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Tag: long term unemployment
A Lonely Fight To Revive Jobless Benefits

A Lonely Fight To Revive Jobless Benefits

By Lisa Mascaro, Tribune Washington Bureau

PLEASANTVILLE, N.J. — Not far from once-booming Atlantic City, here’s what the end of federal unemployment insurance looks like in a tattered community where the jobless rate is still almost twice the national average.

A solitary Republican congressman stands in the afternoon sun, struggling against the odds and the majority in his own party, to rally a handful of supporters seeking the resumption of unemployment benefits that were cut off late last year.

The local workforce development office, a newer building in an otherwise shabby stretch of downtown Pleasantville, swells with job seekers, many from nearby casinos that fueled a boom before the bust when gambling revenue sank.

Long-term-unemployed workers, like waitress Chris Congleton, a grandmother sidelined with a foot injury, desperately look for any available job as they come to terms with the reality that the federal aid they’d come to rely on is probably over. Three months behind on her mortgage, Congleton is hoping to go back to waiting tables, even though her doctor warned against it.

“This is a world of hurt,” said Rep. Frank A. LoBiondo, who grew up not far from here and often talks to his constituents by phone on his commute from Washington back to the southern New Jersey district. “These heart-wrenching stories that I’m hearing … you can sense just the agony that people are going through.”

But the 10-term congressman’s campaign to renew federal assistance for the long-term unemployed is a lonely one, and unlikely to produce the outcome he is hoping for in Congress.

After repeatedly extending federal benefits, Washington has little political appetite for another round — what would be the 13th since jobs started disappearing at an alarming rate in the middle of 2008.

Before expiring in December, the emergency program had lasted a record five years, an unparalleled allocation of federal aid to combat an economic slump unlike any since the Great Depression. With the abrupt end of the weekly payments, which averaged $289, more than 2 million Americans lost their aid.

Never before has Congress allowed the emergency federal benefits to lapse when long-term jobless rates are as high as they are today — about 2.4 percent of the workforce. Congress has, however, shut off benefits when the overall unemployment rate dropped below 7 percent — as it did in December.

Now, nearly five years after the recession technically ended, this unprecedented outlay of federal aid for the jobless — $260 billion over 66 months, twice as long as the next-longest run — is seeing an equally unprecedented end.

Republicans in particular have grown weary of spending federal dollars on the unemployed, arguing that the aid provides a disincentive to finding work. And as the sluggish economy shows signs of improvement, Democrats have little leverage to compel Congress to act. Each month that passes without a renewal of benefits saps the remaining political momentum.

Though the Democratic-controlled Senate passed a retroactive extension in April, only six GOP lawmakers signed a letter drafted by LoBiondo to urge Speaker John A. Boehner (R-OH) to bring the issue to a vote in the Republican-controlled House. No vote is scheduled.

Boehner has told President Barack Obama he would be willing to consider another extension, but only if it was tied to specific policies to create jobs — an unlikely prospect in an election year, when compromise is difficult.

“The ball’s still in their court,” Boehner said recently.

The persistence of a historically large number of long-term jobless — those unemployed for more than six months, when most state benefits expire — has divided the parties along traditional fault lines.

Republicans have begun to argue that the end of benefits has led to more people getting back to work. The national jobless rate has dropped to 6.7 percent.

“Are we going to keep on paying unemployment forever?” said freshman Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), whose Gettysburg-area unemployment rate is just below the national average. “If you’re against it, people want to characterize you as uncaring, which isn’t true. We’re also here to care about our constitutional duties and our fiscal duties.”

The idea that the unemployment insurance coddles workers has not been borne out in numerous studies. Nor does it sit well with Congleton, the 51-year-old waitress in neighboring Cape May County, who lost her job in the seasonal coastal community last spring. Her state aid ran out in the fall and now she and her husband could lose the home they’ve owned for 18 years.

“I didn’t get that (house) by sitting on the couch watching TV, as everyone likes to say about people who are collecting unemployment,” Congleton said. Now that benefits have dried up, Congleton said, she plans to get another waitress job when tourist season reopens, even though she knows her foot pain will return.

“I have no choice. It’s either that or lose my home,” she said.

But employment counselors warn that long-term-unemployed workers often have a hard time finding jobs because employers tend not to hire those with lengthy gaps on their resumes. Those who try to beef up their skills or switch fields learn how hard it is to compete with those with more experience. Congleton tried unsuccessfully to find secretarial work, and though she has a real estate license, she says the local home market is in a slump.

