Posted on 05/11/2004 5:34:48 PM PDT by 11th Earl of Mar
By MARY DALRYMPLE, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - The Senate by a single vote rejected an election-year effort Tuesday to extend federal unemployment benefits.
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Democrats tried to attach the benefit to a corporate tax bill. On a 59-40 vote in the GOP-controlled Senate, they fell just shy of the 60 votes needed to overcome objections that extending the benefits violated last year's budget agreement.
Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites), the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, was the only senator who missed the vote. Kerry was campaigning Tuesday in Kentucky.
The amendment would have offered emergency federal unemployment benefits for six months, temporarily giving 13 weeks of extra assistance to people who exhaust their state benefits — typically 26 weeks.
The unemployment rate dropped to 5.6 percent last month as employers added nearly 300,000 new jobs. The Labor Department (news - web sites) has reported that payrolls have risen for eight months in a row, with almost 900,000 new jobs created so far this year, most within the last two months.
Republicans seized on April's employment report as evidence that more federal unemployment benefits are not needed.
"The employment picture in this country is looking up, by any measure," said Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev. "I believe it's time to end the program."
Democrats said the extended benefits are needed because the economic recovery still hasn't replaced 1.5 million jobs lost since President Bush (news - web sites) took office.
"Keep our social compact and extend these needed unemployment benefits," said Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont.
The amendment's sponsor, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said it would have cost $5.8 billion to offer the temporary benefits, which would have been drawn from $13.3 billion in the unemployment insurance trust fund. Republicans said it would cost $9 billion.
Kerry spokesman David Wade said, "John Kerry has fought again and again to extend unemployment benefits for workers left behind in the Bush economy. The reason we haven't succeeded is because George Bush opposes extending unemployment insurance and so do his allies in the Republican House of Representatives and 39 Republican senators."
Steve Schmidt, a Bush-Cheney campaign spokesman, said: "Last month, John Kerry was pushing for the extension of unemployment benefits. Today he had the chance to actually vote on that question but was too busy playing politics when he would have made the difference in the Senate."
"Actually, I was Bob, until I was John."
Its only going to make the unemployment rate godown even further in the next couple of months as the people that are perfectly happy collecting unemployment will have to get off the dole.
What a hypocrite!
This is the second time that Kerry has missed a vote on extending unemployment benefits, causing the measure to fail. He claims to be for it, while at the same time, he continues to sabotage the measure.
This is not flip flop, this is having it both ways.
I think you hit the nail on the head. Grandstanding at its finest.
If the Republican leadership decide to keep playing this game though, I wouldn't be surprised if Kerry makes a bold move and resigns from the Senate. I think the only thing that's kept him in his Senate seat is the fact that the Republican governor would get to appoint a new person to the seat, most likely a Republican.
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