Political Quotes

“first, the state of play in the Senate is that we want to pass an unemployment insurance benefit bill for 1.4 million Americans who, on January 1, had their unemployment checks cut off. Unemployment checks are sent to those Americans who have lost their job through no fault of their own and who have to prove to us they are trying to find another one. So while they are looking for a job, they receive unemployment benefits. These benefits come from a fund which employers and, in some way indirectly, employees, pay into while they are working. This insurance policy is there so that if you lose a job there will be, on average, $300 a week to keep you and your family together while you look for your next job. It turns out that on January 1, 1.4 million Americans saw those checks cut off. In my State of Illinois, that affected 83,000 people. These are people who have been unemployed for a while and are still looking for work. They have to because that is what the law requires. But here is the problem: The average period when someone is out of work when they lose a job in America is 38 weeks. That is the average. We cut off benefits at 27 weeks. That means that for 11 weeks a lot of people out of work get no unemployment benefits. What do they do? They turn to their friends, to their savings, and then they are out of luck.…”