Three Major Crises

Floor Speech

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Mr. HILL. Mr. Speaker, I commend my friend from Louisiana for bringing our Members to the floor tonight to talk about something that is so essential to American life, our careers, our work, our independence, our ability to pursue happiness.

This pandemic has thrown many off track for that, and it is House Republicans that want to make sure we pursue policies that get people back to work, back to opportunity, back to independence.

Our small businesses in my home State of Arkansas and local economies across our country are recovering from the devastation of the pandemic. They now face a threat that has resulted from President Biden and House Democrats' inflated and fiscally irresponsible approach to unemployment benefits.

The Wall Street Journal reports there are over 8 million job openings, Mr. Speaker, in the United States right now. That is almost more jobs open than every person currently out of work.

Instead of encouraging these positions to be filled, my friends on the other side of the aisle have disincentivized going back to work and have made these benefits so appealing that it has disrupted labor markets across the country, particularly in Arkansas, particularly lower-income labor markets.

Medical workers, small businesses, and restaurants all tell me that this is creating problems for them. It has hurt States so much that a handful of individual States are now rejecting participating in Federal unemployment benefits.

This is not the direction we need to go, and it does not take an economist to understand this is not a permanent solution. We cannot keep tying policies back to a once-in-a-century pandemic that will systematically change our country forever.

The solution is simple, and it is what House Republicans are advocating and have been advocating for months. We need policies that encourage Americans to get back to work, not policies that encourage reliance on the Federal Government.

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