“I come home every weekend, and what I hear time and time again from constituents is that our country’s unemployment rate is still too high,” Loebsack said Friday in response to the U.S. Department of Labor’s announcement of unemployment figures.

“There are far too many Iowans who are still struggling, and our priority must be job creation and economic development. In order to get our country back on track, we need to start building things in America again and support our country’s workforce.”

Specifically, Loebsack wants more attention placed on his Strengthening Employment Clusters to Organize Regional Success (SECTORS) Act, which passed the U.S. House unanimously last year and was reintroduced days ago by Loebsack and U.S. Rep. Todd Russell Platts, a Pennsylvania Republican. The legislation supports “sector” or “industry parternships” that allow businesses, unions, educators and the public workforce development system to create and implement plans to help workers train for and advance in emerging industries. Sister legislation has also been introduced in the U.S. Senate by Sens. Olympia Snowe and Sherrod Brown.

“By matching workers’ skills and training programs to the needs of industries looking to hire, expand or start-up we can connect workers with industries, helping ensure America remains at the forefront of manufacturing and paving the way for the industries of tomorrow, right here at home,” said Loebsack, a Democrat that represents Iowa’s 2nd District.

SECTORS includes grants that will allow the partners to address training needs of multiple employers, help post-secondary educational institutions and other training providers align curricula and programs to meet industry demands, and improve workers’ job quality through improving wages, benefits, and working conditions while also encouraging the creation, and obtaining of, nationally portable, industry-recognized credentials. It will also help businesses and industries recruit new workers, retrain dislocated and current workers, adopt new technologies, and strengthen connections among businesses in the targeted industry cluster.

“It is more important than ever to invest federal dollars in efficient, cost-effective strategies with proven results,” said Andy Van Kleunen, executive director for National Skills Coalition. “While some policymakers in Washington have turned their backs on America’s workers and industries by calling for the elimination of federal workforce funding, Congressman Loebsack has instead called for better, more effective approaches to training our workforce. We applaud his leadership in championing solutions that will enable our education and training institutions to better meet the needs of regional industries and provide pathways to good jobs for unemployed Americans.”

According to the Labor Department, the private sector accounted for all new job growth in March. Government employment fell by 14,000, part of an ongoing series of public-sector cuts. The new national percentage is the lowest the nation has seen in two years, although the total number of unemployed has stagnated at about 13.5 million.

“Private employment has now grown for 13 consecutive months, with February and March showing the strongest growth since early 2006,” Secretary Hilda L. Solis said in a prepared statement. “And since its low point in February 2010, private sector employment has risen by 1.8 million. The bottom line: The policies and programs of this administration are working.”

Loebsack’s bill has garnered support from workforce and vocational organizations, manufacturing associations, colleges and universities, businesses, chambers of commerce, and training and human services organizations across the country. It has also, along with numerous other bills with Democratic sponsors, drawn criticism from Phyllis Schlafly, president of the anti-feminist Eagle Forum, for subsidizing unmarried women and eliminating the need for husband-breadwinners.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) has taken over for Sanders in parts of the filibuster. Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) — a more centrist senator who voted for the tax cuts in 2001 — joined in and made it a colloquy.

This continues. Watch it here.

Sens. Sanders and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) unveiled the resolution Thursday during a conference call with reporters, arguing that Social Security is not the cause of the national debt.

“Do not send Congress a plan that will cut Social Security benefits, raise the retirement age, or privatize this life and death program,” Sanders said on the call. “If you do, we’ll vote it down, and do everything we can to see it defeated.”

The commission is reportedly exploring ways to reduce payouts for Social Security, which is currently running a $2.5 trillion surplus, according to its trustees report, but is projected to run into financial problems in 2037. Its recommendations will be unveiled in December and voted on by Congress during the lame-duck session.

“We strongly believe that cuts to Social Security benefits must not be part of any recommendations or any policymaking,” Brown said. “This isn’t just a political exercise.”

In addition to Sanders and Brown, the 10 co-sponsors are Sens. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) Dan Inouye (D-Hawaii), Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.). The full list is here.

The lawmakers could be in for a battle with not just Republicans but some members of the Democratic leadership, who have proposed incremental increases to the retirement age in accordance with average life span as a solution to the program’s long-term financial difficulties.

Eighty-five percent of the American public opposes cutting Social Security to reduce the deficit, according to an AARP-GfK Roper poll last month.

In a statement, Brown said:

There is nothing normal or fair about the way China trades. If we are going to compete in the global clean energy manufacturing industry, we need strong trade enforcement. Every day we delay enforcing trade rules, China spends $51 million a day to speed past us in the race to lead the world in clean energy manufacturing, while elbowing competition out of the way through unfair subsidies and discriminatory tactics.

