WASHINGTON - Ways and Means Committee Ranking Member Sander Levin (D-MI) made the following opening statement at the Steering and Policy Committee hearing this morning on the urgent need to extend unemployment insurance. The hearing came just hours after the White House Council of Economic Advisers released a new report : “The Economic Benefits of Extending Unemployment Insurance," which highlights the vital economic need to reauthorize the federal Emergency Unemployment Compensation program that expires Dec. 28.
Opening Statement of Rep. Sander Levin
Steering and Policy Committee Hearing - “Expiring Unemployment Insurance: A Financial Cliff Facing 1.3 Million Americans"
In human and in economic terms, this Congress has a mandate to extend federal unemployment insurance.
We will in a few minutes see the human side - from the three Americans who are joining us to tell their personal stories. They represent more than one million other Americans with similar stories who will lose every dime of this support instantly on December 28 if this Congress fails to act. A further 3.6 million Americans would lose access to federal unemployment insurance next year as they exhaust their state coverage.
I strongly believe that if every Member of Congress would take even a few minutes to speak personally with unemployed workers, there wouldn't be any question at all about the need to extend the federal UI program.
More than anything else, they want a job. But finding work remains very difficult in an economy that still has 1.5 million fewer jobs than before the recession started six years ago. We have never had anything close to such a sustained jobs deficit after any recent downturn.
It has been said in opposition to an extension that the federal Emergency Unemployment Compensation program was adopted "for extraordinary circumstances that are disappearing." No. These extraordinary circumstances continue as indicated in the report issued just this morning by President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers that highlights that the current long-term unemployment rate is at least twice as high as it was at the expiration of every previous extended UI benefits program.
The report also sets out the economic impact of a failure to act. It agrees with the Congressional Budget Office, Wall Street analysts, and other economists that allowing the Federal UI program to expire will cost our economy at least 200,000 jobs next year because of reduced consumer demand.
For this Congress to ignore the national economic impact would be shortsighted. To ignore the individual human impact would be coldhearted. That is not the better nature of our nation, and I trust of our Congress.
