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House Fails to Extend Unemployment Insurance |
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The House failed to approve legislation to extend unemployment insurance (UI) to the more than 3.8 million jobless workers who will run out of benefits over the next nine months. The vote would have added an additional 13 weeks of benefits—26 additional weeks for workers in states with high unemployment rates.
The bill was considered under what is known as the “suspension calendar,” which protects the bill from weakening amendments and protracted debate and delay, but also requires a two-thirds majority for passage. The 279-144 vote was only a handful short of what was needed to achieve the two-thirds majority. The House will now leave the UI extension in the Iraq supplemental war bill. (Roll call vote here.)
In the floor debate today, Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) called the nation’s unemployment “a systemic problem,” while Rep. George Miller, chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, put it this way:
It is just so fundamental that when the government should step in is when a family has lost their job.
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Last month, the House and Senate voted to extend benefits as part of a supplemental spending bill for the Iraq war. But a combination of circumstances, including President Bush’s threat to veto the war bill if the jobless aid was included, led Democratic House leaders to bring the extended benefits bill to the floor separately.
Bush claims unemployment is not high enough and the economy not bad enough to justify extending UI for workers who can’t find new jobs. Yet the total number of long-term unemployed is higher than it was the last two times Congress enacted federal extension programs (October 1991 and February 2002). In addition, joblessness is growing. May saw the biggest one-month jump in the unemployment rate in more than 20 years.
Right now, some 1.55 million workers have used up their benefits without finding work and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates about 3.5 million unemployed workers will exhaust their benefits this year.
Since December, the nation has lost 324,000 jobs and there are twice as many workers seeking jobs as the number of available jobs, according to the Labor Department.
Along with providing aid to the long-term unemployed, the CBO says an extension of benefits will boost the overall economy because it
is one of the most cost-effective and fast-acting forms of economic stimulus.
Earlier this year, the AFL-CIO urged Congress to include a UI extension in an economic stimulus package, but it was dropped from the legislation after Bush said he would veto the bill if it included the extension.
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Once again, thankyou Congress. Congress has prevented exploration of domestic oil so now we pay $4.50 a gsllong for gas so I’m not suprised.
Cynical, you’ve been drinking the right-wing Kool-Aid. For each barrel drilled out of Alaska, OPEC will produce one less. The price of gas would go down about 2 cents a gallon according to the EIA (based on an estimated reduction of 75 cents per barrel of oil, many years out — read http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/servicerpt/anwr/pdf/sroiaf(2008)03.pdf).
Oil is oil no matter where it comes from. For the price to go down, we must all use less. Period.
These recent defeats by organized labor to pass these modest proposals must start to tell the labor movement that is relatively powerless… even in a Democratic Party controlled congress.
Has the Democratic Party done anything about the millions of jobs going to China? What measures has the Democratic Party done to attack the root causes of millions being forced from Mexico into the the U.S.? (Wallls along the border, gestapo raids are not the answer! Instead rewrite NAFTA, stop corporate dumping of corn into Mexico, etc.)
What has the Democratic Party offer working people in terms of a universal health insurance? An insurance that must exclude corporate profiteering!
The Democrats have blocked impeachment of Bush/Cheney or refuse to end the war in Iraq by paying for more billions of dollars.
etc.etc. etc.
When it comes down to it, if there is a choice between supporting corporate economic interests or the economic and social interests of working people,
the Democrats, with minor exceptions, invariably support corporate interests.
The time is long past to being a “business partner” to corporate capitalism and to continue to support the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party must be put on notice that organized labor and working people general can no longer survive under these conditions.
1. Working people, anti-war activists, anti-privatization people, PTA people concerned about the destruction of the schools, health care activists for universal health insurance, etc.etc. need to unite under the leadership of a renewed labor movement, under the banner of a new political party, an anti-corporate People’s Peace Party.
2. Working people need a new national media (radio and tv and newspapers) that provide the PRO-labor news, information and education to un-learn the false information provided every day by corporate mass media.
3. Candidates will come forth at every level of participation to run candidates in everything from school boards, city councils, county and state governments to run for office on a new platform: Government of, by and for the people and NOT for corporate interests, NOT for the greed maximizationof the wealthiest,
NOT for the privatizers who want to destroy PUBLIC SCHOOLS, DESTROY PUBLIC HEALTH CARE, and who happily destroy the environment and promote global warming if it makes a fast buck.
We need a conscious rational transition from unending wars, poverty, sickness and death to a society of greater social equality.
Without this unfolding struggle of, by and for the people, we will get more of the same: continual unending wars, destruction of public education, unending credit card debt, lack of affordable health care, etc. WE NEED A PARTY AND CANDITATES TO ELECT TO OFFICE COMMITTED TO THE NEEDS OF THE PEOPLE.
JerryWells -
Right-on to everything you wrote, with this one addition: Labor statesmen (pie-cards) posing as leaders need to move over or get moved over. Their right-wing brand of “unionism” has gotten us down to 12% (7 % in the private sector). Back in the 60’s we were at 35%. Wake up rank and file! You’re the ones being hurt! Take your unioons back. Any union worth its salt is a militant, class-conscious organization.
Yet it is OK for our government to continue to spend billions in other countries to ‘fix’ their infrastructures, which, sadly, our country is responsible for destroying, yet it will not help our people here, who are also ‘destroyed’ because of our own government policies.
Our country belongs to the American people, not the government, not corporations and certainly not foreign investors. When the American people finally wake up and realize that our government is controlling every aspect of our lives and selling our country out to the highest bidder, then maybe the American people will start to speak out in HUGE NUMBERS and insist THAT THIS IS OUR AMERICA and WE WANT OUR COUNTRY BACK!!!!