Louise Slaughter: “Mr. Speaker, unemployed Americans are about to get their annual Christmas gift from the Republican majority, and that is…”

“Mr. Speaker, unemployed Americans are about to get their annual Christmas gift from the Republican majority, and that is the end of their unemployment benefits. This is not the first time this happened. Last year, Congress went home without extending unemployment benefits for those who, through no fault of their own, cannot find a job and have exhausted their benefits. Now they say, well, we just cannot afford it. They can afford hundreds of billions of dollars of other things in this bill, foreign aid other things, much of it borrowed, but they cannot find the money for unemployed Americans. Well, that is actually a lie because there is $20 billion in the unemployment trust fund. They do not even have to borrow the money to help unemployed Americans like they are going to borrow to help many of the special interests. All they have to do is agree to spend some of the taxes paid and on deposit to help unemployed Americans, paid by workers, paid by employers. That is why that money is there. Every week, 400 Oregonians exhaust their benefits in this jobless recovery. Nationwide, tens of thousands of Americans are losing their unemployment benefits. They cannot find work through no fault of their own. They want to work. They want to work, but they cannot find a job. Their job has exported to China or to Mexico or from my district, some of them even to Canada.”