{"id":383589,"date":"2010-03-03T10:00:07","date_gmt":"2010-03-03T15:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/?p=78165"},"modified":"2010-03-03T10:00:07","modified_gmt":"2010-03-03T15:00:07","slug":"the-politics-of-unemployment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/383589","title":{"rendered":"The Politics of Unemployment"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a five-day standoff, Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) conceded defeat<\/a>, and the Senate last night approved<\/a> a short term measure extending COBRA benefits, funding for doctors who treat Medicare patients, federal highway money and the filing deadline<\/a> for unemployment insurance.<\/p>\n

It was quite a ride, though not for the reasons commonly stated. <\/span>That is, the focus on “Bunning’s blockade of an unemployment benefits extension” — the ubiquitous remark both in media reports and on the Senate floor — distracted from the fact that (1) there is no extension of unemployment benefits being proposed, just an extension of the filing deadline<\/a> for existing benefits, and (2) the jobs bill to which the Senate is moving next includes a provision that would pay UI benefits retroactive<\/a> to March 1 — meaning that Bunning could have continued his one-man stand indefinitely and those checks would likely still have been delivered, if a little late.<\/p>\n

The more dramatic consequence of Bunning’s blockade came in the form of the thousands of federal workers who were furloughed<\/a> this week for a lack of infrastructure funds<\/a>, which expired Feb. 28. The Chicago Tribune reports<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Among the construction sites where work will be halted: the $36 million replacement of the Humpback Bridge on the George Washington Parkway in Virginia; $15 million in bridge construction and stream rehabilitation in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho; and the $8 million resurfacing of the Natchez Trace Parkway in Mississippi.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And there’s the rub for Republicans resisting more government spending: That cash sustains jobs, even in conservative districts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a five-day standoff, Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) conceded defeat, and the Senate last night approved a short term measure extending COBRA benefits, funding for doctors who treat Medicare patients, federal highway money and the filing deadline for unemployment insurance. It was quite a ride, though not for the reasons commonly stated. That is, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4315,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-383589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4315"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383589\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}