Congressman Gregory W. Meeks Statement on CBC Letter to Speaker Boehner and Democratic Leader Pelosi regarding Unemployment Insurance
Statement
Congressman Gregory W. Meeks (D-NY), senior member of the House Financial Services Committee and Foreign Affairs Committee released the following statement on Extending Unemployment Insurance:
Yesterday, I joined with other members of the Congressional Black Caucus to send a letter to Speaker of the House John Boehner and Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi calling on both parties in both houses of Congress, in the spirit of the upcoming holiday season, to put aside partisan wrangling with a concerted bipartisan effort to enact legislation by the end of 2011 that:
· Extends current federal unemployment insurance programs through 2012
· Aids millions of Americans who have already exhausted their federal benefits
· Creates jobs
· Implements President Obama's proposal to extend and increase the payroll tax cuts
In the letter, my CBC colleagues and I pointed out that a one-year extension of current benefits will keep 2.2 million unemployed Americans from losing their benefits in February and another 4 million Americans from losing their benefits over the rest of 2012. We stressed that extending current unemployment benefits further will help strengthen the economy. The Congressional Budget Office found that for every $1 spent on unemployment benefits, the economy grew by $2. Enacting the proposal that President Obama put forward in the American Jobs Act to both extend and increase last year's payroll tax cuts would add nearly $1,500 to the disposable incomes of 160 million American workers and their families.
As the season of hope approaches, enacting legislation to create jobs is the most meaningful thing Congress can do to give hope to millions of Americans. Passing President Obama's American Jobs Act as a whole would be a "good tiding of great joy' for millions of unemployed Americans. Congress should also act on the more than fifty pieces of job creating legislation that CBC members have introduced, including the CBC's Create, Protect & Rebuild jobs proposal which would create millions of jobs for Americans.
I call on the Congressional leadership and my colleagues on both sides to the aisle to put politics and ideology aside and set about doing what is best for the country. Let us devote the remaining weeks of this session to taking these concrete and specific steps to bring peace of mind to millions of unemployed Americans this holiday season.
For more information and to share stories of how unemployment insurance will impact you please see the following link:
http://democrats.waysandmeans.house.gov/singlepages.aspx?NewsID=11869
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