Senate to Vote on Unemployment Insurance Extension TODAY!

The Senate will vote tonight (Monday) on final passage of the bill to restore unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless - finally! 

Please don't leave anything to chance:  tell your Senators to vote yes. And tell the House to take a vote.

Click here to send emails to your Senators and Representative.

As of April 5th, more than 2 million unemployed workers have lost jobless benefits because Congress hasn’t acted.
The Senate seems ready to help - you can make sure they do.
But House Speaker John Boehner is using every excuse he can think of to prevent UI from coming up for a vote.

Where things stand:
The Senate has taken all the procedural votes.  Now the vote on final passage in the Senate is scheduled for Monday, April 7, at about 5:30 p.m.  
But Speaker Boehner and his leadership team are preventing UI from being voted on in the House.  First they said it needed to be paid for.  It is paid for in the Senate bill.  Then they said the expiration has gone on for so long, it would be too hard to provide retroactive benefits.  But Jeff Frischmann, head of Nevada state unemployment insurance operations, says "We would stand ready and do it...We'll get through it, just like we have in thepast."

What to do:  click here to send emails to your Senators and Representative.
TODAY - Monday, April 7:  Contact your Senators and tell them to vote to restore Emergency Unemployment Compensation.
Contact your Rep. and tell him/her to urge Speaker John Boehner to bring up the Senate bill to restore Unemployment Compensation for a House vote ASAP. 

Background:
 The Senate has gotten through all the procedural votes; now comes the vote on final passage, which only requires a simple majority.  The Senate bill to restore Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) is a bipartisan agreement on a 5-month restoration of long-term unemployment benefits (the last resort after all other federal and state support has been exhausted). Those who were denied assistance after the program expired on December 28th will get retroactive help.  The bill is an important step forward, made possible because you and many thousands of constituents held their Senators accountable.  But it still needs the final vote.  So please send this email to your senators so they know you’re still paying attention, because jobless workers desperately need this help.

Your representative needs a different message.  Speaker Boehner has refused so far to bring a bill to the floor to restore unemployment insurance.  So every House member must be urged to tell the Speaker to bring the Senate bill to the floor and to vote for its passage.    

Each week since EUC was allowed to expire, another 72,000 workers and their families have been cut off.  As of April 5th, more than 2.3 million people have been denied assistance.  More than $5 billion in benefits have been lost to families and communities.  There are still not enough jobs and too many out of work for more than six months. 

Unemployed Workers Need Your Help

The Senate is expected to vote today on a bill to extend Unemployment Insurance (UI) benefits to the long-term unemployed.  They need 60 votes!

Write to your Members of Congress today.  Now is not the time to leave unemployed workers without help.

What is UI?

Unemployment insurance is a federal-state program that provides a financial safety net to those who have lost their jobs. Unemployment insurance is the first economic line of defense against the reality of unemployment and is intended to keep people clothed, fed, and housed while they seek new employment. 

The Issue:

On January 1, 2014, the special extension of UI for the long-term unemployed expired. This left more than 1.6 million unemployed workers and their families without benefits.  The long-term unemployed are people who have been without a job for more than six months.  They qualified for their state programs, exhausted those benefits, and now the federal extension is all they have left.

Though the unemployment rate is coming down, the measures of long-term unemployment are not improving: [i]

·      38% of the unemployed are long-term unemployed

·      the average duration of unemployment for all unemployed workers is 37.1 weeks, over 11 weeks longer than the maximum state benefit

·      3.9 million workers are long-term unemployed

The unfortunate truth is that the job market is not improving much. Most of the gains in the employment rate over the last year are due to discouraged workers leaving the work force (no longer looking for a job, and therefore, no longer counted as unemployed). People giving up on ever finding a job is NOT the way we want to see the unemployment rate come down.  We should be making sure that those who want to work are able to find good jobs that allow them to support themselves and their families.

Write to your Senators and Representative now!

What does the Church say about work and unemployment?

In 2012, the 220^th General Assembly spoke on the fundamental nature of our economic system and the way it reflects our values.  The Assembly wrote:

“We reject, as incompatible with Christian vocation, any economic system that tolerates the marginalization or exploitation of any of its members through unemployment and underemployment, insufficient wages, or extreme inequality in access to social goods.” 

The statement goes on to urge several policy proposals that would address the wide and varied root causes of economic injustice in the U.S.  On the subject of the safety net, it called for

“a stronger social safety net for poor and low-income families, through measures such as adjustment of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and related income support programs to extend time limits or reactivate expired eligibility in times of high unemployment, and protection of Food Stamps, WIC, SSI, Medicaid, and other programs for the most vulnerable, from across-the-board budget cuts.”[ii]

 

As Reformed Christians, we believe in the value and dignity of work.  We believe God calls us into vocation, which is a “lifelong response to God in all aspects of one’s life.  Work, paid and unpaid, is an integral part of the believer’s response to God’s call.”[iii] But when God’s children have no opportunity to work we have an even greater responsibility to one another. 

