Sen. Reed: Add Unemployment Extension to Emergency Border Spending Bill

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Congress should add an unemployment extension to President Barack Obama’s $4.3 billion proposed emergency spending bill, Sen. Jack Reed said Wednesday.

“There is an emergency supplemental coming down the pike that seeks to deal with immediate threats like wildfires and the humanitarian situation on our border,” Reed said in a statement. “Helping Americans who’ve been hit hardest by the recession is an urgent priority and restoring UI should be part of that conversation and part of that supplemental package. I am going to work with my colleagues to try to find a way to get this done and get people the help they need.”

Reed’s comments come as others have been eyeing the offset in legislation he drafted with Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., to re-up benefit for five months. The measure costs a little less than $10 billion and would be fully offset — a key to Republican support — using a combination of revenue raisers that includes extending “pension smoothing” provisions and extending customs user fees through 2024.

“This is now the second time they’ve taken offsets intended to help the unemployed and used them to pay for other priorities,” Reed said. “First it was the sequestration extension for mandatory spending, which was good enough for Paul Ryan to use, but when it was proposed to help the unemployed, House Republicans said no. Then they turned around and used it as part of the agreement on military COLAs.”

“Then, the Senate came together and broke filibuster after filibuster, repeatedly overcame the 60-vote threshold, and passed a bipartisan, fully offset plan to renew emergency UI, and House Republicans refused to act,” Reed continued. “They refused to take a vote or lift a finger to help job seekers. Now they are again taking UI’s offset and using it to pay for something else.”


read: http://blogs.rollcall.com/wgdb/reed-add-unemployment-extension-to-emergency-spending-bill/