Marcy Kaptur: “I want to thank you so much for bringing this family's plight to light here in the Congress on behalf of all of…”

“I want to thank you so much for bringing this family's plight to light here in the Congress on behalf of all of America's families who are suffering at this holiday season. Isn't it an indictment on the legislative branch of this country at the national level that when people need unemployment benefits, we have to run out the clock right to the bitter end, right to the bitter end for benefits that have been earned--earned. In church on Sunday, a couple came up to me and the husband asked: Congresswoman, if you know of any other jobs, please let me know. What's going to happen with unemployment benefits? This was a family that obviously needed help, a family that had spent their entire life, the man and wife, both working. {time} 1830 He didn't want to ask about the unemployment benefits; but he knew that for that family, maybe it was all that would be there in the near term. I'll give you a couple of figures I would like to put on the record this evening. One, I called the head of one of our major railroads the other day because I was trying to get the word out across my region--not everybody is plugged into the Internet--that there were 4,000 jobs that CSX was offering around the country. I wanted to make sure that people in our region knew that they were available. The chief executive officer of the company said, Well, you know, we've had 500,000 applications for 4,000 jobs. The American people want to work.…”