2010 Unemployment Extensions - Tuesday Vote to Restore UI Benefits to 2.5 Million

2010 Unemployment Extensions - UI Extension legislation has been deadlocked in the Senate for nearly two months now. Jobless Americans began seeing their lifeline cut off as far back as June 2.

Since that time, the Senate has debated, argued, promoted, adjusted, modified, voted, disagreed, blamed, demonized, demagogued - and vacationed - for weeks. But the end result of all this political banter, so far at least, has not been a shiny new piece of unemployment extension legislation to help their constituents. The result has been 2.5 million Americans left with little or, all to often, no income at all with which to take care of their families.

According to the Wall Street Journal, some $2.76 billion has been held back from the unemployed while Washington bickered. Think about that - While we watch helplessly, while our cupboards grow bare, our lights go dark, and the police come knocking on our doors to throw us out of our homes, there is a pile of cash 2,760,000,000 bills high, that could have relieved our suffering.

Well, not exactly. The issue that the Democrats and Republicans have been squabbling over all this time was not whether to extend our benefits or not. Both sides have been on board with that.

What they have been arguing over is how to pay for it. Not only the $2.76 billion in retroactive UI benefits we have now missed but the $34 billion total cost of the unemployment extensions through November.

It seems the Republicans have finally come to their fiscal senses and have asked that we stop adding to the deficit when it's not necessary, particularly in light of the fact that the size that the deficit has ballooned to over the past 17 months has now become one of the major impediments to job creation.

But the Democrats, being in control of the Senate (and the White House and the House of Representatives, for that matter) have rejected every Republican bill, amendment, compromise or offer to get us unemployment extensions without continuing to destroy the economy.

No matter. The debate appears, at last, to have run its course. The 60^th vote necessary to pass the unemployment extension bill by putting it on the national credit card is expected to be there on Tuesday, July 20, when the replacement for the late Senator Robert Byrd is sworn in.

This is welcome news to those 2.5 million unemployed, myself included, who have ceased receiving our desperately needed unemployment checks while we struggle to compete with 15 million others for 3.2 million jobs - Few of which any one of us might even be qualified for.

Some version of the unemployment extensions bill is scheduled to be brought to the floor of the Senate on Tuesday, July 20, at 2:30. Depending on which version Reid chooses to entertain, however, it may take a little longer to actually call for the vote, and then the bill may have to return to the House for their approval before the UI extension bill can finally go to the president for his signature. (The Senate version of unemployment extensions along with a new amendment prepared by Harry Reid is the one currently on the calendar, but the House version has been prepared for a vote as well. There are several others submitted by Senate members on either side of the aisle which are also still waiting in the wings but these are unlikely to be looked at. As Senate Majority Leader, the choice of which bill to put forward lies with Harry Reid.)

Whichever version of the unemployment extension bill is introduced, however, it is finally, truly expected to pass. It should become law by the end of the week. And then, depending on how quickly EDD offices in each of the states can tally our arrearages and cut our checks, we, the unemployed, should start receiving our benefits checks by the end of the month at the earliest - Early to mid August more likely.

So by all indications, this nightmare should soon be over. For some, it will come just in the nick of time. For far too many, however, it may already be too late. The stalemate in the Senate over how to pay for unemployment extensions while allowing so many people to lose their benefits, may have cost many, many people everything they had. Getting back up when you have fallen too far down becomes all the more difficult. Let us hope this government sees the devastation their demagoguing for political gain has caused so that they never put the American people through anything like this again.

Sources:

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2010/07/17/number-of-the-week-unemployment-extension-delay/

http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/job_seekers_still_face_intolerable_odds