Political Quotes

“this week in the Committee on Ways and Means we attempted to offer this amendment to extend unemployment insurance benefits for those people who are going to lose their benefits at the end of this month. That bill will spend $550 billion but does not provide one penny for those people who are going to lose their unemployment insurance benefits at the end of this month. Every prior recession we have extended Federal unemployment benefits for far longer than we have in this recession even though this recession is deeper than the prior recessions. Mr. Speaker, in the next 6 months if we do not extend Federal unemployment insurance, 2 million of our fellow citizens are going to exhaust their State benefits. We have already seen 1 million of our citizens exhaust their extended benefits. What this motion simply does is we should be extending Federal unemployment insurance by 26 weeks and for those who have exhausted their benefits under the Federal system, an additional 13 weeks. Mr. Speaker, the money is in the Federal unemployment trust account to pay for this; $21 billion is there. The money is there just for that reason, for a recession. We should do it. For those who are interested in helping stimulate the economy, the study by the Department of Labor found that every dollar of unemployment benefits generated $2.15 of economic activity. It is the right policy to do. It will help our economy. We have done it in the past on a bipartisan basis.”