{"id":548063,"date":"2010-04-30T14:27:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-30T18:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/?p=83673"},"modified":"2010-04-30T14:27:00","modified_gmt":"2010-04-30T18:27:00","slug":"dems-have-no-plans-to-extend-unemployment-benefits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/548063","title":{"rendered":"Dems Have No Plans to Extend Unemployment Benefits"},"content":{"rendered":"

As Congress continues to negotiate unemployment benefits legislation, Bloomberg has a story<\/a> this week noting what few others have: that the so-called extension of benefits isn’t really an extension of benefits at all. Rather, it’s an extension of the filing deadline<\/a> to apply for existing benefits, which have been capped at a maximum 99 weeks since last fall. And Congress has no plans to lengthen that span.<\/p>\n

That, Bloomberg writes, spells bad news for a growing group of long-term unemployed workers<\/a> who have exhausted all available help.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

[Lawmakers] are quietly drawing the line at 99 weeks of aid, a mark that hundreds of thousands of Americans have already reached. In coming months, the number of those who will receive their final government check is projected to top 1 million.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As we noted recently<\/a>, there’s really no group keeping a tally of how many Americans are exhausting their benefits. The Labor Department, for example, defines “long-term unemployment” as anything beyond 27 weeks, meaning that some workers falling into that category could have 18 months of benefits remaining. And a recent study from the Pew Charitable Trusts revealed that roughly 3.4 million people have been out of work for at least a year — which again, does nothing to indicate how many folks have exhausted their government benefits.<\/p>\n

Bloomberg, for its part, based its estimates on state figures, which paint a pretty dismal portrait of the long-term unemployment problem.<\/p>\n

\n

Interviews with state officials found that in New York, 57,000 people have received their last check. In Florida, 130,000 are no longer eligible as are about 30,000 Ohioans.<\/p>\n

Those numbers will grow, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc, which projects that more than 400,000 may soon begin losing benefits every month.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

For all the uncertainty surrounding the economic recovery, this much seems clear: Congress has no plans to extend unemployment benefits beyond their current length.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t go on forever,\u201d said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, of Montana, whose panel oversees the benefits program. \u201cI think 99 weeks is sufficient,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s just been no discussion to go beyond that,\u201d said Senator Byron Dorgan,\u00a0a North Dakota Democrat.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Congress continues to negotiate unemployment benefits legislation, Bloomberg has a story this week noting what few others have: that the so-called extension of benefits isn’t really an extension of benefits at all. Rather, it’s an extension of the filing deadline to apply for existing benefits, which have been capped at a maximum 99 weeks […]<\/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-548063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548063","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=548063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548063\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}