Unemployment Benefits

Floor Speech

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, over the last few days our friends across the aisle have been telling the American people that we have a choice when it comes to the extension of long-term unemployment benefits. On one hand, they are saying we can do exactly what the President, Senator Reid, and his allies want, which is to extend benefits for 3 months at a cost of $6.5 billion that we will have to borrow from somebody or we will do nothing at all.

Well, I am here to suggest that is a false choice, as President Obama likes to say from time to time. We can do better than that. As a matter of fact, several of my Republican colleagues have offered their suggestions. I have in my hand a list of 23 amendments that would deal with everything from improving access to workforce training to finding a way to pay for this money that would otherwise have to be borrowed from the Chinese or other creditors of the United States and added to our $17.3 trillion debt.

In other words, there are a lot of good ideas. We just have not been given the opportunity to debate them and offer these amendments and actually do what the Senate used to do. As the Republican leader said yesterday, we actually used to have committees that voted on amendments and then passed bills that came to the floor. We used to actually have an open amendment process where people could offer their amendments, and then we would debate them and vote on them. What a novel idea. That, of course, is called legislating. That is what the legislative branch--Congress--is supposed to be doing. That is not what we have been doing.

The majority leader is basically the traffic cop for the Senate floor. He is the one who determines whether we have an opportunity to have this sort of fulsome debate so we can offer these constructive, bipartisan--in many instances--ideas.

We would like to try to reform our unemployment compensation system in order to help grow the economy, help the private sector create jobs, and get more people back to work so they don't have to depend on extended unemployment insurance. However, if they do find themselves in a difficult circumstance, as many Americans unfortunately do, they can then go back to school by the using Pell grant, for example, to go to our community colleges, which do a fantastic job of helping people learn new skills that make them a good fit for the good jobs, of which there are many. Unfortunately, there are not enough skilled workers in the workforce who are qualified for those jobs.

To give the Senate a flavor for some of the ideas, my colleague from Oklahoma, Senator Coburn, who is always full of a lot of ideas, filed an amendment to ensure that people don't claim unemployment insurance and Social Security disability benefits simultaneously. If there is a case of double dipping, that would seem to be it, and it is an abuse of the system. He has filed an amendment that would prevent millionaires and billionaires from receiving unemployment checks. I know it is hard to believe, but people with incomes of $1 million or more have claimed nearly $21 million worth of unemployment benefits in a single year. That is unbelievable. What an abuse. That is an insult, really, to people who are in dire straits and need help, to know there are people gaming the system either by double dipping or being millionaires and claiming unemployment benefits. Again, we have borrowed $250 billion to pay these extended unemployment benefits since 2008, and there are some millionaires and billionaires who are gaming the system for their benefit. Why wouldn't we want to fix that? Why wouldn't we want to have a vote on those good ideas by our colleague Senator Coburn?

Meanwhile, our colleague from South Carolina, Senator Scott, has filed a commonsense amendment that would define full-time employment as a 40-hour workweek for the purposes of ObamaCare. The Presiding Officer--and since he walked in, I will pick on my friend from Maryland--remembers when we had a number of leaders from organized labor who came to the White House and said that ObamaCare is turning full-time work into part-time work. Because of the penalties associated with the employer mandate and the like, many employers are shifting full-time workers into part-time workers. That is not just a concern on this side of the aisle; it is a broad concern which impacts a lot of people.

I remember recently being in Tyler, TX, at a diner, and the owner of that diner said he tragically had to put a single mom on a 30-hour workweek in order to avoid some of the penalties of ObamaCare. So to make up for that lost income, she had to go and get a second part-time job because of ObamaCare and its unintended consequences. So Senator Scott has an amendment that would address that problem.

I hope the majority leader will rethink his longstanding position--at least over the last 6 months--of basically shutting out any other constructive ideas not just on this side of the aisle but on the other side of the aisle as well, as the Republican leader pointed out yesterday.

In addition, our colleague from Indiana, Senator Coats, has several ideas. One would offset the extension of long-term unemployment benefits by delaying the individual and employer mandates under ObamaCare until 2015. We all recall that the President and this administration on its own initiative--I am looking hard to find where they have the authority, but nevertheless they did--delayed the employer mandate for a year on their own. Well, this would take the money saved from delaying the individual employer mandate and use that to pay for the extension of unemployment benefits.

Another amendment would offset the cost of this extension by requiring people to provide a Social Security number before they claim the child tax credit. All it would do is make them provide a Social Security number to make sure that we root out fraud and abuse in the child tax credit claims. It would save billions of dollars, and it would allow us to pay for this short-term extension of long-term unemployment benefits.

