[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 193 (Thursday, December 15, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8622-S8624]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TAX CUTS AND UNEMPLOYMENT
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, we are all in the holiday spirit, at least
partially, knowing that our families and the people we love are waiting
for us back home and around the country to celebrate this once-a-year
holiday occurrence. But we know we can't leave. We can't leave
Washington until we get our job done.
The job we have to do is to be mindful of important measures that
need to be enacted into law before any of us can leave this town with a
clear conscience. One is the payroll tax. Currently, those working--160
million Americans--get a 2-percent reduction in the payroll tax every
pay period. For the average family in Illinois--making about $53,000 a
year--the amount that payroll tax deduction has been calculated to be
is somewhere in the range of $1,000 a year. Now, that means about $100
a month for families who are working and enjoying this payroll tax cut.
I know what is happening with that money. It is being spent, and
spent quickly, by many working families who have a job but are
struggling from paycheck to paycheck. If gasoline prices go up, if
utility bills are higher than expected, then the amount they thought
they had put away as a reserve quickly vanishes. Particularly at the
holiday season, when kids need warm clothes, when they need to keep the
house warm for the family, and they are trying to put a few things
under the Christmas tree, that $100 is more than just a small amount.
It could mean a lot to a family, and it is going to expire. On January
1 it goes away.
As of January 1, these working families will see their paychecks
reduced by about $100 a month, on average. Now, Members of Congress--
Members of the Senate--may not feel that, but a lot of working families
will. We cannot leave Washington in good conscience without extending
the payroll tax cut.
President Obama has been talking about this for 3 months. He has
taken his case to the American people--first to Congress then to the
American people. He has gone from State to State, community to
community, and identified what this payroll tax cut means to individual
families. Then he has spoken to America and said it is more than just
being compassionate to those who are struggling, it is an important
part of restoring economic growth in America. Money that is given in
payroll tax cuts to working families is spent and respent in salaries
for those who work at the shops and businesses that provide goods and
services where working families do their work.
So the payroll tax cut is more than helpful to individual families;
it is good for the overall economy to reduce our unemployment. That is
why we cannot leave without enacting it. We have come up with what I
consider to be a responsible, thoughtful way to pay for it. We impose a
surtax on those making over $1 million a year, but we exempt the first
$1 million in income they receive.
So if a person is being paid $20,000 a week--that is what a
millionaire would make each year--their taxes don't go up. But for the
next $1 million they make, there is a surtax of a few percentage
points. I think that is reasonable. I think people who are comfortable
and well off and, frankly, lucky to be living in this country should be
willing to sacrifice a little to help working families.
We could only find one Republican Senator who would join us in this
effort to put a higher tax on the wealthiest in America to help working
families across America--only one. We need more. It takes 60 votes in
the Senate.
[[Page S8623]]
We have a nominal majority in the Senate on the Democratic side with
53, but it takes 60 to do anything of great controversy, and this is
one that is controversial. We could only get Senator Collins of Maine
who would step over and join us in this bipartisan effort. We are
searching for other ways to do this, with the understanding that it has
to be done. The payroll tax cut has to be done.
But let me say there is another part to this that I think is equally
important; that is, maintaining unemployment benefits for the millions
across America who are out of work. This recession has gone on for a
long period of time. People are unemployed for longer periods than they
ever imagined. In fact, there are four unemployed people for every
available job.
As I visit the centers where people are struggling to make their
resumes more timely and to respond to classified ads and requests from
those who would like to hire, I find these people working day in and
day out in an effort to try to find a job. They are serious about it.
Those who would dismiss them and say, as long as they are receiving
unemployment benefits, they are going to be too lazy to look don't know
what that life is like. They do not understand what these people go
through.
When I meet with unemployed people who have been out of work for some
period of time, the first question I ask is, What has happened to your
health insurance? Overwhelmingly, the answer is, Gone; no health
insurance protection for my family because I lost my job, and my job
brought me my health insurance protection. That is the reality.
