Having beaten the Republican obstruction spearheaded by Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) of a 30-day continuation of extended unemployment benefits last week, the Senate returns today to a larger measure that would continue those programs through 2010.

The New York Times reported yesterday:

The tax measure on the Senate floor would extend added unemployment benefits and health insurance subsidies for those out of work through December while also renewing more than $31 billion in tax breaks sought by the business community. It will also have to return to the House, and approval of that bill is likely weeks off.

But Democrats would like to complete it by the end of the month, since the temporary extension of the unemployment benefits that survived last week’s temporary blockade by Senator Jim Bunning, Republican of Kentucky, will again be expiring. Senators would no doubt like to avoid a repeat of that clash.

Late last week Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) filed a motion for cloture on the unemployment and COBRA subsidy extension legislation — generically known as the tax-extenders bill — and that will require 60 votes in the Senate to pass.

Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Patty Murray (D-WA) proposed a joint amendment combining emergency aid and employment assistance to needy families with an expanded program providing summer jobs for young people. Unfortunately, the amendment just failed to gain the 60 votes required to waive the Senate’s budget rule and was tabled.

The Kerry-Murray amendment would have made $1.3 billion available to extend the TANF Emergency Fund program through March 2011, an additional 6 months beyond its current September 2010 expiration. The amendment would also have provided another $1.3 billion to create an estimated 500,000 summer jobs and training opportunities for young people up to the age of 24 across the country. In failing to pass the amendment, the Senate caved to pressure from those more concerned with the politics of deficit fears than the well-being of America’s struggling families.

As the latest jobs report showed, nearly 16 million Americans are unemployed, according to the not-seasonally-adjusted statistics. An estimated 11 million are receiving essential unemployment benefits, while more than 6 million have remained jobless for six months or more.

The Senate needs to pass the jobless aid extension measure — it’s an economic and moral imperative.

You can help get the 60 votes to pass these essential programs.
Click here to connect with your Senators and tell them to pass the unemployment insurance and COBRA extensions today.

”Unemployed people are just lazy and don’t deserve benefits” seems to be a bona fide Republican talking point by now. Yesterday, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay:

“You know,” DeLay said, “there is an argument to be made that these extensions of these unemployment benefits keeps people from going and finding jobs.” When CNN’s Candy Crowley described his argument as “a hard sell” to the public, DeLay replied, “It’s the truth.”

Crowley followed up, asking, “People are unemployed because they want to be?” DeLay again said, “Well, it is the truth.”

DeLay joined current House members Dean Heller and Steve King and current senator Jon Kyl in making this basic argument.

Kudos to Candy Crowley for following up with “people are unemployed because they want to be?” But there’s another follow-up I’d like to have DeLay’s answer to: “What do you make of the fact that there are six job-seekers for every job out there?” Let’s hear him, or Heller or King or Kyl, explain what the five people who there aren’t enough jobs for should do. Let’s hear them explain how those people are just being lazy.

Here’s the shorter official jobs report for February: not much change in an abysmal situation.

The official unemployment rate remained at 9.7%.

Employers surveyed reported a net loss of another 36,000 jobs last month, a number in line with the 34,000 increase in the number of unemployed in the household survey. While the rate of job losses the last several months has been moderate relative to the massive losses earlier in the recession, we are still losing jobs.

After spending much of the morning watching the talking heads and business pundits on news channels talk endlessly about the numbers and what impact they might have on “the markets”, it’s pretty clear that most of them have forgotten that the statistics are, in fact, real people.

And right now there are nearly 16 million Americans officially unemployed, according to the latest household survey’s Table A-12 (not seasonally adjusted). Of those out of work, the average duration of unemployment rose in February to 29.3 weeks, with nearly 6.3 million unemployed for 6 months or more.

Official unemployment totals do not include those considered “not in the labor force“, such as the 2.5 million jobless who had not looked for work in the 4 weeks prior. Of those, the 1.2 million considered “discouraged” workers was up by 139,000 — the fifth consecutive monthly increase.

The number of people wanting full-time work but only working part-time (Table A-8) increased from 8.3 to 8.8 million (seasonally adjusted), and remained at 9.3 million (not seasonally adjusted).

The official unemployment rate, not seasonally adjusted, was 10.4% as reported in the lesser-known Table A-15 Alternative measures of labor underutilization. More than 26 million Americans remain unemployed or underemployed, nearly 18% of the workforce.

Employers reported job losses for the month in most industries, with job growth limited to temporary help services, education and health services. Government was not exempt from the job declines, with public employment down by 18,000 jobs, despite the 15,000 newly hired for the 2010 census. Facing huge budget shortfalls due to declines in revenues resulting from the recession, many state and local governments continue to lay off workers. And the depression in the construction sector continues with the loss of another 64,000 jobs. It’s now been three years of consecutive monthly job losses in construction.

Unemployment among African-Americans remains staggeringly high. Not seasonally adjusted, the official unemployment rate for black men 20 years and over is 19.1%, 11.8% for black women 20 years and over, and a catastrophic 41.4% for African-American teenagers 16 to 19 years old.

The one real bright spot in today’s jobs report was the increase of 308,000 people reportedly employed in the household survey. Whether that translates into a positive trend, or represents a temporary weather-related boost is still to be seen.

All of the above, nevertheless, adds up to a continuing national tragedy — one that will not be adequately addressed by the far-too-modest jobs plans being considered in Congress. If Congress insists on taking a piecemeal approach to finally tackling the jobs crisis, then it needs a legislative agenda that contains the right pieces. The recession that caused this crisis is unlike any other post-war recession.

