House Votes to Extend Unemployment Benefits

by James Parks, Jun 12, 2008

The U.S. House today voted to extend unemployment insurance (UI) benefits to the 3.8 million jobless workers who will run out of benefits over the next nine months. The bill, which now goes to the Senate, would add 13 weeks of benefits—26 additional weeks for workers in states with high unemployment rates. 

The 274–137 vote comes just one day after the House failed to pass the bill under special rules known as the “suspension calendar,” which required a two-thirds majority for passage. Today’s vote only required a simple majority. Click here for the roll call vote.

Speaking on the House floor, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said the bill is one of the best ways to stimulate the economy: 

This isn’t about people sitting on their butts back home saying, “Goody, I’m getting an unemployment check.” These people want to provide for their families. To imply anything else is an insult to these millions of people who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own and in large measure because of the Bush administration’s failed economic policies.

Extending unemployment benefits not only helps those who are looking for work, it stimulates the economy. According to the Congressional Budget Office, it is one of the most cost-effective and fast-acting ways to stimulate the economy because the money is spent quickly. 

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. The Democratic leadership still has not decided whether to fold the unemployment extension bill into the larger supplemental spending bill.

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, and his administration claims that extending benefits “would reduce the incentive for workers to find new employment.”

Yet the total number of long-term unemployed is higher than it was the past 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.

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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