[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Pages 12988-12991]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                 EXTENSION OF UNEMPLOYMENT COMPENSATION

  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I want to thank my friend and our majority 
whip, Senator Durbin, for laying out, I think in very stark and honest 
and open terms, what we are facing in this country today. I wish to 
pick up on that and to carry it a little further in talking about the 
number of people who are unemployed, what is happening to people across 
America today who can't find work, while the Congress sits here 
immobilized, unable to pass an extension of unemployment insurance 
benefits.
  It is unconscionable what is happening to so many people in America, 
through no fault of their own--people who are at the end of the line. 
They are looking to us, asking us to do something. Yet the Congress 
sits here immobilized, unable to act. We are unable to act because a 
small minority here in the Senate on the Republican side refuses to let 
us move ahead with an extension of unemployment insurance benefits. If 
we could ever have a vote--if we could get a vote on it--we would get 
over 50 votes. A majority would vote for the extension. But once again, 
under the rules of the Senate, a minority of the Senate gets to decide 
what we vote on.
  I wonder how many students in government classes that are being 
taught in high school today, even in college, are being taught that the 
majority does not govern in the Senate. I wonder how many understand 
that in our democratic form of government, 41 Senators decide what we 
vote on--41. Not 51 but 41 Senators decide what legislation comes 
before this body.
  You can go back to the Framers of our Constitution and read all they 
wrote in our Federalist Papers--what Madison said and others--and they 
all warned against the tyranny of the minority. That is why they set up 
a system of majority rule. I think it was Madison who referred to the 
aspect as perhaps a small junta being able to control legislation if we 
did not have a majority vote. Well, we have turned that on its head. 
Because today, a minority--41 Senators--decides what we vote on. Please 
explain that in terms of our democratic principles to kids who are 
taking government classes throughout America today.
  Go to other countries, where we are trying to get them to establish 
democratic forms of government, and tell them: Oh, it is okay to have a 
minority decide what you vote on. They have to scratch their heads and 
say: What are you talking about? We need a majority. Yet here in our 
own country, a minority rules in the Senate.
  I know a lot of polls show that people are angry and they are mad at 
Congress. I can understand that. If I had been out of work for 99 weeks 
and I had a family to feed and house payments to make and all of a 
sudden my unemployment insurance benefits ended, I would be pretty mad 
at Congress too. I think what the Republicans are counting on is that 
this fall they will be so mad they will vote against whoever is running 
Congress, and that is the Democrats, obviously. That is what they are 
counting on; that people will vote because they are mad, they are 
angry, and they will vote the Democrats out. Yet it is the Republicans, 
a minority, who are keeping us from voting on extending unemployment 
insurance benefits.
  I don't care what my friends on the other side of the aisle think. 
The American people will know. People are not stupid. The voters of 
this country are pretty smart. Oh, you might fool them for a little 
bit. As Abraham Lincoln said: You can fool them for a little bit, but 
not all the time. And pretty soon they will catch on. They will catch 
on that the Congress is not acting because a small minority of the 
Senate will not let us act.
  A group of business economists recently released their economic 
outlook and they said that we are on track for recovery. They gave a 
large share of the credit to the Recovery Act that we passed last year, 
of course without one single Republican vote. I think the recovery bill 
prevented a catastrophe. But, quite frankly, the economy is still in 
the doldrums. Sales of new homes plummeted last month to 33 percent, 
the lowest level in 40 years.
  According to the Federal Reserve, U.S. companies--get this--private 
U.S. companies are now hoarding an all-time high sum of $1.84 trillion 
in cash. Companies in America are holding $1.84 trillion in cash. They 
are unwilling to invest, to hire, or to expand. So again, it is a very 
fragile recovery that could dip back into even another big recession.
  We had the Great Depression in the 1930s. In the 1990s, as a result 
of the profligate spending and the huge tax cuts for the wealthy under 
the Bush administration and the Republicans who controlled Congress--as 
the Senator from Illinois pointed out--President

[[Page 12989]]