That’s why we need a response capable of providing the jolt to forge a recovery powered by millions of good new jobs. The American Jobs Plan, the basis of the five-point plan supported by the AFL-CIO and the Jobs for America Now coalition — provides the practical solutions America so desperately needs right now.

Unemployed Working America and union members met for a Table Talk this week and told their stories to Congressman Gary Peters and Michigan AFL-CIO President Saundra Williams.

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In response to the powerful stories told by the jobless workers, Congressman Peters said,

“Providing unemployment to folks now is an emergency situation. It’s like when a hurricane hits, we ask questions about paying for it and other things after we get the help to people to make sure their lives can stay together.”

Attempts to pass an emergency one month extension of expanded jobless benefit programs continued to be blocked in the Senate yesterday by retiring Republican Senator and Hall of Fame Shame pitcher Jim Bunning of Kentucky.

More than 200,000 jobless workers will lose unemployment benefits this week as the February 28th cut-off to extend benefits lapses without Senate action, the National Employment Law Project (NELP) announced today.

Sen. Bunning continued to block the emergency measure again this morning, even objecting to a request by Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins.

From ABC via AP:

Sen. Jim Bunning has again blocked the Senate from extending unemployment benefits and health insurance subsidies for the jobless.

The Kentucky Republican objected Tuesday to a request by Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a fellow Republican, to pass a 30-day extension of jobless benefits and other expired measures. The measure would also extend highway programs and prevent a big cut in Medicare payments to doctors.

Senate Democrats, meanwhile, are moving forward with a plan that includes a full year extension of the jobless aid programs first put in place in last year’s Recovery Act, a move we’ve been urging them to take all along.

The Washington Post reports:

The measure includes one-year extensions of unemployment insurance and COBRA, making the benefits retroactive to Feb. 28 to compensate those whose benefits have temporarily run out. It would continue the increased level of funding for state Medicaid programs that began with last year’s stimulus package, and provide extra help for pension funds that were hit hard by the economic recession.

McClatchy has a fantastic map showing what they dub “the Bunning effect.”

The Louisville (KY) Courier-Journal unloaded on Bunning in today’s editorial titled Bunning’s True Colors:

Jim Bunning partisans will say that the Kentucky junior senator’s most recent headline-grabbing display of obstinate oafishness was really a principled stand. His lone vote — not once, but twice — to block the extension of unemployment and health benefits to unemployed Americans, a vote that also stalled road projects and furloughed those workers, was purportedly all about forcing the country to pay as it goes, even when it comes to extending safety nets to those feeling the worst pains of the worst recession in modern American history. (Question: Did he demand the same standard for bankrolling the wars?)

The penury of even his political soul is breathtaking and is nothing to be admired or emulated. Indeed, a series of missteps, misstatements and other embarrassments so alienated Mr. Bunning from his Senate peers, his fellow Republican Party members and all but the most bovine party-line voters in his home state that he could not run for re-election for a seat that should have been his until he was ready to meet his maker. Instead, he’s raging — and cussing — at the dying of the spotlight. If only he could exit stage right now.

Arizona Republican Sen. Jon Kyl yesterday defended Bunning on the Senate floor and attacked unemployment insurance, saying that for jobless workers “unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work”.

“I’m sure most of them would like work and probably have tried to seek it, but you can’t argue that it’s a job enhancer. If anything, as I said, it’s a disincentive. And the same thing with the COBRA extension and the other extensions here,” said Kyl.

Kyl’s not just mean. He’s wrong.

By every economic indicator, the extension of jobless aid provided by the Recovery Act should continue through the end of year. As recently documented by the Congressional Budget Office, the extension of jobless aid also provides the most significant boost to the economy and job growth of any policy option being debated by Congress. It provides $1.90 in stimulus for every dollar spent, and will be responsible for creating 800,000 jobs this year alone.

With new unemployment claims surging it’s way past time for Congress to pass an extension of critical jobless aid programs through 2010.

Tell Congress to pass the full-year extension of UI and COBRA now.

And tell Senator Bunning (202-224-4343) and Senator Kyl (202-224-4521) to get out of the way.

Sen. Jim Bunning definitely knew he was taking aim at jobless workers when he blocked the urgently-needed extension of unemployment benefits. Did he know or does he care that he was also causing this?

The Department of Transportation will furlough nearly 2,000 employees without pay Monday, temporarily shutting down highway reimbursements to states worth hundreds of millions of dollars, national anti-drunk driving efforts, and multi-million dollar construction projects across the country.

The action comes as a result of Kentucky Sen. Jim Bunning’s decision to block key legislation that would have extended several critical priorities for middle class families. That legislation covered tax credits for COBRA health coverage, unemployment insurance for 400,000 people, as well as the short-term extension of the Highway Trust Fund. The Fund supports all surface transportation programs for the nation – highways, bridges, transit and safety inspections, as well as efforts to encourage seat belt use and to fight distracted and impaired driving.

“As American families are struggling in tough economic times, I am keenly disappointed that political games are putting a stop to important construction projects around the country,” said Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. “This means that construction workers will be sent home from job sites because federal inspectors must be furloughed.”

Oh, and this too:

On Friday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) also pointed out that 1.5 million people may also “be unable to watch local TV stations” beginning today — also because of Bunning’s block on the bill, which includes a “satellite television extension” allowing rural residents to watch local TV stations via satellite. According to MultiChannel news, without the extension, “satellite operators will not be allowed to import distant affiliate TV station signals to viewers who cannot receive a viewable version of their local affiliate.”

