Mike Levin: “first on unemployment comp, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. English), about 35,000 will be benefitted, at the most…”

“first on unemployment comp, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. English), about 35,000 will be benefitted, at the most, 5 weeks. More than twice that will face Christmas having exhausted their benefits and get no help through extended benefits because of the failure of this Congress to act more than twice. So this is not really a modest program. It is really a flawed program and an inferior one because 800,000 will get several weeks. Over 1,800,000 who will exhausted their benefits will get zero, and it will be simply because of the accident of when they exhausted their benefits. If they exhausted them earlier or later, they come up with zero, and that is not the way this country should respond to the needs of people who are unemployed through no fault of their own. Let me just finish by saying something about this approach in terms of physicians. We needed to do something, but what you are doing is essentially more appearance than it is reality in terms of the cost. You do not come forth here with a proposal that addresses this directly, which will cost $20 to $60 billion over 10 years. You do not want CBO to score it. So you come forth and give carte blanche to the administration to do what they say they cannot do anyway, and because it would be done administratively it would not be scored, but it will come out of the budget and will add $20 to $80 billion in the deficit over 10 years, and it will not address the other needs of other providers.…”