Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman from Wisconsin for yielding to me. Mr. Speaker, I rise too in support of the 1.3 million Americans who have lost or will be losing their benefits by the callous efforts of this Congress not to extend unemployment benefits, especially for the long-term unemployed. As you pointed out, Congressman Pocan, as of December 28, over 1.3 million Americans have been kicked off unemployment insurance. We are talking about--and I am going to speak in a few minutes about the personal impacts of this--we are talking about family members, we are talking about friends, we are talking about people in each and every community of every Member, regardless of political affiliation in this Congress. {time} 1745 In my own community in the State of California, if we continue this callous effort not to extend unemployment benefits, we are looking at over 325,000 Californians losing their benefits in the next 6 months. Let's talk about jobs. People say that people should be working. If we do not extend unemployment insurance in my State, we are talking about the impact of the loss of over 240,000 jobs. This is a tragedy for our country. We are just coming out of the holiday season. It is really interesting, in the holiday season, at Christmastime, that there was a lack of compassion by the majority party in the House, which did not put up a bill to extend unemployment insurance. Congressman Pocan and I have looked at this.…”