For the American labor force, Wednesday was a brutal day in the US Senate. You can thank the Republican Party for that. In the waning days of the Senate's session, extensions of long-term unemployment insurance and an emergency fund subsidizing jobs around the country were blocked by GOP senators.
The unemployment insurance extension would've made it possible for jobless workers in states with high unemployment to collect 119 weeks of benefits. The current cut-off point is 99 weeks, the most in recent history. Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) had for months pushed to add another 20 weeks onto the available 99 in states with 7.5 percent unemployment or higher. Joining her in demanding more relief for jobless workers were the "99ers," those out of work Americans who've exhausted all of their support funds and now have no safety net at all. But it was Sen. George LeMieux (R-Fl.) who stood in their way. LeMieux said Stabenow's proposal would add to the country's $13.5 trillion deficit and thus wasn't feasible:
"Without knowing how much it is going to cost and how we're going to pay for it, while we're all certainly sympathetic and want to work to make people go back to work—my home state of Florida certainly suffering with very high unemployment—we need to know how we're going to pay for it so we don't put this debt on our children and grandchildren."
Stabenow countered by saying, "The reality for us in America is that we will never get out of debt with more than 15 million people out of work." But the Michigan senator's request for unanimous approval of the extension was rejected. And with Republicans, uninterested in more jobless benefits, sure to gain seats in the House and Senate this fall, if not win one or both chambers, we've likely seen the last of Stabenow's proposal.
Read more at motherjones.com
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