unemployment benefits

More than 1 million unemployed workers are poised to lose their jobless benefits in January if Congress doesn’t step in to extend the filing deadlines for the emergency insurance program, according to an analysis released Wednesday by the National Employment Law Project, an advocacy group.
Although Congress just enacted an extension of jobless benefits — up [...]

House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) has a message for his Democratic colleagues moving forward with plans for another job creation bill: hold your horses. In an interview with MSNBC Wednesday, Clyburn said the focus for Congress now should be “to get the economy stabilized and grow the economy,” but added, “I don’t think we [...]

Yesterday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told reporters that Congress will likely stick around Washington well into December in order to wrap up legislation reforming health care and tackling unemployment. But he didn’t go out on any limbs to say what the latter bill will contain or how much help might be forthcoming. Instead, he [...]

As we mentioned here last week, the recently passed jobless benefits extension, though packaged as a boost for Main Street, provided many times more funding to the nation’s businesses, including the largest corporations. Specifically, the law allows companies to recover already-paid taxes by applying recession-year losses to income made over the past five years. The [...]

It’s no mystery that some Democrats are hoping to extend emergency unemployment benefits even further into next year — both to acknowledge a jobless rate that’s topped 10 percent, and to fix a filing deadline glitch that will prevent those in high-unemployment states from getting the full 20-week extension Congress recently promised them. The office [...]

The office of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) acknowledged today that, in order for people to access the full 20 weeks of additional jobless benefits enacted last week, Congress will have to extend the underlying program before year’s end.
“It is true that we will need to extend the program before the end of the [...]

Because the bill was held up for so long in the Senate, an end-of-the-year filing deadline will prevent anyone from accessing the final six weeks of benefits, according to state officials and sources on Capitol Hill.

The Detroit Free Press reports:
As expected, President Barack Obama this morning signed into law a bill extending benefits for out-of-work Americans who have exhausted their unemployment checks or will do so by year’s end.
Only 45 days after the House first passed the bill.

Yesterday it was the Senate; today the House passed legislation to extend jobless benefits at least 14 weeks nationwide.
The count was 403-12. The “nays” comprised mostly conservative Republicans who oppose the tiny employer surtax that will fund the benefit extension.
The bill will provide an additional 14 weeks of unemployment insurance in every state, with an [...]

That’s what Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) is saying now on the Senate floor. Word is that chamber leaders are nearing an agreement to stage the final vote within the next hour.
Stay tuned…