Russ Feingold: “it is vitally important that we extend COBRA and unemployment benefits for the millions of Americans who continue to…”

“it is vitally important that we extend COBRA and unemployment benefits for the millions of Americans who continue to find themselves out of work in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. At the same time, we should work to offset the cost of this additional funding through cuts in other Federal spending instead of passing this debt on to future generations. That is why I opposed efforts to table three amendments by Senator Coburn that would have offset the additional spending, and was disappointed those amendments were all defeated. In fact, amendment No. 3727 even included two provisions from my Control Spending Now Act, a proposal to cut the deficit by around $\1/2\ trillion over the next 10 years. While I fully supported the majority of the cuts in this amendment, I did have reservations about a few of the proposals. In particular, I had serious concerns about the idea of consolidating all federal job training programs. While the amendment would not have cut funding to any of these important job training programs, many of these job training programs serve specific populations of Americans, such as dislocated workers or young adults, and are carefully tailored to serve the unique needs of those workers. Nonetheless, the principle of taking steps to balance our Nation's checkbook is one I fully support.”