Extension Of Unemployment Insurance Benefits

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from New Hampshire for adding to the statement of the Senator from Rhode Island about this unemployment issue. As you can tell, this is a national concern. There was a time, I say to the Senator from New Hampshire, who is one of our newer Members, this was not even debated. Whether you were talking about minimum wage or unemployment compensation, it was a bipartisan issue. We basically knew, as the Senator said, the people hurting out there are not all Democrats, not all Republicans; they are all Americans and they are from all over this country.

Unfortunately, we have now drifted into a status where even this has become a political issue. I say to my colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle who are blocking unemployment benefits for the millions of unemployed people in this country: Go out and meet some of these people.

Last Friday, I went to Pilsen, which is a section in Chicago. I went to an office called the National Able Network, where they are trying to help the unemployed find a job. I sat at the table with about 12 unemployed people around me. I wish my Republican colleagues would actually sit down and meet some of these people who are unemployed. They will learn something. These are not lazy people. These are not people who enjoy being unemployed. These are people who are now desperate--desperate people.

Let me tell you about Ira. I will not use his last name. I met him. He is a 43-year-old African American. He worked at one of the biggest banks in Chicago up until 14 months ago. He was in charge of human relations. He said: My job was to place people in jobs. Now I am trying to place myself in a job. He is going to DePaul University to pick up a certification in his field in the hopes that will give him an edge to find a new job.

Ira is a father with a family and his son suffers from a serious illness. Ira has no health insurance. He lost it when he lost his job.

Corinne is another one. Corinne had been a vice president in a bank in downtown Chicago, which the Presiding Officer would know if I mentioned its name. She worked her way up, at age 61, to a good-paying job. She lost it when the bank went out of business and merged. She said: I look through all these classified ads and go on the Internet. There are not too many jobs for vice presidents at banks, and that is what I used to be. Now she says: I am willing to do whatever it takes. Corinne has no health insurance either.

I went around the table and asked people what they were up against. They said, basically, if we stop unemployment payments, if Congress does not extend it, we will turn to our savings. One lady said: I don't have any savings; I have spent it all to keep my house so I don't go into foreclosure.

That is the reality of this issue. So why are the Republicans stopping us from extending unemployment insurance benefits? Some of them oppose it. Some of them believe people who are unemployed are just plain lazy. They should sit down and talk with some of these folks. As the Senator from New Hampshire said, there are six unemployed people for every available job in America. This is not laziness. This is a reality of a recession which this President inherited.

Some others want to try to refinance and reconfigure unemployment as we know it--the unemployment benefits that are collected from all working Americans, while we are working, for the rainy-day possibility that we will lose a job someday. There is money in this fund to pay these benefits.

One of the Senators on the Republican side came to the floor last week and said: I wish to find a new way to refinance unemployment benefits. That is a great exercise and a great challenge. For goodness' sake, while you debate this issue, are you going to let hundreds of thousands of people wonder whether they will be able to keep food on the table? That is the reality.

There is a third group, honest to goodness, that believes these folks do not deserve to receive this money, that it means they will not try hard to find a job. That is fundamentally unfair. If you believe in family, family values, and a safety net for America, unemployment insurance is absolutely critical and essential.

Mr. President, 400,000 American families have run out of unemployment insurance benefits already, and the Republicans are stopping us from bringing up the bill to extend this safety net to unemployed Americans. There are 20,000 in my State of Illinois who lost their benefits a few days ago, at the end of September. There are another 200,000 families across the country who will lose their benefits this month because the Republicans continue to stop us from extending unemployment insurance benefits.

What are they waiting for? Mr. President, 1.3 million Americans will lose their temporary assistance by the end of the year if the Republicans stop us from moving on this legislation, 50,000 families in Illinois, similar to the ones I met with last Friday.

This money is essential for these families. It is essential for the economy. The money we put in an unemployment check is going to be spent by these people instantly. They are living paycheck to paycheck and, in this case, unemployment check to unemployment check.

Never in the history of the country's unemployment insurance program have more workers been unemployed for such prolonged periods of time. That is why we are extending the benefits. Half of all jobless workers cannot find a job within the first 6 months they receive benefits. That is the highest percentage of prolonged unemployment in the history of the program.

I can tell you what this comes down to. We are either going to stand up for these people who have been victims of this recession or we are going to watch more and more Americans show up at the bread lines, show up at the soup kitchens, show up at the homeless shelters. The New York Times had an article yesterday that said 1 out of 10 Americans in homeless shelters today is a victim of foreclosure. In the Midwest, it is one out of every six.

We are pretty comfortable as Members of the Senate. Our life is not bad at all. We know our next paycheck is coming in. But what about these poor people? I say to the Republicans, it is time to wake up to reality. Don't talk about family values, rewarding work, and standing up for people when you believe in them and turn down these unemployment benefits. It is time to pass these benefits now, and the Republicans had better step aside.

I yield the floor.

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