[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 4]
[House]
[Page 5989]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




      HOUSE REPUBLICAN BUDGET PROPOSAL UNDERMINES AMERICA'S FUTURE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Michigan (Mr. Kildee) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. KILDEE. Mr. Speaker, on Monday night, I introduced legislation to 
provide an extension of emergency unemployment benefits that would 
extend the important safety net of unemployment benefits, unemployment 
insurance to over 2 million Americans who lost their benefits on 
December 28 and thereafter as a result of the failure of this body to 
act to protect those benefits.
  Many of us, particularly on the Democratic side--and I know some on 
the other side as well because they have expressed it--would have 
preferred that we had dealt with this question as we were dealing with 
the budget issues and the budget question that we faced at the end of 
last year, but we did not, so we are left now with the fact that we 
have some unfinished business.
  On Monday evening, in a bipartisan fashion, the U.S. Senate enacted 
similar legislation. In fact, the bill that I introduced on Monday 
night was the precise language enacted on a bipartisan basis by the 
U.S. Senate.
  Two million Americans are living right now with the fear of losing 
their homes, losing their cars, having their families split up because 
they don't have that basic need being met of a roof over a head and 
food on the table between their last jobs and their next jobs.
  For typical workers in America, when they lose their jobs, it takes 
an average of 37 weeks. I know, in my home State, it is probably longer 
before they find their next opportunities. In Michigan, once one loses 
one's job, one has got 20 weeks of unemployment insurance. What happens 
to one after that is what we are dealing with today.
  The fact that people go from one week to the next not knowing if they 
are going to be able to keep their families together and keep roofs 
over their heads is something that this Congress can do something about 
if it chooses to.
  I know there are Members of the Republican Conference who are anxious 
to see this enacted because several put together a letter to the 
Speaker, asking that this issue be brought up immediately, and that is 
what I hope my colleagues will do--bring extended unemployment 
compensation, unemployment insurance to the floor, so that we can 
protect those workers who are trying to get from their last jobs to 
their next jobs without starting a cycle of poverty that could last 
generations.
  There are some who say we don't need this because, number one, 
workers who are on unemployment don't want to work. I suppose there may 
be an exception or a myth that we could conjure up about an individual 
who is receiving unemployment compensation who doesn't want to work, 
but for those of you who believe that, come to my district or, better 
yet, go to your home district.
  Talk to people in the unemployment lines and ask them if they would 
trade their situations today for meaningful work. I assure you that the 
vast majority, if not all of the people in that situation, would trade, 
in a minute, their situations for a real job with a decent wage.
  There are some also who say that we shouldn't do this because it is 
not an emergency, that these are supposed to be emergency benefits. As 
far as I can see, it is not only an emergency here in Washington, but 
if you are about to lose your house or if you are about to lose your 
car or if you don't have enough food on the table to feed your kids, 
for you, it is an emergency.
  We represent those folks, and we ought to be thinking about them, and 
we ought to take this up.
  So why is it that we need to do this in the first place? I think the 
Republicans and Democrats could agree that the economy is not growing 
at a rate to put all Americans back to work. We will acknowledge that. 
We will stipulate that, while there has been growth and while there has 
been private sector job creation, it is not enough.
  We will probably disagree on the reasons behind that, but we can 
agree that the current economy is not enough to put these folks back to 
work. We should help them, but we should also do the things that it 
will take to get America back to work again.
  Unfortunately, what we will deal with in the next couple of days is a 
budget that undermines economic growth, that undermines the kind of 
investments in the skills of our workforce by cutting job training, by 
cutting Pell grants, by cutting early childhood education--programs 
like Head Start--that actually change the trajectory for those 
individuals, that make them more capable and more able to get into the 
workforce in this competitive economy that we are in.

                              {time}  1030

  Rather than investing in our people, what this proposed Ryan budget 
would do is to cut those essential programs and not contribute to 
economic growth.
  It also would cut important investments in infrastructure. Democrats 
and Republicans alike agree that we need to rebuild our 
infrastructure--our roads, our bridges, our rail systems, and our 
ports.
  This budget takes us in the wrong direction.
  Mr. Speaker, I hope that the Congress can come together around this 
question and realize that if, in the short term, we are going to deal 
with the crisis that families are facing, we will pass an unemployment 
extension, and, in the long term, we take the kind of steps that we 
need to rebuild our economy.
  The budget proposed by Mr. Ryan that will be coming to the floor will 
take us in the wrong direction.

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