More than 200,000 to lose jobless benefits Monday with Congress out

Starting Monday, more than 200,000 unemployed workers
won’t see jobless benefits they’re expecting because Congress failed to act.

The interruption in benefits will last two weeks at a
minimum, according to Judy Conti of the National Employment Law Project (NELP),
since lawmakers return from spring break on April 12.

{mosads}As the two-week recess began, Congress was at an impasse
over how to extend the emergency unemployment insurance program and other
expiring provisions, including increased COBRA health insurance subsidies for
the unemployed, the Medicare doctor payment rate and federal flood insurance.

Senate Republicans said the $9.3 billion, 30-day extension
preferred by Democrats should be paid for, while Democrats said the bill’s cost
didn’t need to be offset because the program was “emergency spending.”

Under the jobless benefits program that ends Monday, the unemployed are eligible for up to 99 weeks of unemployment benefits.
The program, aimed at helping the jobless stay afloat when new jobs
aren’t readily available, gives an unemployed worker more than the 26 weeks of
unemployment insurance normally available. But with the program ending, those
out of work for as few as six months will see an interruption in their benefit
checks.

“Odds are they have burned through savings, already asked
for loans and gifts from family and friends if needed, so going for two weeks
without a paycheck, especially if those two weeks are a time when rent or
mortgage is due, is going to be hard,” Conti said.

Conti’s
group estimates that 212,000 people will lose unemployment benefits in
the first week that the program has elapsed. For each additional week
that the program isn’t extended, another 200,000 workers will
see an interruption in benefits, Conti said.

Those who will miss unemployment checks may see them in the
future.

Senate Democrats said they’ll try to pass an extension of
the program that can be applied retroactively once Congress is back in session.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has scheduled a vote on cloture to
end debate on the short-term extension for April 12.

Democratic and Republican leaders both claim the higher
ground, confident that the public will blame the other side for causing the
gap.

Democrats blamed Republicans, who objected to a quick Senate
vote on a short-term unemployment benefits extension, for blocking relief to
those seeking work.

Republicans said House Democrats are to blame. When Sen. Tom
Coburn (R-Okla.) and other conservative GOP lawmakers made clear they wouldn’t
allow swift passage of the 30-day extension if its cost wasn’t offset, Senate
GOP and Democratic leaders discussed a brief, one-week extension. But House
Democrats said they wanted the one-month extension.

Senate Republican aides sent a memo to reporters with media
reports suggesting the short-term deal was “quashed by Democrats.”

Coburn said he and other GOP lawmakers were willing to work
through the recess to find a way to extend benefits without increasing the
$12.8 trillion federal debt.

“I think it would have been a good idea to stay here
and work this out,” Coburn told reporters. “Unfortunately, we chose
not to do that… because we didn’t want to make difficult choices about where
we cut spending and eliminate additions to the debt.”

Senior Democrats said their enthusiasm for Friday’s Labor
Department report showing a net 162,000 jobs created in March was tempered by
the fact that 15 million were still unemployed.

“With so many families in Nevada and across the country
still struggling to find work and make ends meet, it is imperative that Senate
Republicans stop blocking the extension of critical unemployment insurance and
health benefits,” Reid said in a statement. “Their obstruction
endangers the economic certainty of millions of families.”

The AFL-CIO said it will be “doing events, writing
letters, making phone calls” this week to press Republicans to go along
with an extension.

“One thing is crystal clear, Republican obstruction is
going to cost hundreds of thousands of working families their benefits,”
said Eddie Vale, spokesman for the AFL-CIO. “So we will be loudly and
publicly calling them out.”

The partisan debate over jobless benefits and their cost
will likely last beyond next week. Senate and House Democrats are planning to
extend the emergency unemployment program and increased COBRA benefits to the
end of 2010. The Senate version, which also included extensions of business tax
breaks, cost about $150 billion, more than $100 billion of which wasn’t offset.