Unemployment Compensation Extension Act Of 2009 - Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. REED. Mr. President, I again rise to urge my colleagues, particularly from the other side, to join us in passing the extension of unemployment insurance, without delaying action through more procedural votes. We are in the midst of a very complicated and important debate on health care and we are being urged to move forward on that. But something that is pressing, in my view, is the need to extend benefits to the people who are running out of the ability to support their families. By my count we on this side of the aisle have been trying for days to do something that the other body did, with bipartisan cooperation, in a vote of 331 to 83 under Suspension of the Rules.

As the President of the Senate knows, this is the way the House moves noncontroversial legislation forward without any delay. It is not used for major legislation such as this, typically, so that underscores the bipartisan solution the House proposed to us more than 25 days ago.

To compound matters, the other side is now doing more than just delaying unemployment benefits for millions; they are also needlessly delaying tax cuts for small businesses and first-time home buyers. This is a very disturbing precedent. The American people, as my colleague was talking about, want to see some results. They want to see us move on issues that are critically important to them. What could be more critical and more important than extending unemployment benefits to those who have lost their jobs and are in a very difficult economy? What could be more important to our economy, and to so many people, than extending the further benefits of the tax treatment of new home buyers, which has produced an increase in sales and investment? This is the time to move forward and to also help small businesses. The legislation before us includes not only the extension of unemployment benefits and the tax break for home buyers, but also the preferential tax treatment for small businesses in terms of their ability to access losses in the past.

With the winter and the holidays approaching, this legislation cannot come soon enough for millions of Americans who are feeling the effects, not of the last 8 months but of the last 8 years, of the Bush economy. This legislation will help people literally put food on the table. It will give them a sense of support and substance as they go forward. It will also help continue the expansion of the economy we have seen. Last quarter for the first time in a year we saw growth in the American economy--3.5 percent GDP. To sustain that we have to keep incentivizing our economy in many different ways. Two of the provisions included--again with bipartisan support--provide those incentives. Small business will get relief in terms of net operating losses. Individual purchasers in the real estate market will get the stimulus of the addition and extension of the tax treatment of purchase of homes.

But we could anticipate another cloture vote this week, another procedural burden to do something that everybody says we should have done weeks ago. My colleagues on this side have suggested amendments that are not germane--some that we have repeatedly taken up already, indeed have passed. But this should be something more than about messaging. This should be about helping the American people. We have legislation before us which incorporates, as mentioned, not just unemployment extension but two other benefits, for small businesses and for new home buyers. This compromise before us should not face these delaying tactics. The reality is that 4,000 people in my State need this help right away. They need the unemployment benefit extension. There are thousands more Rhode Islanders who will exhaust their benefits in the next several weeks. Indeed, 3,000 Rhode Islanders are receiving extended benefits, which is the final tranche of unemployment benefits for most. They will be without any real support if we do not move this week, if we do not move promptly, in a timely fashion.

The latest compromise provides 14 weeks of unemployment insurance for jobless Americans in all States, and 20 weeks in those States that have the highest unemployment rates, above 8.5 percent. As I mentioned before, it also provides help to the home market and help to the small business community.

These are amendments that are important. They are important to all of us. We can look back with some sense of progress on our recent GDP numbers. But you cannot feed your family on GDP. When you are unemployed, looking for work, not finding it, you need unemployment compensation benefits. You cannot keep this recovery in the housing market going, as robust as it has been, without some further assistance. You have to create further benefits for small business so they can begin once again to hire Americans. The key to our economic crisis is not growing GDP, it is growing employment. These latter efforts will be pointed in that direction as we help people who are without jobs today.

This crisis is nationwide. It is not a red State, blue State problem. It is our problem. Too many Americans will exhaust their benefits by the end of the year. Hundreds of thousands have already exhausted benefits. So this delay has real consequences in the lives of all of our constituents in every part of this country. It has already been over a month since the House passed their legislation. We could have passed this promptly. In fact, if you look at the record, the number of cloture votes and everything else, we passed yesterday a cloture vote on a substitute amendment by 85 to 2. Typically when we have 85 votes we do not go through further procedural amendments. We, by unanimous consent, take up the measure and pass it routinely. What is lacking here is not the 60 votes for cloture, it is unanimous consent; i.e., the consent of our Republican colleagues to move forward.

They are not denying us, they are denying the American people. We should take this measure up immediately. With 85-to-2 cloture votes, 85 people will come down, perhaps even all 100, and vote for this bill. But it will be a month after we should have accomplished this task.

While we wait, our economy suffers and thousands of Americans do. So I urge passage as quickly as possible. I hope Leader Reid would propose that we move to the measure as quickly as possible, that we could avoid another cloture vote, another 85-to-2 vote confirming what we all know, that eventually when we are allowed to vote on final passage, this measure will pass overwhelmingly.

I yield the floor.

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