Senator Ben Nelson No to Unemployment Benefit Extension
Senate Fiddles While Jobless Workers Suffer
And have they ever been using it on the pending jobs/tax bill (H.R. 4213) that the House sent over in late May.
I thought by now I'd be telling you what the Senate managed to pass. Instead, I've been following a seemingly endless round of amendments and insider reports on what Senator Max Baucus (D-MT), Chairman of the Finance Committee, has been doing to get a couple of Republicans on board.
He figured he'd probably need at least two because Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE) had said that he wouldn't vote for anything — no extended unemployment benefits, no emergency aid to the states, no extension of the TANF Emergency Contingency Fund, no nothing — unless it was totally offset by other spending cuts, revenue raisers or a combination of both.
As of Thursday, the already-curtailed unemployment benefits extension had taken another hit. The extra $25 per week that's been in unemployment checks since Congress passed the economic recovery act was gone. This would have left the average weekly benefit at $284 — less than what would be need to lift a family of three above the notoriously low federal poverty line.
The extension of the higher-than-usual federal match on state Medicaid costs (FMAP) had been put back in the bill, but then whittled down by about a third, paving the way for more program cuts and job losses at the state and local levels.
http://uspoverty.change.org/
And have they ever been using it on the pending jobs/tax bill (H.R. 4213) that the House sent over in late May.
I thought by now I'd be telling you what the Senate managed to pass. Instead, I've been following a seemingly endless round of amendments and insider reports on what Senator Max Baucus (D-MT), Chairman of the Finance Committee, has been doing to get a couple of Republicans on board.
He figured he'd probably need at least two because Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE) had said that he wouldn't vote for anything — no extended unemployment benefits, no emergency aid to the states, no extension of the TANF Emergency Contingency Fund, no nothing — unless it was totally offset by other spending cuts, revenue raisers or a combination of both.
As of Thursday, the already-curtailed unemployment benefits extension had taken another hit. The extra $25 per week that's been in unemployment checks since Congress passed the economic recovery act was gone. This would have left the average weekly benefit at $284 — less than what would be need to lift a family of three above the notoriously low federal poverty line.
The extension of the higher-than-usual federal match on state Medicaid costs (FMAP) had been put back in the bill, but then whittled down by about a third, paving the way for more program cuts and job losses at the state and local levels.
http://uspoverty.change.org/
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