Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Act of 2003

Mr. REED. Madam President, I rise in strong support of the Kennedy amendment. I am amazed that at a time when there are over 1.1 million workers who have exhausted all their unemployment benefits—who are looking for work, who are not finding work—at a time when our fund to pay for these benefits is in surplus by billions of dollars, we are not extending this program.

This is perhaps the last chance we will have. The program expires in just a few days. Yet we are here on the floor of the Senate talking about many other things: tax benefits for affluent Americans who are doing quite well. But we are not responding to the demands, the needs of countless numbers of our fellow citizens. I am just amazed this would happen.

This UI, temporary Federal unemployment insurance program, will expire at the end of May. What is happening in our economy today is that people are desperately looking for jobs, but the economy is changing. As I go about Rhode Island, I do not find lots of people who say: Well, I don't want to take a job because these benefits are so good. These benefits are a fraction of what these people were making when they were working. They are hardly sufficient to pay the mortgage, to pay for their children's needs, to pay for all the items they have to buy each and every day.

What has happened in the economy, in our case in Rhode Island, is we used to be a manufacturing center where there were 20 or 30 or 40 different manufacturing plants all requiring foremen and supervisors and vice presidents for human resources. Those factories have been closing. Work has been going overseas.

In many cases, it is not a question of losing a job nowadays; it is a question of the company going away, leaving the small towns of Rhode Island and southern New England and the small towns of North Carolina and South Carolina, leaving people highly skilled but with no place to work.

These are the true victims of this current economic malaise and recession. And we are not responding by simply giving them some more time, giving them resources to pay the debts that pile up every day in every family in this country? I think it is just appalling.

Madam President, 1.1 million workers have exhausted their benefits and have not found work. That is the current situation. We have to help them. The unemployment rate today is 6 percent. That rate is higher than when this temporary program was initiated in March of 2002. It is higher today than when the program was extended in January 2003. Yet we are not extending the program. The situation is worse, but our response is not appropriate to that situation.

Over the last 3 months, 540,000 private sector jobs have been lost and the economy has lost, since the beginning of the recession, a total of 2.7 million private sector jobs. This is not a question of jobs being there and workers being unwilling to take those jobs.

As a result, we only have one recourse—frankly, they only have one recourse: They must have these benefits. And we must provide these benefits.

Private payrolls are 2.4 percent below their level in March 2001 at the beginning of this recession. The job losses in this recession now exceed those in the recession of 1990.

One other very compelling point is, on average, if you look at the recessions in this century, at least, job losses tend to bottom out after 15 months and are erased within 2 years. The persistent job losses in this recession are at the 25-month mark—25 months, not 15 months—and as a result, in that dimension, this is the worst recession, most severe recession since the 1930s in terms of the duration of long-term unemployment.

The latest employment report paints a bleak labor market picture for the future.

There are 8.8 million unemployed Americans, but we only count on our unemployment rolls those Americans who are actively seeking employment. There are millions more who are unable or so frustrated by the lack of jobs that they are not actively seeking—4.4 million Americans. They want a job. There is no real prospect, and as a result they are not even counted.

Then add to that the number of Americans—4.8 million—who work part time. They want to work full time but they work part time because there are no full-time jobs.

Then throughout these numbers, there is this persistent overhanging population of long-term unemployed Americans, about 1.9 million jobless for more than 26 weeks, about 20 percent of the total unemployed. This is a number that is not going down; it is persistent. These are the individuals who need our help, and we should help. We must help. Yet the bill that comes before us today, the bill that is supposed to stimulate the economy, ignores all of these millions of Americans. Frankly, I can't think of a more efficient way to stimulate the economy than to continue extended unemployment benefits. It puts money in the hands of working families. That money is not going to be hoarded. That money will not be spent on impressionist art. That money is going to be spent immediately at Kmart and Target and Wal-Mart.

So this is not just about fairness. This is about getting the economy moving again, at least in a very direct way. I believe we have to do this. We have to do it now. The time literally is running out. As Senator Kennedy pointed out, even today's program is less generous than programs in the past. Indeed, the fund has over $20 billion of assets that were contributed by these people when they worked. They paid into these funds. Now they are simply asking in their time of need to be supported, to be helped. It is not fair to ignore them.

There is no good economic argument to say we should not do this. First, it is stimulative. It puts money directly in the hands of Americans who will spend it. That is the best stimulation we can find. Second, the notion that these people are just sitting around because they don't want to work is preposterous. These people, many of them our contemporaries, in their forties and fifties, would love to work simply for the sake of working but, more importantly, because their expenses far exceed whatever payment they will receive from this unemployment compensation fund. We have to do something and we have to do it now.

Alan Greenspan, in January of 2002, dispelled this whole myth that the administration is trying to foster that this program is not any good, it is not worthwhile; they are just sitting around; it discourages people from finding jobs.

He said:

[C]learly, you cannot argue that somebody who runs past the 26-week level is slow for not looking for a job or not actively seeking to get re-employed. There are just no jobs out there.

This is January 2002. The situation is worse today.

And consequently, to adhere to the 26-week limit doesn't serve its actual purpose, which is essentially to prevent a misuse of the unemployment insurance system. So I've always been in favor of extending benefits when the job market itself begins to dry up.

Frankly, this is the Sahara of the job market that we see today. It is very dried up.

That was January 2002. It is worse today. Yet we are not responding today. Since January 2002, we have lost over three-quarters of a million more jobs. There is no economic argument against this amendment. In fact, all of the economic arguments, all the arguments on fairness, all the arguments about letting people get access to the benefits before they find work again argue strenuously for this amendment. I urge my colleagues to support the Kennedy amendment.

I yield back whatever time I have to the Senator from Massachusetts.