Unemployment Assistance

Mr. REED. Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. President, let me remind not only my colleagues, but the American people, why we are forced today, at the eleventh hour, to make a very cruel choice between helping some Americans and abandoning other Americans. It is because all through last fall, the Republican House of Representatives refused to take up and vote upon unemployment benefits in a meaningful way that would lead to successful passage. The President did not involve himself on this issue until the unemployment rate reached 6 percent. He fired his economic team, and they discovered there really were Americans who desperately need help.

Today we were forced to make those choices that you see sometimes in the movies about who gets to stay in the life boat. It was a completely unnecessary choice.

The Senator from Oklahoma talked about one proposal costing $4 billion and another proposal costing $1 billion. The House wanted $1 billion.

There is a surplus today in the unemployment insurance trust fund of $24 billion. There is absolutely no fiscal reason we could not provide these benefits to 1 million Americans who have exhausted their unemployment benefits. We heard from colleagues on the other side of the aisle that they are categorically opposed to giving any extension of benefits beyond a certain time. This not only defies logic and defies the fiscal status of the trust fund but also defies history.

In the early 1990s, this Government extended unemployment compensation a total of five times—three times under President George Herbert Walker Bush because unemployment continued to rise for the 15th month after the so-called end of the recession. There are cases in which individuals were able to collect unemployment benefits for a total of 52 weeks because they qualified for these extensions.

Why is this so important? Because people are desperate. They had good jobs. They lost those jobs. They are looking for comparable work. They cannot find it. The record of this economy under this President is dismal. Family incomes have fallen for the first time in 8 years. Poverty is increasing. Families at all income levels are losing their health insurance left and right. Gross domestic product is growing, but it is growing too feebly to generate the jobs these people need.

Since the President took office, 2.2 million private payroll jobs have been lost. We are losing jobs. We are not gaining jobs. We are asking them to find jobs; we are setting them on a task that is extraordinarily difficult.

So what can we do in the interim?

We can at least give them unemployment compensation, extended, if necessary. It is the fair thing to do. It is the wise thing to do. The President, in his economic speech in Chicago, talked about some special $3,000 benefit for those people who are unemployed. Let's do the mathematics. That $3,000 represents probably a fraction of the unemployment insurance someone would collect if we voted for these benefits. That is not a good deal for the people of America—a $3,000, one-time payment, some type of scheme in which they can use it either to pay their household costs or go to training versus receiving, on a regular basis, unemployment compensation as they look for work.

The reality, as my colleague from Montana pointed out, is that unemployment is different today than it was even 10 years ago in the recession of the early 1990s. It is different because the economy has changed.

The State which the Presiding Officer and I represent used to be a manufacturing center, not just to the United States but to the world. That is changing. As I go about our State talking to people, the unemployed are 50-year-old, former mid-level management people who used to work for a company. They did not get fired. They did not get laid off. The company went away, went out of business, moved its operations to Mexico, moved its operations to Singapore. And then you ask this person, with a mortgage, college tuitions—and the health care benefits which they used to get at work are now his responsibility or her responsibility—to go look for a job with comparable pay? They are not hiring people like that. They are looking for the 35-year-old, with a computer degree, who will work cheaper, who does not have those responsibilities of a family, of a mortgage.

That is the reality out there. That is what we are fighting about today, not the number "1 million," but a million Americans, struggling to find work, trying to find work. They need help. And we turn our back on them today. I heard my colleague, the Senator from Oklahoma, say he would never bring up extension of these benefits to people who have exhausted their benefits already. I heard the majority leader sort of talk about: Well, we want to deal with this issue, but let's get this issue done first.

The message is pretty clear to me and should be clear to the American public: We are walking away today from a million people. We should not do that.

This seems to me to be so clear and so obvious that I am, in fact, amazed and shocked at what we did. The money is there. This is a benefit for people who are looking for work. Once they find work, the benefit expires. We are talking about stimulating the economy. What is more stimulating than giving people money to pay for their household goods as they look for work?

I am more than disappointed. But we were forced today, because of the inattention of the administration and the House, at the last minute, to choose between denying benefits to all unemployed Americans or abandoning about a million—a cruel, unnecessary choice. We can do better. We should do better.

I yield the floor.