Congressional Black Caucus Addresses Unemployment Benefits

Floor Speech

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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate this designated hour at the beginning of this week for the Congressional Black Caucus, as it normally does, to come to this floor to bring forward issues that are very important to the American people. Tonight I join with my colleagues to speak about the importance of extending unemployment insurance benefits, growing our economy, and putting people back to work. So for the next hour, the Congressional Black Caucus will talk about the dire need for emergency unemployment insurance benefits and the fact that it is time for Congress to do its job.

I would like to thank my coanchor, Mr. Jeffries from New York, and our chair, the Honorable Marcia Fudge from Ohio, for their leadership and working tonight to bring forward these important issues.

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I would like to thank the gentlelady from New York. Thank you for your hard work and for bringing your perspective to the need for extending the unemployment insurance benefits to the 1.3 million Americans who, as of this week, have now lost receiving that benefit. This is the week that they would have otherwise received that unemployment insurance benefit in the mail. So this is real for some 1.3 million Americans who are struggling this week to meet their obligations to keep the lights on, to put food on the table and to pay the rent. This is the week. Each week that Congress fails to act, 72,000 Americans--additional Americans--lose their unemployment insurance benefits. One person every 8 seconds, Mr. Speaker, loses their uninsurance benefits when Congress fails to act.

That is why the Congressional Black Caucus is here this evening, to bring attention to this urgency of now. Every week, 72,000 Americans are struggling--additional Americans--on top of the 1.3 million who already, as of December 28, have lost their unemployment insurance.

So this is real, and the impacts are real.

I would like to go to the vice chairman now of the Congressional Black Caucus, the gentleman from North Carolina, who provides tremendous leadership to our caucus and to the issues important to the American people, the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Butterfield).

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I thank the gentleman from North Carolina, and I thank him for his profound remarks this evening and the call to action, not only for the leadership in North Carolina but for the leadership in this House to do its job in bringing legislation forward to allow us to vote to extend unemployment insurance benefits for the people of North Carolina and across America, who this week, now because of the failure of Congress to act, when they went to their mailbox to receive their unemployment insurance benefit, this is the week that they opened that mailbox and nothing was there to provide that bridge. So this is real, and so people are impacted.

This has been an insurance program that has received bipartisan support in the past, and there is no reason why this Congress cannot do its job to get this done now. I thank the gentleman from North Carolina for his leadership.

I would like to now turn to the gentlelady from Texas, who brought forward and who raised the objections prior to our even adjourning in December, along with 170 of our other colleagues, calling on the leadership to not go on recess but, in fact, to stay here and do its job. We are where we are now, but we have raised these objections, and the gentlelady from Texas has raised these objections.

I would like to yield now to the gentlelady from Texas, Ms. Sheila Jackson Lee.

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I thank the gentlelady from Texas. I appreciate very much you bringing to our attention who is covered by unemployment insurance and putting a face to who is receiving this insurance. I am glad you focused on that term ``insurance'' and the fact that these are individuals who have paid into the program, as they have been gainfully employed for some time.

Due to no fault of their own, they are in need of this bridge. Many of them are in training, and this initiative of legislation you are proposing to link job-seekers to employer-based demands is exactly the type of reform that our side supports and that we are willing to work with the other side on, but we need to provide the extension of the unemployment benefits while we work on those reforms.

Right now, the Congress has failed to provide this bridge, and you have documented that very well in your remarks this evening. I thank the gentlelady.

Let me highlight, as well, some of the additional information on who is covered by unemployment insurance benefits. This is according to the Department of Labor: four out of five beneficiaries of unemployment insurance benefits, Mr. Speaker, are individuals with children in the household or another adult in the household, typically a spouse; 44.5 percent of individuals who receive emergency unemployment benefits are households with children. So just think about that for a moment. This is the week that those emergency employment benefits did not come in, the $300 or $400 or $500 that they may have received to help meet their basic needs this month. That impacted not only that job-seeker, not only that unemployed worker, but also their children.

Half of the people receiving emergency unemployment insurance have at least some college education. So for those who continue to use this rhetoric of these are people who are lazy, who are sitting at home channel surfing, they don't want to look for work, half of them are people already with college education or some form of education; 36.4 percent have high school degrees.

