Brad Miller: “4 months ago as a brand- new Member of this House, I stood with two of my Democratic colleagues from North Carolina at…”

“4 months ago as a brand- new Member of this House, I stood with two of my Democratic colleagues from North Carolina at the Employment Security Commission office in Raleigh. And together we called on Congress to extend unemployment benefits for an additional 26 weeks. At that time there were more than 37,000 workers who had already exhausted their unemployment benefits in North Carolina and nationally a million workers were without benefits, out of a job, out of money and because of the inaction of this House, out of luck. Despite my plea and the plea of other Democrats to extend the benefits through a compromise plan that the Senate passed unanimously, the House leadership allowed the benefits to expire and allowed 1 million Americans and their families to go without benefits. And there was never an explanation for why this House could not trouble itself to act quickly, to act in time to give that extension. A few days later this House did act and extended benefits. It was not 26 weeks. It was 13. Again, no explanation for why we could not act in time. Here we are again. With a deadline quickly approaching, the Republican leadership is again doing nothing to extend those benefits. On May 31, just a couple of weeks, this House will let unemployment benefits expire again; but this time the impact will be far greater. Now there are 2.1 million workers who will be left without unemployment benefits.”