John Tierney: “Mr. Speaker, today we are here to vote on the fate of mourning doves. That may be a serious matter, and people may in…”

“Mr. Speaker, today we are here to vote on the fate of mourning doves. That may be a serious matter, and people may in fact cherish the opportunity to go and shoot these birds, and that would be appropriate at some other time, I might suspect. However, there are people mourning in America today because they are working families who have suffered record layoffs since the tragic terrorist attacks of September 11 and prior to that time. From September 11, the date after which people exhausted their benefits, the date they would get additional benefits under the bipartisan legislation passed in the Senate 100 to nothing through January of this year, more than 1.3 million people will have exhausted their regular employment benefits, and we are here talking about doves. In nine States, including my home State of Massachusetts, the number of unemployed workers exhausting their unemployment benefits from November to January more than doubled from the comparable period a year ago. On April 15, just a month from now, unemployed workers across this country will be paying their taxes, filing their returns to pay taxes for the money they made before September 11. Those tax dollars go to pay our salaries here in Congress. They expect us to work, and they expect us to set priorities. Long before the priority of shooting doves, we should be doing something about the unemployment insurance for people who are out of work.”