Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman for his information, and I appreciate the fact that he has put on there the sustainable growth rate in Medicare budget agreement, which hopefully we can get to, which will be bipartisan in nature and will be balanced and fair as well. In addition, legislation pertaining to the farm program's farm bill is necessary. It has been in conference for some period of time. Hopefully, we can pass that as well. I do note, however, with some degree of--actually, I said ``some degree''--with very great disappointment that unemployment insurance extension is not listed by the leader. As the leader knows, 1.3 million people are going to have their unemployment benefits expire, I believe, on December 28. Those people will have no support structure. Very frankly, my own view is they will then go on some other support structure, some sort of welfare payment--SNAP payment, Medicaid--which they may be on already. But, in any event, it will not be at no cost. CBO estimates that it will cost as much as 300,000 jobs if we do not extend unemployment insurance. We just had a hearing, Mr. Leader, where we had very, very compelling testimony from three people, with respect to--one of whom just found a job on Monday; she was very pleased at that--not only the economic damage that going off unemployment will cost them--and they have been looking for jobs--but also the psychological devastation to them and their families that that would cause.…”