“We will take up and pass unemployment legislation,” Rockefeller said.

Rockefeller announced Goodwin’s anticipated vote as he made remarks during a press conference today. West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin (D) announced during the presser that Goodwin, Manchin’s former general counsel, will replace the late Sen. Robert Byrd (D).

Updated at 3:32 p.m.

“Folks in Montana and across the nation are struggling to find jobs in this tough economy, and every day these benefits are lapsed is another day Americans worry how they will feed their families while they look for work,” Baucus said in a press release. “I urge my colleagues to stand with us to support American families and restore the unemployment insurance benefits that are often the only lifeline many workers have in this tough economy.”

Reid filed for cloture last night, and is working with Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to move the bill today, though Republicans have repeatedly objected to any measure that increases the deficit.

The new bill extends federal unemployment insurance benefits through Nov. 2010, and the closing period for qualification for the homebuyer tax credit to Sept. 30. It is technically a substitute amendment to the killed jobs legislation. Here is a summary of what’s in the bill:

Unemployment benefits: Restarts the emergency unemployment compensation program phased out at the end of May 2010. The program provides up to 53 weeks of extended benefits, depending on the state’s unemployment rate. The measure is retroactive — meaning that Americans who have lost their unemployment checks will be compensated — and goes through November.

Further extended benefits: Restarts funding for further tiers of unemployment benefits to 99 weeks.

Eliminates the penalty for part-time workers collecting unemployment benefits: Gives states the option to let UI claimants keep certain benefits if switching to state benefits would reduce their weekly UI check by at least $100 or 25 percent.

These three provisions cost $33.9 billion over ten years.

Extends the closing date for the homebuyer tax credit: Homebuyers need to have purchased a house by April 30, 2010. Now, they need to close by Oct. 1, not July 1, 2010. The provision is estimated to cost $140 million over ten years.

Change to the Travel Promotion Act (TPA): The Department of Homeland Security was due to fund the Travel Promotion Board by the end of the year. This delays that funding start by a year. This change saves $95 million over ten years.

No, you cannot claim a homebuyer tax credit from prison: Remember all those prisoners claiming the homebuyer tax credit — even when serving life sentences? This allows the IRS to disclose tax return information to prison officials, to help recoup money from fraudulent claims. This raises $6 million over ten years.

Finding money elsewhere: This takes back $94 million in unspent Defense Department funding due to expire on Sept. 30, 2010. This saves $45 million over 10 years.

The 99ers, who have exhausted the maximum number of weeks of benefits, are out of luck. They are a growing class — they could total a million this year — and one that remains broadly stigmatized. But, as this excellent five-part piece from Megan Cottrell at Change.org shows, oftentimes 99ers are simply unlucky: trained to work in shrinking industries, tied to particular locations by mortgages or families, overqualified for the positions available.

The fact that she’s been unemployed for over two years is still shocking to Yvonne. She started working at 15 years old and has decades of experience in administration, including work at a movie studio, a major university, a biomedical engineering company and more. But since she was laid off from her job as an executive assistant at a local union in 2007, she can count the number of temp jobs she’s gotten on one hand.

She spends her days reading the Bible and learning the latest software to keep her resume current. Right now, she’s mastering Windows 7 and the latest Microsoft Office.

“It never occurred to me that at my age now I would have no benefits, no pension, and be totally unemployed and virtually unable to reenter the workforce,” she said. “There is a very good chance that a lot of us in our 40s and 50s will never be gainfully employed again.”

Catherine Rampell highlighted the phenomenon in The New York Times as well. For many, the recession has not just left them unemployed, but their skills obsolete, their former salaries untenable in a tentatively recovering economy and their employment prospects dim.

The vote was 215 to 204. The bill — which also extends a number of tax breaks set to expire shortly — now moves to the Senate, which will take up the proposal after lawmakers return June 7 from their Memorial Day recess. In the meantime, the filing deadline for UI benefits will expire June 2.

In a separate vote, House lawmakers also passed a bill to prevent Medicare doctors from receiving a 21 percent pay cut at the end of the month. That proposal, too, won’t be considered by the Senate until after the recess.

That dynamic hasn’t been lost on a growing number of unemployed folks who have exhausted all available assistance, and many of them are pushing for additional tiers of emergency help. Yesterday, though, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) indicated that Tier V advocates shouldn’t hold their breath.

Asked by a reporter if Democrats “foresee having another tier of expanded benefits,” Pelosi responded:

Not — not — no.  This bill will go into the end of November.  At that time we will take up something, but not between now and then.

Pelosi also noted that local politics are playing at least as much of a role as ideology in the debate over whether Congress should extend even existing benefits.

“The phenomenon or the situation that I see is that members who are from low-unemployment areas are very concerned about the deficit,” Pelosi said. “Members who are from high-unemployment areas are very concerned about the jobs.”

To appease budget hawks in their own party, however, they’ve made a number of changes. Most significantly:

1) They’ve cleaved the bill into two parts: one that includes the tax extensions and unemployment benefits provision, and one that would prevent Medicare doctors from receiving a steep pay cut at the end of this month.

