Unemployment Extension

I am currently unemployed. I have been watching republican senators just not get the despair of people like me. I have worked hard for years. I have been laid off since March 2009. Coach USA downsized and then finally closed it's Mishawaka terminal June 30th 2009. I say shame on the Republican senators. I have joined a new group Americans for America. They are working to vote out every congressional leader who has lsot touch with the common man. I was impressed with one senator's speech last night June 24th. So maybe there are some congressional leaders who do care about those who are not wealthy. Here is his speech.


Sheldon Whitehouse
United States Senator for Rhode Island and Providence Plantation


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Sheldon Slams Republicans for Obstruction of Unemployment Insurance
June 24, 2010
Mr. President, we lost this important vote today 57 to 41. For people who are watching who may not be familiar with the peculiarities of the Senate, you might think to yourself: How on Earth did you lose 57 to 41? It sounds to the ordinary person like you won by 16. What do you mean you lost 57 to 41? How could that have happened?
That happened because the other party, as it has done throughout the Obama administration, has used an arcane Senate procedure called the filibuster more times than ever in the history of this country to block progress for this administration.
The rule requires that the majority get to 60 when the minority so demands, and they have been demanding that 60 on everything over and over. There have been years when it was almost never used. There have been years when it was used two or three times. In really bad years, it might have been used 14, 15 times. This group of Republican colleagues has set the record. They use it on everything.
I think we are over 100 acts of obstruction and delay around this filibuster rule as a result. If one is wondering why we lost 57 to 41--if that sounds strange--we got the 57 votes, they got the 41, and we lost--it is because they are pulling out of the rule book this procedural trick so that the majority does not rule, so they can block progress.
They are doing it for what they claim is concern about deficits. I have to say, being lectured by our Republican colleagues about deficits and debt is like being lectured by Evel Knievel about safe driving. They should have a little sense of, at minimum, irony about that.
They say the past is prologue. Let me review a little bit of the past.
When George Bush took office, President Clinton, a Democrat, and the Democratic Congress at the time had left an annual budget that was in surplus. It was returning more money to the Federal Government than we were spending. It was an annual budget in surplus. We had a national debt at the time, but with the annual budget in surplus, our Congressional Budget Office--the nonpartisan, not Republican, not Democratic, professional Congressional Budget Office--had estimated that, when George Bush took office, we would be a debt-free nation by 2009. We would be a debt-free nation by 2009. That was the trajectory that Democratic President Bill Clinton and the Democratic Congress left, along with those annual budget surpluses, when George Bush and the Republicans took office.
So 2009 came and went. How did we do? Did we get to a debt-free nation? Are we at zero debt? No. Something changed when the Republicans took power, and when the Bush administration left, it left $9 trillion in debt--not a debt-free nation but $9 trillion in debt and an economy in which Americans were losing 700,000 jobs a month. They left $9 trillion in debt and families losing 700,000 jobs a month. That is the situation President Obama inherited--a little different from what President Bush inherited.
So have we spent since then? Yes, because every economist worth their salt knows that when family spending is contracting, when business spending is contracting, when municipal and State spending is contracting, the entire economy can contract to the point that it seizes up unless the Federal Government does what an economist would call countercyclical spending. If the economy is dying for lack of spending, if it is seizing up, the Federal Government can put money back into it to try to bring it back to life. As Senator Stabenow's graph has shown, it has brought it back to life. We have gone from losing 700,000-plus jobs a month to losing no jobs a month--actually gaining a few. So it worked.
In that context, to say to the people who are still out of work--the ones who lost their jobs back when 700,000 jobs a month were out the window and going overseas; the Bush legacy--to say that we can't help those people any longer, to say that we are cutting off their unemployment insurance, their lifeline, because we are concerned about the debt, I have to ask: Where was the concern about the debt when they were taking a trajectory toward a debt-free America and turning it into a $9 trillion debt? Where was the concern then? Where was the concern when it was tax breaks for billionaires?
