GOP senator blocks extending jobless benefits

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

As Congress raced to leave Washington for its Easter recess, a Republican senator blocked a stopgap bill to extend jobless benefits, saying its $9-billion cost should not be added to the national debt.

As a result, some people who have been out of work for more than six months will at least temporarily lose benefits when the current extension ends April 5. Newly jobless people won’t be eligible to sign up for generous health insurance subsidies.

At the center of the battle is Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who’s insisting that the measure be ‘paid for’ so as not to add to the nation’s $12.7-trillion debt.

‘What we are doing is stealing future opportunity from our children,’ Coburn said Thursday.

Republicans offered legislation to finance the monthlong extension of jobless benefits by rescinding unspent money from last year’s economic stimulus bill. The effort was killed on a party-line vote.

Democrats repeatedly sought speedy Senate approval of a House-passed measure that would extend jobless benefits through May 5, but Coburn objected. Republicans said Senate negotiations produced a compromise that didn’t pass muster in the House.

Democratic leaders say that a lapse in jobless benefits constitutes an emergency, so the bill doesn’t need to conform to the new pay-as-you-go budget law, which requires new benefit programs to be offset with spending cuts or tax increases so they don’t increase the deficit.

Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), said the Senate would attempt to retroactively bestow the jobless benefits when it returns from its spring recess April 12.

Associated Press