Unemployment Benefits Extension Advances

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2008/04/17/unemployment-benefits-extension-advances/

by Mike Hall, Apr 17, 2008

More than 200,000 jobless workers a month run out of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits without finding new jobs. Some 3.5 million unemployed workers are expected to exhaust their benefits this year.

That’s six months without work or prospects for a new job in an economy that is shedding jobs and on a downward spiral that most economists say isn’t even close to bottoming out.

Yesterday, the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee took the first step to helping the long-term jobless when it passed a bill (H.R. 5749) to provide an additional 13 weeks of UI benefits for jobless workers in every state and an additional 13 weeks to those in states with high unemployment rates. Says Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), co-sponsor of the bill, along with Rep. Phil English (R-Pa.):

The economy is in trouble, the American people are in trouble; and we intend to help. If ever there was a time when the American people expected action out of Congress, this is it….Finding a decent job becomes harder and harder as more jobs are shed.

Earlier this year, the AFL-CIO urged Congress to include a UI extension in an economic stimulus package, but it was dropped from the legislation after President Bush said he would veto the bill if it included an extension. In a letter this week to the Ways and Means Committee, AFL-CIO Government Affairs Director Bill Samuel wrote:

There are currently 1.3 million workers—or 17.5 percent of all unemployed workers—who have been jobless for more than six months….The long-term unemployment rate is already much higher than it was at the beginning of the 2001 and 1990-1991 recessions, and is the same as when Congress extended benefits during the last two recessions….

…There is now one job available for every two (1.93) people actively seeking work. Payrolls contracted for the third month in a row in March—the largest job loss in five years—and the number of private-sector jobs has fallen 300,000 since November.


FULL story at link.

[Faygo Kid]

1. Bush has vetoed every extension since he took office. He'll veto this one, too.

And it won't be overridden, because unemployed people aren't big enough issues on the public radar, and the media will bury it at the bottom of page 9.

Because William Ayers detonating a bomb when Barack was 8 is so much more important to people's lives.