On the recordJanuary 16, 2014
As the chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee leaves, I thank the Senator for her tremendous leadership. I thank the Senator for her leadership in getting this bill to the floor. I come to the floor today to talk about another topic, and that is the 1.4 million Americans who have lost their unemployment benefits and the over 70,000 people who continue to lose them each week. The Senate has found itself in an all-too-familiar place. Once again, some Republicans are refusing to be able to say yes even to the most reasonable of offers, and it is a problem we have seen in this body too many times. Over the course of the 16-day shutdown last October, we tried time and time again to find compromises to end that manufactured crisis, return Federal workers to their jobs, and reopen our Federal parks and buildings. But for too long Republicans refused to listen to the American people and embrace compromise. Instead, they were standing firmly in a partisan corner--and it is a pattern of what we saw last year in our efforts to pass a budget. In March of the past year--as every Senator, I am sure, will remember--we spent a week on the Senate floor in a very open process debating and voting on amendment after amendment until the very wee hours of the morning. On March 23 we finally passed our budget after the House had passed theirs the day earlier. I thought at that time the next step would be to start a conference as quickly as possible. I thought it was a no-brainer.…
