No unemployment insurance extension

[Jazzy]

Fresh criticism of a Senate bill to extend a lapsed unemployment insurance program has all but killed the chances that it will become law just a week after a compromise deal on the issue raised its prospects for the first time in months.

Before the Senate left town last week, 10 senators reached a compromise to reauthorize the Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) program for five months, in addition to retroactively paying benefits that expired on Dec. 28. The bill was fully paid for and would introduce reforms to the program including ending payments to wealthy individuals and giving more individualized aid to the long-term unemployed.

But House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has said the bill has no chance in his chamber in the wake of a letter he received from National Association of State Work Force Agencies, which says the requirements of the Senate bill would, "cause considerable delays in the implementation of the program and increased administrative issues and costs."

The association says implementation could take one to three months, and cite chief obstacles such as aging computer systems, how states should pay for the administrative burden of determining eligibility for the program, implementing the means testing necessary to weed out wealthier recipients of aid, and quickly clearing a backlog of claims to late December, when the program expired.

Efforts to renew the benefits have failed several times in the Senate as the program has fallen victim to both policy and procedural debates.

Two million people have already stopped receiving their checks, and 1.6 million more stand to lose them by the end of 2014 if the program was not renewed.

Source

Are you in favor of giving more aid to the long-term unemployed? Why / Why not?

 

[DrLeftover]

If somebody has been unemployed for a couple of years under the Obama Economy....

.... what is six more weeks?

It's only One More Lie from Our Dear Leader and his cohorts in the Asshouseandsenate.

 

[WHO IS SERAFIN]

I can see unemployment for maybe a 6 month stretch and thats it. At some point we got to stop taking off the back of others. If all these government programs stopped today you would be surprised how many would get off there butts and take those jobs they would have never considered before. And we would even be more surprised if actually enforced the laws of having no illegal aliens here how many of those low paying jobs Americans would take with no government entitlements.