As Thousands are Running Out of Time on Unemployment, House Approves Extension
DOCUMENTARY
Bangor Daily News
Kase Wickman
Boston University Washington News Service
Oct. 1, 2009
WASHINGTON—Maine’s unemployed would receive extended jobless benefits under a House-passed bill to extend federal unemployment benefits 13 weeks beyond the usual 79-week maximum for states whose unemployment rates currently stand at 8.5 percent or higher. Maine’s average unemployment rate is currently 8.6 percent.
Without this legislation, about 4,800 Mainers would exhaust their unemployment packages by the end of December. Since the beginning of August, more than 1,200 Mainers’ benefits have hit their term limit and ended.
The legislation, which passed Tuesday, 331-38, would affect unemployment packages in 27 states. Similar legislation is now pending in the Senate.
U.S. Rep. Mike Michaud (D-Maine) supported the bid to extend benefits but said extension was a patch, not a permanent solution.
“The bottom line is, we have got to get the economy going,” he said. “We can’t just keep relying on unemployment [benefits]. No one really wants to be on unemployment. They have to until we can get the jobs going in Maine as well as nationwide.”
“We can’t continue to rely on government bailouts or stimulus programs or keep extending unemployment. We need a strong manufacturing sector here in this country, and I’m going to continue to push for that in the long term,” he said. “But in the short term, we have no option but to extend the unemployment benefits.”
Michaud said that even more than the recession, job losses were quickened by old policy failures, especially lack of enforcement of trade policies, leading to many jobs lost to cheaper foreign markets.
“Part of it is because of the failed federal policy over the years, whether it’s the unfair trade deals, the value-added tax, lack of enforcement of trade deals, you know, like China manipulating their currency,” Michaud said. “There’s a lot of areas that we have to move forward in and focus on, as well as creating new jobs and new technology.”
U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) also voted to extend unemployment benefits, though she said that “we’re still sort of stuck in the trough. This is only a patch.”
Pingree said that the benefits, which in Maine takes the form of a weekly check of up to $356, are especially important coming into a winter with no sign of major recession relief.
Unemployment checks are, she said, “money that gets spent right away in local communities for heating oil, food, the kinds of things that people spend on in their daily lives. “
Knowing that the economy will not recover overnight, Pingree said she foresees another Congress-approved extension of benefits.
“I do think Congress will continue to be responsive to those states that are struggling, at the same time as we continue to try and boost the economy and help it improve,” she said. “I don’t know when the appetite for extending unemployment will end, but I don’t think that Congress will ever turn its back on high unemployment rates like this.”
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