Temporary Exended Unemployment Compensation Act of 2002 - Amendment No. 2617

AMENDMENT NO. 2617

(Purpose: To extend and expand the Temporary Extended Unemployment Compensation Act of 2002, and for other purposes)

Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I rise to support Senator Cantwell's amendment to reinstate the temporary emergency unemployment compensation program.

The amendment will reinstate the 13-week Federal unemployment insurance program, extend it for 6 months and ensure that "high unemployment" States continue to be covered.

Given all of the pressures that workers face today-outsourcing, a political environment that is hostile to organized labor, and a lack of high-paying jobs-there is no more pressing issue facing our nation's workforce. And yet although Senate Democrats have asked more than a dozen times to unanimously pass the unemployment extension-each time Senate Republicans have said no. It is time that the Senate stop putting partisanship ahead of what nearly everyone agrees is smart policy.

On February 4, the House of Representatives voted to reinstate unemployment benefits by a vote of 227 to 179, with 39 Republicans defying their leadership and voting in favor of the benefits.

But until the Senate acts, hundreds of thousands of workers will be in the impossible position of trying to feed, clothe, and house their families with no work and no benefits.

These are people who are persistently trying to re-enter the workforce, and yet must contend with an economy that has less than one job opening for every three workers.

Today we can change this. This amendment provides crucial temporary assistance to those who have been hardest hit by the recent economic downturn, and provides them a chance to support themselves and their families while they look for work.

Although the amendment would not provide more than 13 weeks of additional benefits to California, since my State's unemployment rate is 6.4 percent, not high enough to meet the 6.5 percent unemployment rate trigger in the amendment, it provides a meaningful extension for Californians by allowing unemployed Californians who were previously unqualified for unemployment benefits to collect 13 weeks of benefits as they look for new work.

As of today, 2.3 million Americans have lost their jobs since President Bush took office in January 2001.

In total, nearly 15 million Americans are out of work, including discouraged and underemployed workers.

Historically, job loss during a recession is about 50 percent temporary and 50 percent permanent. Today, nearly 80 percent of the job loss is permanent. As a result, many of the unemployed will not return to work soon.

In his Annual Economic Report, President Bush said that the outsourcing of jobs was the inevitable byproduct of an improving economy.

The White House says the "benefits" of exporting American jobs "eventually will outweigh the costs as Americans are able to buy cheaper goods and services and new jobs are created in growing sectors of the economy."

How are people without jobs supposed to buy all these goods and services? How do you keep a consumer economy going when you export all the jobs?

The chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors, the office that wrote the report, says the "government should try to salve the short-term disruption by helping displaced workers obtain the training they need to enter new fields, such as health care."

As Senator Daschle pointed out, that sounds like a cruel joke. The President's proposed budget for next year cuts money for Federal job training programs. And how do they know that the jobs they are training for will not be the next jobs targeted to be shipped overseas? It certainly will not be because the President is fighting to keep them here.

It seems to me that the jury is in on the course we must take. I think it is wrong to move to a protectionist stance by raising tariffs or promoting a weak U.S. currency. Historically, such strategies have led to more problems than they have solved.

U.S. companies should not be rewarded through our tax code for moving jobs offshore and then be allowed to bring foreign earned profits back into the U.S. at a tax rate that is a fraction of what they pay on their U.S. earned profits-just 5 percent, as compared to 38 percent in some cases.

You and I pay more than five times that in personal income taxes.

We should be encouraging firms to keep jobs here by producing the best trained, best educated workforce in the world.

And, we must help those who are displaced by outsourcing by providing emergency unemployment insurance.

This amendment provides just such a safety net for those who are temporarily displaced by the economic changes that are engulfing us.

I ask President Bush to put his weight behind this effort to get unemployment benefits extended to those who have been looking for a job more than 13 weeks.

If you are the President, you should be cheerleader number one for the American worker. And you should be supporting workers when they find themselves overcome by economic circumstances beyond their control.

When the national economy was booming 4 years ago, California was particularly blessed. California's economy grew at double-digit rates, and California became the fifth-largest economy in the world.

Billions of dollars of investment flowed into our State, and thousands of talented workers moved to California to take advantage of opportunities in Silicon Valley and other growth engines of the New Economy. Now that picture is dramatically different.

After dropping to a decade-long low of 4.7 percent in December of 2000, the unemployment rate in California is back up to 6.4 percent as of the end of 2003.

During this period of economic hardship, we have a duty to give people the chance to get back onto their feet. This is an obligation that we have met in the past, most recently when faced with an economic downturn during the first Bush Administration. The Senate voted in 1991 to extend temporary unemployment insurance on five separate occasions. Each time such extensions were approved by overwhelming bipartisan majorities.

I urge my colleagues to support this amendment and those Americans who have fallen on hard times.