“I discovered that (nearly) 52 is not a good time to change jobs,” she said.

The coming midterm election only complicates the chances of passing an unemployment measure in the House. Many Republicans represent conservative districts where they are more concerned with beating back primary challenges from the right than with appealing to general election voters in a fall campaign against a Democrat. To their base, unemployment looks like a handout, and polls show waning public support for another extension.

“I hope to convince more colleagues that they should change their mind on this,” said LoBiondo, who is facing a tough re-election in a district won by Obama in 2012. “I’m trying to make sure it’s not the end of the line.”

Photo: Senate Democrats via Flickr

Aid Cuts Have Hit Nearly Two Million Long-Term Unemployed

Aid Cuts Have Hit Nearly Two Million Long-Term Unemployed

By Jake Grovum, Stateline.org

WASHINGTON — Almost 2 million Americans who have been out of work for longer than six months have missed out on extended unemployment benefits since Congress allowed the program to expire in December, according to a new analysis of U.S. Department of Labor data.

In seven states, at least 100,000 unemployed workers have missed out on unemployment benefits they would have otherwise received, according to the analysis from the National Employment Law Project, a group that advocates for workers and has lobbied for an extension of the benefits.

Extended unemployment benefits began during the George W. Bush administration in 2008 as a response to a spike in long-term unemployment during the Great Recession. The extended benefits allowed unemployed workers to collect aid for up to 99 weeks, instead of the normal 26 weeks.

The White House and lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are interested in reinstating the benefits. Four Republicans joined Senate Democrats last month to almost pass an extension, and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has said he’s open to an extension, provided the cost is offset with other budget cuts. But so far, disputes over how to pay for continuing the measure and how long to extend the benefits have derailed any deals.

The most populous states have the most people who have been affected by the expiration of the benefits. But states such as New Jersey and Florida have been hit disproportionately hard because they have high levels of long-term unemployment.

States largely are responsible for regular unemployment benefits, but the federal government covered the cost of the extended benefits. From 2008 through the first half of 2013, Washington spent $252 billion on extended benefits for at least 24 million unemployed Americans.

If the program is not reinstated before April, states and their unemployed workers will have missed out on more than $5 billion in federal money, according to the analysis. Previous government and private-sector analyses have estimated that the cuts could cost as many as 240,000 jobs if they continue through the end of 2014.

The total number of those missing benefits includes those who were receiving extended benefits when the program expired in December, as well as those who have exhausted state jobless benefits in the months since and would have been eligible for extended benefits.

In the wake of the Great Recession, a historically high percentage of the unemployed have been out of work for six months or longer. Long-term joblessness as a share of the total unemployed reached a pre-Great Recession high of 26 percent in mid-1983. As of January this year, 41 states and the District of Columbia had long-term unemployment rates above that level.

Even before the expiration of the extended benefits, some states had scaled back their unemployment programs, leaving workers with even fewer weeks of jobless benefits. Florida, for example, now offers 19 weeks of benefits to the unemployed, while Georgia offers 18. South Carolina, Missouri, Arkansas and Michigan have also reduced the number of weeks the unemployed can receive aid. North Carolina is a special case because the state not only cut its standard benefits program to 19 weeks, but also earlier this year opted out of the extended benefits program entirely — the first and only state to do so.

Photo: Wisaflcio via Flickr

Deficit Of Truth: What Republicans Hope You Don’t Know And Never Find Out

Deficit Of Truth: What Republicans Hope You Don’t Know And Never Find Out

Listening to Republicans in Congress wailing incessantly about our spendthrift culture raises a nagging question: What would they do, besides talking, if they actually wanted to reduce federal deficits and, eventually, the national debt?

First, they would admit that President Obama’s policies, including health care reform, have already reduced deficits sharply, as promised. Second, they would desist from their hostage-taking tactics over the debt ceiling, which have only damaged America’s economy and international prestige. And then they would finally admit that basic investment and job creation, rather than cutting food stamps, represent the best way to reduce both deficits and debt, indeed the only way — through economic growth.

Fortunately for those Republicans and sadly for everyone else, the American public has little comprehension of current fiscal realities. Most people don’t even know that the deficit is shrinking rather than growing. According to a poll released on Feb. 4 by The Huffington Post and You.gov,  well over half believe the budget deficit has increased since 2009, while less than 20 percent are aware that it has steadily decreased. (Another 14 percent believe the deficit has remained constant during Obama’s presidency.)

