The nation’s unemployment rate in January fell to 8.3 percent, down from December’s 8.5 percent, and the economy added 243,000 jobs, according to the latest figures released this morning by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

The nation’s unemployment rate continues it steady decline, dropping by 0.8 percentage points since August and to the lowest point since February 2009. The number of jobless workers dropped to 12.8 million, down from December’s 13.1 million. But the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was little changed at 5.5 million, about 42.9 percent of the unemployed.

The unemployment insurance program for the nation’s jobless workers expires Feb. 29.  A conference is now under way between the Senate and House over two very different one-year extensions of the UI program passed late last year, and the Republican bill would slash federal benefits, impose harsh new restrictions and move to dismantle the essential lifeline of unemployment insurance. Click here for details.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says, “The seeds of sustainable job growth are clearly present—if Republicans in Congress do not succeed in weakening the recovery.”

Republican leaders, who are admittedly unconcerned with the poor and still pressing for ill-timed austerity in Washington and state capitals, run a very real risk of putting this incipient recovery at risk. President Obama, by contrast, has laid out a comprehensive agenda for job creation and broadly shared prosperity, rather than wealth for a few.

Private-sector jobs grew by 257,000, and government employment was essentially unchanged, but over the past 12 months 276,000 public employee jobs have been lost.

In January, professional and business services add about 70,000 jobs. The leisure and hospitality industry added 44,000 jobs and health care jobs grew by 31,000.

Manufacturing saw an increase of 50,000 jobs, mostly in durable goods, and the construction industry added 21,000 jobs.  There were 10,000 new jobs in the mining industry in January.

The unemployment rates for adult men (7.7 percent) and African Americans (13.6 percent) declined in January. The unemployment rates for adult women (7.7 percent), teenagers (23.2 percent), whites (7.4 percent) and Hispanics (10.5 percent) were little changed.

Economic Policy Institute (EPI) economist Heidi Shierholz says today’s figures show “a labor market where all the moving parts seemed to be moving in a solidly good direction.”

Strong payroll employment growth was matched by a falling unemployment rate, strong employment growth in the household survey and a growing share of the population with jobs….It’s important to keep this growth in context, however—the jobs deficit is so large that even at January’s growth rate, it would still take until 2019 to get back to full employment.  We need reports this strong and stronger for the next several years to get back to good health in the labor market.

by Mitchell Hirsch – Reposted from UnemployedWorkers.org

Having narrowly averted cutting off unemployment insurance to millions of Americans right before the holidays, Congress now returns to take up what should be a relatively simple task even for this Congress — a full reauthorization of federal unemployment insurance (UI), the payroll tax reduction and other provisions through 2012.  But, as they did in December, some lawmakers are looking to revive House efforts to slash federal benefits, impose onerous new restrictions and move to dismantle the essential lifeline of unemployment insurance.

The stopgap two-month extension of the federal UI program will expire February 29th unless Congress acts on a full-year renewal.  This week, the Joint Economic Committee issued a report on the benefits of continuing unemployment insurance and the payroll tax cut.  The report estimated that more than 3.3 million unemployed workers would be cut off of their UI benefits by June 2 without a renewal of the program (see page 4 for state-by-state estimates).

A 20-member Conference Committee of the House and Senate convened for the first time this week to begin work on a full year extension.  The Committee is chaired by Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), the lead sponsor of H.R. 3630, the House Republican bill that’s designed to drastically slash federal UI benefits while erecting harmful new barriers to benefits, making it harder for ordinary Americans to access their unemployment insurance.

The House H.R. 3630 proposals would: 

* Slash federal UI by more than half in the highest unemployment states

* Allow mandatory drug testing of unemployment insurance claimants, stigmatizing jobless workers

* Make jobless workers pay for their reemployment services

* Deny benefits to those not fortunate enough to finish high school or GED

* Let states reduce benefits and divert unemployment benefit funds to other uses

The National Employment Law Project has published a detailed legislative analysis of these and other provisions being sought by House Republicans in H.R. 3630.

