Restoration of Emergency Unemployment Compensation Act of 2010

Floor Speech

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Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. I thank the chairman for yielding.

You know, I've been told that if you don't want to do something, any excuse is good enough. And every time I hear my colleagues talk about paying for this and paying for that, I'm reminded of Frederick Douglass, who used to say that he knew one thing, if he didn't know anything else. That is that in this world, you may not get everything that you pay for, but you certainly will pay for everything that you get; and, if you don't pay one way, then you're going to pay another way.

Well, I can tell you that the people who are unemployed have already paid because they've already worked. They've already paid into the system. And I can wonder how we're going to feel when we go to our parades on the Fourth of July, when we're singing patriotic songs--``My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty''--and when we talk about all of the freedoms that we have, we've got 1.7 million people who are free to be broke, who are free to be unemployed, free to be hungry, free to be living in misery, wondering where their next meal is going to come from. How do they pay the rent? How do they keep their kids in school?

Well, I can tell you, I can't believe that we would actually do this. And so any excuse is good enough if you don't want to do it, but let's do the real and the right thing. Let's vote to extend unemployment benefits to those who deserve it.

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