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So the good news is, if you're unemployed and you go to apply for a job and you're not hired for that job, see a lawyer - you may be able to file for a claim because you were discriminated against because you were unemployed.

Social Security is not a retirement savings plan; it is a social insurance program. It's a contract that says, as a society, we will look out for you and your family when you can no longer work.

But we will say something else. That for far too long in this country, people who can work, people who are able to work, and people who choose not to work: you cannot go on claiming welfare like you are now.

Understand, this is unemployment insurance. It's not welfare, as a lot of my Republican colleagues like to suggest it is. You pay into it when you're working. You get help when you're not.

Prolonged unemployment is a tragedy of broken lives, broken families, foreclosed homes, and life without health insurance.

Being unemployed has so many real and palpable ramifications but there are also psychological side effects which you can only understand if you've truly lived through it.

They keep extending these unemployment benefits to the point where people are afraid to go out and get a job, because the job doesn't pay as much as the unemployment benefit does.

I've heard the argument that unemployment benefits somehow act as a disincentive to the long-term unemployed when it comes to looking for work, but the opposite is true. Unemployment Insurance serves as a powerful incentive for people to keep searching for jobs, rather than drop out of the labor force altogether.

I don't think we need to extend unemployment any further without paying for it, and without making some modifications such as turning it into a loan at some point. It then encourages people to go back to work.

Long-term unemployment can make any worker progressively less employable, even after the economy strengthens.