Obama was left with a deficit of $1.3 trillion. When President Clinton 
left office, there was a budget surplus of about close to $300 billion. 
Because of all that, we have had the great recession of the 2000s--
2007, 2008, 2009, and now 2010.
  A lot of figures are thrown around about how many are unemployed. The 
official unemployment is 9.5 percent with nearly 15 million workers. 
But the real unemployment, including those discouraged workers, those 
who are working part time because they can't find a full-time job, is 
close to 26 million Americans. Twenty-six million Americans can't find 
a full-time job. They are desperate and they need help. Right now, 
there are five job seekers for every new job opening. Actually, more 
accurately, there are more than eight. This 26 million who are right 
now unemployed, officially, they say, there are about 5 to 6 unemployed 
workers for every job. But actually, it is closer to about eight job 
seekers for every opening.
  I was reading an article in the Post yesterday. Michael D. Tanner, a 
senior fellow at the Cato Institute--a libertarian think tank--said:

       Workers are less likely to look for work or accept less 
     than ideal jobs as long as they are protected from the full 
     consequences of being unemployed. That is not to say that 
     anyone is getting rich off of unemployment or that unemployed 
     people are lazy, but it is simple human nature that people 
     are a little less motivated as long as the check is coming 
     in.

  Boy, that almost takes your breath away, that we have people such as 
this in high places who are setting economic policy, or trying to set 
economic policy. He says: As long as people are protected from the full 
consequences of being unemployed. What does he mean: They have to 
starve; they have to go out on the street corner with hat in hand, give 
up their homes, put their furniture out on the street, send their kids 
to the orphanage? Is that what Mr. Tanner means by the full 
consequences of being unemployed? Maybe starving; can't get enough to 
even eat? What is he talking about--the full consequences--when there 
are eight people looking for every job?
  He says that by extending unemployment benefits, it makes people less 
inclined to look for work. You wonder where people like this come from. 
Where did they ever go to school? What did they learn in their 
lifetimes? Or are they just so uncaring about their fellow human beings 
that they just say: Let it happen. Whatever happens, let it happen and 
the government can't do anything to help.
  We had that attitude prior to the 1930s, prior to the Great 
Depression. But I thought we turned the corner. I thought we recognized 
that government could be an instrument to make sure that people's lives 
were not miserable, that they did not have to suffer the ``full 
consequences of being unemployed,'' being thrown out on the street or 
starving or putting their kids in orphanages because they couldn't take 
care of them any longer. I thought we turned the corner on that. But, 
obviously, there are some who would like to turn the clock back.
  There are eight job seekers for every one unemployed. They are 
hanging by a thread. Their savings are exhausted. They have no safety 
net whatsoever. Every day we get stories in our office, heartbreaking 
stories, of families back home struggling to survive, but there just 
are not any jobs. I heard from a woman in Waukon, IA. She worked in the 
same job for 33 years, the plant closed, she and 300 other workers lost 
their jobs. This is in a town of 3,500 people. She is a diabetic 
without health insurance. She has applied for more than 200 jobs. She 
is crying out for a job. She wants to work, but she comes up 
emptyhanded because there are no jobs.
  I heard from a worker in the Des Moines area who had been in the 
insurance industry for many years and was laid off a year ago. Her 
benefits were cut off last week. Here is what she said:

       My concern is that my family cannot survive without the 
     unemployment benefits. We have depleted our savings just to 
     save the house and not get behind on the bills. I know there 
     are others far worse off. Please help pass the emergency 
     unemployment insurance extension.