We just had our first billion-plus-dollar estate pass under the Bush tax cuts, where the estate tax was eliminated. As a result, a $9 billion estate of a Texas tycoon went to his heirs tax free. How much tax? Zero dollars. Zero dollars. At the prevailing tax rate that has stood for most of this time, you would have paid $4 billion in estate taxes and your heirs would have had to suffer through with only $5 billion to divide amongst themselves. That $4 billion in lost revenue added to our debt and deficit doesn't bother our friends on the other side at all. They couldn't be happier. That is their plan. Those are the Bush tax cuts. America loses $4 billion, and they smile. It is their plan. But when we are talking about people who lost their jobs because of those very policies, because of letting Wall Street run unregulated and having that financial meltdown, and now regular families across this country who got hit by that tsunami of misery are out of work, now they are concerned about the debt. Now they are concerned about the deficit. They were OK with the billion-dollar family passing its estate tax free, but they can't have ordinary working Americans keep that unemployment insurance lifeline.
I think those are backward policies. I think those are upside-down policies, and they hit very hard in my home State. My home is Rhode Island. For over a year, we have had double-digit unemployment. We have been in the top three or four States every month for unemployment. I know Michigan has suffered immensely, and that is why Senator Stabenow and Senator Levin were here. But I have to say that my small State of Rhode Island, with only 1 million people, is not far behind. We have 70,000 families out of work, and because it has been a long recession in Rhode Island, those families--all their assets, everything they had salted away, they have gone through that. What is left is the unemployment insurance lifeline. It is the basic lifeline. To cut that off, I think, frankly it is disgraceful.
This is a low moment in this body -- 70,000 families missing a paycheck, 70,000 families with a provider who is out of work, 70,000 families with kids wondering where the income for mom and dad is coming from. This money would go right into the economy. It would be instantly spent. It would be spent on shoes. It would be spent on food. It would be spent on paying the electric bill. It would be spent on putting some gas in the car to get out to the job interviews. It would have been spent immediately on the necessities of life.
But that is not good enough. That is not good enough. Those are the families in the toughest circumstances whom our friends want to cut off because of the debt, because of the deficit. The billionaires can go untaxed, but the working families who have lost jobs through no fault of their own are the ones who have to bear the brunt of this. And it hits home to real people, real families, with real fears: that late at night at the kitchen table, with the bills laid out in front of you and the kids asleep upstairs, and mom and dad are adding them up--adding up what they have and what is coming in--and realizing they are not going to make it that month, that something is going to have to go. That is a cold and lonely moment for a family. When families are having that cold and lonely moment, that late night at the kitchen table with the bills they can't pay, that is the time when we are supposed to provide the insurance against unemployment for them, that is the policy of this Nation.
It is discouraging. It is discouraging to Dan, a Rhode Islander, in East Greenwich. He has worked in sales. He has been unemployed since April of 2009. His wife is disabled. He is looking for work, but in Rhode Island, as in Michigan, people can look as hard as they like and they are lucky to find a job because there are more people looking than there are jobs. The jobs just aren't there, and Dan has not been able to find one. Without unemployment insurance, he has let my office know that he and his wife are likely to be evicted from their apartment. That is the human consequence of today's decision for one person in Rhode Island - Dan.
Bill, from North Kingstown, contacted us. He is 56 years old. He has been unemployed for a while now - since January of 2009. This has been a persistent recession in Rhode Island. He used to work in the engineering field. He is a talented man, but he has been twice faced with eviction as his unemployment insurance has been put at risk. He received only $200 over the last 3-week period, as his benefits have expired. He is in that first leading group for whom the benefits have expired. He has lost his COBRA benefits. He needs heart medication. Without COBRA benefits, how can he pay for his health insurance that will provide the heart medication? The real cost of today's shameful decision comes home hard to somebody like Bill.
Nancy, in Portsmouth, RI, is 59 years old. She has been unemployed for a while, too - 21 months. She has been looking for work for 21 months, looking through the classifieds, going online, reaching out to all her friends and contacts trying to find somebody who has a job for her. She has a bachelor's degree, she has several different industry certifications, and she has an extensive background in sales and marketing. She is somebody who, in an ordinary economy, would have no trouble finding a job. But after the Wall Street meltdown sent that tsunami of misery across our country, she got caught in it. For 15 years she worked in the insurance industry, and now she can't find a job. And she will soon lose her unemployment benefits if we don't continue to fight for this.