When I saw the bill that came over from the Republican side this
week, it troubled me. There are two provisions in there that I think
are mindless and, frankly, don't reflect the reality of what people
face in this recession. One of them would authorize the States to give
drug tests to people who are unemployed before they can get
unemployment benefits.
Is there a notion somewhere that people are not applying for work
because they are addicted to drugs? I haven't seen any evidence of
that. This plays into the thought process these people aren't really
trying because they do not want to try. I don't buy that. I think that
kind of attitude reflects the fact that those who support it and
sponsor it never sit down to talk to these people and to their families
and understand what they are going through.
There is an element that I think hasn't been spoken of much but
should be. What happens to a family when the major breadwinner is out
of work for 3 months, 6 months, a year or more? It turns out that some
of the problems may not be anticipated by some Members of Congress or
the Senate that should be.
I received a letter from Lanesia Hoskins, wife and mother of three,
from the south side of Chicago. She wrote that her husband Theodis
Hoskins, who has a college degree, had been out of work for more than 2
years. His unemployment insurance had run out, and Mrs. Hoskins had
just started a second job to help support their family. She wrote, ``My
body is tired and I often feel weak.''
This is how Mrs. Hoskins described her husband's job search in an
economy where there are still five job seekers for every available job:
My husband has stood in long lines at the job fairs located
at Chicago State University, St. Sabina Church, and for the
Ford plant in Chicago. He has stood out in these hot lines
just to have people inside the building take his resume and
say, `apply online.' What a waste and how humiliating after
having news cameras expose your current situation with no
results.
She went on to say:
He has applied for state jobs, federal jobs, temp jobs, and
gone through city agencies and has not had any results.
Interview after interview. This is humiliating for a man who
used to take two buses and two trains to get to work from the
Southside of Chicago to Rosemont, Illinois.
Mrs. Hoskins said she could never understand politicians who say that
people like her husband were ``lazy and did not want to get up and find
a job because they are getting unemployment checks.''
She asked:
How could they make such a statement about a man who had
steady employment and good benefits? Who wants to collect an
unemployment check and not have benefits for their family?
We have a modest home, one automobile, and we do not live
above our means. We are trying to keep things together, but
it is difficult.
She closed her letter with a request:
Can you please get this message across to the politicians?
Like so many American families, the Hoskins family lost a lot of
ground financially while Theodis Hoskins was out of work.
Fortunately, there is a happy post-script to this family's story.
After more than 2 years of looking, Mr. Hoskins found a job. He is
working about 23 hours a week at a Costco store in Chicago and he is
grateful for the work.
The last thing the Hoskins family needs now is to lose $1,000 in
income next year. Yet that is what will happen if Republicans refuse to
extend the payroll tax cut for working families.
The Hoskins family and 160 million other working Americans will lose
an average of $1,000 in income next year if Republicans insist on
killing the payroll tax cut, which expires at the end of this month.
This past summer, working families in America suffered their biggest
loss in wealth in more than 2 years. At the same time, corporations
raised their cash stockpiles to record levels.
Our Republican friends say all the time that businesses need
certainty. You know what businesses need even more than certainty?
Customers.
Continuing the payroll tax cut puts money into the hands of consumers
who are likely to spend that money. That is how you jump start an
economy that is driven by consumer spending--not by giving bigger tax
breaks to individuals and corporations that are already sitting on
record amounts of cash.
We also need to maintain unemployment benefits for workers who have
lost their jobs through no fault of their own, have exhausted all of
their state unemployment benefits and still can't find work.
Mr. President, there are a lot of holiday traditions we look forward
to. This new holiday tradition our Republican colleagues have started--
threatening to cut off unemployment benefits--isn't one of them.
For the second holiday season in a row, unemployed workers and their
families are being threatened with an imminent cutoff of federal
unemployment benefits.
If Republicans refuse to maintain unemployment benefits, 2 million
Americans will lose their jobless benefits by the end of February.
The Congressional Budget Office analyzed 11 different steps Congress
could take to stimulate the economy. The most efficient short-term
economic stimulus by far is extending unemployment benefits.
