SSI serves only low-income children with the most severe mental and physical impairments.

And the objective that you mentioned in your opening statement of helping families deal with these great challenges that they encounter with a child or children with disabilities is a shared goal that we have.

On the other hand, when we have studied unemployment we have had some Members almost suggest that the main problem with unemployment is the unemployed and that they can be blamed for the situation.

SSI assists families who are dealing with a child with a disability, physical, mental or both.

Congress should look for ways to support our Nation's most vulnerable children and families instead of painting a target on their backs in the name of deficit reduction.

To get SSI you also have to have a very severe disability, and the Congress in 1996 in the welfare legislation then upped the severity standard greatly.

However great our Nation's fiscal challenges may be, we ought not to balance the budget on the backs of disabled children.

While this agreement, based upon the flawed framework of the Bush-Cheney administration, offers no model for the future with regard to workers or environmental protection, I am supporting today's measure because of a successful response to…

I thank the gentleman. We need a new, 21st-century trade policy that encourages more trade without encouraging a race to the bottom in conditions for our workers and in the quality of the air we breathe and the water we drink. Trade…

We must stop the blame-the-victim approach of just blaming unemployment on the unemployed.

Let's hope that this hearing is just the first step in forging a stronger consensus that we must not abandon the millions of our neighbors who depend on unemployment insurance.