Date: 2001-11-14
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Speaker. yesterday the Committee on Education and the Workforce held a hearing at the request of the Democratic Caucus to listen to those individuals who have been impacted by the downturn in the economy. workers. Mr. John Sweeney. the president of the AFL/CIO. who represents many. many workers who have been caught in this downturn in the economy. As we listened to two of the witnesses. Mr. Michael Hannah. who is a member of the Steel Workers in Birmingham. Alabama. who has worked for 29 years in that industry and recently. working for Butler Manufacturing. has just been told that he will be laid off indefinitely as of November 30. Mr. Hannah had been laid off earlier this year for 4 months. And. of course. what Mr. Hannah is now confronting is. his unemployment benefits of $190 a week are running out. We also heard from Linda Woods. Linda Woods has been employed in the commercial printing and advertising industry for the last 18 years and for one company the last 8 years. making $19.11 an hour. but she too has been laid off and she is down to her last unemployment check. Her son. who is also working and helping her obviously while he is holding down two jobs for a hotel and an auto parts factory. has lost both of those jobs. First went the hotel job and then the auto parts factory job. So that income has been lost to her household. Mr. Hannah told us also of the problems of his wife who just suffered a back injury and is unable to work and needs a lot of expensive medicines. as he said. He has also told us he would not be able to continue his health insurance under the COBRA program which allows unemployed people to continue to have their health insurance they had when they were working. but they must pay for. would cost him $529 a month. And. of course. his unemployment provides him $760 a month. and he is unable to pay for that. So it is not a luxury. but it is something he must let go if he is going to. try to meet his mortgage payment and the rest of the obligations to his family. Ms. Woods was in the same situation. On her unemployment. she would have had to pay $200 a month for her COBRA and she can not afford to do that. nor can her son. These are two individuals that. between them. have worked almost 50 years. 50 years. and now they find themselves having to need unemployment for 26 weeks and that has run out. And yet this Congress has failed to respond to provide for an extension of unemployment benefits. We provided a bailout for the airline industry for $15 billion. $5 billion in cash. We. provided $38 billion to the energy industries in tax provisions. We have provided a repeal of the alternative minimum tax so that some of the richest and largest corporations in the world would get their taxes forgiven back to 1986. We have provided tax reductions for the wealthiest people in this country. And most recently now the President has suggested we speed up those tax reductions to that same group of very. very wealthy individuals. But what the Congress has not found time to do is to take care of the hundreds of thousands of people. the millions of people in this country that are in the same situation as Linda Woods and Michael Hannah. What we have not -found time to do is extend the unemployment benefits for another 26 weeks or another 13 weeks or whatever we can do to help these people. Many of these people were unemployed before September 11. But because of the September 11 terrorist attack in New York City and the Pentagon. the economy has gotten worse. So their situation in trying to find work has become more difficult. and many people who are unemployed because of September 11 in the hotel industry. the travel industry. they now find themselves trying to replace their income in a worsening job market. If they look for work for 30 hours a week. they cannot get unemployment because that is not fulltime. and while 97 percent of the businesses in this country pay into unemployment insurance. less than 40 percent of the people are covered. Mr. Speaker. I realize my time is running out. I just want to say this. As Congress heads home for Thanksgiving dinner with their family. the -holidays with their children and grandchildren. we had better remember these families and pass the unemployment extension bill so that they can do it. It is the most efficient economic stimulus we can provide. These people will spend the money to create the demand so the economy can recover. We ought to do it and we ought to do it now.