Jerry Nadler: “Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, it is unfortunate we have to come out here and put Bandaids one after another on this…”

“Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, it is unfortunate we have to come out here and put Bandaids one after another on this unemployment benefit. Where the other body has passed 26 weeks, we ought to do 26 weeks; but I guess we will get a chance to do another bill. What is really missing here, though, is the health care benefits if someone is drawing unemployment. The average in this country is somewhere around two and a quarter a week. I am sure in New York it is a little higher than that. Let us say it is $300 a week. So they get $1,200 a month. Now, if they had health care benefits before, they do not have enough out of $1,200 to go out and pay the premiums for health insurance. So they have the double hit of no money to live on and no health care if something happens to them. Most of the working Americans in the situation in New York that they got into were covered with insurance, and they have been able to build up little bit of equity and little bit of future for themselves. All it takes is one illness, one injury and they are wiped out; and there is a bill here, it is Discharge Petition Number 6, that is for House Resolution 3341, which gives 75 percent of COBRA benefits, plus it gives additional money to States for their Medicaid programs so that they can cover the other 25 percent.”