Extended Unemployment Benefits Are Hurting Main Street

Floor Speech

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Mr. ESTES. Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend, Congressman Mike Bost, for hosting this very important Special Order hour.

Today, we are more than a year out from the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, and we are also 5 months out from when the first dose of vaccine was administered. Defeating the virus through a safe and effective vaccine has been critical in reopening our country and our schools and getting Americans back to work. But the recent partisan policies of the left discourage work and create an employment gap in the country.

I hear about this regularly in my district in Kansas. Small businesses, who were hit hard by the pandemic, were forced to shut down, had stay-at-home orders, and are now struggling to find workers to get back reopened.

One of those small business owners, Jessie Sterling, shared with me her experience of struggling to have full employment while she raises her young children, something that was much more difficult when the schools were closed.

While her business has seen customers return, many of her employees have not. Unfortunately, most of Jessie's employees opted to stay home and collect expanded unemployment benefits rather than return to the workforce. The additional $300 means that most of the part-time employees are now making more on unemployment than they were making at their job. While Jessie is responsible for the education and care of her children, she now has the additional stress of picking up extra shifts to cover for the employees who aren't coming back.

But it doesn't have to be this way. We need to shift our focus from the early days of the pandemic, when it made sense to expand these unemployment programs, to encouraging a return to work.

Just yesterday, our neighboring State of Missouri opted out of the enhanced unemployment benefits, a move that will help encourage work and a return to normalcy. Today, my colleagues, Congressmen Tracey Mann and Jake LaTurner, called on Kansas Governor Kelly to do the same thing.

Our American spirit is built on resilience, hard work, and ingenuity. We have had many struggles over the past year, but our history has shown us that we will overcome, not through a heavy reliance on a big Federal Government, but a reliance on faith, on families, and our own work ethic. We need to encourage all Americans to pursue these ideals and get our economy back to work.

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