I have never actually measured it, but I suspect the distance between the Senate floor in Washington, D.C., and the unemployment office downtown where I spent Tuesday afternoon must be at least a dozen or so light years.
I was there when senators finally cleared the hurdle allowing them to vote on legislation to restore unemployment benefits to 2.5 million Americans who have been out of work for more than six months.
One thing, though, did catch my eye during the entire sad, almost-heartless bickering:
Three hundred nine bucks per week. That is the average benefit that will be paid under the legislation to the millions of still-unemployed.
Not exactly chump change, but was it enough, I wanted to know, to keep — as more than a few Republican politicians flat stated in past weeks — any unemployed man or woman from wanting to go out and find work?
The unemployment office is the mother lode of stories. Everyone there has one. And they are more than willing to share it.
Today, we will go with Gerald Goudeau’s.
He is 57 years old, a man who lost his management job with a fast-food restaurant chain after it began closing stores in Denver in November 2008.
He had been happily employed there for 13 years.
Today he works extremely part time collecting shopping carts from the parking lot of a market not far from his Aurora home.
He has had the job for nearly a year, and it remains the best one he has been offered.
He had come to the unemployment office to get reinstated his weekly benefit, which had fallen victim to a series of bureaucratic snafus.
“This is the first period in my entire life that I’ve had to draw unemployment,” he said.
Initially, he was receiving about $400 every two weeks. He kept looking for work. He sold his car and began riding the bus to interviews.
You can’t, Goudeau said, just sit at home and collect the benefit. You have to make at least five job contacts a week.
A friend told him about the grocery buggy job. He took it. His unemployment fell to $52 a week. The more he works, the lower that number goes.
“Politicians today act like they don’t want to help poor people,” he said, “when they are the people we depend on the most.”
Yes, he has heard politicians say his $52 is an incentive for him not to work. They say this, he says, when they are wealthy and he struggles so.
“You never accept this life,” he says. “You realize you have to make something out of nothing. You can’t just give up.”
He saw his mother do what he does now. He grew up poor. He thought he would have a different life.
The politicians should see the people he has in this office, he says, people whose lives are more dire than even his. The politicians play games when mothers have babies to feed, fathers can’t make the rent, people pray for unemployment so they can eat.
He wonders how many politicians ever rode their bike because they couldn’t afford the $2 bus fare. How many shop the dollar stores, or consistently buy graying, “last day” meat?
“I’m not bitter,” Goudeau said. “Trust me, I thank God every day for this part-time job. One day, I just have to believe, things are going to be better.”
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