I would also add that I think most people need to be reminded that actually the basic program of unemployment insurance covers people for up to half a year, but over the last 5 years Congress has extended that up to 99 weeks, which is about 2 years. Well, this is supposed to be an emergency program, and thankfully the economy is starting to show some signs of improvement and growth. So what we need to do is get off of this temporary emergency measure and get back to normal circumstances and try to find ways to pay our bills and make sure people don't abuse the American taxpayer by gaming the system. We need to continue to look for ways to help people learn the skills they need in order to get the good, high-paying jobs that exist, among other things.

Well, here is another idea. Our colleague from New Hampshire, Senator Ayotte, has filed an amendment that would restore the military pension benefits. This is something, if you will remember, that was taken out of the Murray-Ryan budget deal that passed before we left for Christmas, and I think it is fair to say there is broad bipartisan support for restoring those cuts to the military pensions, and Senator Ayotte's amendment would do that.

All of these amendments deserve debate, which I am trying in some small way to provide here, but others have their ideas and have their way of talking about it, and they also deserve a vote. But, again, the majority leader, Senator Reid, is the traffic cop on the Senate floor. As Senator McConnell pointed out yesterday, the Senate has been dramatically transformed from a place where the Senate was justifiably claimed as the greatest deliberative body on the planet but no more.

We can return to the way the Senate used to be by having this sort of constructive, bipartisan, fulsome discussion and vote on good ideas and make legislation better and not settle for something less.

I said--and it is true--that Senators have a right to debate and offer legislation. I am not sure many people across America have thought very deeply about what that means.

This isn't about the Presiding Officer's rights as a Senator or my rights as a Senator. This is about the rights and the voices of the 26 million people I represent, because when I am shut out of the process--when I can't offer amendments and ideas about how to improve legislation--they are shut out as well, and that is wrong.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I was unaware there was a time limit. I ask unanimous consent for an additional 5 minutes.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. CORNYN. I thank the Chair.

So these amendments represent just a small sample of the ideas our side of the aisle has put forward to help the long-term unemployed, accelerate job creation, and grow the economy--something I know we all want. We all want it, so why not talk about it. Why not vote on these ideas. Why not get the Senate back into the position where we have the give and take of ideas and where we come up with the best for the American people.

A few other amendments my colleagues from Ohio and Kansas, Senator Portman and Senator Roberts, have offered would increase accountability and much stronger safeguards in the U.S. regulatory system. Regulations are what the bureaucracy does. We can't vote for them or against them. We can't hold them accountable that way, and they are out of control. If someone wants to know why those bills are so important, it is because last year the Obama administration imposed $112 billion worth of new regulations on the U.S. economy--$112 billion worth of new regulations in 2013 alone.

Our colleague from Alaska, Senator Murkowski, who is the ranking member of the energy committee, is rightly concerned about the impact of misguided regulations on our energy industry--primarily the oil and gas industry--and she has taken the time to draft a bold plan for reforming U.S. energy policy that would promote economic growth, job creation, national security, and responsible stewardship of our environment.

In conclusion, I wish to recognize--in terms of a summary of some of the ideas, 23 of which I have on this card, but I will just mention a few of them--the ideas of our colleague from Utah, Senator Mike Lee, and his efforts to reform our dysfunctional tax system in a way that supports middle class families who are working hard to provide for their children. We should agree, as Senator Lee has advocated, that tax reform should aim not just to simplify the Tax Code and fuel job growth, but also to ease the burden on hard-working, middle-class families.

There are a lot of great ideas out there. I can't think of a better time to talk about them than this time, when the President of the United States has made a priority of income inequality which, unfortunately, has become worse under his administration, not better. This has been further exacerbated by burdens such as ObamaCare, which we find out is just a bundle of broken promises, including: ``If you like what you have, you can keep it.'' ``It will lower costs, not increase them.'' We are finding out none of that is true.

There are a lot of great ideas that we could, working together in the interests of the American people, agree on that would actually improve their economic situation and help restore the American dream. But what is the American dream to somebody who has been out of work and can't find work? It is a disappointment to say the least. We need to help people to not maintain their dependency on a government benefit in perpetuity but to liberate them from that dependency, to help them regain their self respect and sense of dignity by finding work and providing for themselves and their families, and to live their version of the American dream. In the process we all benefit. The Federal Government can pay its bills because people are paying taxes because they have good jobs, and America will be the same America we inherited from our parents and grandparents and, hopefully, we will make it better for the next generation and beyond.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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