Jobless Benefits About To Lapse As Senate Dems Mull Strategy

WASHINGTON -- Senate Democrats are discussing their strategy for reauthorizing extended unemployment insurance on Tuesday as the expiration date for the jobless aid is fast approaching.

Neither the House nor the Senate will be in session next week, aides say, so extended unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless will need to be reauthorized this week before they expire on Nov. 30.

Two million people could prematurely lose their benefits by New Year's Day, according to the National Employment Law Project. Currently five million people are receiving aid under two federally-funded programs for the long-term unemployed.

Yet no clear path forward has emerged in Congress for reauthorizing those programs. Aides have floated the idea of coupling the benefits with a reauthorization of the expiring Bush-era tax cuts for the top two percent of earners.

"I support extending unemployment benefits whichever way we can do it," Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) told HuffPost before heading into a weekly caucus lunch with other Democrats.

Sen. Ben Nelson, a Nebraska Democrat who sided with Republicans when they blocked the previous reauthorization for nearly two months this summer, said he doesn't love the tax cut deal.

"That's a mistake," said Nelson, who has joined the GOP in opposing the extended benefits unless their deficit impact is offset with spending cuts. "Unless unemployment is paid for, I can't support it."


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/16/jobless-benefits-senate-lapse_n_784284.html