[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 17]
[Senate]
[Pages 23789-23790]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE

  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, last night we passed an economic 
stabilization plan that is intended to protect business, pensions, and 
jobs. I know from my State of Ohio, all too often I get plant shutdown 
notifications and applications for shutdown assistance, for worker 
retraining, for all kinds of responses to economic problems. What we 
did last night was particularly important because of potential lost 
jobs. With that bill we are trying to prevent an economic crisis.
  Last week, Republican Members of this body, unfortunately, set the 
stage for another economic crisis. They set the stage for a crisis when 
they blocked a bill to extend unemployment insurance for millions of 
Americans and their families. Congress must extend this insurance for 
Americans. We have a bill to do that. I urge my colleagues to support 
S. 3507.
  My friend from Rhode Island, Senator Jack Reed, has introduced this 
bill that will provide an extension of insurance for all States for 7 
weeks, an additional 13 weeks for high unemployment States, which means 
those States that have an unemployment rate of at least 6 percent.
  Think about the conditions, everywhere from Lima to Zanesville, 
Ashtabula to Middletown in my State, and States across the country--
food prices exploding, energy prices exploding, unemployment benefits 
running out. If that is not an economic crisis, an American crisis--not 
just in Chillicothe and Ravenna, it is a crisis all over this State--
then I guess I don't know what the word ``crisis'' means.
  Last month's jobs report from the Labor Department showed that for 
the eighth straight month the country has lost jobs. Eight months in a 
row we have lost jobs in this country.
  Tomorrow we will get the latest report. I am not looking forward to 
it. Just last week there were 493,000--almost a half million--new 
unemployment claims filed, the largest number since September 2001. We 
know what happened that month.
  Before that, you have to go back to July 1992 when the Nation's 
unemployment rate was 7.7 percent. The unemployment statistics, as we 
know, only count individuals actively looking for work. It may be 
convenient to characterize the unemployed as lazy, then you don't have 
to help them. Apparently, that is what my friends on the other side of 
the aisle are doing who blocked this extension of unemployment 
benefits. These are working people who cannot find work. These are 
plant shutdowns in Dayton. These are major layoffs in Mansfield. These 
are people who simply cannot find jobs in Columbus and Akron and 
Youngstown and Toledo and Bowling Green and Findlay. These are people 
all over my State. These are men and women who want to support their 
families and save for the future. These are people who want to work; 
they simply can't find jobs in this economy.
  These are people such as Terry, in Holmes County, OH, one of the 
least populous counties. A veteran, after 20 years of service he wanted 
to return to Ohio, which he did, and get his life and family settled. 
His company laid off workers this past summer. He has been looking for 
a job, but employers are simply not hiring. His unemployment insurance 
ended in February.
  These are people such as Patricia from Troy, OH, a small community 
just north of Dayton in Miami County. In Troy, that part of Ohio--
Clinton County, Clark County, Montgomery County, Miami County--that 
part of Ohio is one of the hardest hit parts of the State and of the 
Nation. Patricia from Troy put it better than I could. She said:

       My husband is just another one of the 334,000 unemployed 
     Ohioans. . . . I would like to know what we are supposed to 
     do without. Are we supposed to go without a roof over our 
     head? Are we supposed to go without food? Am I supposed to go 
     without medication or the medical care I need to survive?

  Unemployment compensation is an insurance program, it is not a 
welfare program. These are people, they and their employers, who paid 
into this unemployment insurance fund. That is why it is called 
unemployment insurance. It has been with us for 75 years, since around 
the time of the beginning of the Great Depression. It matters for 
people. It helps not just those individuals, it helps to bring money 
into our community, money that will be spent on the necessities of 
life, will create economic activity, and will help us in our economic 
recovery. People all over my State have asked me the kinds of questions 
that Patricia asked. What am I supposed to do about medical care? How 
am I supposed to go without food?
  These people, Patricia and Terry, are not paid spokespeople. They are 
not lobbyists. They are watching the news. They are seeing how Wall 
Street's greed and mistakes have us in this crisis today. They 
understand intuitively that people on Wall Street betrayed them. They 
understand intuitively that people such as one of John McCain's chief 
economic advisers, Carly Fiorina, was let go as CEO of a major company 
and was paid tens of millions of dollars as a bonus, as a golden 
parachute, even though she was fired from this company.
  They understand that they have worked hard and played by the rules. 
What is really amazing about this economic crisis is that the elite in 
this country tell us over and over: If you work hard, if you play by 
the rules, then you are going to do all right. You are going to be 
rewarded.
  People in the middle class in this country have worked hard. They 
have played by the rules. But when they look to Wall Street and the 
Bush regulators, the Treasury Department, the SEC, the people who were 
in charge, they have gotten rid of the rules for Wall Street so the 
cowboy capitalists on Wall Street who don't play by the rules get 
rewarded handsomely while the middle class in Tiffin, in Cambridge, in 
St. Clairsville, the middle class in Circleville and Portsmouth, they 
play by the rules. They don't get rewarded even though that was the 
promise made by so many people in this country. These are people with 
real concerns and real families, from Gallipolis to Toledo, Cleveland 
to Akron, Mansfield to Xenia. They are people who are at the end of the 
line, and they are not alone.
  Across the country, 9.4 million workers are unemployed and looking 
for work, 2.2 million more than a year ago, the highest figure 
recorded, as I said, since December 1992, more than 15 years ago. Even 
September 11 didn't cause this kind of unemployment; 9.4 million 
unemployed compared to 6 million unemployed in January 2001.
  If Congress doesn't act this week, more than 800,000 unemployed 
people will stop getting their much need checks, including 22,000 
people in Ohio.
  Last night, this Senate, by a vote of 74 to 25, more than half the 
members of each party, voted because we had to. We voted. If we did not 
do this financial stabilization package, we knew that pensions would be 
threatened, we knew that student loans would disappear or interest 
rates would go so high they might as well disappear, and middle-class 
college students would lose the opportunity to go to school. We knew 
that some small businesses

