Although Congress just enacted an extension of jobless benefits — up to 20 weeks in high-unemployment states — a Dec. 31 filing deadline will effectively prevent many folks from getting all the money they’re eligible to receive.

Underlying the problem is the bewildering framework of the benefits themselves. Under current law, states offer 26 weeks of jobless insurance before a four-tier system of emergency federal benefits kick in. Beneficiaries must exhaust the benefits they’re receiving before they can file for the next level.

NELP estimates that nearly 475,000 people will exhaust their state-funded benefits after Dec. 31 — and therefore miss the filing deadline for the multiple tiers of emergency federal help — while more than 580,000 folks will exhaust one tier of federal help after the deadline, preventing them from jumping to the next tier.

If Congress doesn’t step in, the deadline “will create total chaos for the state agencies and workers facing an uncertain future,” Christine Owens, NELP’s executive director, said in a statement.

The good news for Owens and the unemployed is that congressional leaders are well aware of the problem. Indeed, the office of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has signaled that Democratic leaders will address the deadline glitch before Congress adjourns for the year.

“I don’t think we need to do another stimulus package,” he said. “All we need to do is move in regular order and do what we need to do for the country.”

Clyburn’s comments put him at odds** with other Democratic leaders — including House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) — who see a new jobs bill as a necessary step toward curbing unemployment rates.

With those rates topping 10 percent last month — and with tough elections looming in 2010 — the smart money here is on Hoyer and Reid.

H/t: The Hill.

**Or not. Clyburn spokeswoman Kristie Greco emails to clarify that the congressman does in fact support job-creating legislation, including an extension of unemployment benefits, more COBRA subsidies and a fully funded, six year transportation bill, “which would create six million jobs,” Greco said. “I don’t see a difference between the Hoyer/Clyburn positions,” she added. It seems that Clyburn doesn’t view these items as “anything new.”

I think clearly we need to move on unemployment insurance and COBRA. Beyond that, you mentioned a couple: public jobs, job tax credits, infrastructure. There are a lot of options available; we are discussing those. We are discussing with economic advisors as to what is the most effective. And, frankly, there are differences of opinion on that.

Asked about the size of the jobs package, Hoyer offered no hints. “I don’t have a figure,” he said tersely.

Obviously, there may be different figures for different things that you do. But it is clear that we need to act in a way that does get to the creation of job opportunities for people in the short term. That is what we are trying for.

Of course, that’s also what Democrats were trying for when they passed their $787 billion stimulus bill in February, when unemployment was 8.1 percent. How many more business tax breaks does Congress have to pass before recognizing that well-targeted infrastructure spending — including money for public transit – just might offer more bang-for-the-buck?

It gets better.

Over the weekend, The New York Times’ Gretchen Morgenson dug deeper to discover that some of the businesses poised to benefit most from the tax rebates are home builders who are not only flush with cash, but also represent “some of the very companies that contributed mightily to the credit crisis by building and financing too many homes.”

[D]ropping helicopter money on the home builders — the folks who massively overbuilt in community after community — seems decidedly less urgent (unless you are one of these companies, of course). Given that the supply of housing far outstrips demand, it is unlikely that these companies will use these tax breaks to hire workers (unless they go into a completely new line of business).

“I AM surprised that home builders are getting hundreds of millions of dollars given that many have very strong balance sheets,” said Ivy Zelman, chief executive at Zelman & Associates, a research firm. “We question the public policy decision to gift home builders with capital that many will not use to create jobs, since they admit that job growth will be dependent not on capital, but on improving demand.”

Among the beneficiaries of the taxpayers’ largesse, Morgenson points out, will be Pulte Homes, “which will receive refunds exceeding $450 million under the new law, [and] has $1.5 billion in cash and cash equivalents on its balance sheet, according to its most recent financial statement.”

Standard Pacific, another recipient, “is poised to reap cash refunds of $80 million under the new tax break,” Morgenson writes. “According to its most recent financial filing, Standard Pacific held $523 million in cash and cash equivalents.”

Ken Campbell, the chief executive of Standard Pacific, said the money would allow his company to continue buying land. “Will we build more houses or will there be more people employed in the first quarter? Probably not,” he said. “Will employment accelerate when the market starts to grow? It will.”

Translation: The builders will sit on their new land acquisitions in hopes that the housing bubble at the root of the economic turmoil re-inflates. Meanwhile, they won’t be hiring.

So why shower these businesses with millions of dollars in the name of creating jobs if the money won’t really create jobs? Morgenson has a pretty sound theory.

Securing this tax break was a top priority for home builders, lobbying records show. The Center for Responsive Politics reports that through Oct. 26 of this year, home builders paid $6 million to their lobbyists. Last year, the industry spent $8.2 million lobbying.