Public outcry, meanwhile, has been growing in support of a full renewal of unemployment insurance and against both the reckless cuts and the proposed new barriers to benefits.  An Unemployedworkers.org action page has already generated a combined 96,000 email and fax messages to the members of the Congressional Conference Committee, and another 34,000 to Congressional leaders and other Members of Congress.

Tens of thousands of calls have been made to Congress through our dedicated toll-free line 888-245-3381.

House leaders had to, finally, accede to public pressure and drop their obstruction when Senate Republicans refused to take up the House version of H.R. 3630 back in December.  Now, only strong public pressure will keep the Conference Committee from doing real damage to jobless workers, their families and the unemployment insurance system.

Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) gets it and is fighting for unemployed workers in the Conference Committee.  Watch what Sen. Reed had to say about the unemployment extension issues during the Committee’s first meeting this week:

President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address tonight made clear that he hears the people who aren’t being heard by the 1 percent, says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. Obama’s speech showed he “listened to the single mom working two jobs to get by, to the out-of-work construction worker, to the retired factory worker, to the student serving coffee to help pay for college.”

By laying out a vision of an America that can create jobs and prosperity for all instead of wealth for the few, Trumka said the president “voiced the aspirations and concerns of those who are too often ignored.”

Obama also made clear that the era of the 1 percent getting rich by looting the economy, rather than creating jobs, is over.

“Now it’s time for Congress to stop standing in the way of rebuilding our country and act,”  Trumka said.

President Obama presented Congress a choice, Trumka said, between Obama’s vision of the need to invest to achieve stable, long-term prosperity for all and the vision of presidential candidates squabbling over how much further to cut the taxes of the 1 percent.

Obama “spoke to the confidence of working people that if we are determined and committed, we can revitalize ‘Made in the USA.’ That commitment to American manufacturing, made possible in part by enhanced enforcement of trade laws being violated by China , is welcome news to the too many productive, hard working Americans sitting idle unnecessarily.”

Trumka praised the President’s powerful insistance “on a more humble Wall Street subject to a thorough investigation of the misconduct in the mortgage  markets that wrecked our economy,” and applauded the creation of a new mortgage  crisis unit to be co-chaired by New York’s Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman.

Obama also sent a message of hope to America’s young people, “with his words of support for DREAM students, immigrants brought to this country by their parents and committed to the quintessentially American vision of hard work at school or in military service,” Trumka said.

The bottom line, of course, is job creation. The nation is still short 10 million jobs deficit from losses in 2008 and 2009. The addition of 200,000 jobs in December was strong and welcome growth, but the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) points out that even at that rate, the United States will not return to full employment until 2019.

Since Labor Day, Obama has been speaking out forcefully against the same staggering increase in inequality that inspired the Occupy Wall Street movement. His State of the Union speech demonstrate s a focus on job creation Republican House and
Senate leaders should follow.

Yet the Republican leadership is so out of touch it chose Indiana’s Gov. Mitch Daniels to give the party’s response to the State of the Union address, a move Trumka says represents:

the sad decline of the national Republican party and its growing fixation with the voices of CEOs instead of every day Americans.

Daniels, once a supporter of the right of working people to come together to bargain in one voice, has now become a loud, angry opponent pushing to take away that right.

The US Conference of Mayors is meeting in Washington, and expressing their disgust with the ongoing spending cuts that leave their cities firmly mired in the ongoing economic crisis.

New York Times:

Only 26 of the nation’s 363 metropolitan areas had recovered their lost jobs by the end of 2011, and only 26 more are projected to recover them by end of this year, according to the report, which was commissioned by the United States Conference of Mayors. It will take at least five years for the 80 hardest-hit areas to recover the jobs they lost, the report forecast.

and

Not only has Congress failed to overcome partisan gridlock to agree on a way to created much-needed jobs by spending more money on infrastructure, mayors said, but even the small sources of federal support that cities rely on — whether the Community Development Block Grants that were devised by Republican administrations in the 1970s or more recent federal programs that help struggling cities pay for more police officers or firefighters — are being scaled back as Washington has made cutting the deficit a priority.

