(VIDEO) Senate speech helps save unemployment assistance from more cuts

(5:24) “It’s OK to call in for certain circumstances or if you can’t make the trip, but you need to look at one of these counselors in the eye, and you need to talk to them not only about collecting benefits, but the steps in getting employed! It’s beyond me, ladies and gentlemen, that the department continues going down this path of sticking a thumb in the face of dislocated and unemployed workers. It’s time for it to stop. It’s time to get them back to work. It’s time to help them. I never thought I’d ever see this, that the department had come to this kind of level of basically forgetting what their job is.”

“Iowa officials have reversed course and will maintain unemployment assistance at the Des Moines office for people having problems with their claims. The move, announced in a press release this afternoon, came about 30 minutes after a senator made a passionate speech before his peers alleging the department had abandoned its mission.” –Des Moines Register