To thousands of unemployed folks, two very different events are conspiring to pose an imminent threat to their federal benefits: (1) The deadline to file for jobless benefits arrives April 5, and (2) Congress leaves this weekend for a two-week vacation, and won’t be back to Washington until April 12.<\/p>\n
Recognizing the timing issue, Democrats are trying this afternoon to pass a bill — approved by the House earlier in the month — which would extend the unemployment insurance filing deadline (not to be confused with creating a Tier V<\/a>) through April. The proposal would also extend COBRA health benefits, and delay a 21 percent cut poised to hit Medicare doctors on April 1 — a problem not addressed<\/a> by the larger health reform bills passed this week.<\/span><\/p>\n “We should not let these programs expire,” Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) just said on the chamber floor, moments before he asked for unanimous consent to pass the bill.<\/p>\n It didn’t happen.<\/p>\n Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) objected, arguing that the bill isn’t offset with cuts elsewhere. It wasn’t unexpected. The Republicans this afternoon have been pushing an accompanying measure that would offset the costs.<\/p>\n “I don’t care how we pay for it,” Coburn said, “as long as we don’t add to our kids’ debt.”<\/p>\n Democrats have fought the pay-for proposal, arguing that the deficit spending is justified to address emergencies in a down economy. Stay tuned…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" To thousands of unemployed folks, two very different events are conspiring to pose an imminent threat to their federal benefits: (1) The deadline to file for jobless benefits arrives April 5, and (2) Congress leaves this weekend for a two-week vacation, and won’t be back to Washington until April 12. Recognizing the timing issue, Democrats […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2763,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4821],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-700939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-2Wlt","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2763"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=700939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700939\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=700939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=700939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=700939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}