House Dems want supercommittee to take up unemployment extension

House Democrats want the deficit supercommittee to extend unemployment benefits set to expire at the end of the year.

Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee say the one-year extension would cost about $44 billion and that including it in the supercommittee package would be the easiest way to get it to the president’s desk.

Republicans are expected to oppose extending the benefits, leading a senior Democrat to accuse them of holding the unemployed hostage.

{mosads}”The GOP won’t give away a card, they’ll hold 6 million people hostage,” Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) told The Hill after the press conference.

Still, McDermott predicted an extension would be approved.

“The bill will happen at some point,” he said.

House Democrats are talking to their colleagues on the supercommittee about including the extension, an aide said.

The supercommittee plan is due Nov. 23, right before Thanksgiving, and the 12 members of the secretive panel haven’t been willing to provide any detail of their discussions.

If the provision isn’t included in the supercommittee’s plan, a freestanding measure would likely churn up angst against more spending and press lawmakers close to the deadline.

There is growing skepticism that the panel will be able to produce a plan by the deadline.

“Never before has Congress allowed emergency unemployment benefits to expire with such a large percentage of Americans looking for work and we must not let that happen now,” said Rep. Sandy Levin (D-Mich.), ranking member on the Ways and Means Committee. He is the co-sponsor of legislation to extend the benefits for a year.

The measure also would relieve states that have federal unemployment insurance loans from interest charges next year, prevent higher federal unemployment taxes beginning in January on employers in insolvent states and provide a solvency bonus to states without any outstanding loans.

“While we’ve waited over 300 days for my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to focus on jobs, the unemployed in this country continue to struggle,” said Rep. Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.). “There is no reason — none at all  — why this bill should not receive swift action by Congress.”

In the past, Democrats have argued that the cost shouldn’t be covered because it negates the economic effects — in this case about $88 billion in spending, double the amount put into the program.

Advocates of reauthorizing the program say they are willing this time around to cover the $44 billion cost of a one-year extension, although they prefer that the offsets are pushed down the road at least three years.

If a bill isn’t cleared by Congress before the program expires Dec. 31, 2.1 million people could lose their benefits by mid-February, meaning 6.1 million would see their checks vanish by the end of next year.

The extension covers only those who have exhausted their 26 weeks of state jobless insurance or who are working their way through the federal tiers.

It doesn’t extend benefits beyond 99 weeks.

Long-term unemployment remains a problem with approximately 31.8 percent of the jobless out of work for a year or more in the third quarter, about 4.4 million people, according to report from Pew’s Fiscal Analysis Initiative released Wednesday.

This percentage has nearly doubled since the third quarter of 2009 when just 16 percent of the unemployed were out of work for a year or longer, the report shows.

Unemployment persists across age and education groups. 

Workers who are older than 55 are most likely to remain out of work for a year or longer.

Although workers with a higher level of education are less likely to lose their job in the first place, their long-term unemployment percentages are similar to others with less education: 34 percent of unemployed bachelor’s degree holders have been out of work for a year or more, compared with 38 percent of high school graduates and 39 percent of high school drop-outs, the Pew report shows.