MSNBC "The Ed Show" - Transcript: Unemployment Benefits

Interview

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CHULTZ: Joining us tonight Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut. Senator, good to have you with us tonight. I want to commend you for doing what you did. Walking with the homeless, walking a mile in their shoes and seeing a life that no one wants, that is for sure. What did you learn, Senator?

MURPHY: I learned that it`s just an absolutely dehumanizing experience. I mean the idea that you have to spend your entire day essentially trying to stay alive, keep warm, find food just to go to bed to get up and do it again especially for these folks who are newly ones who have been in work for their entire lives.

The guy I was with had worked a job for 40 years before he lost his job in the great recession, and is out of work and out on the streets. It just sucks the life out of you. And for this guy who`s only income was a $100 a week and unemployment benefits to now have that taken away from him, it just adds tremendous insult to grievous injury.

SCHULTZ: You think Republican colleagues would have a different view of this if they experience what you did?

MURPHY: Yeah. I mean listen -- you listen to some of my colleagues talk about this mythology in which they really do believe that when you give somebody a little bit of help from the government that that encourages them to continue that behavior.

If you spend some time with this guy Nick (ph) or with his friends on Town Green in New Haven, each one of them has a plan back to employment. But, when you`re filling out job applications and your address is the homeless shelter it`s pretty impossible to get an interview.

So, the fact is that these funds, these unemployment benefits which keep a lot of people from homelessness is really the only thing that`s allowing them to actually have a shot at a job. And that is the true reality of that.

SCHULTZ: So, you saw homeless people trying to get work?

MURPHY: Yes. So, we spend about two hours in the basement of the New Haven public library. And every single one of those computers was taken. Not every single one of them by somebody who is homeless but almost everyone of them by people who were jobless and who were spending hours of their day filling out dozens of applications online.

To tell you the truth, there are actually some people who are living in the shelter in New Haven Connecticut who actually are working, who are working part time temporary jobs that don`t pay enough to afford rent and mortgages. So, even people who are working in this terrible economy have had their hours and their wages stripped back so far that they`re only -- that only goes for them to live out on the streets.

SCHULTZ: Senator, what`s the remedy?

MURPHY: Well, remedy is to understand that there is a solution through government that in the short term the lifeline to these families are extended emergency unemployment benefits. That`s what separates millions of families from homelessness. But, the other remedy is to understand that when there aren`t job training slots for these people, when there are long lines at these shelters that that just perpetuates .

SCHULTZ: Yeah.

MURPHY: . joblessness and homelessness that the government has to step up and not just make sure there an unemployment benefits, not just make sure there are positions of each shelters but actually give them educational on training pathways back to work.

SCHULTZ: I want to quickly play this sound by the Senator Marco Rubio, his
thoughts on minimum wage. I want your reaction. Here it is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUBIO: Really? This is their solution to what the President has called the defining issue of our time. Raising the minimum wage may poll well, but having a job that but having a job that pays $10 an hour is not the American Dream.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCHULTZ: That`s what you`re up against, Senator. I know that the Democrats are going to make minimum wage an issue along with the conversation of income and inequality. What`s your response to the man across the isle there from Florida?

MURPHY: Listen, nobody wants to make the minimum wage. But the reality is, is that millions of people do and it is not a living wage.

And so, the idea that we`re trying to give people the American dream by providing them with a couple of dollars more in income just isn`t the case. And I`ve heard this frankly from Republicans over and over again that Democrats` answer is just to increase the minimum wage. Democrats answer is only to provide unemployment benefits.

That`s not the case. The fact is there are components of a safety net that allow people access to all of the other things that encompass the American dream. Our solution is also rebuilding America to put people back to work.

SCHULTZ: Yeah.

MURPHY: Paying our teachers and our public employees what they deserve having an educational system that actually provides a real pathway to employment. That`s what we`re talking about.

SCHULTZ: Senator, I know our audience commend you for doing what you did,
stepping out with the homeless and finding out what it`s really like.

MURPHY: Thanks a lot, Ed.

SCHULTZ: Senator Chris Murphy with us tonight. That`s the Ed Show, I`m Ed
Schultz. Politics Nation with Reverend Al Sharpton starts right now. Good evening Rev.

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