[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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