Now, here’s a thought:

Mayor James Brainard of Carmel, Ind., a Republican, said that the country must get to a point where it spends less than it collects in revenues, but that it must be done over years, carefully.

“We have to recognize that it can’t be done in one year without throwing us into a huge, much worse depression than we’ve had,” he said. “It needs to be a multiyear plan that doesn’t create terrible hardship.”

The report commissioned by the mayors can be found here.

The opening lines of the introduction:

No one has been hit harder by the Great Recession than the 8.8 million Americans who have lost their jobs during the most significant economic downturn in generations.

Our nation’s mayors are focused on doing everything we can to help the jobless, the underemployed, and those worried about losing their jobs.

That kind of concern is a real contrast to all the unemployed bashing we’ve seen by members of Congress and the presidential candidates. Let’s hope that folks in Washington are paying attention while the mayors are in town.

Photo by usmayors on Flickr, via Creative Commons.

Unemployment for African American workers has remained virtually unchanged, hovering between 15 percent to 16 percent throughout 2011, while unemployment for the rest of the workforce dropped below 9 percent, according to a new report by the University of California-Berkeley’s Labor Center.

Steven Pitts, a labor policy specialist at the center and author of the report, said:

[C]urrent unemployment rates for Black workers are still higher than in June 2009, when the recession officially ended, and well above December 2007, when the downturn began.

Read the full report here.

James Parks, communications director at the D.C. Office of Interfaith Worker Justice, sends us this.

More than 500 people packed the Shiloh Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., Jan. 16 for an Interfaith Service for Jobs. The service was sponsored by Faith Advocates for Jobs to celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and to call on our nation’s government to make King’s dream of economic justice and good jobs a reality.

John Butler and Linda Evans, two unemployed Washington, D.C., workers, told the crowd that they were organizing, protesting and pushing for our national leadership to create good jobs. Butler said it was hard having to decide between paying his rent or buying needed medicines. “America, you can do much better than this,” he proclaimed.

Evans said she was concerned about the future of the “babies” who are just starting work. They were raised to believe that getting an education would lead to a good job. But that’s not the case anymore, she said.

Our leaders must act to make jobs a national priority, said the Rev. Paul Sherry, national coordinator of Faith Advocates for Jobs. Congress has a short time to extend benefits for millions of unemployed workers.

Good jobs can be created; it’s just a matter of will. We will walk the halls of Congress to demand that our representatives create good jobs so mothers and fathers can feed their children. We will walk the halls of Congress to demand that our leaders extend benefits to the unemployed.

Speakers repeatedly emphasized the links between faith and work.  Reading from King’s address to the 1961 AFL-CIO Convention, the Rev. J. Herbert Nelson, director of public witness for the Presbyterian Church USA, pointed out that the goals of the union movements and the civil rights movements are identical. Fifty years ago King told the convention:

Our needs are identical with labor’s needs: decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old-age security, health and welfare standards, conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children and respect in their community.

Nelson said those needs are just as critical today and apply not only to African Americans but to the disabled, poor, immigrants and the unemployed.

An interfaith group of Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders led the crowd in a series of litanies  for worker justice, including those who are unemployed, underemployed and their families, for a faithful national budget, for victims of wage theft who are not paid what they are owed. Other litanies called for worker safety, an extension of unemployment benefits, more opportunities for young workers entering the workforce and for workers’ rights to join a union to be respected.  

Many people would be surprised to learn that access to jobs was a part of Dr. King’s dream, said the Rev. Dr. James Forbes in his sermon. He reminded the audience that the official title of the 1963 March on Washington, where King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, was “The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.”

Any society, economic system or person who stifles a person’s fulfillment by denying them work is “ungodly,” said Forbes, the Harry Emerson Fosdick Distinguished Professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York City.

The following is a statement from Working America.

The increase in jobs growth reported today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics—200,000 jobs gained as unemployment fell to 8.5 percent—is a modest improvement but one that remains virtually invisible to Working America’s 3 million members. Small improvements in jobs numbers are welcome news, but they are not enough.

