Jim McDermott Asks that Congress not Forget Unemployed Workers During the Holidays
For Immediate Release - November 21, 2003

Washington D.C. - Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) delivered the following statement on the floor of the House of Representatives regarding the body's refusal to consider America's current unemployment crisis.

"Several times this week, the House has used emergency procedures to pass partisan legislation.

"Yesterday, the Congress found time to give tax credits to major corporations, but the Republican majority refuses to consider what is truly an emergency to millions of families - the fact that they don't have jobs, and millions of these workers are about to run out of unemployment compensation.

"Last year, the Republican Congress left town before Christmas without extending the temporary program that provides unemployment benefits, leaving hundreds of thousands of unemployed workers to worry over the holidays about whether they were going to get the unemployment benefits they had been expecting.

"It has been reported in the media that Majority Leader Tom DeLay said: 'I see no reason...to be extending unemployment compensation [since]...every economic indicator is better than in 1993, when the Democrats ended the [federal] unemployment program.'

"The esteemed Majority Leader does not know what he is talking about.

"Washington State's unemployment rate is still among the highest in the nation. It has grown for two solid years, as we've felt the brunt of the Bush recession.

"If the Congress doesn't extend the federal program that provides unemployment compensation, and fix a technical flaw in the Federal-State Extended Benefits program, over 83,000 workers in my state will stop receiving unemployment benefits. I know that the economy created about 100,000 jobs last month, but 150,000 jobs must be created each month to maintain the employment rate, because our population is continually growing.

"Two days after Christmas, the temporary federal unemployment benefits program is scheduled to expire - denying benefits to nearly 90,000 workers every week thereafter.

"The unemployment picture today simply isn't much different than it was last year. According to the Department of Labor, there is still only one job opening for every three unemployed workers. In other words, of the 9 million unemployed American workers, six million of them have no chance of finding a job in the current economic climate.

"I urge my colleagues to vote against the previous question so that Congress can consider an emergency that faces millions of families: the nation's unemployment problem."