WASHINGTON - U.S. Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) today stood on the Senate floor in favor of the unemployment insurance benefits extension and released the following statement:

"I rise today to say that it should come as a surprise to no one that we have a jobs crisis in America. To help fix it in the short-term we need to extend unemployment insurance benefits to help families who are suffering through the worst job market in many years - not obstruct and stonewall to score political points."

"People's lives are in the balance. This is not a time for political grandstanding; not a time to once again say NO. NO to everything. NO to people who need help. This is not a time for amendments about ACORN or E-verify - amendments which have been offered and voted on time and time again."

The video of those remarks are available here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNqK-TTPyWM


Full text of speech in the Senate floor, as prepared for delivery:


Mr. President, I rise today to say that it should come as a surprise to no one that we have a jobs crisis in America.

To help fix it in the short-term we need to extend unemployment insurance benefits to help families who are suffering through the worst job market in many years - not obstruct and stonewall to score political points.

People's lives are in the balance. This is not a time for political grandstanding; not a time to once again say NO. NO to everything. NO to people who need help.

This is not a time for amendments about ACORN or E-verify - amendments which have been offered and voted on time and time again. And it's nice that those who offer them get their paychecks direct-deposited every week.

This is not the time to offer them again after the job crisis this administration inherited.
Unemployment in New Jersey is at 9.8 percent, just shy of double digit unemployment, and the experts tell us it will get worse before it gets better.

This is not the time to keep saying NO.

The policies of the last administration that favored the bottom line over the lives of people - Wall Street over Main Street -- sent millions of jobs overseas, leaving us vulnerable to any economic downturn, let alone one so severe as the one we were left with.
When the economy sheds 263,000 jobs in one month alone - it's a crisis...

When 14.9 million Americans are unemployed and we know there are only about 3 million jobs available -- it's not the time to say NO.

When over a third of all unemployed - more than 5 million Americans -- have been jobless for 6 months or longer...

And 500,000 Americans will exhaust their unemployment benefits this month -- 1.5 million by the end of the year -we have to say YES to extending unemployment benefits.

The Real Story

Mr. President, we could recite numbers all day. We could hold up chart after chart showing state-by-state unemployment figures.

But the numbers don't tell us what this is really about.

It's about people, their lives, their hopes, the look on their faces when the bills come due, the fear that they could stand to lose everything.

Everywhere I go someone comes up to me and I see that look on their face. They lost their job after the holidays, their benefits are about to run out - they lost their health care and are behind on the mortgage -- their husband or wife is working two part time jobs to try to make up.

The story of these troubled times is not in the numbers; it's in the faces of families who are looking to us for help.

Mr. President. The numbers are significant but they are merely a snapshot frozen in time.

The truth of joblessness in this country is an every-changing story of men and women who are one check away from ruin -- mothers and fathers who have struggled all their lives to make ends meet...

...had a good job for years, made a decent wage...

...then saw eight years of government policies that favored Wall Street over Main Street.

They watched their company down and send jobs overseas... watched their friends be laid off.

They went to bed at night praying they would not be next.

Then they got the news...

But they had hope because of the wisdom of Franklin Roosevelt who, on August 14, 1935, 74 years ago, signed into law the Social Security Act which included the first provisions for unemployment insurance.

And the Republican opposition in his day called him a socialist and they too tried everything they could to stop the New Deal notwithstanding an economy in Depression.

For FDR the story was not in the numbers. It was on the faces of the people in grainy black and white photographs of breadlines and old women selling apples on streetcorners.

Today the faces of the unemployed are no different. Their need for help is the same and our duty to provide it is the same.

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