Extending Unemployment Insurance

Floor Speech

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Mr. DOGGETT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I still call you ``Mr. Chairman,'' though the formal leadership of the committee has changed with the change in the majority here in the House. And I guess if you were in fact still the chairman with full authority we would not be here, nor would there be any unemployed individual in the United States among the millions whose benefits would expire next year who would be wondering the night before Christmas what would happen the day after their unemployment coverage expired next year.

We face a great challenge, and as you have been pointing out in describing individuals like Jessie, a retired--not voluntarily retired, but retired, removed from the workforce by unemployment in San Antonio, these are very real human beings, not just unemployment statistics.
With over 6 million fewer jobs than when the recession began and more than four workers competing for every job opening, too many Americans have nowhere to go. They are like the lyrics from that working man song of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band:

Had me a job until the market fell out;

Tried hard to borrow, but there was no help.

Now I've got nowhere to go.

I need a job for these two hands;

I'm a working man with nowhere to go.

And if our Republican colleagues continue to insist that unemployment is caused by the unemployed instead of by the troubling economy we have, there will be about another 5 million Americans with nowhere to go, looking as to where they will find the resources to put food on the table, make the car or pick-up truck payment, take care of the kids and meet the other necessities of life if their unemployment insurance expires.

While the Republicans continue to have a really factless finger-pointing at the unemployed, I think it is past time for us to lay the facts straight out on the table and respond to some of these myths that they've been promoting.

Fact: An unemployment check is not a substitute for a paycheck. People like Jessie know that. An unemployment benefit usually amounts to a fraction of what a worker was making before someone lost his or her job.

Fact: Unless you are actively searching for a job, getting job training for a new job, or are on temporary layoff, you're not likely to be entitled to an unemployment check.

I'm not for just paying people to be idle; but these are individuals who are either getting training, who are actively involved in a job search, or the few that are in the temporary layoff category. There is little evidence to support the Republican claim, repeated again and again, that unemployment insurance benefits are a significant factor in discouraging folks from going out and looking for work.

Fact: to receive extended benefits, an unemployed person is required to accept reasonable offers of employment. Two out of three of the unemployed respondents in the Heldrich Center survey, and 80 percent of those who were receiving unemployment benefits, said they were willing to take a pay cut in order to get a new job, as so many Americans have had to do with the challenges in our economy.

Fact: one economist estimates that for every $1 dollar we spend on these unemployment insurance benefits, about a $1.61 in economic activity comes back. In fact, some of the estimates from one group that began its survey back during the Bush administration for the Department of Labor say it's even higher than that in terms of the economic rewards.

So I believe that we must create jobs. Certainly, we must do the kinds of things that this Congress has failed totally to do in terms of job creation and promoting economic recovery. But we also must provide a vital lifeline for those folks who are out there actively searching for work and the jobs are just not there for them.

The facts are clear. The time for us to extend unemployment coverage is now, not to wait until next year, not to wait until Christmas, and not to wait until these families are faced with the critical situation of not having the unemployment insurance coverage that they should have to meet these basic necessities, but to act right now in the next few days.

It's for that reason, as you well know, that we're working together to try to get this unemployment insurance coverage extended, as it has been done often on a bipartisan basis in the past whenever the unemployment rate was at a level near what it is today.

So, hopefully, in our sounding the alarm here again tonight, in your telling these stories about individual Americans and what a loss of this coverage means, we can begin to involve and get the support of more of our colleagues to do what we really need to have accomplished just as soon as possible.

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Mr. DOGGETT. It is our pledge, because there's just too much at stake here. This Congress has been incredibly unproductive. You might think it had been unemployed for much of the past year. And we need to stay and complete the work.

This is work that was done practically on Christmas Eve last year, when this extension was in jeopardy again. And we ought not to go right down to the wire like that again. There's no reason that this could not be done in the coming week, but for this ideological commitment saying that unemployment insurance coverage is not good for the economy. The facts don't bear that out.

The individual stories that you're telling us about tonight, those are the individuals, those are the families that have so much at stake. And of course, because of this economic effect, those unemployed families, when they get a dollar of unemployment insurance, they have to spend that dollar. They may be spending it at the grocery store. They may be paying a landlord or a mortgage company. They may be paying on their credit card or their car, just to have the basic necessities of life; and that's why the economic impact on small businesses is so significant from doing what we would need to do in order to support these families engaged in an active job search or getting the retraining and the retooling they need to have an opportunity for a job in the future.

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