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, it is Republican voters, misinformed by Fox News, who most fervently and consistently insist on these mistaken ideas, with 85 percent telling pollsters that the deficit has increased. Less than a third of Democrats gave that answer. But nearly 60 percent of independent voters agree with the Republicans on that question and only 30 percent of Democrats understand the truth – an implicit repudiation, as The Huffington Post noted, of the president’s political decision to prioritize deficit reduction rather than job creation.

The facts are simple enough even for a Tea Party politician to understand. The federal deficit reached its peak – in dollar amount and as a share of the national economy – in 2009, which happens to be the year that Obama took office. Thanks to the profligate war and tax policies of the Bush administration — which undid the fiscal stabilization achieved under President Clinton — the Treasury had no financial margin when the Great Recession struck. Federal spending required to avoid another (and possibly far worse) worldwide Depression, combined with declining tax revenues that resulted from economic stagnation and tax cuts, all led inevitably to that record deficit.

Over the past five years, the red ink has swiftly faded. This year’s deficit will be about $514 billion, or about one-third of the $1.5 trillion deficit in 2009; next year’s will be even lower, at around $478 billion. As when Clinton was president, those marked fiscal improvements are mainly the product of a slowly recovering economy and growing incomes, along with federal budget cuts.

But not only is the good news about the shrinking deficit widely ignored; it isn’t actually good news at all. By avoiding a mostly mythical “budget crisis,” federal policy has created a very real jobs crisis that persists, with particular harm to working families. The latest Congressional Budget Office report on the fiscal outlook for the coming decade strongly suggests that the cost of reducing the deficit has been – and will continue to be – substantial losses in potential economic growth and employment.

The ironic consequence, as former White House economist Jared Bernstein recently explained, is that the fiscal outlook for the next 10 years will be somewhat dimmer than expected. In other words, we will return to higher deficits because fiscal austerity –enforced by Republicans and accepted by Obama  — is still dragging the economy down.

To restore the kind of growth that lets families prosper and ultimately erases deficits, the Republicans would have to listen to the president — especially when he calls for public investment in infrastructure and an increased minimum wage, the first steps toward robust growth and fiscal stability.

If Americans understood the truth about deficits and debt – and how the federal budget affects their jobs and income – the congressional obstruction caucus, also known as the GOP, would have no other choice.

Photo: Speaker Boehner via Flickr

Senate GOP Denies Help To The Long-Term Unemployed — Again

Senate GOP Denies Help To The Long-Term Unemployed — Again

The Republican minority in the Senate has narrowly defeated the Democratic majority’s third attempt to extend emergency benefits for the long-term unemployed.

The three-month extension would have been paid for by a budgetary maneuver known as “pension smoothing.” It also included an amendment that would bar anyone who had earned more than a million dollars the previous year from receiving emergency benefits.

Democrats fell just one vote shy of reaching the 60-vote threshold to approve the amendment from Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) before Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) flipped his vote for procedural reasons.

Nearly 1.7 million Americans have lost their only income since benefits were cut off in December. Nearly 3 million more Americans will lose their benefits this year unless Congress passes an extension.

Republicans helped George W. Bush pass emergency unemployment benefits five times during his presidency, including the Emergency Unemployment Compensation program defeated today, which began in 2008 at the start of the financial crisis. Congress has never cut off benefits when the long-term unemployment rate has been this high, approximately 2.6 percent.

“I’m beginning to believe there is nothing that will get Republicans to yes,” Reid said. “It’s a ‘no’ vote because they don’t want to extend unemployment insurance.”

Some Republicans called the “pension smoothing” a gimmick, which it is. Members of the House GOP have offered it as a way to pay for restoring cost-of-living increases cut from military pensions in the budget deal earlier this year.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) objected to Reid’s proposed amendment process for the bill, as he had when Democrats proposed a one-year extension of emergency unemployment benefits paid for by a one-year extension of the sequester earlier this year.

Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Dean Heller (R-NV), Susan Collins (R-ME) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) were the only Republicans who voted to move the bill forward.

“All we need is one more Republican vote,” Reid said. He vowed to bring the measure up again.

Help for the long-term unemployed is sure to be an issue in the 2014 elections. If that wasn’t clear enough to Senator McConnell, his likely Democratic opponent tweeted a reminder Thursday morning.

 

AFP Photo/Jewel Samad