The information below is no longer relevant to the current situation.
As posted at, http://waysandmeans.house.gov/press/PRArticle.aspx?NewsID=11236
Status: FAILED
H.R. 5618 The Restoration of Emergency Unemployment Compensation Act
Click here for the text of H.R. 5618
Click here for a graph of the cumulative number of workers losing unemployment benefits due to Senate Republicans’ filibuster of H.R. 4213
Click here for state-by-state breakdown of the estimated number of claimants losing unemployment benefits by July 3, 2010 if Congress fails to act.
Summary:
• The Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) Program began to phase out at the end of May.
• This means individuals exhausting their 26 weeks of regular unemployment benefits over the last month, or exhausting any of the tiers of Federal EUC benefits during this time, are not eligible for emergency unemployment benefits.
• The legislation would retroactively restore those benefits and continue the EUC program through November.
• In addition, the legislation would restore full Federal funding for the permanent-law Extended Benefits program (through November).
• Both of these same policies were included in the jobs package (HR 4213) passed by the House on May 28th.
• Without this extension, an estimated 1.7 million individuals will have lost their unemployment benefits by July 3.
• The bill also includes two beneficiary protections: the continuation of a rule that conditions State eligibility to offer Federal unemployment benefits on an assurance that the State is not cutting the level of regular unemployment benefits; and a safeguard included in the House-passed jobs package (HR 4213) that prevents EUC claimants from having their benefits cut if intermittent earnings requalifies them for regular, State unemployment benefits (which may provide lower payments because the claimant’s more recent wages were lower).
• Unlike the House jobs package (HR 4213), the legislation does not include an extension of the Federal Additional Compensation program, which increases all UI benefits by $25 a week.
The above text is verbatim from the House Ways & Means Committee website posted today, June 29, 2010.
This bill does not include additional weeks of benefits.
In order to pass this bill, Democrats will need 3 Republican votes. Both Senators from Maine have agreed to vote for a stand-alone bill but there is still one vote needed as Senator Ben Nelson has 'bailout fatigue'.