I applaud the United Steelworkers for filing this petition, and urge the Administration to work without delay alongside workers and businesses to challenge China’s trade practices at the WTO.

The United Steelworkers, in the petition, called on the Obama administration to challenge the subsidies through the WTO process.

For the average worker who has lost her job since May 31, the cost of COBRA has tripled. (Flickr, Steve Rhodes)

In the first week of July, Andie Davis’ husband, who worked in manufacturing, lost his job, as hundreds of thousands of Michiganders have since the onset of the recession. Soon after, he started collecting unemployment insurance benefits that might last the family of four as long as 99 weeks. Davis hopes that the benefits will keep the family afloat — the mortgage paid, school lunches made, the electricity on — without forcing her to tap into the family’s savings.

[Economy1] But to keep the family financially stable while both she and her husband look for work, she has decided to forgo health insurance. The Davis family looked at how much COBRA would cost them, thinking the government would help pay for it. Had her husband lost his job just six weeks earlier, Washington would have footed about two-thirds of the premium bill. But since Davis’ husband lost his job after May 31, the young couple is on their own.

The change has gone little-noticed, both by the press and by the laid-off persons impacted by it. But a popular stimulus provision, the federal subsidy of COBRA benefits, expired for newly unemployed workers as of the first day of June. That means, for the average worker who has lost her job since May 31, the cost of COBRA has tripled.

COBRA — a provision created in the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985 — gives workers the option of buying into their old health-care plan when they lose their job. Before the recession, COBRA let workers who lost their job through no fault of their own pay the entire health-care premium plus a two-percent administrative fee to keep coverage, about $8,800 per year for the average enrollee. (Generally, COBRA lasted 18 months.)  As part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or the 2009 stimulus, Congress subsidized this coverage, given the massive number and economic hardship of laid-off workers. The subsidy paid for 65 percent of health-care premiums for up to 15 months, meaning an average enrollee paid less than $3,000 a year.

For the Davises, under COBRA, coverage might have been a manageable $400 a month. When Davis looked into enrolling her husband and herself, she found it would cost more than $1,100 a month — leaving the family just a few hundred dollars for the mortgage, utilities, gas and food. She sought information on other private plans, but considered all of them too expensive. For now, the Davises are purchasing barebones coverage that will help pay hospital bills in case they are in an accident.

She rationalizes: “Me and the husband, we’re young enough that we can go without visits to the dentist and the [gynecologist] for a year,” and she argues, “I just do not see how it would be worth paying that much money for coverage, when we’re looking at a lot of other problems.” She argues that if the choice is between routine care and paying the electric bill, she will choose the latter. In the meantime, she is praying that her husband’s asthma does not flare up in the fall and hoping that they find jobs soon.

The Davises are one of hundreds of thousands of families doing the same. According to a study of 200 very large employers by Hewitt Associates, the COBRA provision doubled the proportion of laid-off workers enrolling in the program. In the fall of 2008, before the subsidy, about 19 percent of laid-off employees enrolled in COBRA. During the first six months of the subsidy, 38 percent of laid-off workers chose to. Now, with the subsidy’s end, enrollment rates are plummeting.

“Enrollment rates will likely decline over time as workers can’t, or aren’t willing to, afford the high premiums associated with COBRA coverage,” Hewitt’s Karen Frost said in a statement. “It’s possible these laid off workers are simply seeking coverage with a new employer or through their spouse’s employer. Unfortunately, it’s also likely that some are just foregoing health insurance altogether.” The National Employment Law Project estimates that 144,000 individuals and families per month have lost out on the subsidy.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way, but the extension of the COBRA subsidy became caught up in the tax extenders bill — also known as the jobs bill or H.R. 4213 — a large package of popular stimulus provisions that eventually died at the hands of a Republican filibuster. Senate Democrats managed to move unemployment insurance benefits, but few other portions of the popular bill made it through a Senate allergic to deficit spending.

The COBRA subsidy is highly popular: Hart Research found that 70 percent of Americans support extending it.  And many on the Hill fought to keep it in the tax extenders bill or to push it through other provisions. “Millions of Americans have been hard hit by the recession and lost their jobs through no fault of their own,” Sen. Robert Casey (D-Pa.) argued. “If Congress turns its back on them, they will have an even more difficult time making ends meet. With no premium assistance, COBRA health care benefits would consume 75 percent of the monthly unemployment payment for a Pennsylvania family.”

