Extending Unemployment Benefits

Floor Speech

EXTENDING UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS -- (Senate - October 05, 2009)

Mr. REED. Mr. President, I rise in support of a swift extension of the unemployment insurance benefits to help jobless people throughout this country.

Last week, we learned that the economy had shed 263,000 jobs in September and the unemployment rate increased to 9.8 percent. I grant this is a remarkable change since the first of the year when 700,000 jobs or more were being lost. Still, that is very small comfort to those people who are losing their jobs and others who are losing their benefits if we fail to act swiftly and extend unemployment benefits for additional weeks.

This is the particular case in my State of Rhode Island. We are looking at a 12.8 percent unemployment rate. There are thousands who have already exhausted their unemployment benefits, and there are another 4,500 who are estimated will lose their benefits before the end of the year. This is an extraordinary number of people who are out of work, and they are finding incredible difficulty in securing jobs.

I ask that my colleagues come together in support of an extension of the unemployment insurance benefits. The House overwhelmingly passed this legislation on a bipartisan basis. I have introduced legislation here, along with Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

This is not a partisan issue. The job losses in this country are across the Nation. They are affecting working families and people who have spent their whole lives working hard, and now they face a huge crisis--without a job--and they are facing uncertainty in the future, health care issues, tuition for college, and those things families struggle with every day.

In addition, unemployment insurance is one of those features of support that actually increases demand, accelerates the economy. The effect of unemployment insurance for each dollar is more than a dollar of economic activity generated. At this time, we are trying to jump-start the economy and move it forward and give it momentum so it doesn't falter and fall back. Unemployment insurance provides not only individual assistance, but it also assists the economy.

We are in the most severe economic downswing since the Great Depression. We have to go ahead and help people who need it and based on their work. That is one of the other values of unemployment insurance. These people are our colleagues and friends and neighbors who have worked and now they are without work. They desperately want to work. In the interim, before they are able to find a job, they need us to provide some minimal support and also to ensure that our economy continues to move forward.

I urge all my colleagues to follow the lead of the House so that, on a bipartisan basis, we can extend unemployment insurance for millions of Americans.

With that, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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