Nearly a quarter-million unemployed and laid-off workers will lose unemployment benefits because a Republican filibuster will prevent an extension of last year’s stimulus bill.
Kentucky Republican Sen. Jim Bunning is blocking the efforts of President Obama and Congress to provide a monthlong extension of “enhanced unemployment benefits and subsidized COBRA benefits for laid off workers,” the media reports. The stimulus bill ended on Feb. 28.
“This week, tens of thousands of jobless workers will receive the jarring news that they no longer have unemployment benefits, because Congress neglected to meet a basic benchmark for extending them,” said NELP director Christine Owens in a statement. “As a result, workers, families and their communities will be cut off from a crucial lifeline and face even more confusion and uncertainty about when and how their benefits will continue. Congress must extend benefits immediately — and for the full year.”
Bunning said he is opposed to some of the other parts of the stimulus package and will continue to refuse to sign it. He has objected to motions for unanimous consent because he claims it would add $10 billion more to the already astronomical American deficit. Instead, Bunning said there could have been the passage of a bipartisan jobs bill that would have featured unemployment insurance and COBRA benefits, but that the bill was killed by Democrats and Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
NELP has stated that about 1.2 million people will lose their unemployment benefits over the course of March. –terry shropshire
