Extend Unemployment Insurance and Payroll Tax Cuts

Floor Speech

Mr. PAYNE. Madam Speaker, I rise today to urge my Republican colleagues to move fast and join forces to extend the unemployment insurance and payroll tax cuts.

Now more than ever, most Republicans are content with cutting off the unemployment insurance and raising taxes on millions of middle class Americans while refusing to raise taxes on the richest 1 percent. The unemployment rates for the month of October in my congressional district of Union, Essex, and Hudson Counties in New Jersey are between nine and 10 percent, which is above the national average. If Congress does not act by the end of this year, 2.2 million unemployed workers, including my constituents, will lose their unemployment insurance benefits by February 2012.

When times could not get any tougher, Republicans also refuse to extend the payroll tax cut holiday enacted earlier this year that gave virtually all working Americans a much needed tax cut. Failing to extend the payroll tax cut will strip over $120 billion from the pockets of consumers. We must act now and extend the unemployment insurance and payroll tax cuts.

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