  These are hard-working people. They have tried their best. They have 
not shirked their duties and responsibilities. They are being good 
citizens, hard-working citizens. What we are talking about is just a 
matter of fundamental fairness and decency and using the power of the 
government to make sure people do not--what did Mr. Tanner say?--
``suffer the full consequences of being unemployed,'' whatever that may 
mean.
  Yet in the face of these families in this crisis, the extension of 
unemployment insurance benefits is stalled, it is stuck. I would say it 
is cruelly obstructed in the Senate. We have tried time and time again 
to pass an extension. Every time it is blocked by our Republican 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle. As a result of this, more 
than 2 million Americans have now exhausted their unemployment 
benefits.
  Actually, when I took this floor before the Fourth of July recess, I 
talked about the number of people who would be out, and I said it would 
be about 2 million. It is now 2.5 million. Last week, 2.1 million; this 
week, 2.5 million. These are people out of work. They have been out of 
work so long, although they have looked for work, that now their 
unemployment benefits are gone.
  I ask people to think about it. Around this place we all have jobs, 
don't we? We all have jobs. Everybody who works on the Senate floor has 
a job. I have a job. You, Mr. President, have a job. We get paid pretty 
darned well too. We are not facing unemployment. No one who works here 
is facing unemployment. Just think how you would feel. Just think how 
you would feel if you got a pink slip yesterday, and it said don't come 
to work next week. You have house payments to make, you have kids in 
school, maybe one in college or two. You might even have car payments 
to make. All of a sudden you are out of work and you cannot find a job. 
They say: I am sorry, you can't get unemployment benefits either. What 
do you do? What do you do?
  Put yourself in the shoes of these people. What would you do? How mad 
would you be at the U.S. Congress and the government if you had worked 
all your life, like this woman from Waukon, 33 years--out of work, 
diabetic, no health insurance, has applied for over 200 jobs, can't 
find a job, and we cut off your unemployment benefits? How mad would 
you be?
  We keep hearing this, and I have heard it from the other side of the 
aisle, I have heard it from Sarah Palin and others, that people are 
lazy. They just rely on those benefits instead of looking for work. 
Even the distinguished minority whip, Senator Kyl, put it recently--
here is the quote:

       Continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a 
     disincentive for them to seek new work.

  There are eight people looking for every job. How low do we have to 
drive people down? I suppose if we paid people 50 cents an hour we 
might get people to work, to do things. Is that what we have come to as 
a country, that people have to be pushed that far down before we 
respond?
  I think those who say people are just lazy are out of touch with 
reality. Let's look at the facts. Numbers vary from State to State. 
Unemployment insurance benefits vary from State to State. Right now it 
is about $300 a week average nationwide--$300 a week. For a family of 
four, get this, if you get unemployment benefits--if you are lucky 
enough to still be on them--you are getting $300 a week average. That 
is about $15,000 a year. Can you keep your family going on $15,600 a 
year, a family of four? The poverty line is $22,000. I suppose, 
according to my friend from Arizona, Senator Kyl, if you are getting 
$15,600 a year, that is a disincentive for you to try to find a job 
that pays more than $22,000.
  I don't understand the logic of that reasoning. The truth is, the 
long-term unemployed would like nothing more than to pull themselves up 
by their bootstraps. But the problem is, in the economy right now we 
are kind of short of bootstraps.
  Another argument I hear from our Republican colleagues is that 
extending the unemployment benefits will

[[Page 12990]]

