Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise today to discuss amendment No. 2622 I have filed, the Solutions to Long-Term Unemployment Act, that will be before the Senate today. The bill before the Senate today would extend emergency unemployment benefits for the 13th time since 2008. Let me repeat that. Congress has enacted or extended emergency unemployment benefits 13 times over the past 5 years. At some point you have to start asking yourself: At what point does this no longer become an emergency but it becomes permanent? We have been doing this now for 5 years. This will be the 13th time. Obviously, there are lots of people in a tough economy who are still hurting. But what this should say to us is that it is time we started not just treating the symptom but fixing the problem we have in America today. And the problem we have is a sluggish economy that continues to sort of stumble along. We have a chronically high unemployment rate with lots of people who have been unemployed for a very long period of time. Over that same period, Congress has pushed through ObamaCare, raised taxes on job creators, while the administration has pursued aggressive regulations that have done little more than drive up costs for many of our small businesses. So after 13 extensions of unemployment benefits, expensive new regulations, and higher taxes, what is the result? Well, today over 37 percent of unemployed Americans have been out of work for 27 weeks or longer.…”