2010 Unemployment Extensions: What Are the Chances for a Tier 5 - Ever?

2010 Unemployment Extensions - "Tier 5 to Survive" has become the rallying cry of the "ninety-niners", those unemployed who have found themselves jobless for the longest period of time and have nearly or already exhausted all ninety-nine possible weeks of unemployment benefits.

It's true that the four tiers of unemployment benefits extensions, tallying up to ninety-nine weeks in the hardest hit states, are unprecedented. Still, jobs are either out there for all of the unemployed or they're not. And unfortunately, they're not. In fact, the longer the jobless go without finding new employment, the less employers seem to want to hire them.

They argue that our skills have gone stale, which is probably true. I know in my own field, real estate, the market has changed enormously over the last year and a half or so since I was employed. Rules are different, buyers and sellers are different, lending is completely different and I understand now even the contracts, about which I considered myself quite a competent expert, have completely changed. It doesn't help my confidence to think about it. Still, I know I learned my vocation one time, I can certainly learn it again. And this time with a lot of carefully honed strengths and a lot of experience behind me.

Nevertheless, positive thinking aside, what it really comes down to is that employers seem to prefer someone who has only recently fallen out of the job market. And someone younger. And someone less ... desperate?

So I apply not only for jobs in my profession, but for every other kind of job you could possibly imagine. But as you may also imagine, if I'm no longer valued in my own profession, I am apparently even less so in another. I am either overqualified or under-qualified or they're sure I'll leave the moment something better comes along.

Which, of course, is absolutely true. Who wouldn't?

I hear so many of the unemployed encountering the same roadblocks. So we are stranded: ready, willing and able to work, but unable to find anyone who will hire us.

Ninety-nine weeks, then, may as well be ninety-nine hours. We have fought to stay alive, we and those that count on us, for all this time on some small portion of what we really need to make it, and all of a sudden it's gone. I'm grateful for my unemployment benefits and all the extensions. (Although I'm currently cut off, but I still fully expect the Senate will restore unemployment extensions soon.) But still, if Congress does not extend unemployment benefits and add more weeks or a Tier 5, the millions of us that have been struggling without a job the longest will still wind up right where several million are today - Losing our homes, falling into homelessness, unable to feed our families, without cars (I already lost mine months ago), without power, without internet, without phones, without an address that we can write down on a job application. Not a pretty picture. No way to have to live - and all for the sins of a rogue government.

It seems obvious to anyone in this condition - Of course the government will have to extend unemployment benefits to a Tier 5. But as hard as the past few months have been in the House and the Senate, just getting them to pass unemployment extensions so people can even move through the first four tiers, the odds are not looking very good for a Tier 5.

First of all, the will of the American people just isn't there anymore. While so many of us are unemployed - Far closer to 20% are unemployed or under-employed rather than the 9.5% the government is currently reporting - that still means that the majority, or 80%, are working and, honestly, for someone not struggling to survive on unemployment benefits, it's hard for many of them to understand.

Many feel that four tiers of extensions or ninety-nine weeks should be more than long enough for anyone who is seriously trying to find some kind of a new job. I don't blame them. How could they possibly understand? This economy and job market are unlike anything almost anyone now living has experienced in their lifetime.

Next, the deficit has now grown so large, there is neither public nor much political will left to continue to let it grow any larger. Even the Obama Administration has said they will shut down stimulus spending after the current unemployment extensions being debated have been passed. This doesn't bode well for trying to add a Tier 5.

Also, the Democrats themselves, who have been so adamant about not paying for unemployment benefits extensions, have already expressed a distaste for adding a Tier 5 or any additional weeks of benefits to Tier 4. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal) and Senator Max Baucus (D-Montana) told interviewers over a month ago that they thought ninety-nine weeks was enough. I don't know what they based that profound judgment on. Since they haven't created any jobs to speak of or done anything that actually stimulates the private sector economy with all their trillions in spending over the last year and a half, there aren't enough jobs to absorb the millions of unemployed that will be falling into homelessness and abject poverty - just a little later rather than sooner because of the four tiers of unemployment benefits currently possible.

Further, Harry Reid apparently intends to recess early after this session of Congress and send his Democrat minions back to their districts to try to protect their turf in the November elections. Definitely an uphill and probably mostly loosing battle, perhaps even for Reid himself, as this President and this Congress has fallen greatly out of favor with the American people over their glaringly failed policies. So there will likely be little will among the Democrats who now claim to be trying to help the unemployed to try to further extend our benefits to a Tier 5. After all, they really only needed to drag out the "we care about the unemployed" show for the upcoming elections. After that, we really won't matter to the Democrats. And besides, they also have big plans for a number of job killing bills that they and the President have vowed to ram through over the remainder of the year while they still hold the majority.

Finally, since the Democrats have refused to vote for any of the many deficit neutral unemployment extension bills or amendments that the Republicans have offered over the last couple of months, and since they are holding out for the 60^th vote for their deficit increasing version of the bill, once that bill has finally passed and then the Dems have spent the remaining stimulus money that the Republicans wanted to spend on us on political payoffs, the Republicans may have a hard time justifying spending any more for unemployment benefits.

All in all, we are left with few people, either in the country or in our government, that may still have the stomach for helping us with a Tier 5 or any additional weeks of UI extensions.

In the end, as it always has been, it will be up to us to either find jobs, start businesses, or, if those options continue to prove impossible for so many of us, as they certainly will under the current economic policies - probably worse - it will be up to us to just lobby the heck out of what will probably be a Republican dominated House, a more evenly split Senate and an apparently disinterested and inept President. What would be our saving grace, really, is if we are wise enough NOT to vote for those that have used us and our suffering during this current unemployment extension debate to demonize the Republicans to get our votes, but to see through that and see that the Democrats' policies, as has always been the case in the past, have not worked. We need fresh legislators on both sides of the aisle that will turn back the misguided policies of this current government and who will enact policies that actually DO work to stimulate economic growth and job creation in the private sector. That way, if we are unable to convince those remaining in positions of power over us to grant us more weeks of unemployment or to grant us a Tier 5, we might have a chance at actually finding a job. But we better start now to make our case ... Not with anger and name calling, but with reason and evidence, in a way they can hear.

I haven't given up on a Tier 5. But I know it's going to be an uphill climb. But we are Americans. More so than any people on this planet, we have the will and the ingenuity to survive and overcome and to thrive again. Hang in there, everyone. I won't give up. Don't you either.