Some Democrats readily conceded that they could have passed the unemployment benefits, which totaled $2.4 billion, without the business-friendly sweetener, but nonetheless agreed to the tax rebates “as a means of greasing the skids,” as Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) said at the time.

There’s some evidence that Democratic leaders aren’t exactly proud of their accomplishment. Although Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) hailed the bill as a necessary stimulus, his statement released after the bill’s passage avoided any mention of the business tax rebates.

But it wasn’t clear how party leaders were planning to do it. The answer might have arrived today.

Reid this week told Senate Democrats that he plans to put together yet another jobs bill this year designed to curb those rising unemployment rates, according to The Hill. Citing Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), the paper reports that Reid offered no specifics about the legislation, except that passage will be a priority before Congress adjourns for the year.

When that bill emerges, you can bet that an extension of unemployment benefits will be somewhere in the package.

“It is true that we will need to extend the program before the end of the year in order for unemployed workers in high unemployment states to get access to the full 20 weeks of benefits,” a Reid aide wrote in an email.

The Democrats’ bill offers 14 weeks of additional unemployment benefits nationwide, with an extra six weeks for those living in states with high unemployment. But an end-of-the-year filing deadline would prevent anyone from getting those additional six weeks unless Congress steps in to extend the deadline.

The deadline issue wasn’t addressed in the recent legislation, the aide added, because lawmakers were focused simply on adding the extra weeks — a much different (and much cheaper) proposition than extending the entire program. They didn’t anticipate that the process would drag on as long as it did, the aide said.

Some Democrats are already urging a broad extension of the underlying unemployment extension. Reid’s office said Tuesday that the majority leader will likely get behind that push.

“I would expect that Senator Reid would move to extend the program before the end of the year,” the aide said.

Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) (WDCpix)

To hear the Democrats tell the tale, the extension of jobless benefits enacted over the weekend will provide those living in high-unemployment states with an additional 20 weeks of insurance.

Well, not quite.

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.

On Friday, President Obama signed into law legislation extending jobless benefits by 14 weeks nationwide, with an additional six weeks for those states where unemployment rates top 8.5 percent. Those benefits kicked in on Sunday. But there’s a glitch. The new law treats the 20-week extension as two separate extensions of 14 weeks and six weeks, with participants required to exhaust the first 14 weeks before applying for the next six. However, the current law keeps a Dec. 31 application deadline, roughly seven weeks from now, making collecting the full 20 weeks impossible.

Image by: Matt Mahurin

As a result, some members of Congress are already eying another sweeping unemployment extension, which would both address the deadline glitch and provide additional help — well beyond the six weeks in question — to those unable to find work next year, when jobless rates are expected to hover near double digits.

The Orange County Register first reported on the deadline glitch last week.

In a state like California, where unemployment currently stands above 12 percent, that technicality would prove significant. Loree Levy, spokesperson for California’s Employment Development Department, said Monday that an estimated 92,000 residents had exhausted all of their available unemployment by the end of October, and roughly 285,000 will be eligible for the newly enacted benefits by the end of the year. Whether they can get 20 weeks or only 14, though, depends on whether Congress extends the filing deadline.

Some in Congress are well aware of the problem. The office of Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) said Monday that he’ll be pushing a proposal to provide as much as an additional year’s worth of jobless benefits. The proposal will be wrapped into a package to include other provisions designed to ease Main Street’s pain amid the downturn, including money to subsidize COBRA health benefits, as well as a provision to extend the full federal funding of a traditionally state-federal unemployment insurance program called FedEd, which got full federal funding under the stimulus bill. Without congressional action, states would again have to pick up part of the FedEd tab at the end of 2009.

McDermott doesn’t have an easy task. The pricetag for extending just the unemployment benefits for one year is roughly $80 billion, the McDermott aide said. With deficit spending having topped $1 trillion in the last fiscal year — and with an enormous health reform proposal in the works — the congressional appetite for expensive new proposals is hardly ravenous. Still, with national unemployment at 10.2 percent — and no wave of new jobs on the horizon — even the most ardent small-government conservatives would have a tough time voting against additional relief.

Update: The office of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) confirms that Congress must pass another bill to guarantee the full 20-week extension.

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.

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 extra six weeks going to folks in the 27 states where jobless rates have topped 8.5 percent.

“This means that they will be able to survive,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said before the vote. “Not thrive, but survive.”

The proposal also extends a popular $8,000 tax credit for new-home buyers, while allowing businesses to recover taxes they’ve paid in the last five years to compensate for more recent losses.

The bill now moves to the White House, where President Obama has vowed to sign it into law quickly, likely tomorrow.

Stay tuned…