Presumably a loss of local TV service to rural residents will affect at least a few people in Kentucky. But Bunning’s already made it pretty clear that he doesn’t care about them—after all, 59,558 Kentuckians could lose their unemployment benefits by June because of the extension he has gone to such trouble to block.

(Image courtesy Hillbilly Report)

AFL-CIO Blog:

More than 5,000 workers, community and religious activists from at least six states converged in front of the Whirlpool plant in Evansville, Ind., to say with a unified and loud voice: “Keep It Made in America.” The massive crowd stretched nearly a mile along the road leading to the plant.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka along with 40 people, including children and grandchildren of workers, clergy and retirees, used a Whirlpool refrigerator to wheel petitions with 70,000 signatures to the plant’s locked front gate. At the same time, more than 40,000 signatures on petitions were delivered to the Whirlpool headquarters in Michigan. The petitions urged Whirlpool executives to reconsider their decision to shutter the Evansville plant, laying off 1,100 people and moving jobs to Mexico. Union members also made more than 1,700 phone calls today alone to Whirlpool headquarters in Benton Harbor, Mich., and the Evansville offices with the same message.

Here are just some of the petitions that went to Whirlpool:

Hillbilly Report was there with cameras:

Richard Trumka Tells Whirlpool Like It Is. Thank You Richard! from James Pence on Vimeo.

Trumka told the crowd:

We’re going to use this shameful situation to kindle a campaign for change, a campaign for jobs so that the kind of atrocity that just happened doesn’t keep happening all across America—but instead of plant closings, we go to celebrate a plant opening.

(Image courtesy Hillbilly Report)

(Image courtesy AFL-CIO)

If you were up late watching the Senate on C-SPAN last night (yes, I was) you would have witnessed an astonishing case of shameless obstruction by Republican Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky.

In an effort to enact emergency legislation to extend the expanded federal unemployment insurance and COBRA health subsidies beyond February 28, Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) brought a series of unanimous consent requests to act on the bill. Every request was met with an objection by Bunning, a stunt he’d begun on Wednesday.

Because of Bunning’s obstruction it is likely that current jobless aid program extensions will expire this Sunday. More than one million long-term jobless face the expiration of these benefits unless Congress can quickly pass an emergency, retroactive extension either this weekend or early next week.

Following each objection by Bunning last night, Senate Democrats led by Durbin responded with passionate pleas on behalf of America’s unemployed millions, and denunciations of Bunning’s cold hypocrisy. Senators Sanders (D-VT), McCaskill (D-MO), Merkley (D-OR), Begich (D-AK), Whitehouse (D-RI) and Reed (D-RI) joined Durbin in delivering some of the most emotionally charged defenses of hard-working Americans heard on the Senate floor in years.

Earlier in the day, an emergency one-month jobless aid extension passed the House by a voice vote.

Then came the series of obstructing objections by Bunning, reportedly peppered with a choice, overheard expletive.

In a colloquy with Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Sen. Jeff Merkley, a freshman Democrat from Oregon, was pleading for Bunning to drop his objection, when the Kentucky Republican got fed up.

“Tough s—t,” Bunning said as he was seated in the back row, overheard by the floor staff and others in attendance.

During the hours of back-and-forth objections from Bunning and responses from Democrats, Bunning complained that he was missing the Kentucky-South Carolina basketball game.

From The New York Times story: Bunning Blocks Jobless Aid in Senate:

12:06 a.m. | Updated The Senate clash over the unemployment benefits ended just before midnight Thursday with Senator Jim Bunning, Republican of Kentucky, refusing to lift his objection, meaning the jobless aid – for however short a time – will run out Sunday night unless a deal is reached Friday.

As the fight drew to a close, Mr. Bunning complained he had been ambushed by the Democrats and was forced to miss the Kentucky-South Carolina basketball game.

Over at Congress Matters today David Waldman noted this about Bunning:

… he’s blocking unemployment benefits for those hard hit by the recession, when he himself, as a Hall of Fame pitcher, can generate cash for himself any time he needs it (and often does) just by signing his name to a baseball. Maybe not everyone in America can turn a pen into an ATM, Jimbo.

Still lurking is Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) who threatens to block future jobless aid extensions, as well as additional jobs legislation, unless he can advance a plan to cut taxes for heirs of multi-millionaires.

It is likely that Senate Democrats will still need a procedural vote on cloture before getting to vote on the one-month emergency jobless benefits extension, something that might not come until next Tuesday — unless the Senate remains in session this weekend.

We’ll continue to keep you posted.

Meanwhile, if you would like to share your thoughts with them by phone:
Sen. Jim Bunning 202-224-4343
Sen. Jon Kyl (202) 224-4521

Earlier today we reported that Jim Bunning is blocking the much-needed unemployment insurance extension because of a dispute over how it would be funded.

That’s his reason for cutting off (at least temporarily) a lifeline to more than a million people.

Arizona Senator Jon Kyl has a different reason: He’ll be holding America’s job-seekers hostage to the interests of America’s multi-millionaires, blocking the extension of unemployment benefits until he gets an estate tax bill he likes; namely, one that benefits the very wealthy.

