On January 8, the President signed legislation (S. 23) to extend through the end of May the federal program that provides additional unemployment benefits to laid-off workers, making it the first bill to be enacted in the 108th Congress. The Senate approved the bill by unanimous consent on January 7, with the House passing it by a vote of 416-4 on January 8, just a few hours before it became law. Four Republicans, Reps. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), Scott Garrett (R-NJ), Jeff Miller (R-FL) and Ron Paul (R-TX), voted against the bill.
The new law will provide an additional 13 weeks of federally-funded unemployment benefits to jobless workers who have exhausted their 26 weeks of regular state-funded unemployment benefits. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the extended program, which expires on May 31, will cost $7.2 billion.
In states where unemployment is exceptionally high, laid-off workers will be eligible to receive an extra 13 weeks of unemployment compensation, in addition to the 13 weeks of added unemployment benefits available to all workers who have exhausted their 26 weeks of regular unemployment payments. Currently, only Alaska, Oregon, and Washington qualify as high unemployment states. Prior to adjournment of the 107th Congress, the House and Senate failed to agree on legislation to extend the federal unemployment emergency program (see The Source, 11/15/02). Consequently, about 800,000 laid-off workers lost all or part of their benefits when the program expired on December 28. Under the new measure, the cut-off workers will receive the remainder of their benefits. Additionally, the Department of Labor estimates that 1.6 million more jobless workers will qualify for the added benefits between now and May.
Despite the lopsided votes in both the House and the Senate, Democrats in both chambers complained that the legislation left out approximately 1 million people who have already exhausted their additional 13 weeks of federal unemployment benefits.
Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) proposed to offer an amendment that would have provided 13 additional weeks of unemployment benefits to jobless workers who have exhausted both their 26 weeks of regular benefits and 13 weeks of extended federal benefits. The Republican leadership objected to the proposal saying it was too controversial and would delay passage of the bill in time to help the 800,000 jobless workers whose benefits were cut-off at the end of December.
Additionally, the House rejected, 202-224, a motion by Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) to send the bill back to the Ways and Means Committee with instructions to add provisions to extend benefits to those jobless workers who have exhausted all available state and federal unemployment benefits.
