On the recordDecember 13, 2011
I was walking through the Cannon Building to get to one of the television stations when an older gentleman stopped me and asked me whether or not they were going to provide the unemployment tax benefits to them. He was trying to find out why we were gridlocked and what the problem was. I assumed he was from my district, but he was from some part of Texas. He heard my explanation as to why we were not just passing what Democrats believe in and what Republicans say they don't have a problem with. I told him it was about the Keystone pipeline, and he says, What the hell is that? That made me think, of all the people at this time of the year who are going to sleep tonight with limited resources and with all of the polls that are saying that Congress is out of touch with the needs of America, they're not talking about Republicans; they're talking about the Congress--Republicans and Democrats. Is anyone telling me that providing a tax break for people who work hard every day has to be connected with a pipeline? If you worked every day and, through no fault of your own, you lost your job when you'd paid into a fund from which you were supposed to get some comfort, are you telling them that we need the Keystone pipeline? Let's get real. This is a political thing that's being done not to deliver on the promise that we made to the American people.…
