Political Quotes

“I rise in support of S. 23, legislation to extend Temporary Unemployment Benefits. Millions of American workers are in trouble today, including many of my constituents, and it is high time we did something about it. Back in March 2002, Congress created the Temporary Emergency Unemployment Benefits Compensation (TEUC) program to provide 13 weeks of federally funded unemployment insurance to qualified workers who had exhausted their state unemployment benefits, and an additional 13 weeks to some in 'high unemployment' states. The TEUC program was a great idea, but we underestimated the economic trouble that we were in. At that time, the unemployment rate in my home state of Texas was 5.6% and that quickly rose to 6.9% by June of 2002. By November 2002, the latest month for which the Texas Workforce Commission has data, the official unemployment rate still stood at 6.0%, meaning that over 640,000 Texas workers are out of work. So, we can see that the problem is not over. The need for an unemployment compensation extension is still very urgent. However, the TEUC program expired, three days after Christmas, on December 28, 2002.”