Jobless benefits cut off for a million US workers

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Jobless benefits cut off for a million US workers
1 March 2010

Inaction by the US Senate last week will result in the cutoff of
extended unemployment benefits and COBRA health care coverage to more
than one million workers. The cutoff, which began to take effect
Sunday night, demonstrates the unbridgeable social gulf between the
working class and the denizens of Capitol Hill, both Democrats and
Republicans.

The bill to extend unemployment benefits and COBRA coverage was
blocked by Republican Senator Jim Bunning, an arch-reactionary from
Kentucky who took advantage of a Senate rule requiring unanimous
consent to bring the legislation to a vote before the weekend.

Bunning, who is not running for reelection, was contemptuous of the
suffering that he was helping inflict on more than one million
workers, including an estimated 60,000 from his home state. He
demanded that Senate Democrats agree to pay for the extended benefits
without creating new debt, and declared that his actions were intended
“to send a message to the American people.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Majority Whip Richard Durbin
repeatedly called the bill up for a vote. Each time it was blocked by
Bunning’s voiced objection. But the Democratic Senate leaders declined
to declare his action a filibuster and invoke cloture, although the
required 60-vote majority would have been easily attainable.

Under Senate rules, cloture would have led to 30 hours of debate on
the bill, followed by a vote. This process would have avoided the
cutoff of benefits, but would have caused senators to miss their
flights home for the weekend.

The Democratic leadership calculated that by allowing Bunning to block
the extension they would be able to put the Republican minority in a
bad light. Reid, Durbin and Vice President Joseph Biden issued
hypocritical statements denouncing Bunning, but there was no move to
invoke cloture.

Instead, the Democrats said they would bring the bill up again next
week. Responding to the political embarrassment, Republican Whip Jon
Kyl said Sunday that while he supported Bunning in principle, the
Republicans would vote to approve a 30-day extension for the
unemployment program while further negotiations were conducted on a
bipartisan bill to extend the program for an entire year.

The expiration of the unemployment extension will have an enormous
impact on working people, particularly in the states hardest hit by
the collapse of manufacturing employment. Michigan, for instance, has
300,000 workers receiving extended benefits under the federal program
that has been at least temporarily shut down.

An estimated 400,000 workers will lose their unemployment benefits
during the first two weeks of March if the extension is not quickly
approved. If congressional inaction continues, that number will grow
exponentially to nearly three million workers by May, according to the
Department of Labor.

Some 5.4 million workers are currently collecting unemployment
compensation--the first 26 weeks from their state government, and
thereafter from the federal program of extended benefits.

Economic figures released last week point to a continuation of high
unemployment rates for the foreseeable future. Among the data: new
home sales plunged 11.2 percent in January from December, hitting the
lowest level in 50 years; the February consumer confidence index fell
to the lowest level since 1983; new jobless claims for the week ending
February 19 shot up by 22,000, confounding forecasts of a decline.

At a minimum, the Senate is not expected to reach a final vote on the
extended benefits until the week of March 8, meaning those receiving
benefits will lose them for at least one week. Given the fragile
household budgets of workers who have been jobless for six months or
more, the loss of one benefit check can mean failure to make a utility
or mortgage payment, and potentially the shutoff of utilities, in the
middle of winter, or the beginning of foreclosure proceedings.

Even if the bill passes the Senate, it will only provide for an
extension of benefits through April 5, meaning that jobless workers
will face a new crisis deadline in little more than a month.

No senator, Republican or Democrat, will return home to a house that
is facing foreclosure or lacking heat because of a utility shutoff.
The majority of senators are millionaires, and all of them owe their
allegiance to the financial aristocracy.

No parliamentary obstacles are allowed to stand in the way of serving
the vital interests of Wall Street or the national-security apparatus
which defends the profits of corporate America. A case in point:
President Obama adjourned his televised health care summit Thursday so
that the House members in attendance could march over to the Capitol
and cast their votes in favor of the extension of the USA Patriot Act,
which gives unprecedented spying powers to the National Security
Agency, FBI and other federal security agencies.

No such priority was given to ensuring that the long-term unemployed
would continue to receive the pittance they are being provided under
the extended benefits program.

Patrick Martin

http://wsws.org/articles/2010/mar2010/pers-m01.shtml

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