This is a fairly shocking admission of priorities. 1.1 million workers are scheduled to have their unemployment benefits expire in the next month, with 2.7 million on track to lose them by April, while unemployment is still at 9.7 percent and there are six unemployed workers for every job opening. 6.3 million Americans have been unemployed for six months or longer, which is the most since the government began keeping track in 1948 and “more than double the toll in the next-worst period, in the early 1980s.” Yet Kyl is willing to hold unemployment benefits hostage in order to fashion a tax cut for heirs of the very wealthiest estates.

Due to a Bush-era budgeting gimmick, the estate tax is currently expired, but it is set to come back in 2011 at the Clinton-era level, which Kyl has an intense interest in preventing. His proposal to slash the estate tax rate and increase its exemption would cost $250 billion over ten years, with 99 percent of the benefit going to the heirs of multi-millionaires. Under 2009 law, only 0.2 percent of estates are subject to the estate tax at all.

This is just unbelievably despicable. Kyl is willing to cut off the meager benefits keeping struggling families afloat in order to benefit the wealthiest 0.2% of people, while costing the government money. In Kyl’s home state of Arizona, 28,832 people will lose their benefits in March, a number that will rise to 120,166 by June.

Give Sen. Kyl a call, why don’t you, and ask why he’s holding struggling job-seekers hostage to the interests of people who already have so much money they will never need to work. Kyl’s office phone number is (202) 224-4521. Call now.

According to Reuters, attempts by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) to move an emergency unemployment aid extension in the Senate are being thwarted:

Reid had hoped to quickly pass a short-term extension of unemployment benefits for more than a million people to ensure they are not terminated at the end of February, but Republican Senator Jim Bunning blocked it.

Policy advocates on Capitol Hill this morning confirmed that Sen. Bunning (R-KY) is currently holding up an emergency measure to extend the expanded federal support for unemployment insurance and COBRA subsidies set to expire in three days.

A spokesman for Senator Bunning said this morning that Bunning had objected to Senator Reid’s unanimous consent request to proceed on the measure, citing a dispute over how it should be funded.

Kentucky’s jobless rate, which exceeds the national average, increased to 10.7% in December, the last month of available state statistics. Numerous counties in Kentucky report unemployment rates of 13% or more, as can be seen on this Washington Post interactive map of unemployment rates by state and county. (click on the map to zoom in)
Several counties in rural eastern Kentucky have jobless rates of 15% or higher, including Magoffin County at 21.4%.

As we have been reporting here for weeks one million unemployed Americans will lose their extended benefits and COBRA health insurance subsidies immediately if Congress fails to act before February 28.

And while Senate Majority Leader Reid is working on a larger, year-long jobless benefits extension, the emergency one-month extension needed right now is being blocked by Republican Senator Bunning.

Call Senator Bunning’s office at 202-224-4343. Tell Senator Bunning to stop blocking the emergency jobless benefits extension for the more than 221,000 out-of-work Kentuckians and the millions of jobless Americans across the country.

With time rapidly running out for millions of jobless Americans facing the end of critical benefits programs February 28, the Senate today continued its piecemeal approach to the massive unemployment crisis by passing a rather small tax-break for hiring plan.

Urgently needed extensions of the expanded unemployment insurance and COBRA health subsidies beyond the end of February were not included. But it appears that another piecemeal approach to those benefit extensions may be in the works.

The jobs bill did not include an extension of expiring unemployment insurance and COBRA health insurance subsidies. A Democratic aide said that leaders plan to pass a short-term extension of unemployment insurance and COBRA but Reid said Wednesday his plan is to eventually pass a year-long extension.

What are they talking about? Most likely a one-month emergency jobless benefits extension, during which they’ll negotiate the provisions of the year-long extension. That just might give opponents the time to pressure for reduced benefits and more corporate tax breaks.

We need to keep the heat on the Senate. Call your Senators and tell them to extend the jobless benefit programs through 2010 immediately and provide needed fiscal relief to state and local governments.

If you don’t think there are some powerful, big money interests who’d like nothing better than to cut off benefits to the 11 million Americans now receiving jobless aid, check out this segment from Monday’s CNBC ‘Street Signs’ hosted by Erin Burnett. It features unemployment benefits advocate Judy Conti of the National Employment Law Project (NELP), one of our key allies, and hedge fund economist John Makin of the conservative American Enterprise Institute. I’ve extracted a few quotes below. The segment is called Funding the Jobless:

It’s darn clear that the ‘Street’ they’re talking about in the show’s title ‘Street Signs’ isn’t ‘Main Street’.

In her lead-in Ms Burnett asks Mr. Makin if it’s time to stop supporting unemployment insurance payments:

“Why may it be time to reconsider?”

Makin replies:

“Well, the cost is one good reason”

and proceeds to present the issue as a choice between funding jobless benefits or tax breaks for businesses to hire.

NELP’s Judy Conti responds:

“These benefits, first and foremost are job creation. Extending unemployment benefits through the end of this year will create 800,000 jobs.”

“For every dollar that is spent on unemployment benefits the Congressional Budget Office tells us that that dollar creates one dollar and ninety cents in economic stimulus for local communities.
If we were to let that money lapse, we would be abandoning the families that are supporting themselves on these benefits, but we’d abandon the communities as well.”

She’s right on all counts. Her opponent in this segment, John Makin, it should be noted, is on the payroll at Caxton Associates, one of the world’s largest private hedge funds, headed by conservative-supporting billionaire Bruce Kovner, ranked among the richest people in the country.

A stark contrast between the advocates for ‘Main Street’ and the super-rich on Wall Street.

