House Votes to Extend Unemployment Benefits

Taking the first step toward enactment of President Clinton’s economic package, the House Wednesday decisively approved a $5.7-billion extension of unemployment benefits for an estimated 2 million workers who will exhaust their regular benefits this year.

The measure, approved 254 to 161, also is expected to be passed quickly by the Senate and sent to the White House for Clinton’s promised signature. Enactment would continue an unemployment compensation program extended during the George Bush Administration but due to expire on March 6.

Early passage of the legislation was an exception to an agreement Tuesday by Democratic congressional leaders and the President to defer action on Clinton’s $16.3-billion stimulus package until lawmakers approve counterbalancing spending cuts and tax increases.

Separately, White House officials said Clinton would miss his March 23 deadline for submitting his complete budget and now planned to send the massive document to Capitol Hill by April 5. The delay will not change plans for Congress to vote on a budget resolution sometime in late March. The budget outline in Clinton’s economic plan contains enough numbers for the House and Senate budget committees to put together the budget resolution, congressional officials said.

White House aides said that the delay in submitting the budget reflected the difficulties that the Office of Management and Budget has had in putting together all the necessary numbers. OMB Director Leon E. Panetta and his aides have tried to compress into several weeks a budget process that normally takes months and have missed several self-imposed deadlines.

Sponsors of the jobless bill said that the emergency designation that permitted the vote was justified because of still-lingering economic problems.

“There is real pain out there for many Americans,” said House Majority Whip David E. Bonior (D-Mich.), citing large layoffs by auto, aerospace, electronic and retail firms.

“Even if the economy rebounds . . . there will still be a lot of people left on the bench,” Bonior added.

Under the bill’s provisions, jobless workers in California and five other hard-hit states would be eligible for an additional 26 weeks of payments. A 20-week extension would apply to the remaining 44 states with lower unemployment rates.

Republicans denounced the bill as fiscally irresponsible, arguing that it would increase the deficit by billions of dollars.

Democrats rallied around the President, saying that a $3.5-billion surplus from previous revenue-raising provisions that accompanied earlier jobless benefit extensions would pay for most of it. Clinton’s proposed spending cuts would finance the rest, they said.

“This is the first step of the President’s economic program and we have an obligation to pass it,” argued California Rep. Robert T. Matsui (D-Sacramento).

In the end, 226 Democrats were joined by 27 Republicans and one independent in favor of the bill, while 141 Republicans and 20 Democrats voted against it.

The bill would extend the deadline for jobless workers to file for emergency extension of their benefits from March 6 to Oct. 2 and authorize payment of extra compensation through next Jan. 15.