1.3 million americans lost a vital economic lifeline while they looked for work. remember that? since then, that number has risen to 2.3 million americans. in the mean typtimmeantime, hou boehner has stone walled any attempt to bring that extension of a lifeline to the house. i made clear to the president last december that, you know, if they wanted us to consider an extension of emergency unemployment benefits, would have to be paid for and would have to include things that would help get our economy going. fortunately for speaker pain, a bill to do all those things has already passed the senate. it is fully paid for through a combination of offsets including exotic sounding pension and custom fees. that includes things like getting the economy going it the cbo estimates restoring people s unemployment insurance would create 200,000 jobs in 2014, not
debate about what the budget should look like? i think it s fundamental wrong to continue to kick this thing down the road. to just punt on this and say we ll deal with this after the election. no, we got a crisis right now. there s some of us who believe we can no longer delay on this. we have to make the cut right now, right here today. i should mention, i would be in favor i would encourage speaker pain, let s have a straight up or down vote. let s see how many people on the democrat and republican side of the aisle would actually vote to unilaterally raise the debt ceiling. i don t think it would pass. i think it would be very bipartisan to say no, we re not going to do that. i m not saying push it back until after the 2012 presidential election. we need to figure this out. but we re not going to figure it out between now and monday. i think we both accept that as a matter of how washington works. let s get the debt ceiling out of the way because everybody s plans requires si