2) The bill no longer extends COBRA health benefits, which help newly unemployed workers pay their health insurance premiums.

3) And it no longer includes funding to help states cover Medicaid patients — funding the states see as vital to balance their budgets, as Medicaid rolls have increased through the recent economic downturn at the same time that revenues have dropped.

If the two bills pass the House today, they will then move to the Senate, which, for all practical purposes, has already adjourned for a week-long Memorial Day vacation. That leaves the upper chamber to take up the House bills when Congress returns June 7. Meanwhile, a number of safety-net benefits — including unemployment benefits and COBRA health benefits — will expire.

Not only have House Democrats — who’d hoped to have their bill wrapped up and delivered to the Senate by Wednesday — failed to rally the support of the budget hawks in their own party, but whatever the House does send over to the upper chamber, “Senate Republicans will not allow us to pass [this week] and maybe not ever,” said one Senate Democratic aide familiar with the negotiations.

As a possible Plan B, Senate Democratic leaders might offer a much smaller proposal Friday: a $4 billion package to provide a 14-day extension of the programs scheduled to expire next week while Congress is gone, including unemployment benefits, COBRA health benefits, payments to Medicare doctors, SBA loans and flood insurance. (None of the proposals under consideration would create new tiers of unemployment benefits.)

Trouble is, the Democrats don’t intend to pay for the short-term extensions with offsets elsewhere in the budget, meaning that Republicans will almost certainly object. (GOP leaders don’t reject the policies, but they want them paid for with unspent stimulus funds — a notion that Democrats oppose.)

There, in a nutshell, is the source of the stalemate — a stalemate that will allow these benefit provisions to expire, and force Democratic leaders to try to forge a deal that can pass both chambers quickly when they return to Washington June 7. The bill they produce, said the Democratic aide, will likely be retroactive.

While most of the roughly $50 billion savings under the amended bill comes from trimming Medicare payments to doctors, the revised proposal — which House leaders are hoping to pass today — also shortens the deadline extension for unemployment benefits and COBRA health benefits by one month.

Translation: While the original bill extended the filing deadline through the end of the 2010, the newer bill extends the filing deadline through November (i.e., just beyond the midterm elections).

(Of note: Neither proposal would create new tiers of benefits.)

If the House passes the bill today, it then moves to the Senate, where Democratic leaders will have to rally the 60 votes needed to defeat the likely GOP filibuster. Whether they can do it before they leave for their week-long Memorial Day vacation remains a real question.

“We will have the votes,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told reporters yesterday.

Unofficially, though, they’re struggling to rally the majority they need.

Why? Well, for one thing, the bill isn’t fully paid for, leaving the Blue Dogs reluctant to support it for fear of adding to the nation’s growing debt. On top of that, the proposal would also raise the tax on “carried interest” from 15 percent to 35 percent. The provision is anathema to Wall Street, where investment managers who take a percentage of their clients’ earnings have been taxed at the lower rate for years — meaning that some of these billionaires are paying a lower tax rate than their secretaries.

Still, the thought of any tax hike in an election year has given pause to some moderate Democrats facing tough contests in November.

And that’s just in the House. The bill will be an even tougher sell in the Senate, where 60 votes will be required to pass the measure, and conservative Democrats are already wary of the country’s enormous reliance on deficit spending. Complicating passage, Congress is scheduled to begin its week-long Memorial Day vacation on Friday.

“I don’t know that it’s going to get resolved this week,” a senior Senate Democratic aide told Roll Call yesterday.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters Tuesday, however, that lawmakers will stay in Washington until the bill is passed. “We must pass the new jobs bill this week, in the next few days,” Reid said.

That assumes, though, that the House can pass it first.

Today, the National Employment Law Project, an advocacy group, noted the consequences of congressional inaction, estimating that 1.2 million jobless Americans would exhaust their benefits in June alone if the deadline isn’t extended.

“Here we are, five days out from the Memorial Day recess, and Congress has yet to act on one of the most crucial pieces of legislation affecting the unemployed in 2010,” Christine Owens, NELP’s executive director, said in a statement Monday.

Under current law, unemployed folks have access to 26 weeks of state-sponsored insurance benefits before four separate tiers of emergency federal benefits kick in. Confusing the arrangement, recipients must exhaust their current benefits before filing for the next tier. Yet that option disappears at the end of May, when the filing deadline for all tiers arrives.

Complicating the timeline, Congress is scheduled to leave town at the end of this week for their Memorial Day recess, which puts them out of action until at least June 7. NELP estimates that 300,000 jobless folks will exhaust their UI benefits by June 12, the Friday after Congress returns.

Owens, for her part, thinks lawmakers should prioritize the UI extension legislation over their scheduled vacation.

“Unemployed Americans are pulling their hair out — and they are looking to Congress for help,” she said. “Even if it means staying in Washington as the Congressional recess approaches, the unemployment bill must move forward. Taking a break without extending the unemployment program will break faith with the millions of jobless workers Congress is leaving behind.”

Stay tuned.