Sheila Jackson Lee: “It is a pleasure to be with you this evening, and I thank you for your leadership as we discuss with our colleagues a…”

“It is a pleasure to be with you this evening, and I thank you for your leadership as we discuss with our colleagues a very important crisis that is now approaching to which, I hope, our message tonight really provides the stopgap, the finger in the dike, if you will, that is about to overrun itself, which is the numbers of Americans who are crying out to this Congress to do the right thing. I thank the gentlelady from Ohio for her persistent leadership and for her timeliness, because this is a very, very important need that needs action, and it needs action now. I guess I would like to add to this definition of what 'unemployment benefits' are and what it means to extend them and the numbers of Americans who are now waiting, between 2 and 15 million Americans who are now waiting for those benefits to be extended, and the extension is simply adding to the 26 weeks that are now expiring. You mentioned that it was not a gift, and I'd like to suggest something even more.”