Maxwell Frost: “Mr. Speaker, several times this week the House has used emergency procedures to pass partisan legislation. Yesterday…”

“Mr. Speaker, several times this week the House has used emergency procedures to pass partisan legislation. Yesterday, the Congress found time to give tax credits to Wal-Mart, but the Republican majority refuses to consider what is truly an emergency to millions of families, the fact that they do not have jobs, and millions of these workers are about to run out of unemployment insurance. Last year, the same thing happened. The Republican Congress left town about Christmastime without extending the temporary program that provides employment benefits, leaving hundreds of thousands of unemployed workers to worry over the holidays about whether they were going to get the unemployment benefits that they had been expecting. We have heard it has been reported that the majority leader said, 'I see no reason to be extending unemployment compensation since every economic indicator is better than in 1993 when the Democrats ended the Federal unemployment program.' Mr. Speaker, the esteemed majority leader does not know what he is talking about. Washington State's unemployment is still among the highest in the Nation. It has grown for two solid years as we felt the brunt of the Bush recession.”