[[Page 23790]]

would close and others would have to lay off, costing States such as 
mine, which are so hard hit already, more lost jobs. We knew that was 
what was happening last night. That is why we passed that legislation.
  The same people in the Treasury Department and the Bush 
administration who relaxed the rules and betrayed our country, betrayed 
the middle class, hurt families all over my State--those same people 
have blocked the extension of unemployment benefits. That is why we are 
not voting on it today because every time we try, Republican leaders 
say we can't do unemployment.
  I don't know if they think unemployed people are lazy. I don't know 
if they think because we provide them a few dollars to get by until 
they can find a job and keep their families going, keep their kids in 
school, keep food on their tables, keep a roof over their heads--I 
don't know what they think. They are not going to try to get a job if 
they get a few dollars unemployment? It is not like unemployment is 
like a congressional pension. It is not like unemployment compensation 
is like a Carly Fiorina bailout or Carly Fiorina's bonus for failing at 
her company. It is not like this is a lot of money that is going to 
keep people so fat and happy that they do not need to work. I do not 
get why they would do that.
  Congress needs to extend unemployment benefits for unemployed 
workers. We need to do it for those workers, for those workers' 
families, for those communities in which they live. It is in no one's 
best interests for Congress to twiddle its thumbs while more American 
families sink into poverty. An extension of unemployment insurance--not 
welfare, insurance--was in the economic stimulus package last week. The 
House may very well take up unemployment insurance extension before we 
adjourn. Here is why.
  If we are going to talk about stimulating the economy, there is no 
better way to do it. Every dollar invested in unemployment benefits 
leads to $1.64 in growth. This is not money that people use to go out 
and buy a flat-screen TV made in China. This money, unemployment 
extension, is used for food; it is used for books for their children 
and clothes for their children. It is used to pay the rent. It is used 
to pay utility bills. These are dollars that stay in the community, 
dollars which help the local hardware store, help the local grocery 
store, dollars which provide other jobs in the community. There is no 
better stimulus than that.
  The Congressional Budget Office says extending unemployment benefits 
is cost effective and fast acting. We already have the mechanism. We 
put money in the pipeline. The money gets into the community. It 
doesn't take 3 months to send out a check. It is money that can be put 
into the pipeline right away.
  Unemployment benefits are spent to sustain families so they do not 
need other forms of public assistance. It gives workers the resources 
they need to put gas in their cars to go out and look for work. I get 
letters all the time from people who literally cannot afford to buy gas 
so they can go out and look for a job, particularly in rural Ohio, 
particularly in places such as Waverly and places such as Jackson and 
places such as Ottawa and places such as Tiffin. It is just too 
expensive to have to go looking for jobs in rural Ohio too often.
  There is another reason to extend unemployment benefits: patriotism 
demands it. Our Nation is not defined by its borders, it is defined by 
its people. Millions of people are running out of unemployment 
benefits. They need our help, and they need it now. We cannot claim to 
be American patriots and ignore the American people. It is not just a 
strong military. It is not just pride of country or wearing an American 
flag pin. It is that, too, for sure. But patriotism is helping our 
people. Patriotism is a covenant we have between our Government and our 
people.
  That means if you work hard and play by the rules--if you work hard 
and you play by the rules--you are able to get ahead. That means if 
your company closed, if your company laid off workers and you happened 
to be one of the unlucky souls who got laid off, it may be that the 
Government, your neighborhood, your country, your community, can help 
you until you can find your new job. Workers, their families, their 
communities--we cannot continue to ignore them.
  When my Republican friends talk about patriotism, they talk about 
whatever it is we need to do--tax cuts for corporations, to provide 
jobs, all that. They ought to start talking about workers because we 
know the wealth in this country is created by productive workers. 
Workers in this country are more productive than they have ever been. 
They produce more wealth for their employers. It is time that they 
shared--that employers, as their profits go up, even in not-as-good 
economic times, as their profits go up, it is time more of that wealth 
was shared with workers. It is time those workers who are working their 
hearts out get a little reward, playing by the rules, get some 
advantage, get some opportunity, have the opportunity to get ahead.
  We have a responsibility to listen to Americans who are not employed 
and probably believe they have nowhere to turn. They can turn to us. 
They should turn to us. We should not turn our backs on them. That is 
what too many people in this institution, too many people at the White 
House, too many people in this whole Bush-Cheney-McCain idea of how to 
run an economy--clearly, they have not done that good a job on Wall 
Street or on Main Street. It is the way they may look at things. I got 
elected to the Senate in 2006 because people thought their country 
betrayed them. They saw the drug companies writing the Medicare laws; 
they saw the insurance industry writing health care legislation; they 
saw the oil industry dictate energy policies; they saw Wall Street jam 
down the American peoples' throats these job-killing trade agreements. 
This Government, this administration, has betrayed the middle class.
  We want a government where the public can turn to us, they should 
turn to us, and we will not turn our backs. No, we will actually 
embrace them and work with them. We can start by extending unemployment 
insurance. Senator Reed has a bill to do that. We should pass it. We 
should move on and begin to change this country.
  I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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