Federal Unemployment Benefits example essay topic

Politics - U.S. Congress GOP Does Not Extend Jobless Benefits Mon Dec 8, 3: 11 PM ET Add Politics - U.S. Congress to My Yahoo! By JIM ABRAMS, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - Citing the improving economy, Republicans decided Monday against extending federal unemployment benefits before Congress leaves for the year. Democrats said it would mean a joyless Christmas for tens of thousands of jobless Americans. "It's almost inconceivable to me that Republican leaders are poised to play the Grinch again", said House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California. Democrats raised the benefits issue Monday in a vain effort to block a vote on a $373 billion spending bill for the 2004 budget year, the House's final major act before it ends this congressional session. Federal unemployment benefits, which supplement state payments to the jobless, have been extended three times since March 2002.

Without legislative action, they will be phased out beginning Dec. 21. House Republican Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said extending the benefits was unjustified when unemployment is going down in the country. "It's a question of whether we continue to be in an extraordinary unemployment environment, and we are not", Blunt said. Most states provide up to 26 weeks of aid to people who lose their jobs. In March last year, after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and a downturn in the economy, Congress voted to add 13 weeks in federal benefits, with extra help for jobless Americans in states with high unemployment rates.

That emergency help has been extended three times. Congress also left last December without reauthorizing the federal program, then too amid Democratic charges that Republicans were ignoring the jobless just before Christmas. The program was extended soon after lawmakers returned in January. This time, however, the economy is showing signs of a strong recovery, and the unemployment rates has fallen slightly in recent months, to 5.9 percent. Rep. Jennifer Dunn, R-Wash., whose state has been hit hard by job losses in the aviation industry, has led a small group of Republicans in seeking continuation of federal benefits. She said, however, that the overall good news has "stalled out our efforts, the numbers look so good".

Dunn said she had talked to Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas, R-Calif., about the plight of high unemployment states like her own. "We just need to get them through the holidays", Thomas said. Thomas' office distributed statistics that showed unemployment at 6.4 percent, higher than now, when a Democratic-controlled Congress ended a similar program in the 1990's. But Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., the House's No. 2 Democrat, said the 57,000 jobs the country added in November didn't come close to equaling the 150,000-person growth in the job population. He said there are 8.7 million unemployed Americans today, and some 2 million have been jobless for more than 26 weeks, the highest percentage of long-term unemployment since 1983. He said that after the federal program begins to be phased out, some 80,000 to 90,000 jobless workers a week will be cut off after exhausting state benefits.