Senate Set to Approve Extension of U.S. Unemployment Benefits
“This debate is about whether in extending these benefits we should add to the debt or not,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Photographer: Brendan Hoffman/Bloomberg
July 20 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Senator Evan Bayh, an Indiana Democrat, talks about the importance of unemployment benefits in the current economic climate and the need for additional measures to create jobs. The Senate today ended a Republican filibuster and moved toward a final vote on legislation extending unemployment benefits to 2.5 million Americans who lost aid during a dispute over how to pay for it. Bayh talks with Matt Miller and Carol Massar on Bloomberg Television's "Street Smart." (Source: Bloomberg)
The Senate is preparing to approve an extension of unemployment aid to millions of Americans after the seating of the late Senator Robert Byrd’s successor gave Democrats the last vote needed to advance the measure.
The Senate voted 60-40 yesterday to end a filibuster by Republicans who objected that the bill would add to the federal deficit. The chamber will take a final vote as soon as today. The measure also requires approval by the House.
The $34 billion bill has been held up for weeks by Republicans demanding that Democrats find savings elsewhere in the budget to keep it from adding to the shortfall. Democrats, one vote short of the 60 needed to advance the bill, decided to wait for Carte Goodwin of West Virginia to take office.
“It’s such an honor to come to the United States Senate and fill the seat occupied by Senator Byrd,” Goodwin, 36, a former aide to West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin, said yesterday after casting the decisive vote. “But to come on my first day, in my first vote and help out millions of Americans - - it’s really quite an honor.”
Republicans said the measure could have been approved weeks ago if Democrats had agreed to find other funds to pay for it.
“There’s no debate in the Senate about whether we should pass a bill -- everyone agrees that we should,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican. “This debate is about whether in extending these benefits we should add to the debt or not.”
Snowe and Collins
Maine Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins were the only Republicans to support the bill; Ben Nelson of Nebraska was the only Democrat to oppose it. His state has a 4.9 percent unemployment rate, the nation’s third lowest.
Although the House previously approved the measure, it must be passed there again because of minor changes made by Senate Democrats. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, said his chamber would take it up as early as today.
The legislation would extend through November a program offering the long-term unemployed up to 99 weeks of assistance and provide aid retroactively to more than 2.5 million Americans whose checks were cut off by the impasse. Aid would average $310 per week.
It would push total unemployment benefit spending this year to more than $130 billion, a 50 percent increase from last year, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
Abandoned Provisions
Democrats dropped other unemployment assistance provisions because of complaints over the cost, including a 65 percent subsidy created last year to help the jobless buy health insurance through their former employers. It benefited 2 million households last year, according to the Treasury Department.
The measure wouldn’t renew an additional $25 weekly jobless benefit that was part of last year’s economic stimulus. Nor would it extend a tax exemption for the first $2,400 in unemployment aid.
Also, Democrats don’t plan to extend aid to the growing number of Americans who have already received the maximum 99 weeks of allowable aid. A number of other jobs-related provisions, including plans to send additional aid to state governments, that once comprised Democrats’ election-year agenda were jettisoned amid complaints they would add too much to the deficit.
“We have stripped this measure down to the bare essentials,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat.
Contributed to Unemployment
An April report by a pair of economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco said that the aid extensions, which are the longest ever, have contributed to the unemployment rate though the effect was “relatively modest.” It estimated the jobless rate at the end of last year would have been 9.6 percent, rather than 10 percent, without the extensions.
A study by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. last month said the earliest Congress allowed extended unemployment benefits to lapse during an economic recovery was in 1978 and 1985, when the jobless rate in each case was 7.4 percent -- a figure the nation won’t see again before 2012, according to CBO.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said earlier this week the extension probably won’t be the last. “I think it is fair and safe to assume that we are not going to wake up at the end of November and find ourselves at a rate of unemployment that no one would consider not to be still in an emergency,” Gibbs told reporters.
To contact the reporter on this story: Brian Faler in Washington at bfaler@bloomberg.net
Rate this Page