Your Congress on UI Benefits

Arthur Delaney of HuffPost continues to do his kiss-ass best to provide the jobless with the inside view of Congress and their thoughts, or non-thoughts, on the UI situation. Here he is again: Do Members of Congress Understand Unemployment Benefits Legislation?   And before you read on, please note that NJS provides this link so you may find the contact information of your Congressperson so you may email or call him/her to explain how Tier 5 makes sense and that YOU paid in all these years to UI benefits and you and millions like you, DESERVE THEM.

Arthur Delaney WASHINGTON -- Do members of Congress and their staffers understand that if they don't approve legislation to reauthorize federally-funded extended unemployment insurance by the end of November, two million layoff victims will prematurely stop receiving benefits during the holidays?

Apparently, many of them do not.

"We found ourselves over the weekend in a conversation with two public opinion analysts who were telling us that they didn't think there was that much public support for this," Robert Greenstein, director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told HuffPost on Wednesday. "And they thought by 'extend,' what we meant, and what the administration is proposing... was to not let anybody ever go off the side and to just keep adding weeks, which is not what anybody is talking about at all."

"They told us that they thought a number of members of Congress and their staff were similarly confused," Greenstein said.

To fight the worst recession since the Great Depression, Congress started giving the unemployed additional weeks of federally-funded unemployment benefits in July 2008 on top of the 26 weeks always provided by states. The benefits became more generous in 2009 to the point where in hardest-hit areas, the jobless are eligible for 73 weeks of extra benefits, for a total of 99 weeks in some states.

All 73 weeks of federally-funded benefits expire on Nov. 30 without a congressional reauthorization, which will face stiff opposition from Republicans and conservative Democrats opposed to deficit spending, which is the traditional way of financing extended unemployment benefits during recessions.

Apparently, some members of Congress and their staffers fundamentally misunderstand the question before them. They think they're being asked to hand out additional weeks of benefits to help the "99ers" -- people who collected unemployment for nearly two years without finding work. (There are bills to give additional weeks to the 99ers, but those bills are pretty much dead in the water.)

"The same confusion exists in the media and it exists in the general public," said a lobbyist who works on the issue. "This isn't about adding more weeks. This is about the 27ers."

The lobbyist said leadership offices and progressive offices understood the issue just fine. It's the rank-and-file members and their staffers who don't get it.

READ ON

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