On the recordJuly 21, 2010
It must, Mr. Speaker, be a luxury to have the ability to think about the great sweep of economic history since the 1930s, and I enjoyed very much the remarks of my friend from California, but we're here to talk today about 2.5 million Americans who don't have that luxury. These are people who have been out of work for a very long time, and as the first of the month rolls around very soon and there's no rent payment or no mortgage payment in their checking account, as they find it difficult or impossible to pay their utility bills, their health care bills, and they're slipping away, these are the Americans that we're here to talk about this afternoon, 2.5 million Americans. The extension of unemployment benefits should have been done a very long time ago. There should not have been this wait to extend the benefits. Some people said that we should delay the benefits because people aren't looking hard enough for a job who are on unemployment. I would challenge those who make that assertion to go walk in the shoes of someone on unemployment a little while and see just how difficult it is to find a job. The problem in America today is not that people aren't looking hard enough for work. It is that frankly not enough jobs are being created.
