In December, Congress allowed federal unemployment benefits to expire, cutting off aid to more than 1 million people who had been out of work for 27 weeks or longer.
Since then, that number has tripled to 3 million Americans who would qualify for the discontinued federal unemployment benefits, creating a economically-marginalized and increasingly desperate subset of Americans struggling to make ends meet as the economy slowly recovers.
Six months of political and legislative maneuvers by advocates to get the benefits extended have so far been unsuccessful. So now a new grass-roots effort is taking shape to plead the case for an extension. Beginning this week, several groups will hold events on Capitol Hill each Wednesday this summer, in which members of Congress, and union and faith leaders will press lawmakers, particularly House Republicans, to extend the benefit payments.
A deal brokered in the Senate earlier this year to extend benefits has languished in the House, where the GOP leadership refused to bring it to a vote. President Obama, who has called for the passage of minimum wage and paycheck fairness bills -- both of which failed in the Senate -- has been less active in pushing for the renewal of federal unemployment benefits. He has not called House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) to urge a vote on the issue.
But even as there has been little movement in Washington, those who have lost their benefits have vowed to keep up the pressure on lawmakers. Many have turned to online communities for support and advice. Half a dozen Facebook pages and groups for the long-term unemployed boast thousands of members. Articles on the stalled efforts to renew emergency unemployment benefits often amass hundreds of comments, serving as message boards and chat rooms for the jobless.
One group, Emergency Unemployment Benefits Extension NOW, has a 3,700-member Facebook page. Asked to share their stories with The Washington Post, more than 200 members responded in less than in 24 hours.
A 54-year-old security consultant from New York says he is living on $11 a day, having been out of work since 2013. A mother of four in upstate New York notes that, with no money to pay for Internet service, her 15-year-old spends evenings sitting in McDonalds -- where there is free WiFi -- to complete homework assignments.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics defines the “long-term unemployed” as those who have been out of work for 27 weeks or more. According to the latest statistics from the BLS, there are more than 3.4 million long-term jobless as of May, out of a total of 9.8 million unemployed.
“My husband I wanted to live the American dream,” said Sandy LoBianco Ford, 53, who after years working as a bartender and waitress went back to school at age 42.
She was ecstatic when she quickly found a “dream job” right out of school, working in computer-aided drafting and design. She and her husband began building the life they dreamed of: buying a house and new cars. But in June 2013, her company downsized, and LoBianco Ford was laid off.
Under the federal unemployment system, someone who loses a job typically receives unemployment benefits from the state for 26 weeks. But in 2008, Congress voted to provide additional aid that made checks available for as long as 99 weeks in the hardest-hit states. Last year, lawmakers cut the maximum benefit to 73 weeks. Then, at the end of December, Congress let federal aid lapse altogether.
“Our government has never terminated unemployment benefits when a full 35 percent of the unemployed have been out of work for six months or more,” Rep. Sandy Levin, (D-Mich), who is the leading the unemployment extension push in the House, wrote in an op-ed published by Roll Call this week. “It’s cruel.”
Even with monthly job reports signaling an improving economy, millions remain without work. And, the longer they stay jobless, economists say, the harder it becomes for them to find work.
In the year since she last worked, LoBianco Ford has depleted her meager retirement fund. Soon, she said, they will have to sell at east one, maybe both, of their vehicles. Their credit is in shambles, and their two family dogs go without flea medication and trips to the vet.
“I pray every night that if we can just hold on a little longer, the bill will pass and people will be able to start digging out of this mess,” she said. “We just need a little help to get us going in the right direction.”
In March, after the Senate had voted and failed three times to pass an extension to unemployment benefits, Boehner declared that he would not consider legislation that does not include job-creation measures.
But then, several Republicans joined the Democrats to pass a Senate bill to renew the expired benefits. Some observers hoped that the bipartisan nature of the bill – which had the support of several prominent Republicans, including Sens. Rob Portman (Ohio) and Mark Kirk (Ill.) -- would spur movement in the House.
The deal, brokered by Sens. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) and Jack Reed (D-R.I.) fueled speculation that the GOP House leadership might relent on their insistence that any bill to extend the benefits must also include job creation measures. But no real political pressure on the House GOP ever materialized.
Many of the jobless have grown increasingly frustrated, and the animosity and disdain for Boehner and the House Republicans have mounted.
In April, Kimberly Rowe of Tennessee, a regular contributor to one of the Facebook groups, wrote that her husband, who had been out of work for more than a year, had killed himself. His depression, she wrote, stemmed from feelings of hopelessness because he had been unable to find a job and unable to provide for the family since December, when the unemployment checks stopped.
“I blame this on our government,” Rowe wrote. “They don’t realize what this is doing to millions of people who are suffering.”
Advocates says they will redouble efforts for an extension this summer. The Wednesday “storytelling” events on the Hill will feature members of Congress – organizers have invited both Democrats and Republicans – as well as faith and union leaders reading personal stories and anecdotes from the long-term unemployed. The first in this series, on Wednesday, will include Levin, several other Democratic lawmakers and officials from the AFL-CIO, NETWORK and AFSCME.
“Anytime we’re having these high levels of unemployment we’ve always had bipartisan passage of unemployment extension,” said Katherine McFate, president and chief executive of the Center for Effective Government. “If we can let the American public understand what is going on here they can potentially put pressure on the elected officials.”
And, in what advocates for the jobless are taking as a glimmer of hope, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told reporters last week that he hopes Heller will soon be able to craft a new deal to renew the expired benefits.
“He has talked about this at least once a week. What he’s doing is scrambling to get a few more Republicans,” Reid said. “Of course, anytime that Senator Heller makes a little progress on this, we’ll bring it back because people are just as desperate today as they were two months ago.”
0 comments:
Post a Comment