Friday, November 06, 2009

Senate Approves More Jobless Benefits

Senate Approves More Jobless Benefits: The New York Times

The Senate voted unanimously Wednesday to offer up to 20 more weeks of unemployment benefits to those who have been out of work a long time, after weeks of delay in which hundreds of thousands of Americans exhausted their government aid.

The Democrats feel an urgency to act now because the monthly labor report that comes out Friday is expected to show that the nation’s unemployment rate in October continued to be at or above 10 percent. Also, more than 600,000 workers had run out of benefits at the end of October, according to the National Employment Law Project, a liberal advocacy group. The Senate added two unrelated provisions to extend and liberalize tax breaks that were in this year’s $787 billion economic stimulus package. ...

By this week, pressure to act was building from states with double-digit unemployment rates. One Republican senator, George V. Voinovich of Ohio, suggested impatience with his colleagues’ demands. “This is serious business, and we ought to get on with it,” Mr. Voinovich said in an interview. “We’ve got to keep these families together so they don’t fall through the cracks. I mean, this is what keeps them going so they get through this period.”


Comment: Got-a get it out before the monthly labor reports boss...got-a cook the books... no really I mean as George Voinovich tells it, keeping the families together. With the dems it's about the children; with the re-pubs it's about the families... aaahhh, that's the sound of a "sigh of relief."

I'm not sure about falling through the crack, but I am worried about some in Congress that are smoking the crack.

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