Working America members are among the nearly 6 million people who have been jobless for more than six months. Employment in communities of color remains an ongoing catastrophe. And many workers have given up looking for work, leaving them uncounted in the statistics we read every month.

As corporations sit on huge piles of cash, they refuse to hire, devastating the economy. Not only are millions without work, there are 7.5 million homes that have entered into the foreclosure process, with 4.8 million more homes at risk.

Lawmakers should be calling for robust investment in infrastructure to rebuild crumbling roads, schools and bridges. They should be protecting homeowners and consumers from runaway banks and a financial system that favors the 1%. They should be holding accountable corporations who hoard their profits, rather than hire in the United States. Those would be the modest improvements to our economy worth celebrating.

by Tula Connell – Reposted from the AFL-CIO NOW Blog

The nation gained 200,000 jobs in December, and the unemployment rate improved to 8.5 percent from 8.6 percent in November, according to Department of Labor data out this morning. The unemployment rate has declined by 0.6 percentage points since August and the number of unemployed workers dropped to 13.1 million from close to 14 million.

The data also show the:

unemployment rate for adult men decreased to 8 percent in December. The jobless rates for adult women (7.9 percent), teenagers (23.1 percent), whites (7.5 percent), blacks (15.8 percent) and Hispanics (11 percent) showed little change. The jobless rate for Asians was 6.8 percent.

Most industries added jobs, with the exception of construction and government. In 2011, 280,000 jobs were cut in local government, state government, (excluding education) and the U.S. Postal Service.

In December, employment in transportation and warehousing rose (50,000) and manufacturing (23,000). Retail trade continued to add jobs in December, with a gain of 28,000. Health care added 23,000 jobs in December and mining employment rose by 7,000 over the month. Over the year, mining added 89,000 jobs.

The jobs report is a “step in the right direction,” according to the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute (EPI), which pointed out that data also show hours and wages were up, underemployment dropped and the duration of unemployment declined.

The organization cautioned, however that

The jobs deficit left from losses in 2008/2009 remains well over 10 million jobs; even at December’s growth rate, it would still take about seven more years — until around 2019 — to fill the gap and get back to the pre-recession unemployment rate. We need reports this strong and stronger for many years to come to bring our labor market back to health.

The nation gained 200,000 jobs in December, and the unemployment rate improved to 8.5 percent from 8.6 percent in November, according to Department of Labor data out this morning. The unemployment rate has declined by 0.6 percentage points since August, and the number of unemployed workers dropped to 13.1 million from close to 14 million.

The data also show the:

unemployment rate for adult men decreased to 8 percent in December. The jobless rates for adult women (7.9 percent), teenagers (23.1 percent), whites (7.5 percent), blacks (15.8 percent) and Hispanics (11 percent) showed little change. The jobless rate for Asians was 6.8 percent.

Most industries added jobs, with the exception of construction and government. In 2011, 280,000 jobs were cut in local government, state government, (excluding education) and the U.S. Postal Service.

In December, employment in transportation and warehousing (50,000) and manufacturing (23,000) rose. Retail trade continued to add jobs in December, with a gain of 28,000. Health care added 23,000 jobs in December, and mining employment rose by 7,000 over the month. Over the year, mining added 89,000 jobs.

Hailing the report, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said ”the leadership of
the President and Democrats in Congress is demonstrating a way forward.” In fact, more private-sector jobs have been created under the Obama administration in either 2010 or 2011 than were createdunder the eight years of George W. Bush.

But Trumka warned:

Immediate growth depends critically on extending unemployment insurance and the payroll tax cut, for the entire year, without the politicking and brinksmanship that has become the norm. From investing in infrastructure, keeping jobs in America, aiding our cities and states, keeping homeowners in their homes and continuing to reform Wall Street, we are hopeful for a New Year defined by putting America back to work.

The jobs report is a “step in the right direction,” according to the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute (EPI), which pointed out that data also show  hours and wages were up, underemployment dropped and the duration of unemployment declined.

