Madam President, fifty years ago today, President Lyndon Johnson challenged a joint session of Congress and the American people to begin a war on poverty.
“Unfortunately,” President Johnson said, “many Americans today live on the outskirts of hope.” “Our task,” he said, “is to help replace their despair with opportunity.”
Since President Johnson first issued that call, Congress and our nation have taken important steps to build and sustain a circle of protection around the most vulnerable in our society.
That protection isn’t as complete or strong as it can and should be – but through programs like unemployment insurance, which we are considering this week in this Congress, we are more able to catch our neighbors when they fall and support them as they work to get back on their feet.
Earlier this week the Senate began debate on whether to extend emergency unemployment insurance for the 3,600 Delawareans and more than a million job-seekers across the country whose benefits just expired.
It is absolutely critical that we approve this extension. During this fragile economic recovery, unemployment insurance has been a critical lifeline – one that has prevented millions of unemployed Americans from slipping further and falling into poverty.
In 2012, unemployment insurance kept 2.5 million Americans — including 600,000 children — out of poverty. That means that without federal action to extend unemployment insurance, the nation’s poverty rate would have been double what it was. And these numbers are for 2012 – they were even higher at the height of the recession.
So let’s be clear about what we’re debating when we discuss an unemployment insurance extension. These are long-term benefits for jobless Americans who’ve been out of work through no fault of their own for over 26 weeks.
When I say through no fault of their own, I mean you can’t get benefits if you’re fired for cause. And if you receive benefits, you must diligently search for another job. When we talk about the millions of long-term unemployed Americans, we’re talking about folks who were laid off because of the recession, are fighting to get back on their feet, and rely on these benefits to keep their families afloat, to keep a roof over their head, food on the table, their families together, and sustain them as they continue looking for work.
Yet two weeks ago, funding for long-term emergency benefits ran out. That meant $300 less in weekly income for the average jobseeker and that meant $400 million left our economy in just the first week.
In Delaware, it pulled $800,000 from our local economy. That’s money that otherwise would be spent in local grocery stores and our markets.
Now, one of the most vexing things I’ve heard in the debate over whether to continue these benefits is that they somehow incentivize people to not bother looking for jobs – that they instead lull able-bodied Americans into lives of dependency and despondency.
Madam President, given the people I hear from, the people I meet with, the people I know in Delaware, that’s not just absurd, it’s, forgive me, offensive. And, as President Obama said yesterday, it sells the American people short. I’ve heard from and spoken with Delawareans up and down my state who are relying on unemployment benefits that they paid into when employed and every one of them would trade a job for relying on unemployment insurance in a heartbeat. Let me share with you a few stories of Delawareans who have contacted me and who have shared just how hard this has been for them.
Debbie from Middletown, Delaware wrote that while she’s been receiving unemployment benefits, she’s applied to 156 jobs. She had been interviewed three times. She is 56. She has worked diligently since she was a teenager. She’s worked hard, paid her taxes, she’s paid into this system for practically her whole life and yet now when she needs it most, we failed to continue to provide this lifeline of support.
Linda from Newark wrote to me that on just $258 per week, her family has barely been able to stay afloat. They’re doing everything they can to keep up on their bills, to stay current, but even with unemployment insurance they’ve had to sell some of their family’s treasured possessions and goods. She wrote to me, “This is no way for anyone to live. It’s disheartening and difficult to stay motivated. And frankly,” she said, “I’m thoroughly fed up with being categorized as someone who lives off the government by collecting unemployment benefits.” I agree with her because, frankly, Linda, you paid into these benefits for years. This is what it’s there for.
John from Frederica told me he was laid off from Dover Air Force Base in part because of the sequester, and now depends on unemployment benefits while he looks for another job. This man who is a Navy veteran and was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for our country and yet right now because of the partisan gridlock in this Congress, we’re not there for him and his family.
Madam President, the millions of Americans like Debbie, Linda, and John in Delaware face a really tough job market. Nationally, for every available job, there are three jobseekers. And the longer someone remains unemployed, the harder it becomes for them to find work. The more their skills are out of date, the more difficult the search becomes, and the more they need our support to sustain that job search.