He offered an amendment to keep the subsidy within the jobs packages, and along with Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) has offered it as a standalone bill. The Extend COBRA Premium Assistance Program Act of 2010 provides a six-month subsidy for workers laid off between May 31 and Nov. 30. The provision is entirely deficit-neutral, eliminating a tax break on annuity trusts as a pay-for. (The bill is one of many that would extend COBRA. On the House side, Rep. Susan Davis (D-Calif.), for instance, introduced a bill doing so until relevant portions of Obama’s health care bill come into effect in 2014.)

Casey and Brown’s bill is popular — cosigned by Democratic Senators John Kerry (Mass.), Carl Levin (Mich.),  Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), Debbie Stabenow (Mich.), Patrick Leahy (Vt.), Christopher Dodd (Ct.), Al Franken (Minn.), Roland Burris (Il.) and Daniel Akaka (Hi.) and supported by a slew of others. But it is caught in committee, and its likelihood of passage any time soon is small.

That means that the popular provision is likely dead, and for families like the Davises, health care coverage will remain an unaffordable luxury.

Reed stressed the importance of having Carte Goodwin sworn in as Sen. Robert Byrd’s (D-W.Va.) replacement. (Byrd passed away at the end of June at the age of 92, and Goodwin will provide Senate Democrats with the crucial 60th vote for cloture.) “Tomorrow, after our new colleague from West Virginia is sworn in, we will have an opportunity to vote for a bill to extend a lifeline to millions of Americans,” he said, noting, “Historically, even under [the presidency of] George W. Bush, extending unemployment insurance was a bipartisan endeavor. Congress never declined to do so” with joblessness above 7 percent.

Reed also argued that Republicans have “cavalierly dismissed [the need to offset] tax cuts for the wealthy” while insisting on paying for unemployment benefits. “We’ve got to be able to provide for people who have worked their whole life,” he said, so that Democrats can “get on with the business of creating jobs.”

Brown noted that he has gone to the Senate floor virtually every day to read letters sent to him by unemployed constituents. And he and Mishel stressed that unemployment is not just good policy for families, but good for the economy. “We are now in the midst of just really a catastrophic situation,” Mishel said, “where we have had rising unemployment for three and a half years. That is the steepest rise since the Great Depression.”

Mishel argued that unemployment benefits, by fostering additional economic activity, will support 800,000 for the rest of the year. And because unemployment insurance is so stimulative, he said it usually ends up costing the government only about 40 percent of the sticker price.

Both Reed and Brown pushed back on the suggestion that Democrats could have pushed unemployment benefits through faster, had they only passed them separately rather than as part of the extenders package. (For a complete history of how Congress has struggled to pass unemployment insurance for the past year, see here.)

Brown argued, “We tried to [pass a more long-term, standalone extension]. And we weren’t getting any Republicans. I think there were some Republicans who wanted to vote for it, but didn’t because [Senate Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell was putting so much pressure on it.”

Reed agreed. “Every time we’ve tried to get unemployment compensation through it’s been a struggle.” He said that the Senate used to “routinely” pass longer-term extensions, with bipartisan support and relative ease. This time, he noted, Republicans forced Senate Democrats to hold three or four cloture votes, and to winnow the time frame down. “We’d finish one extension, and we’d immediately have to start the other one,” Reed said. “We’ve had separate votes on unemployment insurance that have taken repeated weeks — weeks! — to get through. This has been flying in the face of the legitimate need” for benefits.

Reed also lauded Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), the majority leader, for continuing to seek Republican votes. “He does a remarkable job of trying to reach consensus and compromise. This isn’t take it or leave it.”

Correction: The headline of this post initially stated that Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse was on the call with Reed; in reality, it was Sen. Sherrod Brown. We regret the error.

Stabenow on what the collapse of the bill means:

People who lost their job through no fault of their own [got] caught up in this economic crisis. We didn’t even get one Republican colleague to join us to stop the filibuster. What we saw instead was them standing with the oil companies and the corporations shipping jobs overseas and wealthy investors. [This was] very much like the fight on Wall Street reform, where we saw them standing with those who wanted to block any changes.

And, it’s very much what we’ve seen from them all the time in the Senate. We’re at 244 objections now, 244 efforts to block us from moving forward. It’s unheard of, absolutely unheard of. We’ve never seen the kind of obstruction that we see now.

People who lost their jobs are being caught up in this, and used as political pawns in a partisan battle about an election.

Brown on who the collapse of the jobs bill has hurt:

These are people who, if they lose their insurance, if they don’t get unemployment insurance, they’re more likely to lose their health care. They’re more likely to lose their home … Most Senators voting against [the bill] do not personally know people who have lost their jobs, lost their health care, lost their homes … Some Senators think unemployment is welfare. It’s called unemployment insurance, not unemployment welfare. You pay in when you’re working, to help you when you are not.