The organization cautioned, however that:

The jobs deficit left from losses in 2008/2009 remains well over 10 million jobs; even at December’s growth rate, it would still take about seven more years—until around 2019—to fill the gap and get back to the pre-recession unemployment rate. We need reports this strong and stronger for many years to come to bring our labor market back to health.

This is a cross-post by Kenneth Quinnell from Crooks & Liars.

In a great example of a proactive way to deal with unemployment, the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA) partnered with Community Churches United for Baltimore Jobs to give job training in the construction trades to unemployed workers. In a sharp contrast to the developers in Baltimore who are receiving massive tax breaks, the faith-based coalition requested help from the labor union in helping get unemployed workers the skills they need to get back into the workforce.

From the press release about Thursday’s event:

“As a long-time Baltimore resident I am appalled that members of our communities, who are willing and able to work, are routinely left out of conversations with developers when it comes to local jobs,” said David Stokes, a local LIUNA trainer. “We have hundreds of workers who have reached out to us from throughout Baltimore who are willing to be trained so that they can help rebuild their own communities.”

Currently, Community Churches United for Baltimore Jobs is working to bring attention to EBDI to hear the community’s cry for local job opportunities. Community Churches United for Baltimore Jobs is calling on EBDI to implement a Community Workforce Agreement with the following provisions:

• Goal of 50 percent of Baltimore city residents with aggressive recruitment from the communities directly affected by the project.

• Goal for apprentices and new entry-level workers to be 20 percent of total workforce.

Community Churches United for Baltimore Jobs is a faith-based alliance comprised of congregations whose goal is to uplift the community by helping residents attain their full potential through local job training and spiritual guidance.

In October we told you about the governors and legislators proposing mandatory urine testing in order to qualify for food stamps or welfare.

A few weeks ago, we wrote about Rep. Jack Kingston from Georgia, who wants the unemployed to undergo mandatory drug testing to “qualify” for unemployment benefits.

The latest entrant into the drug testing wars is Michigan. From Huffington Post:

Officials in Michigan’s Department of Human Services want to bring back drug testing of welfare recipients, a controversial practice that Michigan courts struck down more than a decade ago. The new policy would differ from the one enacted under Republican Gov. John Engler in 1999, which required a urine test to apply for benefits and would have subjected recipients to random drug screenings.

and

Michigan state Rep. Jeff Farrington (R-Utica) introduced a bill on Dec. 13 that would require applicants take a drug test to qualify for FIA benefits. Under the proposed bill, which is still up for discussion, recipients who passed a drug screening would have the cost of the test deducted from their first benefits payment.

Great. Not only do they want to demonize the poor, they want the poor to pay for that demonization. Rep. Farrington should heed the lesson of Governor Rick Scott of Florida, whose misguided urine test policies lead to record low approval levels. From Mother Jones:

But with 96 percent of applicants passing the test with flying colors (and another 2 percent getting inconclusive results), the state is having to buy back a lot of clean pee: 11.5 gallons at $34,300 every month, assuming an average sample size of 1.5 ounces and and average test price of $35.

That’s spending an awful lot of taxpayer money just to harass poor people. It’s certainly not creating the big savings that Governor Scott promised his constituents.

I wrote in October:

On the one hand, we hear a lot of gnashing of teeth from DC about job creation, yet on the other, we have the ongoing blame being heaped upon those who aren’t able to find work and are living in poverty, as if being unemployed or poor were somehow voluntary.

It is deeply distressing to see this becoming a national trend.

Photo by micahb37 on Flickr, via Creative Commons.

Update 3:55 p.m.: It looks like the House Republicans have bowed to overwhelming public pressure and agreed to the short-term extension.

—-

“Have we become so dysfunctional that even when we agree on things we can’t do it?” President Barack Obama asked today. It’s a good question.

