On the recordJuly 19, 2010
when millions of Americans lost their jobs, they did not just lose a place to go to work in the morning; they lost their incomes, their savings, and their retirement security. They lost their tuition payments. Many lost their homes. They lost their gas money, their grocery money, and many other things--all of this through no fault of their own. I am not talking about a handful of people in isolated corners of this country. I am talking about millions of Americans from every one of our States. To so many of them, unemployment is not just a temporary inconvenience. For far too many, it is an unending emergency. As the front page of today's New York Times reports--and it is the same in newspapers all over the nation--40 percent of the unemployed in this country have been out of work for 6 months or longer. They are trying to understand why at this pressing moment--when jobs are harder to come by than at any other time in recent history--Congress cannot get its act together to extend emergency insurance, as we have always done with bipartisan backing for decades. Well, part of the reason is that many on the other side do not see this as an emergency. They look at a crisis for families' budgets and see an opportunity for their political fortunes. They think when unemployment goes up, so do their poll numbers. Some even think that the unemployed enjoy being out of work.
