{"id":475425,"date":"2010-03-26T11:37:45","date_gmt":"2010-03-26T15:37:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/?p=80603"},"modified":"2010-03-26T11:37:45","modified_gmt":"2010-03-26T15:37:45","slug":"senate-likely-to-leave-town-without-extending-cobra-doc-fix-unemployment-benefits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/475425","title":{"rendered":"Senate Likely to Leave Town Without Extending COBRA, Doc-Fix, Unemployment Benefits"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Behind Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), the Republicans this morning have continued to block a $9.2 billion proposal to extend COBRA health benefits, delay a 21 percent cut in Medicare doctor payments, and extend the filing deadline for unemployment benefits (<a href=\"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/77922\/unemployment-extension-does-not-create-additional-benefits\" >not to be confused with the creation of additional UI benefits<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>Because Coburn has prevented efforts to adopt the measure by unanimous consent, Democratic leaders last night filed for cloture on the bill &#8212; setting in motion the series of votes that would allow Senate lawmakers to pass the bill despite Coburn&#8217;s objections. Trouble is, it&#8217;s Friday before a two-week congressional vacation, and a good many lawmakers have already left town. Indeed, the office of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said this morning that just 11 Republicans are available to vote.<span id=\"more-80603\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The flight of living, breathing senators means that the cloture votes likely won&#8217;t happen before Congress returns to Washington 18 days from now, the Reid spokesperson said.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, COBRA benefits expire April 1; a 21-percent cut in Medicare doctor payments is scheduled to take effect that same day; and the filing deadline for UI benefits arrives April 5.<\/p>\n<p>Senate lawmakers will tweak the bill to make the extensions retroactive, Reid&#8217;s office said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Behind Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), the Republicans this morning have continued to block a $9.2 billion proposal to extend COBRA health benefits, delay a 21 percent cut in Medicare doctor payments, and extend the filing deadline for unemployment benefits (not to be confused with the creation of additional UI benefits). Because Coburn has prevented efforts [&hellip;]<\/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-475425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475425","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=475425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475425\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}