Unemployed North Carolinian: “We have been forgotten. We are not going on days, we are not going on weeks, we are going on months of unemployment”
Senator Tillis and Mitch McConnell continued their push to ram through a Supreme Court nominee hostile to our health care today, even as North Carolinians across the state call on Senator Tillis to prioritize a coronavirus relief package instead.
Just yesterday, Senator Tillis again lied to North Carolinians about his priorities, saying he’d stay in D.C. “as long as it takes” until he passes additional aid even though Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans like Senator Tillis continue to be “the holdup to a coronavirus stimulus bill before the election.”
North Carolinians out of work slammed Senator Tillis for failing to pass a COVID relief aid:
- John Motsinger, a Winston-Salem rigging technician: “We have been forgotten. We are not going on days, we are not going on weeks, we are going on months of unemployment”
- Uschi Woronin, a Huntersville flight attendant: “The same elected officials that months ago are calling us essential, I think I can speak for airline employees when I say that if our elected officials were to be more honest about how they really feel about us, a better word would have been expendable.”
- Zattier Marvin, an airline passenger service agent: “Congress is not facing this. They know they have a place to go home to lay their head, they have food on the table, they have clothes on their back, they have doctor’s care, we’re facing where we don’t we don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. And it’s scary.”
North Carolina’s unemployment rate jumped last month to 7.3%, twice the pre-pandemic rate, yet Senator Tillis remains more committed to rushing through a Supreme Court nominee before the election that passing critical relief. Senator Tillis in August promised, “we’ll stay here as long as we have to to get it done,” yet has repeatedly failed North Carolina.
“In the middle of a pandemic, as people are still struggling to get by and calling out Senator Tillis by name for breaking his repeated promises to pass additional coronavirus relief, Senator Tillis is more focused on ramming through a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court who is hostile to our health care,” NCDP spokesperson Robert Howard said. “Senator Tillis continues to show he doesn’t just have the wrong priorities, but that he’s abandoned North Carolinians right when they need him the most.”