Over a long Senate career, John McCain has voted at least 18 times against extending benefits of the federal unemployment insurance program to Americans who have lost their jobs.
With generous tax cuts McCain now rewards corporations that move factories out of Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, while opposing any relief for the millions of jobless workers who are left behind.
• In Michigan the unemployment rate of 8.5 percent is the highest in the nation. The rate has increased from 7.1 percent a year ago. Today, there is a huge bloc of 423,000 unemployed workers in Michigan. This number has increased by 70,000 over the past year. In the cities of Detroit, Kalamazoo, and Flint, all ravaged by lost jobs, the unemployment rate is even more severe.
• The state of Ohio, too, has been devastated. Since George W. Bush took office, the number of manufacturing jobs in Ohio has dropped by 236,000. Currently there are 430,000 unemployed workers in Ohio, an increase of nearly 100,000 over this time last year. In Cleveland, the unemployment rate has shot up from 5.9 percent to 7.3 percent over the past year.
• There are 341,000 unemployed workers in the state of Pennsylvania. This is a huge 25 percent increase over a year ago.
Barack Obama has a solid record of support for using federal powers to relieve the problems of those who have lost their jobs. McCain, on the other hand, has consistently ignored their problems. Through his 22 years in the Senate McCain has voted against standard unemployment benefits that would relieve the travails they face.
• In 1991, when the nation’s economy was in a severe recession, McCain voted against an appropriation of $6.4 billion to extend unemployment benefits for 20 weeks.
• In 1993 McCain opposed the extension of an emergency unemployment compensation program that aimed to extend benefits for displaced workers for three months.
• In 2001 McCain voted against legislation that would have provided enhanced unemployment benefits for workers who were laid off from their jobs as a result of reductions in air service due to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
• In 2003 McCain voted against legislation that would have increased appropriations for unemployment insurance by $16.3 billion to enable benefits to be paid to people who had been unemployed for a long time and also to extend benefits to part-time and low-wage workers who lost their jobs.
• In 2003 McCain opposed an amendment that would have provided additional weeks of unemployment benefits for workers who were still out of work after six months.
• In 2004 McCain voted against a measure to extend unemployment benefits to workers who had to leave their job because of spousal abuse or other domestic violence.
Now that McCain is running for president he has voiced support for extending unemployment benefits. But he still declines to vote for them.
Today McCain sheds crocodile tears over those who have lost jobs as a result of Hurricane Gustav. Yet in 2005, when unemployment insurance was not on his list of his presidential concerns, McCain voted against extending unemployment benefits to victims of Hurricane Katrina.