Senate set to pass extension of unemployment benefits

Senate Democrats are poised today to break an impasse over financing unemployment benefits that has resulted in aid being cut off to more than 2 million Americans.

With the seating of Carte Goodwin, the successor to the late Senator Robert Byrd, Democrats say they will have the 60 votes needed to overcome stalling tactics of Republicans, who have demanded that Democrats find savings elsewhere in the federal budget to pay for bill and avoid adding to the deficit.

Democrats, who came up one vote short in their latest bid to extend aid, opted to wait for Goodwin to give them the clinching vote. Senate leaders have scheduled a procedural vote this afternoon to bring debate on the matter to a close, immediately after Goodwin’s seating.

Along with Goodwin, Maine Republicans Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe are expected to vote with the Democrats to end the Republican filibuster.

The legislation, already approved by the House, could clear the Senate today. It would extend through November a program offering the long-term unemployed up to 99 weeks of assistance.

Democrats dropped several other pieces of unemployment assistance amid complaints over the cost, so even with passage of this measure, the unemployed will receive less benefits.

A 65 percent subsidy created last year to help the jobless buy health insurance through their former employers will be allowed to lapse. It benefited 2 million households, according to the Treasury Department.

The measure also would not renew a provision boosting unemployment checks by $25 that was part of last year’s economic stimulus package. Nor would it extend provisions exempting the first $2400 in unemployment aid from taxation. In addition, Democrats have no plan to extend aid to the growing number of Americans who already have received the maximum amount of allowable aid.

The bill comes amid a growing debate over whether the aid extensions are contributing to the jobless rate.

An April report by a pair of economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco found that extensions have had a “relatively modest effect” on the unemployment rate, estimating the figure would have been 9.6 percent at the end of last year rather than 10.0 percent without the aid. The unemployment rate in June was 9.5 percent.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said yesterday the extension probably won’t be the last. “I think it is fair and safe to assume that we are not going to wake up at the end of November and find ourselves at a rate of employment that one would consider not to be still in an emergency,” he told reporters.