Brown on Republican hypocrisy:

[Republicans] voted for tax breaks [and] two wars without paying for them … now that it’s unemployment, now that it’s middle-class workers that need help with unemployment compensation or to keep their health insurance, then all of a sudden they’ve got budget religion, then everything is about cutting government spending.

Brown on the impact of unemployment insurance:

We want to extend these benefits. And we want to extend them clearly because it is good economics … [Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) own] economic adviser argued that unemployment compensation has the best stimulative effect in terms of the multiplier effect.

We’re all concerned about the national debt. Sen. Stabenow and I have been concerned about it for a decade and a half. And that’s why, when [President Bush took office], we had left it with a budget surplus. When I hear Republicans talk about the budget deficit — after the war, tax cuts, Medicare, insurance company bailouts — they caused it. It appears a bit hypocritical. I’m interested in dealing with the deficit, but at this stage in the recovery, we can’t.

Stabenow on the relationship between unemployment and the deficit:

We’re never going to get out of the deficit if 15 million people are out of a job.

Stabenow on governors needing federal aid for states:

There is a group of governors coming in on Monday. It’s my hope that we’ll see the Republican governors talking with us stand up and join, so it’s a bipartisan effort [to push for funding for states]. We received a letter prior to the vote from 47 governors, Republican and Democrat, asking us to pass this critical state funding. What’s [going to be] most helpful to us is to have the Republican governors talking to their Republican colleagues.

The point is this: The arguments against shrinking the largest financial institutions are found wanting. And sufficient or not, ending the existence of TBTF institutions is certainly a necessary part of any regulatory reform effort that could succeed in creating a stable financial system. It is the most sound response of all. The dangers posed by institutions deemed TBTF far exceed any purported benefits. Their existence creates incentives that will eventually undermine financial stability. If we are to neutralize the problem, we must force these institutions to reduce their size.

I do not want to be naïve here. I am not suggesting that our banking system devolve into institutions like the Bailey Building and Loan Association in It’s a Wonderful Life. Large institutions have their virtues. They can offer an array of financial products and services that George Bailey could not. A globalized, interconnected marketplace needs large financial institutions. What it does not need, in my view, are a few gargantuan institutions capable of bringing down the very system they claim to serve.

Fisher described the bill’s reliance on regulators — foremost, the Federal Reserve, where he is a major figure — as dangerous. The House and Senate bills give regulators the power to shut down systemically important and overly risky firms. But Fisher doubts whether, in a climate of financial insecurity, regulators would really do so:

The sad truth is that when the chips are down, regulators become reluctant to put their money where their mouths are — or more precisely, they become too eager to put their money where they said they would not. Few, if any, policymakers have been willing to let large banking organizations fail, thereby missing an opportunity to impose significant losses on failed institutions’ creditors. We know from intuition and experience that any financial institution deemed TBTF will not be allowed to fail in the traditional sense. When such an institution becomes troubled, its creditors are protected in the name of market stability. The TBTF problem is exacerbated if the central bank and regulators view wiping out big bank shareholders as too disruptive, extending this measure of protection to ordinary equity holders.

The Treasury Department and figures on the Hill argue that the other prudential measures in the bill — capital and leverage requirements, and the Volcker Rule splitting commercial and investment banking functions, for instance — would prevent too-big-to-fail banks from becoming risky in the first place. But Fisher seems to support the Safe Banking Act, which would have put hard caps on the size of banks. The provision, by Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Ted Kaufman (D-Del.), did not make it into the final Senate bill.

But the Senate did vote — suddenly — on Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Ted Kaufman’s (D-Del.) amendment to break up big banks and impose strict capital and leverage requirements. It failed, 33 to 61, with about half of Democrats voting against it. Democratic staffers say that capital and leverage provisions — less controversial than breaking up the bank provisions — might be inserted via other amendments.

And the Senate is done voting for the week.

The two amendments have both received bipartisan support despite strong — if until very recently behind-the-scenes — opposition from the executive branch, including the White House, Treasury Department and Federal Reserve. That opposition had been giving senators pause. For instance, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) had indicated she would vote for the strong audit of the Federal Reserve, but then backtracked. Expect to see more and more senators indicating a firm yes or no today as the vote on the Sanders amendment might come as early as this afternoon.

Sanders, for the past day or two, has punched back against opposition to his amendment, telling ABC News, for instance, that the implication that auditing the Fed will impinge or politicize monetary policymaking is false. “It’s not accurate. I know that’s what the Fed is saying. I know that’s what Treasury is saying. But it’s bogus,” Sanders said. “What people are saying is the Fed has enormous power and while Congress absolutely should not be doing monetary policy — raising interest rates, lowering interest rates — it is unacceptable to give trillions of dollars in zero or near-zero interest loans to large financial organizations, with the American people having no idea which organizations.”