Though the Senate reached cloture on a jobs bill yesterday afternoon, they still have yet to vote on extending unemployment insurance. As we’ve said ad infinitum, with the latest extension ending February 28, a million job-seekers could lose their benefits in March alone.

NELP points to what that means for the states. For instance,

• In California, 201,274 jobless workers will lose state or federal benefits in March without an extension. By June, the number will have risen to 855,529.
• In Florida, 105,016 jobless workers will lose state or federal benefits in March without an extension. By June, the number will have risen to 415, 714.
• In Indiana, 38,360 jobless workers will lose state or federal benefits in March without an extension. By June, the number will have risen to 160,279.
• In Massachusetts, 36,781 jobless workers will lose state or federal benefits in March without an extension. By June, the number will have risen to 153,089.
• In Maine, 4,016 jobless workers will lose state or federal benefits in March without an extension. By June, the number will have risen to 18,592.
• In Michigan, 61,990 jobless workers will lose state or federal benefits in March without an extension. By June, the number will have risen to 225,708.
• In Virginia, 21,761 jobless workers will lose state or federal benefits in March without an extension. By June, the number will have risen to 91,002.
• In Wisconsin, 27,269 jobless workers will lose state or federal benefits in March without an extension. By June, the number will have risen to 127,093.

And don’t forget that every dollar of unemployment benefits spent results in $1.69 of economic stimulus in the community.

Now, we’re hearing, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has indicated that, rather than the 15-day extension being discussed yesterday, they’ll be voting on a 30-day extension. Gosh, thanks, Sen. Reid, but we’d really rather have an extension to the end of 2010. Otherwise, the Senate will be clogged up voting on this very basic, necessary issue every month or every three months, millions will continue to live in uncertainty, and the Senate will be even less likely to move forward.

So please, call your senators. Urge them to vote for an unemployment insurance extension—and let them know that these 15- and 30-day half-measures are inadequate. As they struggle to find work in an economy in which there are 6.4 workers for every single job opening, America’s job-seekers need to know that their meager insurance against disaster is guaranteed for more than 30 days at a time.

Talking Points

• 26 million Americans are unemployed or don’t have the full-time work they need to support their families.
• Up to 800,000 jobs will be lost nationwide if benefits are not extended through the end of 2010.
• Every $1 of unemployment insurance benefits that is spent results in $1.69 in economic stimulus in the community.

Call now.

Can you believe the Senate still hasn’t extended unemployment insurance? Benefits start to run out for a million job-seekers in a week, and some states have begun the process of taking those people off the rolls and telling them they will no longer have the check they depend on to get by while finding a new job. This did not sneak up on us. We here had plenty of time to http://www.workingamerica.org/blog/2010/02/18/groups-tell-congress-to-extend-jobless-benefits/">see it coming, and the Senate should have had plenty of time to act.

After losing a week of work to the massive snowstorms that paralyzed Washington, DC, the Senate went on a scheduled recess for a week. Now they’re turning their attention to unemployment again—but millions of people waiting to hear if they’ll be able to pay for food and housing next month have been able to think of little else during these weeks.

And now comes the news that the Senate is expected to only pass a 15-day extension.

While a 15-day extension will allow people to continue receiving aid, states hundreds of thousands of people will still receive notices from state unemployment offices saying that they will stop receiving aid.

Many people will be confused and not realize that they are indeed eligible for additional unemployment benefits. This will cause people to miss required steps for applying for benefits, such as documenting applying for jobs. Others will become confused and simply not file for benefits anymore. Thousands of people will effectively be disenfranchised due to this weak 15-day extension, which does nothing substantial to meet the jobs crisis this country faces.

Furthermore, the Senate’s failure to pass a long-term unemployment extension, along the lines of the six-month extension the House passed earlier this year, would mean states already broke will waste lots of money sending out confusing notices, first to say that unemployment benefits were canceled, then to say their benefits are restored, then to say they are about to be canceled again.

Meanwhile, governors are at the White House this week begging for more money from the federal government. Since states by law are not allowed to go into debt, without federal aid they will have to cut essential services in order to balance their budgets. States face a $357 billion budget shortfall and local governments are facing an additional $80 billion in budget deficits.

Can you imagine? With huge long-term unemployment, this could cause chaos.

So it’s time, once again, to call your senators. How many times do they expect us to go through this cycle? They pass an extension that’s not nearly long enough. Almost as soon as it takes effect, we have to start pressuring them again. They drag it out to the bitter end. Jobless workers face more uncertainty, and possibly go through a month without benefits, pulling them even deeper into debt.

Let your senators know these patchwork, piecemeal responses to the needs of tens of millions of struggling families are not enough. We need unemployment insurance to be extended through 2010, so that we can turn our attention to real economic recovery, for the country, for communities, and for families.

Talking Points

• 26 million Americans are unemployed or don’t have the full-time work they need to support their families.
• Up to 800,000 jobs will be lost nationwide if benefits are not extended through the end of 2010.
• Every $1 of unemployment insurance benefits that is spent results in $1.69 in economic stimulus in the community.

Call now.

As important as human stories are, the New York Times sort of buries the lede in their major new story about people dealing with long-term unemployment.

Shining a light on the fact that people who have worked all their lives are sending out “dozens of resumes a week” and not getting interviews, let alone jobs; that people who once earned substantial commissions from their sales jobs are now desperate for sales jobs with a set wage barely big enough to scrape by on; that when unemployment insurance extensions are delayed, as is happening right now, people suffer; shining that light is important.

