[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 11]
[House]
[Page 15698]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   THE REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN

  (Ms. KAPTUR asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, as the House Republicans continue to shut 
down our Federal Government, I rise to draw attention to the impact it 
is having on our labor markets and job creation in this country.
  The House Republican shutdown has prevented even the Bureau of Labor 
Statistics from releasing the September jobs report, and the Bureau is 
down to just three employees from its usual number, while the 
Republican shutdown is, in effect, making it impossible to compile the 
data for a jobs report for our country.
  All we know is that our labor market, the number of people applying 
for unemployment benefits, increased somewhere between 66,000 and 
300,000 people. We don't know what the unemployment rate actually is 
because we don't know how many people are looking for work, and we 
can't find the data. So we don't know what actually happened completely 
in September and this month.
  This is creating needless uncertainty in our markets and makes it 
harder for businesses to know what is actually happening in our 
economy.
  Before the House Republicans shut down the government, what we did 
know about our labor market was we still had 11 million people looking 
for work following the deepest recession since the Great Depression.
  Mr. Speaker, it is time for the Republicans to bring the clean 
continuing resolution to the floor that has their budget number in it, 
and let's reopen the government.

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