On the recordApril 3, 2014
Mr. President, I rise to speak to my amendment No. 2959 to the unemployment insurance legislation that is before us. The amendment is called the Good Jobs, Good Wages, and Good Hours Act. Twelve times Congress has voted to extend emergency unemployment benefits since 2008, and what do we have to show for those 12 extensions of these benefits. More than 10 million Americans remain unemployed. Of those, more than 3.8 million Americans have been unemployed for longer than 6 months. Millions more remain underemployed or have simply dropped out of the workforce altogether, too discouraged to even look for work in this stagnant economy. Over that same period a Democrat-led Senate and the Obama White House have done little but grow the size of the government and shrink the size of the middle class. In 2009, Congress passed a $1 trillion stimulus bill that poured taxpayer dollars into projects such as Solyndra and a battery manufacturer that is now owned by the Chinese. It failed to create the jobs and economic growth that was promised by the White House, but it succeeded in creating 5 straight years of record deficits. In 2010 Congress enacted ObamaCare--essentially a government takeover of one-sixth of our economy with 2,700 pages of new laws and 25,000 pages of new regulations. It didn't fulfill the President's promise of lowering health care costs or letting families keep their doctors, but it has succeeded in canceling health plans and raising taxes.…





