Extension of Jobless Benefits

Millions to lose unemployment benefits, By David Welna, December 1, 2010, National Public Radio: “Things just got worse for the millions of Americans who have been unemployed for up to 99 weeks. At the stroke of midnight Tuesday, a short-term extension of jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed expired as Democrats and Republicans in Congress failed to agree on how those benefits should be further extended. Congress decided last July to extend long-term unemployment insurance only until the end of November. November has now given way to December, and West Virginia Democratic Sen. John D. Rockefeller lamented that those benefits have run out, just in time for the holiday season. ‘I feel terrible about it, particularly in West Virginia where everybody’s fighting to survive all the time. And we have to do it,’ he said. ‘Why we haven’t done it, I don’t know.’ The House has already tried once – and failed – in the current lame-duck session to extend the jobless benefits. In the Senate, No. 2 Democrat Dick Durbin appeared stricken Tuesday when asked what that chamber planned to do about the 2 million people losing their jobless benefits…”