Extension Of Unemployment Benefits

Floor Speech

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, the last item of business considered on the Senate floor was an effort to extend several provisions of law that will expire either late Saturday night or Sunday. One of these provisions is the extension of unemployment benefits. It is well known across America that we have many people out of work. A lot of them have reached the point where their unemployment benefits are about to expire. I have met with many of those people in my State--in Springfield, in Chicago--and heard their stories, and they are sadly very similar. Many of them have exhausted whatever savings they had to try to keep their homes and their families together. They are literally living on unemployment insurance benefits.

Come Saturday or Sunday, thousands of people in my State and literally more than 1 million Americans will see their unemployment benefits stop; 65,000 people in Illinois will lose their unemployment insurance benefits if we do not extend this; 1.2 million Americans nationwide will lose their unemployment benefits.

It is all right for us to debate. It is certainly our job to offer amendments if we believe something should be amended. But at the end of the day I think we have to be sensitive and conscious of the fact that a lot of people will start to suffer in ways that most of us cannot imagine. When they lose their unemployment benefits and their savings are exhausted, they are about to lose their homes. I have seen that happen, and it is going to continue to happen.

Let's do the right thing. Let's find a way through this difficulty. Let's try to find a reasonable way to resolve it. Let's not leave here and go to the comfort and happiness of our families with these people disadvantaged.

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