add to the deficit. Their argument is that we should cut off some of 
the most desperate people in our economy, take away their last meager 
lifeline, because we are concerned about the deficit. Yet those very 
same Senators are demanding that we extend hundreds of billions of 
dollars in tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans in our society. My 
friend, the Senator from Vermont, Mr. Sanders, who was here yesterday 
morning, gave a great speech on what is happening in our society in 
terms of the few controlling more and more and the rest getting less 
and less. As he pointed out, the top 1 percent, the richest people in 
America, control 90 percent of the wealth. They control 90 percent. The 
rest can get all the rest. Yet my Republican colleague said we have to 
keep giving them more tax breaks, but we cannot help people who are 
unemployed; it will add to the deficit.
  Extending these tax breaks for the wealthiest in our society also 
adds to the deficit, but I guess in their way of thinking that is all 
right.
  Again, when we talk about extending these tax breaks, my friends on 
the Republican side, they don't say we have to find an offset for it. 
They say, no, add that to the deficit; we don't have to pay for that. 
But if we want to extend unemployment benefits, we have to somehow pay 
for that.
  Again, I am sorry, I am lost in the logic of that. According to our 
Republican colleagues, adding massively to the deficit to finance tax 
breaks for the wealthy is fine, but adding to the deficit to extend 
benefits for the long-term unemployed is unacceptable. I just happen to 
think those are misplaced priorities.
  Let me speak a little bit about deficits because they are a concern 
and they are something we do have to pay attention to and we are going 
to have to fix for the long term. We are in a fiscal mess. But it was 
not so long ago then-Vice President Dick Cheney dismissed the need for 
fiscal responsibility when they were cutting tax breaks for the 
wealthy, spending more and more. Here is what he said: ``Deficits don't 
matter.''
  Vice President Dick Cheney said: ``Deficits don't matter.'' Again, 
under his administration, with President Bush, they didn't matter. Boy, 
the deficits just spiraled out of control. I do not remember any 
significant Republican dissent from Mr. Cheney's view during that 
period of time, that deficits don't matter because they were off going 
after weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and that misplaced war has 
cost us pretty close to $1 trillion, not counting untold lives lost, 
people injured for life. And the tax breaks for the wealthy spiraled 
us, again, into a deficit. But Mr. Cheney said deficits don't matter.
  I tend to disagree with Mr. Cheney. Deficits do matter. They matter 
because when Mr. Clinton was President, we got out of the deficit hole. 
They said deficits don't matter when Republicans were in control. Now 
they say deficits do matter. They blame the Federal Government's fiscal 
mess on President Obama and actions taken by this Congress. That takes 
a wholesale rewriting and air brushing of recent history.
  As we all know, it was the administrations of President Reagan and 
George Herbert Walker Bush in the 1980s that launched America into a 
new era of large budget deficits. President Clinton then spent the 
following 8 years cleaning up the fiscal mess he inherited.
  In 1993, President Clinton, along with the Democrats, the Democratic 
Congress, passed a painful but a courageous deficit reduction plan 
without one single Republican ``yes'' vote in the Senate. That plan not 
only produced record budget surpluses, it expanded our economy. People 
were employed. It put us on a path, by the year 2000, to completely 
eliminate the national debt within a decade. We could have wiped out 
the national debt.
  I remember that debate. I was here. In 1993, I remember the Senator 
from Texas, Mr. Gramm, getting up, wailing about how this plan was 
going to destroy America. It was going to plunge us into fiscal crisis. 
It was going to create unemployment. It was going to create a disaster.
  We passed it without one Republican vote. Look what happened: the 
economy grew, unemployment went down, we paid down the national debt, 
and we left in 2000 with a huge budget surplus.
  Yet in 1994, the year after we passed this without one single 
Republican vote, Republicans were all over the country taking the 
Democrats to task for raising taxes. You know what happened in 1994. 
The Democrats lost the Senate and lost the House and Republicans took 
over. But we were able to keep that program intact. They couldn't 
repeal it and we kept it intact during the 1990s, resulting in a good 
strong economy, more employment, less unemployment and, as I said, 
putting us on a plan to pay off the national debt.
  Then in 2001 George Bush came to office, Republicans gained control, 
and again we moved into deficits once more in our country--huge 
deficits. As my friend from Illinois said, according to CBO, when 
President Obama took office we had a $1.3 trillion deficit. When 
President Bush took office in 2001 we had about a $300 billion surplus. 
What a difference. What a difference.
  Now, because of the profligate spending and the deficits of those 8 
years of Bush, because of the huge hole we were in when President Obama 
took over, our economy is in a tailspin.
  Now we are trying to work our way out of it. That is why we had the 
Recovery Act. The Recovery Act helped us gain more jobs in this 
country. As I said, it kept us from having a catastrophe. Now we know 
we can bring the deficit back under control. We did it during the 
Clinton administration, and we can do that again.
  As my friend from Illinois said yesterday, President Obama nominated 
Jack Lew to serve as Director of the White House Office of Management 
and Budget. He held that same position in the Clinton administration, 
in the latter years of the Clinton administration. So again we are 
looking to Mr. Lew to help us work our way out of this mess we are in.
  So I can say that we Democrats are proud of our record of fiscal 
responsibility. But forgive us for asking: Why is it that again and 
again we Democrats are cast in the role of the shovel brigade in the 
circus cleaning up after the elephants? Why are we always doing that? 
And then people get mad because we have to clean up the mess. Well, I 
am tired of being the shovel brigade after those elephants. We all 
understand that deficits are unaffordable and unsustainable. However, 
among economists, a broad array of economists in this country; among 
many Senators--I am one of them--I believe there is a more immediate 
and urgent concern; that is, getting a recovery from the deepest 
economic downturn since the Great Depression. Do unemployment benefits 
cost money? Of course they do. Are they in our long-term interest? 
Absolutely.
  The single most effective way to reduce the deficit is to keep the 
recovery on track. If we can do that, we can reduce the deficit, 
according to CBO, from 10 percent of GDP this year to 4 percent by 
2014. I will be the first to say we cannot do it overnight. We did not 
do it overnight in the 1990s. It took us literally 8 years, but it 
built up slowly, and toward the end we were really rolling by the year 
2000: low unemployment, the economy was booming, we had budget 
surpluses. But it took a long time to get there, and it is going to 
take us some time to get back there again. But extending unemployment 
benefits is an essential way to keep us on that path to recovery.
  Economists calculate that for every dollar invested, the unemployment 
insurance safety net generates about $1.63 in economic activity. Again, 
they tell us: If you are going to spend government money, if you are 
going to do that, you get the most bang for the buck by putting it in 
food stamps. Because when poor people get food stamps, they go out and 
they buy food. The next is unemployment benefits. When you give it to 
people who are unemployed, they go out and they spend that money. They 
buy food, they pay their rent, they pay their food bills, they pay 
their clothing bills, they pay for car payments, house payments, all

