Tag: unemployment extension

The U.S. Senate shuttered Thursday afternoon for the 4th of July holiday after failing for weeks to pass unemployment insurance extension and condemning hundreds...

WASHINGTON-- On Wednesday night, a bare-bones measure to keep federally funded unemployment insurance checks headed to the long-term unemployed failed in the Senate. Moderate Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine had signed on to vote for cloture on the $34 billion bill. But without Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), who passed away earlier in the week, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) — the majority leader who hails from the state with the worst unemployment rate in the country — once again found himself stuck at 59 votes. By the time Byrd’s replacement is in place, in mid-July, two million Americans will have lost their benefits, and the bill extending them will have languished for some 11 weeks.

Coloradans are suffering directly because lawmakers in Washington can not find a way to work together to pass vital federal unemployment insurance benefits extensions. Like many states, Colorado tied benefits to federal payments and in Colorado the federal money pays larger percentages of claims. As Republicans and Democrats face off on Capitol Hill, thousands of Coloradans are being dropped from the rolls. Some of them will be hungry. Others homeless. And some of them jailed for not paying debts. Kelly, for example, a former Westminster financial analyst whose unemployment insurance recently ended and who didn't want the Colorado Independent to post her full name, is working to avoid arrest for not paying fees incurred in the wake of a misdemeanor traffic violation.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is telling reporters today that he has won the votes of two Republicans for his extension of federal...

Tea party favorite Sharron Angle, the Nevada GOP’s candidate for Senate, is arguing that the government should cut unemployment benefits to get the jobless...

Congress has never before let federally extended unemployment benefits drop with an unemployment rate so high: That is the takeaway from a searing new...

Faced with the fact that millions of Americans are losing their unemployment benefits and cutting into the national economic recovery, Tuesday night Sens. Harry...

WASHINGTON-- Last week, as House Democrats took to the floor with near-unanimous praise for legislation to help the unemployed and stimulate the fragile economy, Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) offered a wildly different message.

“This bill,” he said, “represents a textbook example of how not to deal with the economic challenges that our country faces.”

After three weeks of stalling over controversial amendments to legislation extending unemployment benefits, Senate GOP leaders are floating a new message as they criticize...