A $15 billion jobs bill cleared a procedural hurdle in the U.S. Senate yesterday after a handful of Republicans, including Scott Brown of Massachusetts, broke with their party leaders to help advance the Democratic measure.
The vote that allows the measure to proceed was 62-30, with 60 needed to overcome Republican stalling tactics. Most Republicans opposed the bill after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid scaled back an $85 billion jobs-related measure that had been crafted in committee by a group of Democrats and Republicans.
Reid said the Senate will take a final vote on the stripped-down bill “in a day or so.”
Brown, in just his third vote since being seated earlier this month, said that while the bill was “not perfect” he “came to Washington to be an independent voice, to put politics aside and to do everything in my power to create jobs for Massachusetts families.”
Also siding with Democrats were Republican Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, Christopher Bond of Missouri and George Voinovich of Ohio. Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska was the sole Democrat to vote against advancing the bill.
Democrats, who lost their 60-vote supermajority with Brown’s surprise win in a special election last month, needed support from at least two Republicans in yesterday’s vote because New Jersey Democrat Frank Lautenberg is being treated for stomach cancer.
Obama ‘Grateful’
President Barack Obama issued a statement saying he was “grateful to the Democratic and Republican senators who voted to support” the bill’s provisions.
“The American people want to see Washington put aside partisan differences and make progress on jobs” and with yesterday’s vote “the Senate took one important step forward in doing that,” Obama said.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, said lawmakers there may pass the Senate plan without any changes.
The measure’s centerpiece is a $13 billion plan to fight joblessness by offering companies a one-year holiday from paying a 6.2 percent Social Security payroll tax for each worker they hire who has been jobless for at least 60 days. The plan would save or create as many as 234,000 jobs, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
The plan would spend $2 billion to aid state governments by expanding subsidies for bonds used to finance construction projects, give small businesses more power to write off expenses and transfer $19.5 billion in tax revenue into the government’s highway trust fund.
Republican Demand
Republican leaders had demanded a chance to restore provisions Reid dropped earlier this month, including a package of business-related tax cuts. Reid’s decision amounted to a bet that at least a few Republicans wouldn’t vote against his stripped-down bill in an election year when the economy is at the top of the list of voters’ concerns.
The provisions eliminated by Reid included an extension in unemployment benefits, a package of individual and business tax cuts worth $31 billion, and provisions preventing looming cuts in Medicare reimbursements to doctors. Reid said lawmakers would take up those items later.
The House approved a jobs bill in December costing more than $150 billion. It would spend $53 billion to extend unemployment benefits, $24 billion to help states to pay their Medicaid bills, $48 billion for infrastructure and $26 billion to shore up funding for public service jobs.
Source Link: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-02-23/job-bill-clears-hurdle-in-u-s-senate-with-republican-support.html
Showing posts with label 2010 Jobs Bill. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2010 Jobs Bill. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Congress Leaving Unemployment Benefits Extension To The Last Minute
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is paring back a jobs bill proposal unveiled earlier on Thursday by the Senate Finance Committee, dropping an extension of unemployment insurance and COBRA health insurance subsidies for laid-off workers. The Senate is taking a break next week, so that stuff will have to wait until the end of the month -- the last moment before the previous extension runs out.
"State agencies are going to start sending out letters next week letting people know that their benefits are going to expire," said Judy Conti, a lobbyist for the National Employment Law Project.
So, even though it's entirely likely that Congress will pass an extension before Feb. 28 -- barring another major blizzard -- people will nevertheless receive letters telling them they're not eligible for the next "tier" of benefits.
Last year's stimulus bill provided up to 53 additional weeks of federally-funded unemployment benefits (broken into several tiers) and a 65 percent subsidy of COBRA health insurance. When those provisions expired at the end of December, Congress scrambled to extend them another three months. If they're allowed to expire at the end of the month, 1.2 million people will exhaust their unemployment benefits in March.
"I think it's disturbing because there are four tiers of emergency unemployment compensation benefits, and if you're on a given tier, you only have a few weeks if the program isn't extended... Individuals could look at running out of benefits in a week or several weeks," said Rich Hobbie, director of the National Association of State Workforce Agencies.
