Tuesday, July 20, 2010

U.S. Senate Passed Bill To Extend Federal Unemployment Benefits To 2.5 Million Unemployed Americans

Graph: Internet

"Americans remember the Republicans (GOP) in November, remember they opposed extended unemployment benefits for 2.5 million fellow Americans."

Republicans opposed extending unemployment benefits to Americans with filibuster, but were out voted by Democrats who overrode blockage of benefits

By H. Nelson Goodson
July 20, 2010

Washington D.C. - On Tuesday, U.S. Senate Democrats passed bill by 60-40 to override a Republican filibuster and proceed to extend federal unemployment benefits to 2.5 million unemployed whose benefits had ran out, despite opposition by Republicans. The Senate will take up the bill once again on Wednesday and is expected to be approved. Then the full House will get the bill, which is expected to easily pass it and extending $34 billion in federal unemployment benefits. President Barack H. Obama will sign the bill later in the week, after Congress approves it.
Two Republicans, Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, both from Maine voted with Democrats to end the filibuster. Only Senator Ben Nelson (Dem) of Nebraska voted with Republicans to oppose extending benefits to unemployed Americans.
The Republicans in Congress have blocked extended benefits three times forcing Americans who are unemployed through no fault of their own, to face losing the roof on their heads and can't affort to pay monthly ultilities and buy food for their children.
The lack of extended unemployment benefits support by Republicans had forced President Barack H. Obama to address the issue and call on Republicans on Monday to end the block of extended benefits to jobless Americans who continue to look for work.
Republicans and the G.O.P. were accused of using Washington politics to block benefits, according to Democrats and President Obama.
On Tuesday afternoon, West Virginia U.S. Senator Clarke Goodwin (Dem) was sworn in and within minutes the Senate took up the unemployment benefit bill and approved it. Goodwin provided the 60th crucial vote to pass the bill.
On Monday, President Obama called on Congress to extend critical unemployment insurance to millions of Americans looking for a job.
In the three previous efforts, Senate Republicans have blocked the extension of emergency relief for the unemployed. Across the country, this stonewalling has already blocked assistance to 2.5 million Americans, and hundreds of thousands more are impacted by each additional week of delay.
The President also highlighted that many Republicans have previously supported unemployment extensions under Republican administration, but refuse to offer relief to middle class families today. Many of these Republicans want to extend hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans while telling working families that we can't afford to help them when they need it most.
President Obama said, "who need emergency relief to help them pay the rent, cover their utilities, and put food on the table while they look for another job. For a long time, there's been a tradition under both Democratic and Republican presidents to offer relief to the unemployed. That was certainly the case under my predecessor, when Republican Senators voted several times to extend emergency unemployment benefits.
These benefits that are often a person's sole source of income while they're out of work are in jeopardy. After years of championing policies that turned a record surplus into a massive deficit, the same people who didn't have any problem spending hundreds of billions of dollars on tax breaks for the wealthiest American are now saying we shouldn't offer relief to middle class Americans.
Over the past few weeks, a majority of Senators have tried not once, not twice, but three times to extend emergency relief on a temporary basis. And each time, a partisan minority in the Senate has used parliamentary maneuvers to block a vote, denying millions of people who are out of work much-needed relief. Republican leaders in the Senate are advancing a misguided notion that emergency relief somehow discourages people from looking for a job.

ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND

Federal unemployment insurance provisions expired on June 4th. The Republicans refusal to act has already blocked assistance to 2.5 million Americans, and hundreds of thousands more are impacted by each additional week of delay.

There also is a broader economic imperative to extending these benefits Independent assessments from the National Federation of Independent Businesses and the Duke University/CFO Magazine survey have cited sales concerns and weak product demand as the largest concerns voiced by small businesses and corporate financial officers. The Duke survey found that 36.4 percent of the CFOs believed that weak consumer demand was the top macro concern for their corporation more than 18 percentage points higher than any other listed concern.

Extending unemployment benefits expands local purchasing power Economist Mark Zandi of Moody's Economy.com put the economic multiplier of extending a dollar of unemployment benefits at 1.6 meaning that, for every dollar spent on unemployment compensation $1.60 is added to our economy's output. Similarly, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office places the multiplier in a range between 0.8 and 2.1.

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