But understanding why is more important, and that’s information the Times gives us, but doesn’t foreground. So this is the big story here: Businesses don’t want to be employers.

“American business is about maximizing shareholder value,” said Allen Sinai, chief global economist at the research firm Decision Economics. “You basically don’t want workers. You hire less, and you try to find capital equipment to replace them.”

And our safety net was built for a system in which there are jobs, has over the years been shredded in ways designed to punish people for not having jobs, and isn’t being rewoven to adjust to the new reality.

Nearly 200 major national, state and local organizations representing tens of millions of Americans have signed on to a letter to Congress calling for an immediate full-year extension of the urgently needed jobless benefit programs initiated in last year’s Recovery Act, before they expire February 28th.

The full text of the letter, just released by the National Employment Law Project (NELP):

Dear Congressional Leaders:

We are writing to strongly urge the Senate and the House of Representatives to act immediately to continue the Recovery Act’s aid to the jobless as a stand‐alone measure through the end of 2010.

Congress and President Obama took bold action one year ago to enact major benefits for today’s jobless families, including the extension of jobless benefits and subsidized COBRA coverage. Subsequent expansions of the program, including the 14‐20 week expansion of Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC), have also gone a long way to respond to the severity of the crisis of long‐term unemployment that has now gripped the nation, with more than 40% of all unemployed workers still struggling to find work after six months and more than six unemployed workers looking for every available job.

While the jobless aid provided by the Recovery Act has been significant, the decision of Congress to adopt limited extensions of the program have caused severe hardship, both for unemployed workers and the state systems that are struggling with severely outdated equipment and insufficient staff and resources to process over 10 million unemployment checks each week. Indeed, as result of the limited two ‐month extension that expires February 28th starting in the week of February 15th, the states will be forced to spend time and resources they can ill‐ afford to waste notifying workers that the extended UI programs are shutting down. They will also need to start reprogramming their computers to implement the required shut‐down as of March 1st.

If Congress does not take final action by February 22nd, the states will no longer be in a position to reverse the process and there will be mass confusion among desperate workers whose only means to pay their groceries and housing is their limited unemployment benefits. Moreover, the delay will wreak havoc on the state agencies as a result of the extra work required to shut down the programs and the immediate need to respond to the flood of phone calls that will start coming in from panicked workers.

By every economic indicator, the extension of jobless aid provided by the Recovery Act should continue through the end of year. As recently documented by the Congressional Budget Office, the extension of jobless aid also provides the most significant boost to the economy and job growth of any policy option being debated by Congress. It provides $1.90 in stimulus for every dollar spent, and will be responsible for creating 800,000 jobs this year alone. In spite of the importance of this program, the House of Representatives passed a jobs bill in December that includes an extension of jobless aid only through June and the recent draft of the Senate jobs bill only continues the program through May.

Given the severity of the crisis and latest evidence of the problems associated with a short‐term continuation of the program, these limited extensions of jobless aid can no longer be sustained. These short‐term extensions simply do not measure up to the realities facing unemployed workers in today’s economy or to the serious challenges facing the state agencies that process the benefits.

Accordingly, we call on Congress to enact a stand‐alone continuation of the jobless aid provisions of the Recovery Act as its first measure of business when it returns from recess, and to continue the program through the end of the year.

Working America is one of the nearly 200 co-signing organizations.

When Congress returns from its Presidents’ Day recess on Monday, February 22nd, clearly the jobless benefit extensions must be the first order of business.

The growing coalition movement for jobs is planning a national call-in to Congress next week on this urgent issue. Stay tuned. And take action now to tell Congress: Don’t let the lifeline be cut off — extend jobless benefits and create jobs for Main Street.

“The jobs bill emerging in the Senate is pathetic”

So starts the lead editorial in The New York Times last Friday titled How Not to Write a Jobs Bill.

The jobs bill emerging in the Senate is pathetic, both as a response to joblessness and as an example of legislation deemed capable of winning bipartisan support.

An $85 billion proposal put forward Thursday morning by Max Baucus, the chairman of the Finance Committee, and by Charles Grassley, the committee’s top Republican, scarcely began to grapple with the $266 billion in provisions for jobs and stimulus that President Obama proposed in his budget. It was not even in the same league as the modest House-passed $154 billion jobs bill.

The Times rightly notes that most of the Baucus-Grassley plan wasn’t really jobs-related, but loaded with a patchwork of business and other tax breaks for the wealthy, as well as special interest payoffs to attract hoped-for Republican votes. In response, many Senate Democrats said they could not support the Baucus-Grassley proposal.

So the majority leader, Harry Reid, decided to hold a vote on a stripped-down, $15 billion version in late February. The rest of the package, plus many other job-creation ideas, would be left for another day.

With 14.8 million Americans unemployed — more than 40 percent of them for more than six months — the smaller package is so puny as to be meaningless.

The Times goes on to endorse a plan that would immediately include key components of the five-point plan proposed by the AFL-CIO and endorsed by the Jobs for America Now coalition.

At a minimum, a credible jobs package must extend unemployment benefits through 2010. Piecemeal extensions only ensure that lawmakers will have to return to the issue repeatedly, creating avoidable uncertainty for unemployed workers and for businesses that rely on the consumer demand generated by jobless benefits.

A credible package also must provide fiscal aid to states, which continue to be slammed by falling tax revenues just as more people need help. Without more aid, states will have to cut spending and raise taxes to close an estimated $142 billion budget gap for fiscal year 2011, which starts on July 1 for most states.

Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has objected to a proposed emergency one-week extension of jobless benefits beyond their scheduled February 28 expiration.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s tiny payroll tax-break plan leaves out the essential jobless benefit extensions, fiscal relief for states, large-scale infrastructure and public works programs for hardest-hit communities across the country.

Stop the cockamamie nonsense already!

Last week Senator Reid was quoted as saying “we don’t have a jobs bill, we have a jobs agenda.”

At the moment it’s clear that he’s right on the first point. We need to make sure that he’s right on the second. As the Times editorial concluded Friday:

The $15 billion Senate proposal may win Republican votes, but better-than-nothing is not nearly good enough. Neither is a pledge to do more later. A full response to joblessness is already overdue.

By an overwhelming margin of more than 3-to-1 Americans think that reducing unemployment is more important than reducing the budget deficit, according to a new national Quinnipiac poll released yesterday.

71% of all respondents said it is more important to reduce unemployment, while only 23% said it’s more important to reduce the deficit. And the massive consensus on this question emerged from every political preference, every age group and every income level.

Responding to the question (number 25 in the survey) “What do you think is more important - reducing the federal budget deficit or reducing unemployment?”:

80% of Democrats, 67% of Republicans and 68% of Independents said reducing unemployment is more important.

Only 15% of Democrats, 28% of Republicans and 26% of Independents said reducing the federal deficit is more important.

Elsewhere the survey also found large majorities favoring substantial additional federal programs to create jobs, invest in infrastructure and boost hiring.

The consensus among serious economists that more large-scale job-creating stimulus is needed to address the unemployment crisis is shared by the American people. Big time.

There’s a lot more that’s frozen in D.C. this week than the usual fallout from a blizzard. The brains of many Senate Republicans are on ice as well. The House passed a jobs bill in December, but the Senate is dawdling, and worse—threatening to pass bits and pieces, taking apart what should be a comprehensive approach to jobs and turning it into minced cabbage. Or, as Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) put it, Democrats shouldn’t advertise the package as jobs legislation

because it’s just extending a bunch of tax policy and related items that we need to do.

Only today did the Senate Finance Committee release its first take on jobs. The immediate need is for passage of unemployment insurance (UI) because it will expire for millions of workers Feb. 28, unless Congress—specifically, the Senate—takes action. COBRA also must be extended to help unemployed workers maintain health care.

The White House’s new economic report estimates the economy would create an average of 95,000 jobs a month this year, rising to 190,000 a month on average in 2011.

Yet there must be 100,000 jobs created per month, just to stay even, let alone fill the gaping hole that is the nation’s unemployment crisis. The nation needs more than 10 million jobs to get back to 5 percent unemployment, the rate we had before the recession started.

The economy lost 20,000 jobs last month, and the rate of unemployment declined to 9.7 percent, a figure the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) describes as a statistical blip, not the beginning of a trend toward full employment because the January data was based on differing surveys. As EPI economist Heidi Shierholtz describes it, this apples-to-oranges comparison means the drop in the monthly unemployment rate

can largely be attributed to the higher volatility of the much smaller household survey. Given what happened in the establishment survey, one would have expected the unemployment rate to hold steady or increase slightly in January.

The White House is forecasting the jobless rate will average 10 percent this year. But the generic jobless rate—as bad as it is—hides a lot. Here’s a look at the hardest hit in the jobs crisis.

The workers losing jobs are those who had almost no income to begin with. As Bob Herbert pointed out this week:

The highest group, with household incomes of $150,000 or more, had an unemployment rate during that quarter of 3.2 percent. The next highest, with incomes of $100,000 to $149,999, had an unemployment rate of 4 percent.

Contrast those figures with the unemployment rate of the lowest group, which had annual household incomes of $12,499 or less. The unemployment rate of that group during the fourth quarter of last year was a staggering 30.8 percent. That’s more than five points higher than the overall jobless rate at the height of the Depression.

The jobless rate of 16.5 percent for black workers is much higher than the national jobless rate of 9.7 percent. The Christian Science Monitor goes on to point out that the jobless rate is astronomically higher for black teens—43.8 percent—than for white teens, at 23.5 percent.

Long-term unemployment (those without a job for 27 weeks or longer), is off the charts. More than 40 percent of the nation’s unemployed workers are without a job for more than six months, a new record. In January, that means 6.3 million unemployed workers have been out of a job for more than six months.

The longer workers are out of a job, the harder it is for them to get one. With the massive numbers of unemployed workers, employers are more likely to hire a worker who is more recently unemployed, than one who has been out for months, skills and other factors being equal. This is why the group on the Hill needs to extend UI ASAP. According to National Employment Law Project estimates, of the nearly 1.2 million U.S. workers facing a cut off of benefits in March alone:

• 380,000 workers will exhaust their 26 weeks of state benefits without accessing the temporary EUC [emergency unemployment compensation] extension program or the permanent federal program of Extended Benefits.
• Another 814,000 workers will not be eligible to continue receiving EUC past their current tier of benefits.

Richard Duncan, who works for the Tennessee AFL-CIO technical assistance program, has met many unemployed workers. The assistance program helps union workers who have been laid off (see video above).

I’ve traveled the state of Tennessee and seen an enormous number of union brothers and sisters lose their jobs. Since 2006, I’ve seen the same people. They lose their job at one facility. Then they go to another facility, then there’s an additional layoff and they lose their job again.

This downward cycle must be broken. And the ice in brain and heart, melted.