So behind all the big brave talk about how we have to fight the deficits - ironic talk coming from the people who were responsible for virtually all of these debts and deficits - behind all of that are the human stories that are just being ignored here, and it is wrong. We have to change our direction here and start putting people first instead of the big corporations.
Let me mention one other topic. There were winners today and there were losers today. The people who lost today were Dan and Bill and Nancy and many, many others like them in Rhode Island and across the country. The people who won today - among them - were the big Wall Street financiers, the hedge fund hotshots, the ones who have been earning millions of dollars every year and through clever legal tricks have got their million-plus-dollar salaries treated as if they were capital gains. So the hedge fund superstar out there in his private jet, getting ready to fly down for a weekend in the Caribbean in the private jet, looking out the window at the fellow stuffing his luggage into the hold of the private jet, the guy in the jet is paying a lower tax rate than the guy outside with the earmuffs on and the jumpsuit stuffing the luggage in the hold. The guy in the private jet is paying a lower tax rate than the guy outside working day-to-day and putting his luggage in the hold. The guy being driven around in his car is paying a lower tax rate than the man behind the wheel who is driving him around.
Who is the biggest, best, most prominent capitalist in America? I would submit that it is Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett is a legendary investor, a spectacular investor. One of the great success stories of American capitalism. And he has come to lobby us about this issue. He has come to lobby us about the fact that he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary. He has come to lobby us about it because it is wrong, because he finds it embarrassing that, in a country like ours, somebody who has been as successful as he has, who has received such remarkable benefit from his talent and his energy, ends up paying a lower tax rate than the secretary who does his mail and takes his phone calls. He knows that that is wrong and we should know that that is wrong. And we could have corrected that. That was one of the ways that the benefits for regular working folks in this bill could have been paid for.
So that is who won and that is who lost: Dan and Bill and Nancy lost. And tonight when they get word about this they are going to sit in their homes and they are going to worry. They are going to be anxious. They are going to be heartsick. They are going to be looking at a future that is filled with uncertainty.
Our friends on the other side will say, well no, once they get off unemployment insurance that is just a spur, that is an incentive to get out and find a job; get off the dole and get back out in the workforce. Not in Rhode Island, not with a 12.3-percent unemployment rate. At a rate like that Dan, Bill, Nancy - the three of them might go out looking for a job, but there will only be one for the three. These are people who have been looking for work for over a year. These are people who have had a lifetime of work experience. These are people who want to be back to work. Their character, their sense of self is that they are people who work and support themselves. They want to be back to work. The argument that they are just going to fritter away their time on unemployment insurance until it ends and then they will get serious and get back to work is nonsense. It is nonsense. And the suffering they are going to face as a result of this is real.
Those are the people in the column who lost today. In the column of the people who won is Warren Buffett. Based on what he said when he has come here to lobby us, I will bet you dollars against Dunkin' Donuts that he is embarrassed to be in the winners column. But he knows that it is not right, in this great country of ours, for the people who have been most successful, who have earned financial rewards beyond what ordinary people can dream of, to be able to pay a lower tax rate than the regular working people who come to their offices everyday and serve in their businesses. It is just wrong. It is topsy-turvy.
So I just can't tell you how discouraging a day it is. First in the real regular world you would have thought we had won today, 57 votes to 41. But, no, there is this procedural trick. So because we did not get to 60, we lost. And because we lost, Dan and Bill and Nancy lost. And the wealthiest people in our country won in a way that embarrasses probably America's greatest capitalist, Warren Buffett.
I see the majority leader is on the floor. I will inquire to see if the majority leader desires the floor? If so, I will gladly yield.
I yield the floor.
Senator Whitehouse‘s
Sheldon Slams Republicans for Obstruction of Unemployment Insurance »
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