Aside from the anxiety the situation creates for the unemployed, Hobbie said it's a huge administrative burden for state agencies. Norm Isotalo, spokesman for the Michigan Unemployment Insurance Agency, said Congress's dithering does indeed make work for his office.
"February 28 is rapidly approaching and we still don't have any certainty if the ending date is going to be extended, so the agency is preparing to wind down the payments of extended federally-funded unemployment benefits," Isolato told HuffPost. "But on the other hand, we have to be ready to pull the plug on these wind-down efforts if Congress acts. It could be a lot of wind-down work that all may go for naught if Congress extends the deadline date for these programs. And of course we hope that they do."
Isotalo said that even if Congress interrupts his agency's wind-down work at the last second, unemployed Michiganders would not see an interruption of their unemployment checks.
NELP is frustrated that Congress insists on taking a piecemeal approach to extending the benefits (the extensions do not allow people to stay on unemployment insurance for longer than already provided by the stimulus bill -- they allow people who've been laid off more recently access to the same additional tiers of financial support given to people laid off last year). The piecemeal approach guarantees that every extension will happen at the last second.
"It will always be held victim to a blizzard, to partisan politics, a flood in the spring, elections in the fall," said Judy Conti of NELP, which would rather Congress extend benefits for a full year. "What's going on in Congress is an ever-changing game. The American people and communities surviving on these unemployment benefits can't be held victim to this process."
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/11/congress-leaving-unemploy_n_458991.html
"State agencies are going to start sending out letters next week letting people know that their benefits are going to expire," said Judy Conti, a lobbyist for the National Employment Law Project.
So, even though it's entirely likely that Congress will pass an extension before Feb. 28 -- barring another major blizzard -- people will nevertheless receive letters telling them they're not eligible for the next "tier" of benefits.
Last year's stimulus bill provided up to 53 additional weeks of federally-funded unemployment benefits (broken into several tiers) and a 65 percent subsidy of COBRA health insurance. When those provisions expired at the end of December, Congress scrambled to extend them another three months. If they're allowed to expire at the end of the month, 1.2 million people will exhaust their unemployment benefits in March.
"I think it's disturbing because there are four tiers of emergency unemployment compensation benefits, and if you're on a given tier, you only have a few weeks if the program isn't extended... Individuals could look at running out of benefits in a week or several weeks," said Rich Hobbie, director of the National Association of State Workforce Agencies.
Aside from the anxiety the situation creates for the unemployed, Hobbie said it's a huge administrative burden for state agencies. Norm Isotalo, spokesman for the Michigan Unemployment Insurance Agency, said Congress's dithering does indeed make work for his office.
"February 28 is rapidly approaching and we still don't have any certainty if the ending date is going to be extended, so the agency is preparing to wind down the payments of extended federally-funded unemployment benefits," Isolato told HuffPost. "But on the other hand, we have to be ready to pull the plug on these wind-down efforts if Congress acts. It could be a lot of wind-down work that all may go for naught if Congress extends the deadline date for these programs. And of course we hope that they do."
Isotalo said that even if Congress interrupts his agency's wind-down work at the last second, unemployed Michiganders would not see an interruption of their unemployment checks.
NELP is frustrated that Congress insists on taking a piecemeal approach to extending the benefits (the extensions do not allow people to stay on unemployment insurance for longer than already provided by the stimulus bill -- they allow people who've been laid off more recently access to the same additional tiers of financial support given to people laid off last year). The piecemeal approach guarantees that every extension will happen at the last second.
"It will always be held victim to a blizzard, to partisan politics, a flood in the spring, elections in the fall," said Judy Conti of NELP, which would rather Congress extend benefits for a full year. "What's going on in Congress is an ever-changing game. The American people and communities surviving on these unemployment benefits can't be held victim to this process."
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/11/congress-leaving-unemploy_n_458991.html
Monday, February 08, 2010
U.S. Jobless Rate Now 9.7%, but Millions Fear Losing Unemployment Insurance
This is a good story from the AFL-CIO for those seeking information regarding information about the latest action Washington plans to take to tackle unemployment.
The following story is straight from the AFL-CIO:
"The U.S. unemployment rate fell from 10 percent to 9.7 percent in January, with 14.8 million workers now without jobs. Employment continued to decrease in construction and transportation and increase in retail, health care and temp work, according to U.S. Department of Labor data out this morning. Unemployment among black workers continued to worsen.
