Congressional Black Caucus Addresses Unemployment Benefits

Floor Speech

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Let me thank my good friend, the distinguished gentleman from the Silver State and the anchor of today's CBC Special Order for his eloquence, his continued leadership and, of course, for all of the hard work that you have put in on behalf of the people that you represent back at home. It has been an honor and a privilege to serve with you, as well as with all of the members of the Congressional Black Caucus who continue to be a voice for the voiceless, the conscience of the Congress fighting hard each and every day to bring to life the American Dream for the greatest number of people possible in this wonderful country of ours.

Last week we commemorated the 50th anniversary of the declaration of the war on poverty. In January of 1964, President Lyndon Baines Johnson came to this House before a joint session of Congress and rolled out a series of initiatives designed to march us toward what he would term the Great Society, a war on poverty to lift people out of their perilous condition and bring to life for them the American Dream.

His war on poverty produced programs like Medicare and Medicaid, school breakfast, Head Start, the Food Stamp Act, minimum wage enhancement, Job Corps, college work study, program after program enacted between 1964 and 1966, which, taken together, were effective in lifting millions of Americans out of their impoverished condition.

Fifty years later, we have made a tremendous amount of progress. But, unfortunately, there are many in this Chamber who, instead of continuing the great legacy started by President Lyndon Baines Johnson here in January of 1964, have instead engaged in what perhaps is more appropriately termed a war on the poor, a war on working families, a war on the middle class, a war on senior citizens, and, in its current manifestation, a war on the long-term unemployed.

Unfortunately, whenever folks identify, set their sights on a government program that they don't like, the operating procedure follows a script that is all too familiar: demonize, downsize, and ultimately pulverize.

First, the script says you have got to demonize the program; tell things to the American people that don't necessarily hold up to the scrutiny of a comprehensive factual examination. Once you demonize the program, it enables you to downsize it, to reduce its impact, to reduce our investment. Ultimately, the goal of those who are engaged in this war on the poor, war on the long-term unemployed in its current iteration, ultimately the goal is, once you have demonized it and downsized it, in some way, you just want to pulverize it.

So if you think about this in the context of what we face right now in America, we have heard emanating from this Chamber and other parts of the country this caricature of individuals who supposedly are the long-term unemployed. As the gentleman from Nevada has indicated, we have heard representations suggestive that these are individuals who are couch potatoes sitting at home channel surfing, who only get exercise once a month apparently when they are running out to get their unemployment check and then race back into the house, and that is the only exercise that they get.

What is the basis for this caricature? What analysis has been done of the 1.3 million Americans who you have unceremoniously thrown off the long-term unemployment rolls to come to this conclusion? You have no evidence to make this caricature.

In fact, we know that current statistics suggest that here in America, while we have made significant progress since the Great Recession, 8.1 million private sector jobs that have been created, we know that we still have a way to go. For every 2.8 Americans who are looking for a job, only one job exists.

So the facts are working against those who are unemployed at this point. It is not as if they are not working hard to find a job. The jobs statistically don't exist, simply in terms of the raw numbers. We have an economy that needs to produce more jobs.

Now, what I found fascinating about this whole situation, in addition to this unwarranted caricature that you have created--folks on the other side of this debate who don't necessarily like unemployment insurance and have been plotting to work against it, perhaps since the moment that it was first put into effect in this great country--is that during the short time that Representative Horsford and Payne and Beatty and Veasey and myself have been here, what folks here in the Congress have systematically done is to undermine our ability to actually recover and produce jobs.

This is now at least the third meaningful instance in which this type of unproductive legislative behavior has been witnessed. We first saw it in the march toward April 1 when economists subjectively warned that if we allow sequestration to take effect, what would happen is that we would cost the economy approximately 750,000 jobs. Yet folks on the other side of the aisle, many people in this town decided that, notwithstanding the random nature of the $85 billion in sequestration effects, the impact that it would have adversely on the economy, that we were going to allow sequestration to take hold on April 1. That is exactly what was done; an unproductive, unconstructive action that robs the American people of jobs that might have otherwise existed.

