and
they passed the bill in the middle of the night, this huge bailout. It
was a bailout--there is no other word for it--a bailout to the drug
companies and the insurance companies.
It was not a benefit for seniors. We could have done that much more
directly and much less expensively and given seniors a prescription
drug benefit. No, the Republicans wanted to do a Medicare prescription
drug bill. When you give tens of billions of dollars--hundreds of
billions of dollars--to the drug and insurance companies and let some
trickle down to seniors, that is really the way they believe in doing
government.
All of this hypocrisy must end. It is wrong. It does a disservice to
the American people.
Let me share a handful of letters that say this way better than I can
say it about why unemployment insurance and COBRA are so important.
Barbara from Hancock County--that is south of Toledo. Barbara writes:
I cared for my cancer-stricken father while working full-
time and raising my three young children. After my father
died, I went back to college. I got an associate's degree,
three certificates, and a bachelor's degree. Last year I lost
my job. I have been looking for work ever since. I have
mouths to feed and student loans to pay back. I don't take
fancy vacations. I don't buy flashy expensive clothes. I am
over 50. I should be preparing for retirement. Because I
can't find a job, though, my small savings is gone. Without
unemployment insurance, there is no help for me. I send out
dozens of resumes, but no one is hiring. Please tell me what
I can do. Because the extension has not passed, I will be
living on the streets with my three children.
Think about that. She is playing by the rules. She worked hard. She
took care of her dying father. She has three children. She went back to
school. Now she has lost her job, No. 1. No. 2, she has a mortgage; she
wants to keep her house. She has children to feed. She has student debt
because she did what so many of us want people to do, which is to go
back to school and make something better of themselves. She lost her
job. She can't get unemployment insurance because my Republican
colleagues have said no to extending unemployment insurance.
This isn't a political game. This isn't playing with a bunch of facts
and figures. This is people like Barbara from Hancock County, OH. We
all have Barbaras in every State of this country--people who have lost
their jobs and need that unemployment compensation just to tread water.
We don't want them to drown. They are not going to get ahead receiving
unemployment benefits. They are not going to get rich.
Remember, as my Republican friends forget, unemployment insurance is
not welfare; it is insurance. You pay into it when you are working, you
get help when you are unemployed.
I know the Presiding Officer--whether it is in Eugene or whether it
is in Portland or wherever it is in Oregon--understands these are
people who are working hard. They lost their jobs. They paid into
insurance. They should be eligible to receive unemployment
compensation.
Rebecca is from Crawford County, just 8 or 9 miles from where I grew
up in Mansfield.
Today is another day I am spending in tears and obsessed
with fear. I am in the ranks of the unemployed. I was brought
up with a sense of personal accountability and values. I have
attempted every method I can think of to obtain a job to
support myself. I won't burden you with a discussion of what
it feels like to be uninsured and not be able to see a doctor
when I am sick. You keep your fingers crossed. You pray you
can treat
[[Page S5196]]
what ails you with over-the-counter remedies. My unemployment
insurance was allowing me to keep a roof over my head,
although incurring massive credit card debt for the remainder
of my essentials--food, gasoline, eating. Most of us who are
looking for work want to return to a normal life. Please pass
an unemployment extension so we can continue to survive and
maintain a degree of dignity. Allow us to rebuild our country
and our economy. I know I am one of millions and my voice
alone means very little. Please ask your fellow Senators to
at least acknowledge us.
Think about what she said. She is obsessed with fear. Her future is
uncertain. She has lost her unemployment. She has lost her job. She is
not getting unemployment insurance now. She said she was brought up to
believe in personal accountability, personal responsibility, and those
values. She said: My unemployment insurance was helping me to at least
get along, even though I was adding to my debt because unemployment
insurance is never really enough to do all you need to do. She points
out that, as most people do, she wants to work. She sends out resumes
every week. You don't just get unemployment insurance by going like
this. You get unemployment insurance by filing for it, showing that you
are out of work. You have to show that you are searching for work,
seeking work, and you can't find it in this economy.