We’re still not really close to an agreement on an extension of unemployment insurance and the payroll tax cut that will expire in ten days. The easy answer is for the House to pass the short-term extension passed by an overwhelming bipartisan margin in the Senate—but the Tea Party radicals who keep Speaker John Boehner on a short leash are preventing that. The President is pushing hard to try and break the deadlock this week.

The consequences of failing to pass an extension? Millions of people cut off from the lifeline of unemployment insurance, and 160 million people facing a payroll tax hike. “”So many of these debates get reduced to which party is winning and which party is losing,” Obama said in a statement today, “but we should remind ourselves this is about the American people.”
p>

Obama said that more than 30,000 people have written in to explain what the end of the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits would means to them. For working-class and middle-class families, those dollars represent heating oil, food, gas for your car to get you to and from work, or school supplies. For the economy as a whole, it’s fewer dollars that van flow to local businesses.

Today, Ohio Working America members rallied outside Speaker Boehner’s district office to demand an extension. That’s just one of the ways that voters are letting their representatives know that failure on this is not an option. (You can take part, too—click here to call your member of Congress.)

“This is exactly why people get so frustrated with Washington,” Obama said. He’s right. It’s time for Boehner to get it together and pass the Senate’s bipartisan compromise, and then get to work on an extension for the rest of 2012.

When House Republicans left town for the holidays Wednesday, they didn’t even leave behind a piece of coal in the stockings of some 2.8 million jobless workers whose unemployment benefits are about to expire over the course of the next two months. At least a piece of coal can be burned for heat.

An analysis by the National Employment Law Project (NELP) finds that come January, some 1.8 million will lose their unemployment insurance (UI), with another 1.1 million meeting the same fate in February.

NELP Executive Director Christine Owens explained in a statement:

Winter is upon us, a time when shelter, heat, and adequate nutrition are expensive and deeply important, and the most vulnerable among us are at even greater risk.

Further, Owens explained, the House failure to extend UI will be felt well beyond the ranks of the unemployed themselves:

The impact of a lapse of federal unemployment insurance will be devastating for the unemployed, their families, the communities in which they live and the local economies the benefits support.

As we reported, House GOP leaders scuttled a vote on a bill already passed by the Senate that would have extended federal unemployment benefits by an additional two months, and extended the payroll tax holiday for the same amount of time.

Owens concludes:

To rob the unemployed and their families of their essential lifeline just as the New Year begins, especially when a clear alternate path is available, is more than callous—it is unconscionable.

Download the full report, in a PFF file, here.

We like to judge people not only by their words, but also by their actions. We’ll remember these actions in November. We hope you do too.

(h/t Talking Points Memo.)

The following is a statement from Working America.

The recent move to block unemployment insurance, which is set to expire December 31st, will devastate millions of working families already struggling to get by in this Wall Street-created economic crisis.

As House Republicans take leave of their duties to the American people, and big banks and financiers enjoy their bailouts and record profits, jobless Americans will continue this holiday week and next to demand responsible governance from their lawmakers who claim to hold their interests at heart.

In places like New Mexico, Michigan, Ohio, Maine, Minnesota, Oregon and more, working families will gather together, make phone calls, and send messages to lawmakers pushing for immediate extension to unemployment insurance – an uncontroversial measure that keeps jobless people afloat in this scant job market and provides immediate economic stimulus to communities.

by Mike Hall – Reposted from the AFL-CIO NOW Blog

Fearing they didn’t have the votes to defeat a bipartisan Senate compromise that would extend unemployment insurance (UI) for long-term jobless workers and a payroll tax cut for workers, Republican House leaders scuttled a vote on the bill today. Then they left town for the holidays. Both the UI program and the tax cut expire Dec. 31.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) previously indicated he supported the compromise that passed the Senate 89-10 with 39 Republican votes. However, when the Republican tea party wing vociferously objected, he changed his tune and opposed the bill. Republican leaders then blocked an up or down vote and 229 Republicans voted to kill Senate bill through parliamentary trickery.

Christine Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project (NELP), says that the compromise was negotiated “with the involvement and blessing of the Speaker of the House.” She also says that Senate bill rebuffed attempts in an earlier House bill that scapegoated unemployed workers and “enacted dangerous changes to the basic UI program which undermined its very purpose and effectiveness.”

