Neal Dunn: “Mr. Speaker, I am going to remind the gentleman from Washington of what the situation was last fall when we began to…”

“Mr. Speaker, I am going to remind the gentleman from Washington of what the situation was last fall when we began to debate the extension of unemployment compensation. The leading plan was one that was proposed by his party on the Senate side. It was a $5 billion plan. It called for a 3-month extension of unemployment benefits. It called for an additional 3-month phaseout. What we have done in the interim, led by people who are from States like Alaska and Oregon and Washington, States where we are very, very concerned about our extremely high level of unemployment, not led by people from Virginia, where the unemployment rate is something like 3.8 percent over the last 3 months, or Georgia, where the unemployment rate is 4.6 percent, low unemployment rates never thought to be even possible to achieve by economists in years past, but we have put together a piece of legislation which considering the state of our economy is a generous piece of legislation. It takes care of an additional 2 million people who were not helped before. It extends benefits for some 800,000 folks nationwide whose benefits were interrupted on December 28, and this is specifically Federal dollars I am talking about. I am not including the State unemployment programs.”