And, finally, Mr. Speaker, 50 percent, over nine in 10 live in households with total income less than $75,000 a year. This is the working poor of our country. These are the people who are striving to be part of the middle class; and, if anything, they are using emergency unemployment benefits as a bridge until they can get back on their feet. I also want to point out that 43 percent are individuals with income over $75,000 a year. So this economy has hit virtually every stratum of income level, and so that is why it is important for this Congress to do its job in extending unemployment insurance benefits.

I want to commend the other Chamber, the leadership, Majority Leader Harry Reid from my home State of Nevada, and Republican U.S. Senator Dean Heller, also from Nevada, in large part our State, because we have unemployment at about 9 percent. We are tied with Rhode Island for the highest unemployment in the country, not because job-seekers don't want to go to work, because the second highest industry in our State was construction and because of the bust of the construction economy in our State, there are no jobs or there are very few jobs for those trades workers, for engineering firms, for architecture firms. I have one architecture firm that has had to lay off 70 percent of their workforce in the last few years because there simply aren't the jobs in the construction sector. Despite the fact that our economy is beginning to rebound, it is not rebounding in all sectors or all regions of the country. That is why it is critically important that this Congress do its job to extend unemployment insurance benefits for the 20,000 Nevadans who have lost them, and the 1.3 million Americans who have also lost them.

I now would like to turn to my good friend and freshman colleague. It has been a great opportunity over the last year to get to know him and the work that he does in the great State of New Jersey and the commitment that he brings to serving the people of his congressional district. I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Payne).

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Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey. Again, I commend you for raising your voice and urging this body to do its job on behalf of your constituents, the people of New Jersey who elected you to bring their perspective to this Congress. You are asking the same question many of us are asking, which is to our colleagues on the other side: Do they know what it is like to be unemployed? Do they know what it is like to have to look for a job day after day, week after week, submitting resumes not knowing if you are going to be called back? Do they know what it is like to struggle, or to look one of your children in the eyes and worry about how you are going to make ends meet? That is the reality for 1.4 million Americans today because Congress has failed to act. Whether they have been in that situation or not, they need to understand that is the reality for many Americans.

I thank you for your comments and for being here during this Special Order hour on behalf of the Congressional Black Caucus, and I commend you for your hard work.

Mr. Speaker, the reality of the situation is significant for many.

Like my colleagues last week, I went to a local work center in my district, Workforce Connections, to talk with and meet with a group of workers, job seekers, people who were looking for work. When I walked into the center, the one-stop center where everybody looks for the jobs on the job board was packed. There was a waiting list to get in in order to get onto a computer to search for jobs.

I talked to one unemployed worker. Her name is Alfordeen. I want to just share a bit of her story with you because it hit me that this is who I am fighting for. She is one of those 20,000 Nevadans affected by the expiration of her unemployment insurance.

She worked for 20 years doing patient admissions for a local medical facility in southern Nevada. She was laid off in 2012, which resulted in her losing her health insurance. Unfortunately, she was later diagnosed with breast cancer and has been living with one of her children while she trains to become certified to get another job. Alfordeen is using her remaining unemployment insurance benefits to cover some of her medical costs, and she just found out recently, fortunately, that she qualifies now for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.

But what Alfordeen told me, what all of the workers I talked to told me, is what she wants most is what she had in 2012: to go back to work, to regain her independence, and to help others do the work that she loves by admitting them and helping them get health care.

So Alfordeen is an example to me of the 1.4 million Americans who are out there who are trying, who want this Congress to try as well. They expected us to do our job, and we failed them. We failed when we left in December, and we are failing them every day that we don't extend unemployment insurance benefits.

So I am urging my colleagues to not allow another day to go without us
taking action. It is true that one person every 8 seconds loses unemployment insurance. It is true that 72,000 additional Americans will be affected every week that this Congress fails to act. But we have the ability to do something about it, and that is why we are here tonight.

I want to turn now to my co-anchor for of this Special Order hour. He is a great colleague, someone who I have profound respect for. He works tirelessly on behalf of the constituents who elected him from New York. He brings so many great perspectives to the Special Order topics that we have been able to cover. I would like to recognize him now, the gentleman from New York, Congressman Jeffries.