Every dollar we spend on unemployment generates $1.90 in economic
activity. That is a 90 percent return on investment. Nothing else comes
close.
According to the U.S. Census, emergency unemployment benefits kept
3.2 million Americans from slipping into poverty last year.
If the extended benefits aren't renewed, economist warn, economic
growth next year could slow by up to a half-percentage point.
Some of our Republican colleagues who want to end the payroll tax cut
for working families say they are concerned about the budget deficit.
We also have a serious jobs deficit in America.
They may be handing out million-dollar bonuses again on Wall Street
and corporations are sitting on record amounts of cash. But there are
still five job seekers for every available job in America.
Here is a sobering statistic. In the recoveries from the previous
three recessions, the longest average length of unemployment was 21
weeks; that was in July 1983.
The average length of unemployment for this last recession, the Great
Recession, is about 41 weeks--nearly twice the previous record.
That is the longest average unemployment since the government started
keeping records in 1948.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke calls long-term unemployment a
``national crisis.''
He is right. The idea that we would abruptly end unemployment
benefits for millions of Americans in the midst
[[Page S8624]]
of this national crisis is hard to believe.
Not since the Great Depression have so many Americans been out of
work for so long.
When I talk to people in my state who are running food pantries and
emergency shelters, they all tell me the same thing. They have never
seen so many families struggling so hard for so long.
Go to an emergency food pantry and you will see America's ``new
poor'': families who were solidly middle class just a few years ago,
who are now having to ask for help for the first time in their lives.
It may start with a job loss. As weeks without a paycheck stretches
into months, many families find themselves in financial free fall. They
may lose their homes.
The inability to support one's family financially very often leads to
feelings of shame and fear, which can lead to isolation, which makes it
even harder to find work.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, an estimated 6.6
percent of Americans were ``clinically depressed'' in 2001 and 2002. By
last year, that percentage had increased to 9 percent--an almost 50
percent increase in 8 years.
Last year, the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at
Rutgers University in New Jersey released a comprehensive study of the
emotional and mental health consequences of long-term unemployment on
individuals.
The title of the study is, ``The Anguish of Unemployment.''
Overwhelming majorities of the survey's respondents said they feel or
have experienced anxiety, helplessness, depression, and stress after
being without a job.
Many said they have experienced sleeping problems and strained
relationships and have avoided social situations as a result of their
job loss.
Carl Van Horn, a professor of public policy and economics at Rutgers
and head of the Heldrich Center said that America faces ``a silent
mental health epidemic'' as jobless Americans face the financial,
emotional, and social consequences of being unemployed.
One of the respondents in the Rutgers survey said:
The lack of income and loss of health benefits hurts
greatly, but losing the ability to provide for my wife and
myself is killing me emotionally.
Children are especially sensitive to the effects of unemployment in
the family. They pick up on their parents' stress and are more likely
to suffer from poorer school performance and low self-esteem.
One recent study found that children in families with an unemployed
parent were 15 percent more likely to repeat a grade in school.
In extreme cases, people who are emotionally fragile and overwhelmed
may see suicide as the only way out of their troubles.
A study released last April by the Centers for Disease Control shows
that suicide rates rise and fall with the economy.
It is the first study to examine the relationships between age-
specific suicide rates and the economy.
It found that suicide rates rose to an all-time high during the Great
Depression, fell during the expansionary period following World War II,
rose again during the oil crisis of the early 1970s and the double-dip
recession of the early eighties, and fell to its lowest level ever
during the booming nineties.
It also found the strongest link between business cycles and suicide
among people in prime working ages, 25 to 64 years old.
It is too soon to know for certain whether we will see another
increase in suicide as the result of the Great Recession that started
in 2007, because government figures lag. But a preliminary estimate by
the CDC shows that suicide ticked up slightly in 2009, becoming the
10th leading cause of death in the United States.