Write to your Members of Congress today.  Tell them to support the extension of Unemployment Insurance for the long-term unemployed.

As the Assembly wrote in 1995, “All conditions of paid employment, including compensation and working conditions, should sustain and nurture the dignity of individuals, the well-being of households and families, the social cohesiveness of communities, and the integrity of the global environment.”

Learn more about Unemployment Insurance from the United States Department of Labor. 

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[i] Tackling the Long-term Unemployment Crisis: What the President, Congress, and Business Leaders Should Do; National Unemployment Law Project (NELP); January 2014. http://www.nelp.org/page/-/UI/2014/Issue-Brief-Tackling-Long-Term-Unemployment-Crisis.pdf

[ii] World of Hurt, Word of Life: Renewing God’s Commuion in the Work of Economic Reconstruction; 220^th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), 2012, http://www.pcusa.org/resource/world-hurt-word-life-renewing-gods-communion-work/

[iii] Principles of Vocation and Work; Minutes, 207^th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), 1995, pp.426-427.

What’s in Congress’ budget deal, and what isn’t?

House Budget Chairman Ryan and Senate Budget Chairman
Patty Murray announce the budget deal

With great aplomb, the media has been in a frenzy to report the new and seemingly unprecedented progress of Congressional budget talks.  Indeed, last week the House overwhelmingly approved (332-94) a two-year budget blueprint that will set the stage for the final weeks of negotiation at the start of the New Year.  The Members of the House who opposed the deal are, for the most part, on the far right or the far left.   The Senate will take up the measure this week, and while it has a steeper slope to climb in that chamber, it will likely pass there before the adjournment of the 1^st session of the 113^th Congress.

But what is actually in the deal?  And what is not?

First, this is NOT a funding bill.  It is a budget blueprint that essentially takes the place of the annual Budget Resolutions for Fiscal Year (FY) 2014 and 2015.  These Resolutions are usually passed no later than April 15^th of the year (April 2014 for the FY15 budget).  Congress must still act on spending bills by January 15^th to avoid another government shutdown.

So, what does the budget deal do?

• It makes it much more likely that Congress will reach spending deals and avoid a government shutdown in January.
• It is also more likely that FY2015 budget negotiations will proceed in the normal order, starting early next year.
• It shrinks the sequester (across-the-board spending cuts) by $45 billion in 2014 and $18 billion in 2015. 

• This year’s $45 billion increase will be split evenly between defense and non-defense discretionary programs (2015 increases will be split evenly also).
• The mandatory programs affected by sequester (including Medicare), on the other hand, see the length of their cuts extended for two additional years, in 2022 and 2023 (i.e. more cuts in the long-term to pay for these short-term increases).
• It means that appropriators in January will be able to put some funds back into the programs that serve the most vulnerable, like Head Start and Housing Vouchers.
• It continues to protect the Defense department from bearing its full share of spending cuts by restoring some of its funding, even after it was funded in FY2013 with an additional $20 billion above the original deal that created the sequester.
• It raises some new revenue for the federal government by increasing some fees and other premiums, included the following item:
• It increases retirement contributions for new federal employees, reducing their take-home pay, even after federal workers have already been seriously attacked in recent months through furloughs, sequester, and layoffs.

What does it NOT do?

• It does not extend Unemployment Insurance (UI) benefits for the long-term unemployed (workers unemployed for 27 weeks or more, not including those who have given up looking for a job and “left” the labor force), which expire on Dec. 28. 

• Without an act of Congress, 1.3 million workers will lose benefits only days after Christmas, and an additional 3.5 million workers will lose their safety net in the course of 2014. 
• According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), allowing benefits to expire will harm the economy by resulting in up to 300,000 fewer jobs by the end of 2014.
• The modest economic boost achieved by partially offsetting the sequester will essentially be counteracted by the expiration of UI for the long-term unemployed.
• It does not do anything about the U.S. debt ceiling.
• It does not make some of the deepest cuts to social and safety net programs, about which we have been concerned all year.
• It does not close corporate tax loopholes or reform the tax code in order to achieve more economic equality.  

For a more in-depth analysis of the budget deal, see this paper released by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

In all, this deal is a mixed bag.  It could have been so much worse.  But we hoped that it would be so much better.  In the short term, it provides some stability and accomplishes some measure of bipartisanship.  It makes the brinksmanship of recent months all the less likely when Members of Congress return from the holiday recess, as so many Members, especially Leadership in the House, have agreed to these spending levels. It paves the way for final spending bills in early January that will avert the next government shutdown, whose deadline looms on January 15^th.

But this bill fails U.S. workers who are and have been struggling to find jobs in a still languishing economy. It reduces take-home pay for federal workers who have already borne the brunt of furloughs and budget cuts. And it locks in the sequester for 2016-2023, so we will continue to have these funding battles every year for the foreseeable future.

In all, it is positive sign that Members of Congress from across the aisle came to the same table and negotiated a compromise -- but this is a low bar. It is a very small step in the right direction, and the Senate should pass it.  But we can do so much better for this nation and for each other.