I’ve seen these effects up close and personally in Delaware. In my three years as a senator I’ve hosted 16 different job fairs to connect Delawareans looking for work with employers looking to hire. I’ve been honored to partner with Senator Carper and Congressman Carney in hosting these job fairs. In fact we’re hosting another one in our state capital, Dover, in just a few weeks.
When you speak with these folks about their struggle — about how hard it is to make ends meet and to keep searching for a job — you get a sense of how important these benefits are for their survival, for their families. And you get a sense of how much more we can and should be doing to tackle and deal with long-term unemployment in America.
As poverty of opportunity and hope afflicts too many of our communities and darkens the lives of too many of our neighbors, let us not suffer, in this chamber, from a poverty of imagination, determination, and ambition.
On this issue – which is so fundamental to who we are as a nation and to our service in this body – we cannot give in to complacency and apathy.
Fighting poverty is hard. And adapting our economy to the realities of a new era is a challenge we’ve struggled with for more than a generation. Yet figuring out how to realize an economy whose growth is strong and equitable… one that is dynamic and creative and competitive and also has a broad middle class, provides security for working families, and leaves no one behind… an economy that invests in the dreams and aspirations of every child – building that economy is surely one of the most urgent and difficult challenges we face.
And doing so requires that we put aside our personal politics and come together in these areas where, until recently, there has been broad and bipartisan consensus.
I now hear many of my Republican colleagues talk on this floor about the War on Poverty 50 years later as having been an abject failure. They make sweeping indictments on government action, putting small government ideology ahead of the shared national goal of fighting poverty.
But this perspective misses the point. The original War on Poverty was made up of a lot of programs that worked at every level of government – some that failed and others that, through steady and determined bipartisan work and steady improvement and refinement over the years, have become critical and widely accepted strands that hold together our social safety net.
Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, food stamps, unemployment insurance – all of these programs are valued and hold American families together and sustain American jobseekers. Bipartisan leaders across the decades have reaffirmed the importance and value of these programs time and time again.
And these programs, let’s remember, are about so much more than lifting people out of poverty – they’re also about keeping people out of poverty in the first place. We need them to build and strengthen the middle class, which is one of the greatest legacies of this nation.
So as we search for ways to adapt our fight to new times and new challenges, we must remember that there is no one way to win the war President Johnson first declared 50 years ago. It’s not a question of big or small government – of federal or local action.
As President Johnson himself said, “This will not be a short or easy struggle, no single weapon or strategy will suffice…”
“Poverty,” he said, “is a national problem. But this attack, to be effective, must also be organized at the state and the local level… For the war against poverty will not be won here in Washington. It must be won in the field, in every private home, in every public office, from the courthouse to the White House.”
This wasn’t an ideological argument for big centralized government. It was an all-hands-on-deck call, a moral call, for a nation to meet a national challenge. And although we’ve made progress since he addressed this Congress in 1964, his call to combat poverty remains just as important today, even as our challenges have evolved.
We’ve come a long way since the depths of the Great Recession just a few years ago. More than 8 million private-sector jobs have been created. There’s been a more than three-point drop in the national unemployment rate. We have resurgent energy, housing and manufacturing sectors.
Although a few years have passed since our economy sunk to its lowest lows, this crisis remains for those Americans and their families who are still struggling to find a job and keep a roof over their heads. Though this week we’re debating extension of emergency unemployment insurance, we should note this is not only an obvious and necessary thing to do, it is the beginning of our real work of sustaining the war on poverty. I’m proud to be engaged in broad bipartisan efforts to strengthen the middle class, to focus on jobs and skills and manufacturing.
We have to find bipartisan solutions that engage the private and the public sectors, federal and local governments, in putting people back to work.
And while we do that, we cannot forget to continue to insist on a circle of protection around the most vulnerable in our society, rather than allowing that valued circle to crumble.
We have to remember that we are all in this together. That, “there but for the grace of God go I.” As we see those in our community, in our families who are struggling in this recovery, we know that although today it may be our neighbors, tomorrow it may be us.
President Johnson called on us to focus on the best of America – the spirit that we hold each other up, the spirit that builds community through mutual sacrifice.
As we begin our work in this new year to jump-start our economy and spread hope and opportunity, we must never forget that basic spirit which President Johnson called for and which has kept this country moving forward from generation to generation.