Progressive Caucus

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHNEIDER. Thank you again, Congressman Pocan, not just for your friendship, but tonight for organizing and bringing us here to have this conversation.

For us in Illinois and Wisconsin, throughout the country it has been a harsh winter. Everyone has talked about the weather and the snow and the storms, but for some it has been a harsher winter than for others.

In January, I hosted a roundtable on unemployment, long-term unemployment. At that roundtable I met a young mother, 29 years old, with two young children, and she told me how, at the end of the day, she comes home, she makes dinner for her kids, and they crawl into bed under the covers to eat dinner and watch TV because she had to make the choice between paying her rent and paying her heat.

I met another woman who has been looking for work now for over a year. Her story was a little different. She was in an industry, travel agency, that is shrinking. She has two kids, high school age, who are looking forward to going to college, and she is now in the position of having to deplete the kids' college accounts so that they can simply make ends meet as she looks for work.

This is the reality for 2 million people around the country, and the numbers, as you have pointed out, grow by 72,000 people every single week. In Illinois alone, there are more than 116,000 people who have lost their unemployment insurance and are struggling just to survive.

Yet, in this Chamber, in this House of Representatives, we have not had a single vote to extend or address the unemployment insurance challenge. Partisan gridlock, partisanship and gridlock have already cost millions their emergency unemployment insurance, and the next year it is estimated that it will cost the U.S. economy 240,000 jobs.

Failing to extend unemployment insurance is hurting families, it is hurting businesses, it is hurting our communities, and it is hurting our national economy. That is why yesterday I filed this discharge petition to end the gridlock and to bring to the floor a vote on extending unemployment insurance.

Now, look, I understand some of my colleagues may disagree, and I respect their perspective and I respect their right to vote ``no,'' but not allowing a vote on the floor, not allowing us to voice our vote in this House of Representatives on unemployment insurance is simply unacceptable.

I believe extending unemployment insurance is not just smart policy, it is the right thing to do. That is why I celebrate the passage, or the agreement in the Senate, bipartisan agreement, to extend unemployment insurance by 5 months. I look forward for that to come into this House, and I hope we will have a chance to vote to it.

I know the path ahead is not going to be easy, but our constituents deserve better than partisan gridlock.

Thank you for sharing your time, and thank you for organizing this evening. Thank you so much.

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