Then in October of this past year, we see another unproductive action taken by those who constantly complain about the alleged slow pace of the economic recovery but then consistently take actions to undermine it. So on October 1, we shut down the government because of this unbridled obsession that some people have with the Affordable Care Act, even though at the time it was the law of the land, it remains the law of the land, passed by a duly elected Congress in 2010, signed into law by President Obama as a first-term President, passed constitutional muster in a decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts, and then reaffirmed by the American people with the Electoral College landslide that took place in November of 2012. Yet you came to this floor and decided that you were going to shut down the government for 16 days.

Why was that unproductive? Because not only did you push hardworking civil servants out of work, but objective analyses of the situation said you cost the economy $24 billion. And then you create this caricature that you want all of us to believe that the unemployed are simply sitting home with this alleged plethora of jobs that exist and they can't find them.

Now we find ourselves in another situation where, instead of coming together to try and reasonably take steps to put Americans back to work, what you have decided to do, since unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed were allowed to expire on December 28, is that you are threatening to cost the economy an additional 240,000 jobs.

So for the third time within the last 12 months, legislative malpractice here in the Congress essentially has resulted, or will result, in the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars and billions of dollars in lost economic productivity. Yet you create this caricature that there are Americans sitting at home on the couch channel surfing, getting one day of exercise per month racing out to get their unemployment check.

There is no basis for that conclusion. That is why we are here on the floor of the House of Representatives, saying that we need to pass an extension of unemployment benefits and that we need to pass it now.

As I prepare to yield to my good friend, I just want to point out that, at this point in time, as the chart reflects, the long-term unemployment rate in America is higher than it ever has been before as a percentage of those who are unemployed, which means that, today, 37.7 percent of those Americans who are receiving unemployment insurance are long-term unemployed, meaning they have been out of work for 27 weeks or more.

In prior instances, when this Congress and our government had allowed unemployment insurance to expire for the long-term unemployed, the percentage of those who actually had been out of work for 27 weeks or more was much lower--15 points lower when unemployment insurance was allowed to expire for this category of Americans in March of 2004, about 16 points lower when unemployment insurance was allowed to expire for this category of long-term unemployed folks in April of 1994 under President Clinton, and if my math serves me correctly, about 22 points lower in June of 1985 under President Reagan when unemployment benefits were allowed to expire.

So we are in a very different situation than we have been in the past. It is an urgent situation. Progress has been made. We still have a long way to go, and that is why it is necessary for us to do everything possible to help out those Americans in need and not leave them on the battlefield simply to fend for themselves.

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I appreciate the distinguished gentleman from Nevada.

I think that you have identified a subject matter that is important for discussion before the American people as a result of this argument that we have heard related to the need to pass unemployment benefits only if a pay-for or an offset or a host of programs on the GOP wish list is passed simultaneously to our trying to provide some measure of relief to unemployed Americans. I am going to let the distinguished gentleman from Nevada address this argument in the current situation, but I would note that we have seen this type of ransom-like behavior here in this Chamber before.

We saw it when I first arrived on the floor of the House of Representatives. It was when we were waiting day after day, week after week, month after month for a Superstorm Sandy relief bill to be passed--more than 75 days, unprecedented in the history of our country's response to a natural disaster--for the people I represent back home who were devastated by Superstorm Sandy. The reason for the holdup was that this ransom-like demand of offsets--unprecedented in American history--was put before us. It was the same situation as it relates to the government shutdown, in which we were told that you can keep the government open--that is a proper function for us here in the Congress--but only under circumstances in which you delay, defund or destroy the Affordable Care Act--ransom-like behavior.

Now we find ourselves in a similar situation, and I yield to my distinguished colleague from Nevada to lay out why we once again find ourselves dealing with unreasonable demands to do what otherwise is our proper duty here on the floor of the House of Representatives and in Washington.

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