[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.)

                          ____________________