[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 96 (Thursday, June 24, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5430-S5431]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              UNEMPLOYMENT

  Ms. STABENOW. In closing, I wish to take a few more minutes to stress 
again how disappointing and, frankly, outrageous I find what happened 
tonight to be as it relates to the continual 8 weeks of blocking the 
jobs bill in front of us, for the ability for people who are out of 
work to be able to get some temporary help just to be able to keep 
things going for their family while they are looking for that next job. 
There are almost 1 million people who find themselves in a situation 
now where they have lost their jobs and have lost their insurance 
benefits, insurance benefits paid in when they were working to then be 
able to get help when they are not working, as any of us would want for 
ourselves and our families.
  We are in a situation where we cannot get beyond--we cannot get even 
beyond one, and we need two Republican colleagues--we cannot even get 
one to be able to join with us to overturn this filibuster. We have a 
bill, a jobs bill in front of us that would provide tax cuts to 
businesses, provide help to State and local and municipal governments 
to keep police officers, firefighters, and teachers on the job in our 
communities for our children, and the other side has said no.
  Time after time, no. We are putting much needed tax cuts, money back 
into the pockets of middle-class families. The other side has said no. 
We wanted to help small businesses be able to restore credit to create 
jobs. They said no. We want to help people who are going back to school 
to start a new career, people who have been looking for work, and they 
have said no. And we want to make sure we are investing in the kinds of 
jobs that are going to rebuild America--roads and bridges, other kinds 
of construction efforts, good-paying jobs for engineers, construction 
workers. Those provisions were in this bill, and they have said no. For 
people who are out of work, they have gotten a great big no, no way, 
time and time again from colleagues on the other side of the aisle.
  We know that for every $1 we put into unemployment insurance 
benefits, we get, according to Mark Zandi, an economist, and certainly 
many other economists, at least $1.40 back in investment. Why? Because 
somebody goes to the store and buys some food with that $200 or $300 a 
month in unemployment benefits. They go buy some shoes for the kids. 
They put gas in the car. They keep the lights on. They are able to pay 
their rent or the mortgage or do other things we all want to be able to 
do for our families, for our children. So when you give unemployment 
insurance benefits to someone who is out of work, they, unfortunately 
for themselves, have to turn right around and spend it. But from an 
economic standpoint, that is stimulus, which is why that is viewed as 
one of the best economic stimuli you can have, to be able to provide 
assistance for people who are going to turn around and spend it in the 
economy.
  We are struggling now. Even though we have the majority in the 
Senate, we do not have a supermajority, enough to stop filibusters. And 
we are struggling with a perversion of the Senate rules that has taken 
place. I think, frankly, our forefathers would be rolling over in their 
graves to see the perversion that has gone on here. Instead of using a 
majority vote like any of us would use if we were in an election--one 
more vote than the other guy wins the election--here one more vote than 
the other guy does not get us moving forward because of the efforts to 
block, obstruct, and filibuster that go on every single day and require 
60 votes in order to overcome.
  So what are they saying no to? Why are they blocking and stopping? 
Why do we see this continual effort to go back to the way it was, to go 
back to the policies that got us where we are today? We are in a 
situation now where we want to go forward. We want to change things. We 
want to go forward. And all we get are efforts to take us back.
  Well, what was happening then? What was happening at the place they 
want to go? Well, in the last Presidency, when they were in charge, we 
saw us lose jobs, more and more jobs throughout the 8 years of this 
former President. And there were a number of reasons: wrong economic 
policies; wrong investments; investing in people who were very wealthy 
hoping that it would trickle down; not enforcing our trade laws; not 
stopping the incentives to ship our jobs overseas; not paying attention 
to manufacturing and making things in this country; and, frankly, not 
paying for things; two wars, not paid for; Medicare prescription drug 
benefit, not paid for--nothing was paid for. Everything was put on the 
credit card. And now the people who got us into this ditch, amazingly, 
are arguing for policies to take us back into the ditch. They dug the 
ditch, and now they want us to give them back the shovel and get more 
shovels to dig a bigger one.
  We have a very different view and, frankly, a different set of 
priorities on whom we are fighting for. We are losing the middle class 
of this country. We are losing the middle class of this country because 
of the policies that have focused not on jobs, not on things that 
matter to middle-class families, working-class families, but on what 
the privileged few care about.

[[Page S5431]]

  The philosophy that got us where we are, which this President 
inherited, President Obama, was a philosophy that said that a tax cut 
to the wealthy solves every problem and, by the way, step back and let 
corporate America regulate themselves, police themselves, and 
everything will be OK.
  Well, we saw what happened on Wall Street--millions of jobs lost, 
401(k)s gone, pensions gone, savings gone. We have seen what happened 
in the gulf when the oil companies policed themselves. We saw what 
happened in West Virginia, where the miners lost their lives because 
the mines were policing themselves. And we saw what happened 
economically in terms of job loss.
  This really is a bigger fight than just the jobs bill in front of us. 
It is about whose side you are on. It is about what your values and 
priorities are. And I can tell you, just as a practical matter, I am 
going to support whatever works for the people I represent, whatever 
works for the people in Michigan.
  This did not work, this red ink getting longer and longer and longer. 
President Obama comes in; 750,000 jobs lost a month. We put in a jobs 
bill, a Recovery Act to focus on manufacturing and small businesses, 
job training, to help the people who lost their jobs. It has been slow 
because the hole was so deep, but we have begun to turn it around. By 
the end of the year, we got it to zero jobs lost, and now we are 
gaining jobs. Now we have to keep gaining jobs. We are returning 
accountability and commonsense regulation to Wall Street, to the oil 
industry, and to other areas where lives could be lost and there is a 
public interest.
  So we are in the middle of a major debate in this country. And what I 
find most disturbing is that too many on the other side of the aisle 
are rooting for failure. They want the President to fail. They want our 
majority to fail. But in the process of that, we all will fail. The 
country will fail if we do not have a set of economic policies and 
investments and partnerships that work, if we do not focus on the 
people who need temporary help and support right now while they hold 
their family together and look for a job.
  When I think about the men and women fighting overseas, fighting in 
two wars around the world for our great democracy, they want to know 
that they are coming home to a job; that their family has a house; that 
the kids are going to be able to go to college; that they are going to 
be able to breathe fresh air and drink clean water; and that somehow 
that they were fighting not for some craziness, some crazy political 
battlefield here, but for a sense of love and thought about our country 
and the people in our country.
  Patriotism really is, when it comes to our country, against other 
countries in the world, it is fighting for our side--not our side of 
the aisle but our country, not rooting for people to fail just so you 
can get a short-term political advantage. I hope that does not work. 
Obviously, you could say for personal reasons, we do not want it to 
work, but I hope it does not work for our country because we have to 
get beyond this and be able to work together because too many people 
are counting on us.
  In closing this evening, I want to express an apology to everyone who 
is caught in this economic tsunami. I am not going to stand here and 
apologize to BP, but I am going to apologize to the people who are out 
of work in this country for what has happened today because it is 
shameful. And over 87,000 people in my State are going to be directly 
affected by this by the end of next week. I apologize to them for what 
has happened because it is wrong. It is wrong. And we are going to do 
everything we can to turn this around because people are counting on us 
to do that.

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