[[Page 12991]]

of those things just to keep afloat. So that spurs economic activity. 
Yet look down here--extending the Bush tax cuts. For every dollar we 
extend the Bush tax cuts, we only get back 49 cents. Compare that to 
unemployment benefits. Yet the Republicans want us to do this, spend 
every dollar we have to extend the Bush tax cuts, for which we will get 
back about 49 cents. They do not want to do unemployment benefits that 
for every dollar we spend we get back $1.63 in economic activity. They 
say unemployed households spend these dollars on immediate needs.
  From the Recovery Act alone in Iowa, more than 3,700 jobs were 
created in 2009 thanks to the economic activity of the Recovery Act. 
Did that get us all of the way out of the recession? No. But it sure as 
heck helped a lot of families and kept us from sinking even further. So 
that is why we had the Recovery Act, which has at least helped us out 
of a depression.
  David Walker is the former Comptroller General under the Bush 
administration, the George W. Bush administration. Now he is president 
of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, an organization that is single-
mindedly focused on cutting long-term deficits. Last week, he testified 
before the bipartisan deficit reduction panel. He said it is a ``myth 
that we cannot address our current economic crisis and our long-term 
fiscal crisis at the same time.'' Yet that is what we are hearing from 
Republicans: We can't do both of those; we have to focus on the 
deficit, and don't worry about the crisis we have right now.
  David Walker continued:

       In our view, the answer is to continue to pursue selected 
     short-term initiatives designed to stimulate the economy and 
     address unemployment, but to couple these actions with 
     specific meaningful actions designed to resolve our long-term 
     structural deficits.

  Well, I agree. We have to address the short term and then think about 
the things we have to do here to address the long-term problems of the 
deficit.
  So, again, for the sake of all of the families who have written in to 
my office, for all of the families who are at the end of the line, I 
urge my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to stop this cruel 
obstructionism and do the right thing right now for people who 
desperately need our help. Stop the filibuster. Let us vote. There are 
more than 50 votes. There is a majority here to extend unemployment 
benefits. I ask the minority to allow us to vote on it, to help these 
families in desperate need all over the country.
  It is my intention, as often as I can, to get to the floor to 
continue to speak about the desperate needs of those families we cannot 
continue to ignore.
  To those who think they can gain politically at the polls in 
November, who think they can gain politically by having people suffer 
more, by having them more desperate and more destitute, I say that is 
an aberration, that is a total abdication of our responsibility as 
officers, as people who are sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution 
of the United States. It is unworthy. It is unworthy of a great country 
for their leaders, for their elected leaders, to show they can get 
political gain by making people more desperate than they are today.
  So I hope we can have the vote, we can extend the unemployment 
benefits, and we can help people who really need a lifeline right now. 
Anything short of that is not worthy of our great country. I urge the 
minority to let the bill come up for a vote so we can vote it through. 
It should be done this week.
  I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Hagan). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in 
morning business for such time as I may consume.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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