GOP ‘Runs Out the Clock’ on Unemployment Insurance

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2014/05/30/GOP-Runs-Out-Clock-Unemployment-Insurance

BY ROB GARVER, The Fiscal Times
May 30, 2014

Barring an unexpected change of direction from the Republican leadership, the House of Representatives on Friday evening will go into recess yet again without taking action on extending emergency unemployment compensation benefits for millions of the long-term jobless.

It’s not the first time the House has left town without delivering financial help for the more than 3 million Americans who have exhausted their state-level benefits. But this exodus has a special significance. The extension approved by a bipartisan majority in the Senate – but never voted on in the House – authorized benefits only through May 31.

The Senate bill, which passed two months ago, renewed a federal extension of state-level unemployment benefits through the EUC program for five months, retroactive to when Congress allowed the previous extension to expire at the end of December.

The Senate bill will still be available for a House vote when members return on June 9, after a week’s time off – but it appears, for all practical purposes, to be dead. The chances of a purely retroactive extension of benefits passing the House at this point are extremely slim.

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The House Republicans’ refusal to allow a vote on an extension of jobless benefits has incensed advocates of the long-term unemployed, who point out that the federal extension of state benefits has never been ended when the level of long-term unemployment (defined as 27 weeks or more) was at high as it is right now. In the past, the program has never been cut off when long-term unemployment affected more than 1.3 percent of the workforce. It currently affects almost twice that percentage.

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