[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 6]
[House]
[Pages 8522-8523]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




             EXTEND EMERGENCY UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE TODAY

  (Mr. YARMUTH asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Mr. YARMUTH. Mr. Speaker, it has now been more than 4 months since 
Congress let emergency unemployment insurance expire. In that time, 
more than 2.8 million job seekers, including 200,000 veterans, have 
lost the ability to provide for their families. Another 72,000 
Americans are losing critical unemployment benefits every week.
  Let's be clear: these are people actively looking for work who lost 
their jobs through no fault of their own. Both are requirements for 
receiving unemployment insurance. But by failing to extend emergency 
insurance, we are creating a new disaster on top of the hardships 
already facing millions of American families, and we are damaging our 
economy.
  During just the first week that emergency unemployment insurance 
expired, our economy took a $400 million

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hit. Failure to extend that insurance could cost us 240,000 jobs this 
year due to lost buying power, exacerbating the difficulty for current 
job seekers and adding more to their ranks.
  Mr. Speaker, this is not smart policy. It is coldhearted and 
shortsighted, and I urge my colleagues to join me in demanding a vote 
to extend emergency unemployment insurance today.

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