Protecting Volunteer Firefighters and Emergency Responders Act of 2014

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. President, I applaud my colleague from Ohio for his stories from his home State on the families who have been dramatically impacted by the broken bridge between a lost job and the next job. Indeed, in my home State there are about 26,000 folks who are affected in this manner.

We can think of it as the space between two jobs, as a chasm--a chasm that threatens the success of every family. They are hoping to make their payment on their light bill. They are hoping to make their rent payment or their mortgage payment. But they have to make it to that next job, and savings run thin, particularly when savings are very hard to come by when our economy is generating fewer and fewer living-wage jobs.

In the last recession of 2008, 60 percent of the jobs lost were living-wage jobs. But of the jobs we are getting back, only 40 percent are living-wage jobs. Indeed, that means millions of families have gone from a strong foundation--the ability to raise children, to buy a modest home, perhaps take an annual vacation, perhaps to save a little bit of money to help send their kids to college--to struggling and chasing minimum wage or near minimum wage jobs, part-time jobs, and jobs that often have no benefits. All of those wrestling with this situation aren't going to have a big pile of savings to get from one position to the next.

That is why, during periods of high unemployment, we have created a longer unemployment insurance bridge to get them successfully to that next job. When people fall into the chasm between one job and the next, it is not just the family that is hurt; it is not just the worker who is hurt. Our entire society is impacted. It is impacted in several ways. First we have the situation where people go through foreclosure, and that is devastating to the family, devastating to the children, and certainly it also impacts the value of every home on the street. We have the situation of families who lose their home, who lose their rental home and become homeless. It isn't just the parents who are impacted. The children are deeply impacted, and they go through a traumatic event. That is certainly a terrible situation to endure and mal effects throughout. Indeed, of those 26,000 families in Oregon, right now there is a couple sitting at their kitchen table trying to figure out just how many meals they are going to skip in order to make their next rent payment, or they are struggling with how long they can defer a health care bill while they make their mortgage payment. These are tough decisions.

This is why we developed a bipartisan agreement under President Bush that during periods of high unemployment, we would have a longer bridge to the next job. The logic is very simple. The logic is that during periods of high unemployment, the average time between jobs is longer and the chasm is wider, so people need a longer bridge to get there. This is a program that automatically pulls itself back in, retires itself, as the unemployment rate drops. As the unemployment rate drops, the number of extra weeks become fewer and fewer. That is why there is so much logic behind it. That is why there was no partisan divide.

Today we are going to vote, again, on whether to keep this logical, bipartisan, self-retiring, critical bridge in place, and I hope we have a broad bipartisan vote to support it. Then we need to say to the House of Representatives: This is not another bill we can lock in the basement and throw away the key. This is a fundamental piece of legislation that affects the welfare of our families, the health of our economy, the strength of our communities, and it merits a vote on the floor of the House of Representatives. It is certainly a reasonable expectation that everyone in America should see where their Congressman or their Congresswoman stands on such a vital economic strategy for individual families and for the broader community.

So let us not disappoint those 26,000 families in Oregon. Let us not disappoint those 1.7 million families across America that have counted on problem-solving common sense rather than partisan warfare to address this issue.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source