When both unemployed and underemployed workers are counted, there still are 25.5 million people without jobs or full-time work.
As AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says:
We welcome the news that unemployment dropped to 9.7%, but we shed another 20,000 jobs last month, following a revised 150,000 loss in December. These numbers underscore what we have been saying all along. Working families need bigger and bolder actions—in the short, medium and long term—to create jobs in the immediate future—or we risk permanent scarring of our economy and our workforce.
Among the worst aspects of the nation’s unacceptably high unemployment rate—and there are many—the growing numbers of long-term jobless workers is something that can, and must, be addressed immediately. Long-term U.S. unemployment (those without a job for 27 weeks or longer), with more than 6 million unemployed workers out of a job for more than six months. In January, the number of long-term unemployed workers worsened, to 6.3 million workers.
But the unemployment insurance (UI) extension for millions of workers expires Feb. 28, unless Congress—specifically, the Senate—takes action.
In December, the U.S. House passed a jobs bill that included a long-term UI and Cobra extension, but the U.S. Senate failed to act and Congress was forced to pass a short-term extension of both programs. (Click here to tell your lawmakers it’s time to act.)
According to National Employment Law Project estimates, of the nearly 1.2 million U.S. workers facing a cut off of benefits in March alone:
*
380,000 workers will exhaust their 26 weeks of state benefits without accessing the temporary EUC extension program or the permanent federal program of Extended Benefits.
*
Another 814,000 workers will not be eligible to continue receiving EUC past their current tier of benefits.
A one-year extension of unemployment insurance is part of our AFL-CIO five-point jobs program, and the Obama administration supports a long-term extension. But it’s unclear what shape a Senate jobs bill will take. Senate Republicans say they will oppose any jobs legislation on a scale large enough most economists say will do real good.
After all, why should those senators worry? They have a job. For now"
Source: http://blog.aflcio.org/2010/02/05/us-jobless-rate-now-97-but-millions-fear-losing-unemployment-insurance/
The following story is straight from the AFL-CIO:
"The U.S. unemployment rate fell from 10 percent to 9.7 percent in January, with 14.8 million workers now without jobs. Employment continued to decrease in construction and transportation and increase in retail, health care and temp work, according to U.S. Department of Labor data out this morning. Unemployment among black workers continued to worsen.
When both unemployed and underemployed workers are counted, there still are 25.5 million people without jobs or full-time work.
As AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says:
We welcome the news that unemployment dropped to 9.7%, but we shed another 20,000 jobs last month, following a revised 150,000 loss in December. These numbers underscore what we have been saying all along. Working families need bigger and bolder actions—in the short, medium and long term—to create jobs in the immediate future—or we risk permanent scarring of our economy and our workforce.
Among the worst aspects of the nation’s unacceptably high unemployment rate—and there are many—the growing numbers of long-term jobless workers is something that can, and must, be addressed immediately. Long-term U.S. unemployment (those without a job for 27 weeks or longer), with more than 6 million unemployed workers out of a job for more than six months. In January, the number of long-term unemployed workers worsened, to 6.3 million workers.
But the unemployment insurance (UI) extension for millions of workers expires Feb. 28, unless Congress—specifically, the Senate—takes action.
In December, the U.S. House passed a jobs bill that included a long-term UI and Cobra extension, but the U.S. Senate failed to act and Congress was forced to pass a short-term extension of both programs. (Click here to tell your lawmakers it’s time to act.)
According to National Employment Law Project estimates, of the nearly 1.2 million U.S. workers facing a cut off of benefits in March alone:
*
380,000 workers will exhaust their 26 weeks of state benefits without accessing the temporary EUC extension program or the permanent federal program of Extended Benefits.
*
Another 814,000 workers will not be eligible to continue receiving EUC past their current tier of benefits.
A one-year extension of unemployment insurance is part of our AFL-CIO five-point jobs program, and the Obama administration supports a long-term extension. But it’s unclear what shape a Senate jobs bill will take. Senate Republicans say they will oppose any jobs legislation on a scale large enough most economists say will do real good.
After all, why should those senators worry? They have a job. For now"
Source: http://blog.aflcio.org/2010/02/05/us-jobless-rate-now-97-but-millions-fear-losing-unemployment-insurance/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
