Political Quotes

“this is a very easy issue for people to understand. If we concur in the Senate amendments, we send a bill to the President today extending unemployment insurance for 13 weeks for the people who have exhausted their benefits. Mr. Speaker, there are currently 8 million people who are unemployed looking for work in this country. If we pass the motion that is suggested by the chairman of the committee, we will get nothing done. Nothing will occur. It is the same old bill that we tried to do once before, twice before. The only thing certain is that we are going to go home for the Presidents' Day recess and it will be 2 weeks before we are really back here doing work again; and during that 2 weeks, there is going to be another 150,000 people in this country who will have exhausted their unemployment insurance benefits and cannot find employment. That is what is going to happen. It is not about the pride of whether we accept what the Senate wants, the other body wants, or whether we have the right to add or subtract to it. That is not what is in question here. The question is whether we are going to hold the displaced workers, those who have lost their jobs, hostage to the Republican tax agenda to cut business taxes. During the last five recessions, we have been able to work on a bipartisan basis to extend unemployment compensation benefits. We did that without holding it hostage to other agendas in this body. We should do that again.…”