Congress Swiftly Passes Bill to Extend Jobless Benefits : Employment: President Bush promises to sign it before the current law ensuring compensation expires.

With unemployment at an eight-year peak, Congress Thursday swiftly approved a $5.4-billion bill to extend jobless payments for up to 26 weeks and sent it to President Bush for his promised signature.

The measure was rushed through the House on a 396-23 vote and passed the Senate only hours later by an even more lopsided 93-3 roll-call.

Bush told reporters at the White House that he would sign the bill “as soon as it reaches my desk” before the current law extending unemployment compensation expires Saturday.

Jobless workers in California and 14 other states with unemployment rates of 9% or more would receive an additional 26 weeks of payments under the fourth and latest extension since the recession began nearly two years ago. Extra payments would continue for 20 weeks in 35 other states and the District of Columbia.

While the legislation received overwhelming bipartisan support, a Labor Department report showing that the national jobless rate had risen to 7.8% in June sparked some partisan comments during House debate.

“President Bush is going to sign this bill for two reasons--unemployment is up and his popularity is down,” said Rep. Thomas J. Downey (D-N.Y.), a leading sponsor of the measure.

But the President said that the final version of the legislation was a good compromise that took the best parts of separate Senate and House bills, adding: “It’s paid for. And it . . . preserves the financial discipline that is so vital to our economic recovery.”

The cost of extending benefits for an estimated 300,000 Americans who exhaust their right to unemployment compensation each month would be offset by speeding up tax payments by corporations and high-income individuals and by revising the tax policy for lump-sum distribution of pension benefits.

The bill would continue the extended benefits as long as the national unemployment rate remains above 7%. If the jobless figure falls below that level for two consecutive months, the benefits would be phased back to 15 and 10 weeks, and drop further to 13 and seven weeks if the unemployment rate drops below 6.8%.

In addition, states would have the option of using the total unemployment rate as a trigger for extending benefits in the future rather than the existing rate of joblessness among workers covered by the federal-state unemployment compensation system.

Another provision of the bill, originally sponsored by Sen. John Seymour (R-Calif.), would allow more workers in California and other major industrial states to collect the extended benefits by revising an eligibility standard previously used by the Labor Department.

The bill would allow state officials to use more than one method for calculating past wages in determining who is eligible for extra payments, Seymour said.

Congress extended the program through next March 6, well after the election, thus avoiding a partisan confrontation during the campaign.