Nearly 300,000 Veterans Have Lost Out on Jobless Compensation Because of the Disdainful House GOP

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/nearly-300000-veterans-have-lost-out-jobless-compensation-because-disdainful



When Republicans in Congress chose in December not to renew the federally funded emergency unemployment compensation (EUC) program for Americans who had been out of work for six months or more, 1.3 million people suddenly lost the small weekly check they were using to tide them over until they could find a job. About 10 percent, 130,000 of them, were military veterans.
Since then, some 1.7 million more people have lost out on the compensation first passed by Congress six years ago this month. About 155,000 of them are veterans.

The EUC program was meant to ease, however slightly, the financial trauma of losing a job and not being able to quickly find a replacement. The implicit (and sometimes explicit) view of many Republican lawmakers is that out-of-work people who collect unemployment compensation are layabouts who would find a job if they didn't get the assistance the government checks provide. This disdain comes from politicians who make more than three times the median household income and turn every three-day holiday into a week or three of paid vacation.

The EUC was designed to deal with the impact of the Great Recession, just as emergency compensation programs had done during previous economic downturns. At the time it was passed in 2008, every state offered 26 weeks of unemployment compensation. Through a tiered system that depended on the rate of joblessness in a state, the federal program provided additional weeks of compensation—up to 73 weeks in the worst-hit jurisdictions.

No more. Not only is EUC renewal blocked in the House of Representatives, eight mostly Southern states have also passed laws in the past two years that cut the number of weeks they provide compensation from 26 to as few as 16. Georgia, where unemployment is still officially 7 percent, provides only 18 weeks of jobless compensation.