Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise to urge my colleagues to support the bipartisan agreement I have reached with five of our colleagues from across the aisle Senators Heller, Collins, Portman, Murkowski, and Kirk to provide emergency unemployment insurance to 2.7 million Americans. This commonsense, bipartisan agreement is one of the many things the Senate should do to help create jobs and strengthen our Nation's economy so it works for every American, so everyone has a fair shot. So I hope my colleagues will join with us and pass this bill quickly so it can be taken up for a vote in the House. The individual and economic consequences of a lapse of these unemployment insurance funds are very clear. I have described many times, and my colleagues have come to the floor many times, and indicated the individual cases where people who have worked for years found themselves without a job, through no fault of their own, desperately needing some modest assistance--and these benefits are about $300 to $350 a week--just to keep going, to keep looking for work, to keep trying to be part of the workforce, which they desperately want to do. We have shared these stories. These individual hardships ripple across our entire economy. Indeed, the Congressional Budget Office and other economists looking at this, not from the individual perspective but from the overall economy, find this is one of the most effective ways to keep the economy moving forward.…”