Emergency Unemployment Compensation Extension Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, pending before the Congress now is debate about unemployment benefits.

On January 1 1.3 million Americans got a notice that they were not going to receive any more unemployment benefit checks. These are people out of work through no fault of their own who are required, under law, to be actively pursuing additional employment and regularly reporting to the government. For that, they receive average unemployment benefits of about $300 a week. Three hundred dollars a week is not a generous amount in this day and age. It is very difficult for any family to get by. They are going to have to dip into their savings to make rent payments, utility payments, put gas in the car to look for a job, and pay for the cell telephone they need in order to go looking for work. So we are now debating as to whether we should extend those unemployment benefits which were cut off on January 1.

I think we should. Historically we have. Even with lower unemployment rates in the past, we have extended unemployment benefits.

Think about this for a second. The average person unemployed in America takes 38 weeks to find a job. However, we are cutting off unemployment benefits at 27 weeks in most places. That means people will have 10 or 11 weeks on average without any support.

What happens to a family under those circumstances? Awful things happen. They cannot make their rent payments or their mortgage payment or the utility payments or their health payments, and they find themselves literally facing bankruptcy. Losing a job is bad enough. Making it worse by cutting off unemployment checks is unacceptable. So we are debating it.

Historically, we have extended these unemployment benefits on an emergency basis, which means we do not pay for them because we understand this is an unusual time in our economy when we need to give a helping hand. We also understand the money that we give to these families is frequently spent immediately. They have to spend it to get by. As they put money back in the economy, it helps other people go to work. So it is a bit of an accelerant. It is a catalyst for more economic growth. It is good for the overall economy.

However, we have run into something new. The Republican side of the aisle has now said if you want to give unemployment benefits to Americans, you have to pay for them. In other words, you have to cut spending in other areas to pay for them.

Listen to what the Republicans have suggested we should do in order to provide unemployment benefits for 1.3 million people who were cut off on January 1. Mitch McConnell, the senior Senator from Kentucky and Republican leader, came to the floor and suggested last week that the way to pay for the unemployment benefits was to eliminate that section of the Affordable Care Act which creates a personal responsibility for people to buy their own health insurance and a tax to be paid if they do not, about $95 a person per year. He says eliminate that.

The problem with eliminating it is you do raise some revenue, but on the other hand you cut off the pool of uninsured people who are now buying insurance. By doing this, you eliminate the protection we built into the law for every American family that has someone in the household with a preexisting condition. You cannot say to insurance companies and others cover everyone, even those with preexisting conditions, unless you expand the pool of people insured. Senator McConnell wants to cut that off. Senator McConnell's proposal would, in fact, eliminate this protection in our bill against discrimination because your child has asthma, your child has diabetes, your wife is a cancer survivor.

That was the reality of insurance before this bill. The Republicans believe that eliminating that protection is the way to pay for unemployment benefits. They would penalize 300 million Americans and their families in order to take care of 1.3 million unemployed on a temporary basis. That is a terrible tradeoff.

Then comes Senator Portman from Ohio. He has a little different approach. He suggests that if you are disabled in America, adjudged disabled in America, you should never draw unemployment benefits. ``Double dipping'' is what they call it.

Wait a minute. You are getting a government check that says you are disabled, and you are getting another government check that says you are unemployed? What is wrong with this picture?

I invite him--and I am sure the Presiding Officer has done this--to the sheltered workshops of his State. If you have ever visited a sheltered workshop, here is what you will find, and I found it in Decatur, IL: Profoundly retarded people and people with serious mental challenges are given a chance to work a little bit. They can make only about $1,000 a month maximum. What kind of work do they get? Much of it is very simple manual labor. In my State they make license plates at this facility in Decatur.

They told me the story about a person who was brought in there who had suffered from serious mental illness his entire life and was nonfunctional. He just stood there. They brought him in and put him on the line with the license plates and showed him a simple task. He blossomed. His life opened. He became a different person. He started accepting more and more responsibilities. There came a point when there was a blizzard in Decatur, IL, and they closed the sheltered workshop. He was not going to miss a day of work. He walked in the snow and stood outside, ready to go to work.

The people working in that sheltered workshop are only paid a few dollars an hour, but for him it is the most important part of his life, and while he is being paid, his unemployment benefits are building up to protect him. The day may come when the sheltered workshop can't find a job for him or closes down. He would then be eligible for unemployment benefits. Senator Portman of Ohio says no, we should cut off his unemployment benefits to pay for the temporary unemployment benefits of others. I invite Senator Portman to go to a sheltered workshop in his State to meet these people, and I bet he changes his mind on that Republican pay-for.

Then comes Senator Ayotte of New Hampshire. She says we have a terrible situation with the child tax credit. The child tax credit is available for wage earners who can claim a credit on the tax they owe and a refundable credit as well, in some circumstances, for their children. In other words, if you are low-income in America, we reduce your tax burden based on the number of children you have. The obvious reason is to give you $1,000 more a year for your child, $20 a week for your child. That, to me, is not unreasonable. It alleviates poverty for literally millions of Americans. Senator Ayotte says for those who are filing a so-called I-10; that is, those who do not have a Social Security number but work in America and pay taxes as they are required to do, she would cut them off so they could not claim this child tax credit for their children even if their child is a U.S. citizen, and that is the requirement under the law. So she would cut off child benefits for citizen children to pay for temporary unemployment benefits.

We can clean up the child tax credit situation, and I think there are ways to do it in a reasonable fashion, but to cut off millions of children who are legally here in the United States, eligible for this child tax credit--is that what we have come to? Cut off a child tax credit? Eliminate the help for those who are working in sheltered workshops, disabled people cross America? Eliminate the protection under the Affordable Care Act for discrimination against people with preexisting conditions? Those are the three Republican alternatives? Does that define the difference between the parties?

I am afraid it does. It tells you from our point of view that helping folks who need a helping hand in this country is just part of who we are. There is a compassion gap here when you believe the only way you can help some is by hurting so many others who are struggling to get by in life, and that is all we heard from the other side of the aisle.

I commend those who want to work on a bipartisan basis to solve this, but let's get it done. Let's extend these unemployment benefits. Do it as we did 5 different times, without paying for it, under previous Republican Presidents. Let's do it in a fashion that speaks well of our country. Let's give those folks who are searching for jobs a helping hand so their families can stay together during these winter months, these challenging months, so they can get back to work and pay their taxes and be right where they want to be, a part of the workforce of the future.

I yield the floor to Senator Schumer.

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