Political Quotes

“Mr. Tonko, I knew that I would enjoy listening to you. The passion, the knowledge, the intensity that you bring to this issue is critically important. You have worked at these issues for a long time, and I want to talk, just wrap up the unemployment insurance issue with going back to where I started here some time ago. Again, in early December, a jobs fair in Fairfield, California, nearly 1,000 people came to it, 50 employers. More than half of the people in this line are women. I could probably go down through this line. I remember a conversation with a couple of the women here, and they were on unemployment insurance. Now, unemployment insurance actually started with the New Deal. It was part of the effort to deal with poverty in America, and it was an insurance program, a program into which the employer and the employee pay for insurance for the employee should there be a layoff, should they be unemployed, should that individual be unemployed. It is an insurance program. It is not a welfare program. It is an insurance program. But if I were to go back down this line and talk to each one of these individuals, probably, maybe, 15 percent of them have lost their unemployment insurance because the House of Representatives has refused to extend the long-term unemployment insurance. So where are they today? They are without a job because, as you said, Mr. Tonko, for every job available in America today, there are three people looking for that job.…”