For Immediate Release: Wednesday, April 4, 2012

WASHINGTON, DC – Today, Congressman Jim McDermott (D-WA) issued the below statement about the announcement that Washington state’s long-term unemployment insurance will decrease by 26 weeks after April 21.  The decrease was triggered after the state’s unemployment rate dropped to 8.2% in February.

“While the economic situation in Washington state is improving for some, this is terrible news for the tens of thousands of long-term unemployed individuals who have yet to secure a job and are relying solely on unemployment insurance to make ends meet on a week-to-week basis.  More than 12,000 unemployed workers will be cut off from unemployment insurance on April 21.  In the 8 weeks that follow April 21, more than 11,000 will exhaust their unemployment insurance.  Add to that another 40,000 people who could run out of unemployment insurance during the last six month of the year.
 
“Behind these numbers are the lives of hardworking Washingtonians who lost their jobs through no fault of their own and continue to suffer from the effects of the worst recession since the Great Depression. As companies started laying off workers during the recession, I worked to see that emergency unemployment benefits were enacted in 2008, which gave the workers in hard-hit states like Washington up to 99 weeks of unemployment insurance.  Since then, I’ve successfully fought for the extension of unemployment insurance nine times despite growing resistance from Congressional Republicans.
 
“In recent debates, Republicans have been quick to accuse the long-term unemployed of being lazy and this couldn’t be further from the truth.  The fact is that our unemployment insurance system needs to be modernized – it is not the re-employment system that it should be and Republicans allowed the historic modernization efforts that I fought for in 2009 to expire.
 
“Four people are competing for every available job, and we must do more to help the unemployed, and especially the long-term unemployed, re-enter the job market with the necessary skills to compete for the available jobs out there.”

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Follow McDermott on Twitter: @RepJimMcDermott.