Main Street

Groups Tell Congress to Extend Jobless Benefits

Nearly 200 major national, state and local organizations representing tens of millions of Americans have signed on to a letter to Congress calling for an immediate full-year extension of the urgently needed jobless benefit programs initiated in last year’s Recovery Act, before they expire February 28th.

The full text of the letter, just released by the National Employment Law Project (NELP):

Dear Congressional Leaders:

We are writing to strongly urge the Senate and the House of Representatives to act immediately to continue the Recovery Act’s aid to the jobless as a stand‐alone measure through the end of 2010.

Congress and President Obama took bold action one year ago to enact major benefits for today’s jobless families, including the extension of jobless benefits and subsidized COBRA coverage. Subsequent expansions of the program, including the 14‐20 week expansion of Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC), have also gone a long way to respond to the severity of the crisis of long‐term unemployment that has now gripped the nation, with more than 40% of all unemployed workers still struggling to find work after six months and more than six unemployed workers looking for every available job.

While the jobless aid provided by the Recovery Act has been significant, the decision of Congress to adopt limited extensions of the program have caused severe hardship, both for unemployed workers and the state systems that are struggling with severely outdated equipment and insufficient staff and resources to process over 10 million unemployment checks each week. Indeed, as result of the limited two ‐month extension that expires February 28th starting in the week of February 15th, the states will be forced to spend time and resources they can ill‐ afford to waste notifying workers that the extended UI programs are shutting down. They will also need to start reprogramming their computers to implement the required shut‐down as of March 1st.

If Congress does not take final action by February 22nd, the states will no longer be in a position to reverse the process and there will be mass confusion among desperate workers whose only means to pay their groceries and housing is their limited unemployment benefits. Moreover, the delay will wreak havoc on the state agencies as a result of the extra work required to shut down the programs and the immediate need to respond to the flood of phone calls that will start coming in from panicked workers.

By every economic indicator, the extension of jobless aid provided by the Recovery Act should continue through the end of year. As recently documented by the Congressional Budget Office, the extension of jobless aid also provides the most significant boost to the economy and job growth of any policy option being debated by Congress. It provides $1.90 in stimulus for every dollar spent, and will be responsible for creating 800,000 jobs this year alone. In spite of the importance of this program, the House of Representatives passed a jobs bill in December that includes an extension of jobless aid only through June and the recent draft of the Senate jobs bill only continues the program through May.

Given the severity of the crisis and latest evidence of the problems associated with a short‐term continuation of the program, these limited extensions of jobless aid can no longer be sustained. These short‐term extensions simply do not measure up to the realities facing unemployed workers in today’s economy or to the serious challenges facing the state agencies that process the benefits.

Accordingly, we call on Congress to enact a stand‐alone continuation of the jobless aid provisions of the Recovery Act as its first measure of business when it returns from recess, and to continue the program through the end of the year.

Working America is one of the nearly 200 co-signing organizations.

When Congress returns from its Presidents’ Day recess on Monday, February 22nd, clearly the jobless benefit extensions must be the first order of business.

The growing coalition movement for jobs is planning a national call-in to Congress next week on this urgent issue. Stay tuned. And take action now to tell Congress: Don’t let the lifeline be cut off — extend jobless benefits and create jobs for Main Street.

Tags: jobless benefit extension, unemployment