[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 14]
[Senate]
[Pages 20125-20126]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE

  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, there are no more important issues for 
middle-class families across America than jobs and the economy. This is 
what they want their elected officials to be focused on. It is exactly 
what I think we ought to be working on every single day. That is why I 
have come to the Senate floor again and again to urge my Republican 
colleagues to stop blocking our attempts to extend and expand the 
middle-class tax cut so many of our families are counting on. That is 
why I come to the floor once again today to discuss the urgent need to 
maintain Federal unemployment benefits for middle-class families across 
our country. This should be an easy issue.
  Unemployment benefits provide a lifeline for millions of families, 
and it would be simply wrong to cut off this support while the economy 
continues to struggle and so many of our workers are having so much 
trouble finding work. Right now, there are more than four unemployed 
workers for every single job opening. If every opening were filled 
tomorrow, we would still have more than 10 million workers across the 
country without a job to even apply for.
  Additionally, nearly half of all unemployed workers have been out of 
a job for 6 months or longer, which is higher than we have seen for 
more than 60 years.
  So millions of Americans are unemployed today, not because they do 
not want to work and not because they do not have valuable skills but 
simply because they find themselves in an economy that is not creating 
jobs as quickly as we need it to. Those unemployed workers are 
desperate to get back on the job. Unemployment benefits make all the 
difference for them and their families while they scour the want ads 
and pound the pavement and send out resume after resume after resume.
  I recently sent a letter to my constituents asking for their stories 
about what these benefits actually mean to them and their families. The 
response to that was unbelievable. Within a few days, I received 
hundreds of e-mails. People sent me videos. They sent me pictures of 
their families. I received story after story from workers and families 
from across my home State of Washington who are fighting to make ends 
meet in this very tough economy and who cannot afford to have the rug 
pulled out from underneath them.
  One of those stories came from a woman named Vicki, who lives in 
Maple Valley, WA. She was an unemployed single mom, lost her apartment, 
and told me she now has to share a room with her son in a relative's 
home. Vicki told me she has made every effort--going to interviews, 
sending out her resumes to hundreds of employers, still not able to 
find a job.
  She understands that in this economy finding a job will not be easy, 
but she is going to keep trying, and the support she receives from 
unemployment benefits has kept her and her family afloat and made all 
of the difference. She said those benefits allowed her to put food on 
the table for her family and gas in her car so she could go to job 
interviews. She told me, ``If I lose my unemployment benefits, I do not 
know what I will be able to do to provide for my son.''
  She is not alone. I heard from older Americans such as Judy. She is a 
grandmother of five from Bothell, WA. Judy told me she had been working 
for 47 years before being laid off from her teaching job in 2009. She 
said over the last 12 years she has worked to teach adults the skills 
they need to move into jobs as bookkeepers and receptionists and 
schedulers. But in this economy, although she was an expert in her 
area, even she cannot find a job in those fields.
  She wrote to me, saying:

       I want to work, but nobody will hire older citizens no 
     matter how much experience they have. I started looking for a 
     job at the pay level I was at when I was laid off. But after 
     being unemployed now for 2 years, I am even looking at jobs 
     for less than half of that. Still I am told my experience 
     does not match their requirements.

  For Judy, unemployment benefits are not the solution. She wants a 
job. But they provide her with some critical support while she looks 
for that last job before she can retire.
  I also heard from Sheila from Bellevue, WA. Like Judy, she is close 
to retirement, but she was laid off last year from an engineering 
technician job that she told me she loved and now she is desperate to 
get back to work. After sending out over 500 resumes since then, she 
has had 4 interviews. In her e-mail to me, Sheila wrote:

       I was devastated when I was laid off. I now look for work 7 
     days a week. I have worked hard my entire life. I do not want 
     everything I have worked for to disappear.

  She told me that is what would happen if her unemployment benefits 
run out now.
  Finally, I received a video message from Scott in Olalla, WA. Scott 
told me that after working at the same company for 20 years, he was 
laid off in March and filed his first unemployment claim in the 30-plus 
years he has been in the workforce. He said he always thought 
unemployment insurance was for the other people, never thought he would 
be the one collecting it. Now he calls it a godsend for him and his 
family. In his video, Scott told me about the uncertainty his family 
would face if his benefits expired before he could get back on the job. 
If this happens, Scott said:

       I cannot imagine what it would do to my family to lose our 
     home. We spend our money wisely. We live well within our 
     means. But if we lost our home, we would be just another 
     statistic. The last thing I want to do is to explain to my 
     wife and my daughter that we have to leave our home.

  That is exactly what he said would happen if he loses his 
unemployment benefits in this tough economy.
  Those are just a few of the many stories I have received. There are 
so many of them out there. Millions of the people across America, 
including about 100,000 in my home State of Washington, will stand to 
lose their benefits that they count on if Congress does not act by the 
end of this year, in a few short weeks. These workers are not looking 
for a handout. They do not want to be a burden, but they need support 
while they get back on their feet and back on the job.
  In this struggling economy, maintaining these unemployment benefits 
is critical. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has said 
maintaining unemployment benefits is one of the most effective policy 
tools we have now to boost the economy and get money into the pocket of 
our consumers. If they are cut off, it would not just be devastating 
for the families who count on this support, it is going to hurt our 
small businesses and communities to have billions of dollars pulled 
away from consumers who spend it every month on food and rent and 
clothing. We cannot afford to have this lifeline cut off. Our great 
country has

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always been a place that stands with our middle-class families when 
times are tough and gives them the support they need to get back on 
their feet and back on the job and contributing to their communities 
once again.
  I urge all of our colleagues to stand with us as the holidays 
approach, to maintain these unemployment insurance benefits that so 
many of our families are counting on, and to keep working to cut taxes 
for the middle class and get our economy moving again and put our 
country back to work.
  On that last point, before I finish, I want to join our majority 
leader and so many others who today called on Republicans to stop 
blocking their own bill and allow it to be brought up for an up-or-down 
vote. We know the Republican bill that passed the House yesterday is 
going to fail. It is bad policy, and many in their own caucus 
apparently do not support it. Their bill takes some of the policies we 
are fighting for to support the middle class, including unemployment 
benefits, waters them down, and then adds a whole bunch of tea party 
red meat to attract the Republican support it needed to pass the House.
  I am focused on delivering the tax cuts that middle-class families 
need and deserve, so I will vote against the Republican bill if it is 
allowed to come up. But I cannot believe that our Republican colleagues 
are now preventing us from taking a vote on their own bill and then not 
allowing us to come together, which we need to do in these last few 
days before the holidays, to get a bipartisan deal and get it to the 
American people. They expect us to do this job. That is what is holding 
us up.
  I urge our colleagues to sit down, work out an agreement, so that we 
can all celebrate the holidays with our families, and the families out 
there who are counting on us will know we have done the job for them.
  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. THUNE. 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.

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