Whether it is Rebecca in Crawford County or Barbara in Hancock County
or whether it is somebody from Oregon, you don't just automatically get
a job.
It is clear that it is hard to find work, and these are people who
are out trying. If they are not able to find a job, they should be
getting this unemployment extension.
Three more letters, briefly.
Georgetta from Warren County:
I am an unemployed single mother of two children, 10 and
14. I was laid off through no fault of my own. I have been
doing what I can to secure a new job. I am about to lose my
unemployment insurance. How can I feed my children? How can I
keep a roof over their heads? What am I supposed to do? My
savings are gone. I have no health insurance. I am trying to
find a job. I can take the pain, but I can't sit by and watch
my children suffer through no fault of their own. Please help
me. Please pass an unemployment insurance extension.
I wish my colleagues who walk down into this well and, when their
name is called, vote no--I wish they would meet people like Georgetta.
I wish they would sit down with the Georgettas in their State and
listen to their stories. I wish they would look at the pain in her face
that she has because of her children suffering, not getting the food
they need, the clothes, the books they need for school, not even sure
she is going to have a roof over their heads. Think about that.
Again, I think we don't know very many people--my colleagues who vote
against unemployment insurance, my guess is most of them don't know
anybody who lost their job, lost their insurance, lost their house. My
guess is they haven't thought through the conversation a parent has
with a son or a father has with his daughter telling them the news that
they are going to have to move out of their house, maybe move into a
different school district, maybe just not know about the future because
they are about to lose their home they have lived in for the last 5 or
6 years. What is that like for a parent to explain that to a child?
I ask my colleagues to try to empathize and try to put themselves in
that position, when that conversation takes place, when parents have
lost jobs and then health insurance and then their homes.
Joe from Pickaway County, south of Columbus:
I was laid off last year after working at a company for 13
years. I am still unemployed. I have lost my house, my car,
my credit rating, and my liberty. I relied on unemployment
benefits to feed my family. If UI is not extended, there will
be people and families starving. Please do what you can to
help us.
This is in another part of the State, southern Ohio, Appalachia, OH.
Joe worked at a place for 13 years. The company laid him off. He is
unemployed. He has lost his house and his car and he is struggling. If
we don't extend unemployment benefits--even with unemployment benefits,
his life is not going to be very easy, but without it where does he
turn? What does he do? He goes to food banks. He lives on the street.
What does Joe do in Pickaway County if we don't extend unemployment
this week? He shouldn't be waiting any longer.
The last letter is from Amy from Hamilton County. That is where I was
today, near Cincinnati. Amy is writing saying:
I am among the many Ohioans who lost their job due to the
economic downturn that started 2 years ago. My husband and I
did not live beyond our means. We bought a modest house. We
lived reasonably on what we could afford. I encourage you to
continue to push through passage of the UI extension. It will
help pay for basic bills like our mortgage, food and
utilities. UI is crucial to my family's viability. Please do
whatever you can to pass the extension. We want to restore
our basic way of life.
She is saying unemployment benefits would not make her life easy,
would not even make her life comfortable in any way, but unemployment
insurance would give her the bridge until she can, when the economy
gets better, find a job.
I conclude by just saying again that I hope my Republican colleagues,
who have consistently voted no on extending unemployment benefits and
helping people keep their health insurance, will open their eyes and
look around their States and talk to people, look at the mail they are
getting, look at what they are hearing from constituents on the
Internet and e-mails and try to put themselves in the shoes of a father
who lost his job and his insurance and has to explain to his kids they
lost their house or a single mother who was renting and can't even pay
the rent because she has lost her insurance and she is going to have to
figure out how to explain to her children they will be in a different
school district and they don't even know what it will be yet.
As people without jobs often do, they change from one school district
to another one, and their kids fall farther and farther behind.
I ask my Republican colleagues who consistently vote no to try to
empathize with those who have less privileges than we do, who don't
have huge staffs and don't have a good salary and don't have good
insurance and don't have a secure place to live, what their lives would
be like if any one of us lost all of those privileges. I think it would
make a difference in how they vote.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
(Mr. MERKLEY assumed the Chair.)
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