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Floor Speech
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Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, this last Friday, we learned that U.S. employers added another 428,000 new jobs in the month of April. The unemployment rate is down to 3.6 percent, which is just about what it was before the pandemic struck. April marked the 15th consecutive month of job growth under President Biden, and the United States has now recovered more than 90 percent of the jobs that were lost during the coronavirus pandemic. To put it into context, when President Biden took office, 20 million Americans relied on unemployment benefits just to get by. Now that number is down to slightly more than 1 million--from 20 million to 1 million.
This historic progress shows the resilience of American workers and small businesses that battled through more than 2 years of this unprecedented health crisis. This is truly an American success story. It is also the result of bold and decisive economic actions taken by the Democrats in Congress and President Biden.
The American Rescue Plan you will remember well. It passed without a single Republican voting in favor of it last year. That plan helped us get shots in the arms, and it provided economic relief to small businesses and unemployed Americans when they needed it the most.
The bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and JOBS Act represented a historic investment in America, in our Nation's infrastructure-- everything from roads and bridges to expanding broadband and access in underserved communities. This legislation is creating jobs. We see it in the report. It is helping America stay connected at home, at school, and with their doctors, and it is allowing us to meet 21st century demands like climate change and cyber attacks.
Even with last Friday's good news, we still have more work to do to make sure we have an economy that really works for everyone. Too many American families are still struggling to pay the bills and afford the basics amid global inflation caused by President Putin's unprovoked war in Ukraine and rising COVID cases in China that are disrupting our supply chains.
Last week, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates by half a percentage point. That is the biggest rate hike in 22 years. They are trying to tamp down this inflationary pressure. We know, for many American families, a break in rising prices can't come soon enough, but we also know that the root causes of this challenge are complicated and that it will take a global effort and some good fortune for us to address it successfully.
Democrats are committed to taking action to lower household costs and combat rising prices, get kids back to school, and workers back to work. We need to give families a helping hand when it comes to the basics: medication, housing, gas for your car or truck. We need to think ahead and begin preparing and investing now for future COVID surges so we can save lives and minimize the potential disruption to our supply chains and the economy.
It is incredible to me, after what this Nation and world have gone through and continue to go through with over a million Americans having died from COVID, that we still are in a fierce debate over whether we ought to prepare for the possibility that it could come back. We know it will. Sadly, it will. I hope it is in a manner that we can control. We believe, on the Democratic side, that we should ``be prepared.'' We weren't prepared when it hit initially. With the statements by the former President that this was some sort of a hoax and that it would all disappear someday, we just lulled ourselves into thinking it wasn't serious. Well, a million American lives have been lost to prove just how serious it has been. We need to support workers and families-- healthcare workers, too--and small businesses, like restaurants, that are the lifeblood of our economy.
I urge my Republican colleagues to sit down and get real. We ought to face this public health issue for the reality that it is. We ought to face this economy with the challenges we face. We need to boost American manufacturing and jobs. We need to lower costs for families, and we need to insulate our economy against future COVID.
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