While a two-month deal is not ideal, time is running out to protect the unemployed from being victims of the worst partisan games Congress has ever seen. Congress is preparing to recess for five weeks. By the time members return to D.C. to begin negotiations anew, close to 1.8 million long-term unemployed will lose their only life-line. As Speaker Boehner well knows, this stalling tactic virtually guarantees that benefits for the long-term unemployed, those already hit hardest by the recession and slow recovery, will lapse for a dangerously long period of time.

Photo by xlibber on Flickr, via Creative Commons.

Wondering why this Congress has an approval rating that has hit a historical-record low of 11 percent? Just check out the surreal means by which the mad Tea Party that runs the House Republican caucus halted unemployment insurance and middle-class tax cuts today.

In less than two weeks, the payroll tax holiday and extended unemployment benefits will both expire—a major hit to the economy next year. But the House, in this vote, showed themselves perfectly comfortable with that outcome.

As I go through the details of how this economic relief measure actually went down, let’s remember that this is not some abstract matter of legislative arcana, or a purely political battle. This is about the payroll taxes paid by 160 million working people and the unemployment insurance that millions of families of the jobless depend on. This may seem like a silly Washington story, but when you look at the actual lives and pocketbooks of working-class and middle-class people, it’s a devastating failure.

As I’ve said before, there should be an easy answer here: everyone in Congress should be able to agree to cleanly extend the payroll tax holiday and unemployment insurance. The Senate tried and failed, thanks to Republican filibusters, to pass longer-term extensions of these provisions on their own and through the American Jobs Act. Finally, this weekend, they passed a bipartisan two-month extension that would give them time to continue to negotiate over the long-term options.

That was the theory, anyway, until the hard right of the House GOP caucus decided not to accept the bipartisan deal. Late last night, Speaker John Boehner planned to bring the Senate bill to the floor with the intent of defeating it—but was afraid he wouldn’t have the votes to kill it outright.

Donny Shaw at Open Congress explains the convoluted process that Boehner used to circumvent this problem:

All that the House has to do to make the bill officially ready to be signed into law is hold a simple up-or-down vote on the Senate’s bipartisan bill. But during a 3 a.m. meeting of the House Rules Committee last night, the Republican majority devised a different plan — twist the voting procedure so that the Senate’s bill can be rejected while allowing the Republicans to save face by technically voting “aye.”

And the plan succeeded. In a 229-193 vote, the House Republicans killed the bipartisan Senate bill, in a downright acrobatic feat of legislative farce:

They didn’t give that bill an up-or-down vote. They gave it a down-or-down vote. The question before the House wasn’t “do you agree with the Senate bill?” It was “do you disagree with the Senate bill?” Thus a “yes” vote was actually a vote against extending the payroll tax cut and vice-versa; and even if the majority of the House had supported the Senate bill, it wouldn’t have passed. It was set up to fail.

(Please note, as you hear the House Republicans’ rationalizations, that in 2009 many of them were perfectly happy to pass a two-month payroll tax holiday. Preposterously, while millions of people are waiting for economic relief, the House Republican caucus is comparing their efforts to block it to “Braveheart.”)

So what happens now? The Senate is out of session, which means the House is kicking the issue back to an empty chamber. The House Republicans are insisting on the passage of their own bill, which would have cut 3.3 million people off of unemployment benefits, among other bad provisions.

There are 11 days to go, and Christmas hits at the end of this week. People who are depending on the economic boost of the payroll tax holiday and unemployment insurance—like Working America’s 3 million members, half a million of whom are unemployed—can’t wait around for the House Republicans to grow up. Is it any wonder that 9 out of 10 Americans aren’t happy with their representatives?

Photo of U.S. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) from House GOP Leader on Flickr, via Creative Commons.

This shouldn’t be particularly complicated. Two key policies keeping working families afloat—a temporary cut in the payroll tax and an extension of the time people out of work can draw unemployment insurance—are set to expire in a matter of days, pulling money out of the pockets of millions.