It is important to stress: It is never just one factor that drives
people to suicide, and most people who suffer terrible losses never
even think about suicide. But for those who are already emotionally
vulnerable, this time of unprecedented longterm unemployment can be
very dangerous.
One more measure: Between 2004 and 2010 calls to the National Suicide
Prevention Lifeline increased 72 percent. Last year, almost 40 percent
of calls to the hotline involved people with financial and unemployment
concerns.
The Atlantic magazine recently asked readers to share the one thing
people didn't understand or appreciate about looking for work. The
responses poured in.
One reader wrote:
For those of us prone to depression, the job search can
amount to a heroic effort.
Another wrote:
Possibly the worst thing about being unemployed is having
to suffer through the pundit and the politician classes
gassing on interminably about what it's like to be
unemployed, what kind of people are unemployed and how they
think and act, when none of them knows or understands one
damn thing about it, nor do they even want to. Get down here
on the ground, and try to go a year on $350 a week with no
hope in sight, and then tell us why the lazy unemployed just
need a good swift kick to get the country moving again.
Still another wrote:
I am over the bruises to my ego . . . The worst thing
though is the impact on my kids. We were making $120K plus
two years ago. Now, about $35K. Lost the house. Thankfully
still in the same school. That said, the kids went from being
respectably comfortable in their cohort to being comfortable
if tattered (used clothes, battered rental, same old car, no
summer trips, etc.). Thank God they are still young (just
started third grade) but we're not having any sleepovers here
no matter how much they ask. I am afraid for the social
impact on them. They are so upbeat, so enthusiastic. They
don't know we're in a ditch. It would break my heart if they
figured that out.
Yet another wrote:
Unemployment dehumanizes the real person. They lose the
essence of their identity and value. To become a number, a
label, a resume, a failure, a defect, unproductive,
desperate, wishful, delusional, depressed, poor and separated
from respectful society. Being unemployed is to be silently
disrespected. On a par with being homeless, mentally ill or
addicted.
The website Unemployed-friends.com is another place you can hear the
stories of unemployed Americans who are trying to hang on.
One person wrote:
Living in constant fear and feeling helpless to do anything
about it is bound to take its toll. I really feel like I am
going to have heart attack. Severe chest pains, shortness of
breath, heartburn, but it has been going on for months and
I'm still here. By the way, no doctor will see me without
money for tests up front. I've already had the consult and
that almost broke me.
Another wrote:
Another rejection notice from Lowe's today. Second time
they've rejected me with the automated rejection notice--this
time for ``seasonal plumbing department associate.'' . . . I
am willing to go from a 17-year professional to working doing
anything I can. Retail, washing cars, pumping gas, flipping
burgers . . . be it whatever. I cannot even land that!!!!!.
This is what one woman posted at 1 o'clock in the morning:
I'm so tired. I have no more fight left in me. I am a tough
NY girl but this recession has sucked the life out of me. . .
. I've exhausted all resources, borrowed from everyone, lost
most of everything including my pride and self esteem. I feel
like nothing, a total zero, non-productive person. . . . I
fully expect to look in the mirror one day and see no
reflection. I am fading away, becoming irrelevant. How will I
ever recover?
Peter Kramer is a professor of psychiatry at Brown University and the
author of two best-selling books, ``Listening to Prozac'' and ``Against
Depression.''
In a recent op-ed in The New York Times, he wrote:
I began my psychiatry residency at a community mental
health center. The director liked to put trainees in their
place. He'd trade any of us, he said, for a good employment
counselor. Medication and psychotherapy were fine, but they
worked better if a patient had a job. . . . There is no
substitute for the structure, support and meaning that jobs
offer.
He went on to say that if Congress wants to do something about this
silent mental health crisis that is hurting so many Americans, the best
thing we can do is work with the President to pass programs that will
get Americans back to work.
I couldn't agree more and I urge our Republicans colleagues to do
just that.
In the meantime, at the very least, we need to maintain unemployment
benefits for people who have lost jobs and are still looking and
continue the payroll tax cut so that families that are working aren't
hit next year with a $1,000 tax increase.
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