Unemployment Benefits Amended, Extended
WASHINGTON – The House passed an amendment to the Community Services Block Grant Bill Wednesday night that if passed in the Senate and signed into law by the President, will extend unemployment benefits by six months to those whose benefits have expired.
The amendment, sponsored by George Miller (D- Calif.), was passed 227 to 179 with 27 members abstaining from voting. In arguing for support of the amendment Miller said, “This Congress stands by as 375,000 people lost their benefits in the month of January. We knew it was going to happen. We went home for Christmas. What kind of Christmas did these people have when they knew that their benefits were going to run out? What kind of Christmas did these hard working families have?”
“Most of them have worked their whole lives, played by the rules, tried to do it the right way, tried to raise their families; and now all of that is at risk and we sit with $17 billion in the trust fund, and they say go to the states.” A lot of the states, he said, are out of money.
On the other side of the debate, Rep. Boehner (R- Ohio ) replied, “.at the 11 th hour we get this cynical attempt to talk about extending unemployment benefits. It has no business on this bill. As I said before, this is an authorization. There is no money attached to it; and for goodness sakes, no unemployed worker in America ought to count on anything happening out of this bill because it will never be funded.”
Rep. Tierney (D – Salem ) said he didn’t think the Republicans had a good argument against the amendment. “Many of the Republicans that voted against it tried to make the point that they thought this was not the proper procedure to go about it,” he said. “We were forced to go this route because of their inability or unwillingness to help regular people that are unemployed.who want to work and just have not been able to but need those resources to survive.”
He also said that an added benefit of extending unemployment benefits is that America would gain 1.73 dollars in economic balance for every dollar that was put into unemployment.
“I think it’s a serious statement that finally we’ve got some members on the Republican majority side to recognize the economic situation. We’re just not creating jobs.”
He said that they voted for this amendment because they’re recognizing that the people who are making money in this country are people who own stocks and are CEOs of companies. “That doesn’t necessarily translate down to regular Americans. Regular Americans are the ones who haven’t gotten their jobs back,” he said.