Congress had an easy choice available. Since our economy continues to struggle with high joblessness and low consumer demand, our elected leaders should have simply renewed these policies. But never underestimate the hostility of the House Republican majority to simple governance and their indifference to the economic condition of working-class people.

On Saturday, the U.S. Senate passed—after a lot of negotiation—a bipartisan compromise that would extend the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance in the short term. It’s not perfect, but it would at least avoid pulling the rug out from under 160 million workers and millions of unemployed people. House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, asked Senators of both parties to come to a compromise, which passed 89-10, on the assumption that the House would vote on the same bill today.

But since nothing can be simple with this Congress, not even the most no-brainer extension of basic economic relief, House Republicans may very well defeat the compromise bill tonight. The political-journalism term of art for this might be “playing hardball,” but the more accurate term is “throwing a tantrum.”

See, the House Republicans’ stance is that they will accept nothing less than the passage in full of HR 3630, which, among other things, would end unemployment insurance for 3 million people. They would rather see the economic damage that results from the rise in the payroll tax than accept a bipartisan compromise.

It’s worth noting that the House Republicans’ strategy here is to bundle together the important payroll tax holiday and unemployment insurance extensions with unrelated riders aimed at scoring political points. This is sure to upset people who signed this pledge, right?

We will end the practice of packaging unpopular bills with “must-pass” legislation to circumvent the will of the American people. Instead, we will advance major legislation one issue at a time.

Once the authors of that pledge hear about the House Republicans’ violation of that principle, they’re sure to…oh. Wait.

The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent nails it: the caucus that controls the U.S. House is “extreme, intransigent, self-indulgent and hostile to basic norms of governing.” To that I’d only add “clearly completely uninterested in the real-world effects of their decisions.”

Photo of U.S. House Speaker John Boehner by Gage Skidmore on Flickr, via Creative Commons.

By Tula Connell – Reposted from the AFL-CIO NOW Blog

Terry Miale, a communications systems engineer, lost nearly everything when she lost her job.

My whole life is gone. My retirement is gone. My house is gone. For a period of time, I lost my mental health because I went into a deep depression.

Even though she worked 30 years in her field, it took Miale four years to get re-employed. So Miale can’t understand why Republican leaders in Congress just won’t extend unemployment insurance (UI) to long-term unemployed workers who can’t find jobs in an economy in which there are more than four workers for every one job.

When I needed unemployment benefits, they were there. I really think that it isn’t fair to pull a lifeline out from under people that are just now having to collect unemployment benefits. It’s hard enough to live on unemployment benefits, let alone live with none.

Unless UI is extended this month, 2 million jobless people will lose their lifeline. Those in Congress blocking the UI extension should be made to feel what it’s like to be unemployed.

Sign a petition to Congress demanding it act now to extend the emergency UI benefits program.

It bears repeating, every day: if Congress doesn’t act, six million people will lose unemployment insurance benefits at the end of the year. That’s six million people who will find it harder to make ends meet, and six million fewer people who can support their community’s economy.

Half of America is poor or low-income and wide majorities say that our economic and political systems are unfairly tilted towards the rich. It’s time we start listening and responding to the voices of the people who are actually impacted by our political decisions—not just the politicians, pundits and lobbyists who set the agenda in Washington. Here are two.

Shonda, a Working America member from Ohio, has been unemployed for nearly two years, and has relied on her unemployment insurance to help care for her ailing mother.

Karen, a Working America member and a former bank teller from Pennsylvania, has been unemployed for 13 months.

So many people in this country are unemployed—including half a million of our members—and House Republicans are offering up a bill that would end unemployment insurance for more than 3 million people. How can you claim to be concerned about the economy when you’re fighting to pull back the unemployment insurance so many families, including people like Shonda and Karen, are counting on to make ends meet?

In Washington, they’re really making their priorities clear. Either their idea of how the economy works is totally backwards or they’re just not interested in policies that actually help working-class and middle-class people like Karen and Shonda.