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I appreciate very much the gentleman from New York--the coanchor--and the chronology and the facts that you have laid out to make the case that, unfortunately, it is not just the unemployment insurance benefits that have been under attack by the House Republicans to reauthorize or to extend but that there have been other bridges that have helped the middle class--or those who are aspiring to be part of the middle class--in just the last year that this Congress has failed to act on.

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I would like to use that final 10 minutes then, Mr. Speaker, to close by highlighting the points that my colleague Mr. Jeffries just did a phenomenal job of laying out, one being that this is not the first time unemployment insurance benefits have been extended. In fact, this chart shows that while there is still more work to be done to help the unemployed--and I completely agree that our focus must be on creating jobs and on growing the economy. That is why the Congressional Black Caucus and individual Members like myself have proposed jobs-creating legislation. The first bill I introduced as a Member of Congress was a jobs-creating measure to help people in Nevada's Fourth District go to work, to help bring down our stubbornly high unemployment.

For those who are in the unemployment calculation, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, from January 2007 to date, unemployment insurance has repeatedly been extended, including by Republican administrations. It was in June of 2008 that then-President George W. Bush authorized emergency unemployment insurance benefits to be extended. What was the unemployment rate at the time? 5.6 percent. He didn't extend unemployment insurance one time--he extended it five times--and he didn't offer a proposal for how it had to be paid because it was an emergency. It was an emergency then, and it is an emergency now with the national unemployment rate just below 7 percent. When 1.4 million Americans who rely on the unemployment insurance benefit have now lost it, it is an emergency for these individuals, and it is an emergency for our economy.

So, for those on the other side who don't want to do this because it is the right thing to do for our neighbors, for hardworking Americans who have done everything that they can and at no fault of their own they are still unemployed, if you don't want to do it for that reason, then maybe do it because it is good for the local economy, because the money that is provided for under the unemployment insurance benefit is then spent by those beneficiaries in local grocery stores, and it is spent paying utility bills, paying rent, and that all helps affect the economy.

Failing to renew the emergency unemployment insurance program will cost the economy, as my colleague from New York said, over 200,000 jobs this year, including 3,000 jobs in Nevada, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The expiration of the Federal unemployment insurance at the end of last week is already taking more than $400 million out of the pockets of American job seekers nationwide and of State and local economies, according to analysis done by the Ways and Means Committee. In Nevada, in the first week from the loss of uninsurance benefits expiring, $5.4 million has been lost. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has found that unemployment benefits are one of the most effective fiscal policies to increase economic growth and to help employment.

So, if our colleagues on the other side don't want to do it because it is the right thing to do for those four out of five of the beneficiaries who have children, if they don't want to do it for half of the beneficiaries who have gone to some form of college, if they don't want to do it for the veterans who also rely in some part on unemployment insurance benefits, then do it for the local economy, but whatever your reason, do it.

I would like to ask my colleague if he has any final remarks that he would like to offer. Then I want to close by just debunking this pay-for argument that some on the other side have again proposed, which is that the only way they are going to vote for something is if there is a plan to pay for it.

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As I come to a close, let me just say directly that, President George Bush did it five times and not with a pay-for. On December 14, 2012, during his Weekly Radio Address, he was reminding the Congress that no final bill was sent to him extending these unemployment benefits for 750,000 Americans whose benefits would expire on December 28.

He went on to say:

These Americans rely on their unemployment benefits to pay for their mortgage or rent and their critical bills. They need our assistance in these difficult times, and we cannot let them down.

As I said, the unemployment rate at that time was below 6 percent, and it is now below 7 percent. It is time for this Congress to act, but if you demand a pay-for, then I have one suggestion: What about eliminating or closing a number of the corporate tax loopholes, such as eliminating the tax incentives for companies that get benefits for shipping American jobs overseas? Right now, the United States loses an estimated $150 billion annually to tax avoidance schemes involving tax havens. Many of our largest and most profitable companies paid no Federal taxes in previous years.

So, for the other side to make this argument is disingenuous. It is unconscionable that you would hold hostage the benefits for 1.4 million Americans for 3 months at a cost of $6.5 billion when you have a Tax Code that is littered with corporate tax incentives for shipping American jobs overseas. If we were to close those tax loopholes, we could re-shore those jobs back to America, putting Americans back to work, reducing our unemployment rate, and growing America's economy. That is what we should be doing. That is why this Congress needs to act, and it is time for this Congress, under the leadership of the Speaker, to do just that.

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