Nov. 21—If Majority House Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) has his way, millions of America’s jobless workers who reach the end of their state and federal unemployment insurance (UI) benefits without finding work will enter the holiday season worrying whether they’ll have any income after the year ends.
More than 2 million workers will exhaust their state benefits in the first half of 2004 and lose their financial lifeline without reauthorization of Temporary Extended Unemployment Compensation (TEUC). Another 1.4 million have already exhausted state and federal UI benefits now and need additional federal benefits. And another 1 million of the jobless will exhaust TEUC between November 2003 and March 2004, and would benefit from additional weeks of TEUC benefits.
The percentage of jobless workers who are unemployed for long periods is at record levels—the average job search takes nearly five months. The unemployment rate has been at or above 6 percent for months, more than 10 million unemployed Americans want jobs they cannot find and more than 2 million have been unemployed for at least six months.
On Nov. 19, DeLay said that with appropriations bills and other legislation still unapproved, “I don’t see how we can get to” extending federal UI benefits.
House and Senate Democrats have introduced legislation (H.R. 3244 and S. 1708) that would extend the TEUC program through June 30, 2004, and provide 26 weeks of additional benefits. In addition to helping workers who exhaust their regular state UI benefits, the bill would provide essential support to those workers who already have received and exhausted their federal benefits under the current law.
The TEUC program gives workers who have exhausted their state UI benefits an additional 13 weeks of federal UI. They can receive a total of 26 weeks of federal benefits in states with unusually high unemployment.
DeLay said extending UI is unnecessary because “every economic indicator is better than in 1993, when the Democrats ended the [federal] unemployment program.”
Current Recovery Not as Strong as the Early 1990s Recovery
Yet, the 1990s economic scenario was much different: The extended federal UI benefits program established during the early 1990s recession did not end until the economy had created nearly 3 million jobs compared with pre-recession levels. The current UI program is scheduled to end while there are 2.4 million fewer jobs than before the recession.
In addition, the economy isn’t creating jobs quickly enough to absorb the unemployed workers who outnumber available jobs by about 3–1, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“Just as they failed to renew the TEUC before the 2002 holiday recess, Republican leaders now are on track to abandon jobless Americans during the second consecutive holiday season,” says Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.).
“Along with their apparent refusal to protect workers’ overtime rights, the cynical refusal to extend UI benefits to the nation’s most vulnerable workers speaks volumes about these leaders’ priorities for and commitments to working families,” says President John J. Sweeney.
The same day DeLay made his announcement, House GOP Conference Chairwoman Deborah Pryce (R-Ohio) said Republicans are “conflicted” about extending unemployment benefits because economists have advised them that another TEUC extension “is the last thing we need to help the unemployed.”
To the contrary, most economists see the value of extending UI at a time of high employment, according to Economic Policy Institute (EPI) economist and research director Lee Price: “Not only is extending benefits a humanitarian act, but it helps match people to the right job and boosts the economy because they spend the money immediately on household necessities.”
More
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Visit the Economic Policy Institute’s JobWatch website tracking the Bush administration’s failed job promises.
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