McConnell: Unemployment Benefits Extension Likely To Pass

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Kentucky's senior Senator said another extension of unemployment insurance benefits will likely be passed by the U.S. Congress next week.

WLKY's Andy Alcock had a chance to ask Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell some questions.

McConnell is in Louisville this weekend. The University of Louisville alumnus will be at the Cardinals' final Freedom Hall basketball game Saturday.

For several days, Kentucky's junior Senator, Jim Bunning, one of McConnell's fellow Republicans, kept a measure extending unemployment insurance benefits for March for hundreds of thousands of Americans from coming to the floor for a vote. He expressed concerns about the federal deficit. The move drew national attention.

The move drew national attention.

"I'm embarrassed that a senator from Kentucky has put us as a government in that position," Kentucky Rep. John Yarmuth, a Democrat, said on Monday.

"That's behind us and we're looking forward," McConnell said.

Tuesday, Bunning stopped his blockade of the unemployment extension.

When the measure came to a vote on the Senate floor, he voted no. McConnell also voted no.

"Well, I thought he had a point. We ought to pay for it," McConnell said.

"We know we face longterm deficit situations, but we also know that there's a balance to be struck. When you have people hurting, someone's going to have to help feed their families," Yarmuth said.

The Senate is working on another, longer extension of unemployment insurance benefits.

"We're dealing with a bill now, a much larger bill, that I hope will also ultimately be paid for," McConnell said.

Last week, McConnell also took part in a health care summit with President Barack Obama.

As part of the summit, the president promised to include some Republican ideas in the bill being considered in the House.

"That isn't going to get our members on board. We think this bill needs to be put on the shelf and we need to start over and go step by step to work on the cost issue," McConnell said.

McConnell also accused the Democrats of arrogance for trying to push through a bill he said the American people don't want.

"The only history that will be made if they vote for it is their own history, they'll be history," McConnell said.

Yarmuth said on Monday he expects House Democrats will approve the health care bill with a rarely used tactic called reconciliation.

McConnell pointed out Democrats used that same tactic in 1993 and lost control of the Congress in 1994. He noted Republicans did it in 2005 and also lost control of Congress in the next year's election.

Band-Aid Legislation May Be Needed For Any Unemployment Extension - Republicans Oppose Extending Benefits Through End Of Year...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is pressing to extend unemployment benefits and health insurance subsidies for the jobless through December as he and Republicans try to clear leftover Senate business.

Reid also hopes to keep helping cash-strapped states with their Medicaid budgets, he said Tuesday on the Senate floor. Taken together, these proposals would cost in the range of $100 billion.

The Nevada Democrat is in talks with GOP leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky over what to include in catchall legislation to help the long-term unemployed, extend several expired tax breaks and prevent doctors from suffering a big cut in their Medicare reimbursements.

The measure would cost more than the jobs bill the Senate is scheduled to approve on Wednesday. It mostly clears up business left unfinished because of last year's health care debate.

There is nothing new in the emerging measure to spur job growth. Instead, it would extend provisions that senators in both parties say have generally been helpful to the economy.

Facing a Feb. 28 deadline, Reid hopes to pass two measures, one as soon as possible. The first includes a 30-day extension of several of soon-to-expire provisions such as jobless aid, parts of the Patriot Act and prevention of cuts in Medicare payments to doctors.

Reid and McConnell were discussing the parameters of the second – a broader, longer-term measure – in a private conversation on the Senate floor. A top Reid aide could be overheard suggesting a full-year extension of unemployment insurance and a 65 percent health insurance subsidy for the unemployed through the federal COBRA program.

There is no agreement on how to proceed on the broader measure, said Minority Whip Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., who said Republicans are concerned about the high cost of the aid to the unemployed. An earlier bipartisan proposal would have extended the aid through May 31 instead of through the end of the year as proposed by Reid.

Kyl added that the proposal to give more Medicaid help to the states took Republicans by surprise. The nation's governors are lobbying strongly for the help.

The most costly piece of the measure would continue to provide additional weeks of benefits to jobless people whose unemployment insurance would otherwise expire. They have been extended several times by Congress since June 2008. The core benefit is 26 weeks, with up to 20 additional weeks in states with high unemployment.

The Reid aide also proposed extending for another six months a provision of last year's economic stimulus bill in which the federal government pays a higher share of costs for the state-federal Medicaid health care program for the poor and unemployed. The Medicaid help mirrors an Obama administration proposal to give states about $25 billion to help with their Medicaid budgets.

Reid dropped the help for the unemployed from the jobs bill. Republicans were unhappy Reid had also discarded an extension of more than 40 expired tax breaks they wanted in the bill. A trimmed-down version of the jobs bill advanced on a bipartisan 62-30 vote Monday to end a GOP filibuster.

Source Story: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/23/reid-seeks-to-extend-unem_n_473436.html