Unemployment Compensation Extension Act Of 2009 - Motion To Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, let me begin by suggesting that at a moment in American history when we probably have more serious problems than at any time since the Great Depression, I find it rather sad and distressing that time after time the response of our Republican colleagues is no, no, no; filibuster, filibuster, filibuster. In fact, what we are seeing now is that the filibuster is the norm. Most Americans think it takes a majority to pass something. Not around here. Our Republican friends, I think, have broken the alltime world's record for bringing forward filibusters--my understanding is 81 in this session alone.

So here you have a crisis in health care, a crisis in the economy, a crisis in global warming, a crisis in foreign policy, a crisis in terms of our national debt, and yet our Republican friends say: No, no, no; filibuster, filibuster, filibuster. So it is easy to understand why the American people are extremely frustrated with what is going on here.

The election in November was all about the American people saying very loudly and clearly: We did it their way for 8 years. We gave the tax breaks to the billionaires that these folks wanted. We went into a war we should never have gotten into. We drove up the national debt to a recordbreaking level. We ignored the crisis in global warming and forfeited enormous opportunities to create jobs addressing that. We did it their way.

Now let me tell you the results of having done it their way.

During the Presidency of George W. Bush, over 8 million Americans slipped out of the middle class and into poverty. Today, nearly 40 million Americans are living in poverty.

During the 8 years of the Bush administration, 7.8 million Americans lost their health insurance. Today, these guys still do not want to address the issue of soaring health care costs and 46 million Americans uninsured.

Under President Bush, 4 1/2 million manufacturing jobs in this country were lost in the Midwest and other parts of this country. We are seeing desolation in areas where workers used to earn good wages, producing real products. In my own small State of Vermont, we have lost 10,000 manufacturing jobs over the last 6 or 7 years.

During the Bush era, 3.2 million American workers lost their pensions--pensions they were dependent upon in order to provide some security when they retired. Incredibly, during that period, median household income declined by over $2,100.

My colleagues may have seen an article in USA TODAY recently which mentioned that from 2000 to 2008, middle-class men experienced an 11.2-percent drop in their incomes. Do you believe that--11.2 percent? That is a reduction of $7,700, adjusting for inflation, during the Bush era. Middle-class women in this age group saw a 4.8-percent decline in their incomes as well.

We did it their way, and the middle class is on the verge of collapse, poverty is increasing, more and more people are losing their health insurance, and the national debt has exploded. And then, after hearing President Bush tell us how robust the economy was, Secretary of the Treasury Paulson saying how strong the economy was, they walked into Congress over a year ago and said: Seems we made a little bit of a mistake. The economy is not actually robust. If we don't get $700 billion within the next couple of weeks, the entire world's financial system will collapse. Sorry about that.

We not only have many hundreds of supervisors and the Fed, we have the whole Federal bureaucracy looking at what is going on--we kind of missed it. We are sorry about that.

What ended up happening, as everybody in America knows, the economy plunged as a result of Wall Street greed and illegal behavior and recklessness; the conversion of Wall Street to a gambling casino, to all the deregulation that these guys fought for for years--both parties, by the way, not just Republicans--we ended up with the greatest economic decline since the Great Depression.

Let me tell you a little bit about where we are today when we talk about the need to extend unemployment benefits. We hear the official unemployment statistic of 9.8 percent. That is bad. But that only tells literally half of the story. If we add to the 9.8 percent who are unemployed all those in high unemployment areas who have given up looking for work or who are not part of the official statistic, and we add to that number people who want to work full time but are working part time, do you know what we end up with? We end up with 27.2 million Americans who are unemployed or underemployed. This is over 17 percent of our population.

That is a disaster. That is an absolute disaster causing massive suffering for working families all over this country.

I rise today in the midst of that economic disaster in strong support of the Emergency Unemployment Compensation Act. I am proud to be an original cosponsor of this legislation. I thank Majority Leader Reid and Senator Baucus, the chairman of the Finance Committee, for their leadership on this legislation. We are in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and the suffering, from California to Vermont, is enormous.

I am sure my colleagues get the same letters I get:

I lost my job, I am looking for a new job, there is no job available.

I lost my job, I got a new job, but it only pays half of what my old job did.

I lost my job and I lost my health insurance and maybe I am 1 of the 1 million people this year who are going to go bankrupt because of medically related illnesses.

I am a young person, I graduated high school, I want to get a job. I can't find a job.

I graduated college, I can't find a job.

That is what we are looking at. We have to address that problem.

As bad as the current situation is, what we also understand is that long-term unemployment is soaring. It is a bad thing if somebody loses their job. That is always bad. If they get a new job in a couple of weeks, that is one thing. But what is happening now is we are looking at 5.4 million Americans who have been unemployed for over 6 months. That is the highest on record. We have a crisis of long-term unemployment. The average length of unemployment is now 27 weeks, the longest since World War II. In the midst of serious unemployment numbers, the fact we are looking at long-term unemployment at record-breaking levels tells us it is absolutely imperative to extend and increase, expand unemployment benefits.

There are fewer jobs in America today than there were in the year 2000, even though the workforce has grown by over 12 million since that time. We now have the fewest manufacturing jobs at any time since April of 1941. Can you believe that? We have fewer manufacturing jobs, blue-collar jobs, the jobs that made the middle class, since April of 1941.

The American people need our help. That is why it is so important that we pass this legislation and why it is so important that we do this in a bipartisan way. I hope our Republican friends will finally stop saying no and say yes to American working families. This bill provides an additional 14 weeks of unemployment benefits to all 50 States. That is important to me. It is important to me because while I do understand there are States which have a lot higher unemployment rates than the State of Vermont, the truth is there is long-term unemployment in 50 States in America, and I believe we should be extending unemployment for all of our workers.

If we do not pass this legislation, by the end of this year nearly 2 million Americans will see their unemployment benefits expire, including some 2,000 people in the small State of Vermont. In the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and at a time when long-term unemployment is extremely high, we cannot turn our backs on jobless Americans by letting their unemployment insurance expire. That would be driving people into the abyss. We cannot do that. This bill will allow workers who have lost their jobs during the severe recession to get the help they deserve while they try to find new jobs to support their families.

The American people are looking to the Congress for help. These are tough times all over this country. We cannot turn our backs on hard-working Americans who are trying as best they can to keep their families above water. I hope we pass this legislation and we pass it as soon as possible.

I yield the floor.

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