This is a cross-post from the Firedoglake blog.

Over 150,000 are in danger of losing their heat in Detroit.

State and local agencies estimate an unprecedented 150,000 metro Detroiters are at risk of having their heat shut off if they don’t receive help paying their bills. The number of people seeking state assistance so far this winter jumped 30% over last year at this time, according to the state Department of Human Services.

Officials blame the rise on metro Detroit’s miserable economy that continues to cost people their jobs. Since last winter, unemployment rose 33% — to 288,000 people — for the tri-county area, according to state employment data.

Detroit has the highest unemployment rate of any metro area in the nation. This winter, people who have never asked for help before find themselves asking, which means that there’s more need than there is funding.

The state’s largest nonprofit for energy assistance, The Heat and Warmth Fund (THAW), is experiencing the highest demand for help since it was established 25 years ago. Volunteers are scurrying to raise more money.

The Huffington Post is doing a series they call “Bearing Witness,” stories of middle class families who are barely getting by. If you have a story to tell, email Laura Bassett (LBassett@huffingtonpost.com). They recently profiled the story of the Renault family, published by Voice of America.

The Renaults are one of more than 20 homeless families currently living in Lebanon’s Timberline Campground. Timberline’s the kind of place someone with a tent or camper might spend a night; a day or two at most. The Renaults have been here since last August.

It’s a giant step down from the three-bedroom home they lost. Renault says her family’s slide into homelessness started nearly two years ago when her husband Troy lost his construction job. “[For] a little under a year,” she recalls, “we just kind of maintained living expense. But then it just got to a point where, with the economy shifting, it caused people to no longer really utilize his services.”

These are the kinds of stories we aren’t seeing told on the nightly news – or in most of the mainstream media. Many people aren’t aware of just how dire the situation is for so many working families like the Renaults, which is why it is important that they be told. There is a stereotype of what a homeless person is, a stereotype that does not apply any longer.

But beyond the physical hardships, Tammy Renault says her family is getting a crash course in what it means, socially, to be labeled homeless. “It’s being called names. It’s being ridiculed. It’s running into people that have seen you in your highest and are not even speaking to you anymore because they’re too afraid for where you are and don’t know what to say.”

Meanwhile, Colorado is facing decisions on what to do about tent cities that are springing up around the state.

The colorful tents and their colorful residents, both very visible amid the barren winter landscape, have been the focus of months of lively debate, public forums and study by lawyers. But Colorado Springs is just one of dozens of cities struggling to find a solution to unsightly and unsanitary tent cities that house thousands of homeless across the country.

In Colorado Springs, the issue emerged when the homeless complained that police and a city contractor were making sweeps through the camps and scooping up their few personal belongings. An investigation reported that one homeless man, a veteran, lost his driver’s license, Social Security card, clothing and sleeping bag in one “clean up.”

Now Boulder is contending with homeless outrage as well. Several homeless people, fed up with being dealt fat fines they can’t pay for sleeping outside, took their complaints to the City Council, urging a moratorium on ticketing the homeless for sleeping outside.

Fining people for being homeless is not any kind of a solution. That the United States has a huge and growing homeless population should be a source of profound national shame. Our leaders should be focusing on ending homelessness, and preventing more of our fragile middle class from entering the downward spiral.

Somewhat contradictory stories emerged from the latest jobs report for January, in which 20,000 more private sector jobs were lost even as the unemployment rate dropped to 9.7% from 10.0% in December.

While employment levels continued to stagnate, the number of discouraged workers — those not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them, and though jobless are not counted as unemployed — continued to rise to nearly 1.1 million.

The real story was to be found in far more disturbing data contained elsewhere in the January report.

Major revisions to the employment data for 2009 showed that the jobs crisis caused by the Great Recession has, in fact, been much more severe than previously reported.

The total nonfarm employment level for March 2009 was revised downward by 902,000 (930,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis), or 0.7 percent. The previously published level for December 2009 was revised downward 1,390,000 (1,363,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis).

The revisions by month are listed in Table A in the employment summary.

But it’s the shocking statistics in Table A-12 Unemployed persons by duration of unemployment for January 2010 that clearly demonstrate the relentless deepening of the current unemployment crisis. The number of unemployed workers (not seasonally adjusted) currently out of work for different lengths of time is staggering:

The number of unemployed for less than 5 weeks was 3,464,000 — an increase of 593,000 from December 2009.

Those unemployed from 5 to 14 weeks numbered 3,698,000 — up by 363,000 from the previous month.

The number of unemployed for 15 weeks and over was 8,986,000 — an increase of 452,000.

And those unemployed for 27 weeks or more numbered 6,423,000 — up by 527,000 from December 2009.

Only the 15 to 26 week category showed a modest decline, but that category also has the lowest percentage of the total unemployed. It is the continuing increases in both short-term and, especially long-term unemployment that should help convince policy makers and the Congress that it’s time for a major set of new jobs initiatives, programs that are big enough and bold enough to meet the crisis head on.

The very first and most urgent step is for Congress to extend the Recovery Act’s unemployment insurance and COBRA subsidy programs through 2010. But with these programs set to expire February 28, time is running out for millions of unemployed Americans. Congress must act to keep the lifeline from being cut off.

Working America is joining more than 60 other major organizations in a national Call-in to Congress organized by the Jobs for America Now coalition to tell Congress it must take urgent action to extend jobless benefits.

Click here to call or here to email. Don’t let Congress cut off the lifelines for the unemployed.