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NEWS BRIEFS

Date Posted: October 29 2010

Short window for extending jobless money

More than 1 million long-term unemployed workers a month will lose their unemployment benefits – the weekly check that helps keep a roof over their families’ heads and food on the table – if Congress doesn’t act by Nov. 30.

That’s the date the extended unemployment insurance (UI) benefits program expires. But Congress does not return to work until Nov. 15 and then will adjourn again for the Thanksgiving holiday, leaving just a few days when lawmakers are in town to extend the lifeline that has been so vital as unemployment continues to hover near 10 percent.

Christine Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project (NELP), says that in 2009 alone, UI benefits have kept 3.3 million American families – including 1.5 million children – from falling into poverty.

With the holiday season approaching, it would be especially cruel to families and bad for businesses to cut off these benefits. Any cuts would also be a drastic departure from how unemployment insurance has functioned ever since the Great Depression; Congress has never cut back on federally-funded jobless benefits when unemployment is so high.

NELP in recent days launched an online campaign – UnemployedWorkers.org – as a resource to mobilize support and push Congress to act before the Nov. 30 deadline. That will be a big lift because for the past two years, Republicans have tried to block every extension of the extended UI program.

Says Owens: “Congress took seven weeks to reauthorize the extensions when benefits expired last June, and in that time, more than 2 million unemployed Americans and their families lost their jobless benefits. Some Republicans and radio blowhards have even claimed unemployment insurance benefits – an average of just a little more than $300 a week – make jobless workers so comfortable, they won’t go out and look for work. Not that there’s much out there.

One of those radio voices is Rush Limbaugh, who said, “the longer you pay people not to work, the longer they’re not going to try to work. He added: “the question is how the hell are we going to pay for this?”

Owens calls such claims “insulting and infuriating.”

– James Parks, AFL-CIO