On the recordFebruary 25, 2010
The ones I have met in that--they call it a career link, a job center--of those eight individuals, all but one--but maybe even the one--of those eight people were in their fifties, sixties, or seventies. In most instances--probably five out of the eight, maybe six out of the eight--they had never lost their job before; they had never had to depend upon unemployment insurance, food stamps, any kind of help. In fact, one woman said she felt ashamed that she had to apply for food stamps. She had never had to be that reliant on anything. Another woman by the name of Debbie said to me: We just want to get back to work. We don't want to be in this condition. We want to get back to work. So there was no complaining. But I want to ask the Senator, as well, you referred earlier to another part of this discussion, which is that we focus on those who need this unemployment insurance--and we are talking here just about a 30-day extension; we are not talking about providing this for years or a long period of time--but the Senator talked about the economic impact of the spending of these dollars. I do not know if the Senator is familiar with what Mark Zandi, the economist, talked about. I do not know if the Senator is familiar with that. Let me just ask the Senator that.
