Free Republic

Two men suspected of withdrawing over $164,000 with fraudulently-obtained unemployment benefit debit cards were arrested this month in Thousand Oaks, officials said Monday. A resident called 911 on the afternoon of Aug. 6 when she saw two people “acting suspiciously” at a Bank of America ATM on 1440 N. Moorpark Rd., the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release. Deputies responded and stopped a car just as it was leaving the area, finding two grocery bags full of cash and a large amount of Visa debit cards in different people’s names, according to the Sheriff’s Office. Investigators found...

The extra $600 in weekly unemployment benefits provided the federal government to Americans amid the coronavirus pandemic is expected to expire after Friday as Congress struggles to agree upon the next stimulus package. A few Republican senators are pitching a last-minute proposal..... ....The proposal suggests allowing states to choose between reducing the unemployment benefits to an 80% wage replacement rate or gradually reducing the extra benefits to — $500 per week in August, $400 per week in September, or $300 per week in October. Until a deal is reached between both parties, jobless Americans will not receive any unemployment benefits...

The household survey is simply insane. Do not pay any attention to it. Do not make eye contact. Just calmly walk away. It’s simply not believable that the labor market contracted so violently according to one survey, while at the same time a separate survey of business establishments showed strong payroll growth of 288,000. Consider this: The jobless rate fell because 733,000 fewer people were considered unemployed. That’s the largest one-month decline since 1949, when unemployment fell by 920,000 when two large national strikes concluded. Nothing like that happened in April.

A controversial jobless benefits bill narrowly cleared a key Senate hurdle on Tuesday, over the objections of Republicans who complain the $6 billion measure is not paid for. Senators voted 60-37 to advance the bill extending long-term jobless benefits, which expired Dec. 28. Democrats needed 60 votes to move the bill forward. But Republicans blasted Democratic leaders for pushing the bill without any plan to offset the cost elsewhere in the budget. "This is all borrowed -- every penny of it," Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., told Fox News. Backers of the extension still need to clear several additional votes in...

WASHINGTON — An emergency federal program that acts as a lifeline for 1.3 million jobless workers will end on Saturday, drastically curtailing government support for the long-term unemployed and setting the stage for a major political fight in the new year. The program, in place since the recession started in 2008, provides up to 47 weeks of supplemental unemployment insurance payments to jobless people looking for work. Its expiration is expected to have far-reaching ramifications for the economy, cutting job growth by about 300,000 positions next year and pushing hundreds of thousands of households below the poverty line. An extension...

A friend of mine heard a story about an unemployed guy who finally accepted a new job that paid 50k less than the job he had before unemployment. The reason he took this job is that some part of the gov't. Is paying the 50k difference! So its essentially a program that props up the employment statistics while still spending massive amounts of money. The question is, does anyone know if this is true or the name of the program or agency that may be doing this?

With all the media panic about sequestration, one would think a study finding billions of dollars of fraud in a government program would be national news. Apparently not, for with few exceptions, a report published by the St. Louis Federal Reserve last week finding $3.3 billion in fraudulent unemployment claims in 2011 got almost no attention: The unemployment insurance program in the U.S. offers benefits to workers if they lose their jobs through no fault of their own. In 2011, this program cost $108 billion, of which nearly $3.3 billion was spent on overpayments due to fraud. Unemployment insurance fraud...

Legislation introduced Tuesday would give about 400,000 undocumented immigrants in California the same rights as citizens to unemployment benefits and various other government services.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The jobs crisis has left so many people out of work for so long that most of America's unemployed are no longer receiving unemployment benefits. Early last year, 75 percent were receiving checks. The figure is now 48 percent — a shift that points to a growing crisis of long-term unemployment. Nearly one-third of America's 14 million unemployed have had no job for a year or more. Congress is expected to decide by year's end whether to continue providing emergency unemployment benefits for up to 99 weeks in the hardest-hit states. If the emergency benefits expire, the...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: From TheHill.com: "A pending legislative package to extend the payroll tax credit and unemployment insurance will create more jobs than the approval of the Keystone pipeline, Obama said yesterday. 'Here's what I know,' he said. 'However many jobs might be generated by the pipeline, they're going to be a lot fewer than the jobs created by extending the payroll tax cut and extending unemployment insurance.'" In fact, here's the president saying that. This was this morning, actually, in Washington talking about this. OBAMA: I know that, eh -- the -- the suggestion right now is that somehow,...

One of the oddities that seemed out of whack in this morning's weekly Unemployment Claims update was the explanation for the spike in this week's receipents of government generosity: apparently it had to do with the BLS handing out weekly benefits checks to striking Verizon workers. We will repeat the key word from that sentence because it bears repeating: "striking." Now, we may be wrong here, but if one is striking, one is not u-n-e-m-p-l-o-y-e-d, and hence the US government should probably not be using taxpayer money to double pay such individuals who have singlehandedly decided to forgo pay in...

Pummeled by ghastly economic news, President Obama called Monday for more spending and extended tax cuts that he said would help stimulate the economy — but these also could deepen the deficit problems that helped the federal government earn its first-ever debt downgrade last week. The president made the proposals as world stock market indexes were tumbling, and his remarks seemed designed to help the White House regain its political footing by resetting the congressional agenda next month. Mr. Obama said he wants the 2 percent payroll-tax cut extended into next year, the creation of an infrastructure bank by Congress...

Was Jim McDermott mocking Christmas? View the video and be the judge. On this evening's Hardball, the left-wing Democrat [but I repeat myself] from Washington was making the case for the extension of unemployment benefits. MCDERMOTT: This is Christmas-time. We talk about Good Samaritans, the poor, the little baby Jesus in the cradle and all this stuff. And then we say to the unemployed we won't give you a check to feed your family. That's simply wrong. Chris Matthews, interestingly, took umbrage at what he clearly took to be McDermott's mocking tone. View video here.

Although the deadline to file for extended unemployment insurance is officially Nov. 30, many jobless have already filed their last claim for benefits. And since lawmakers aren't likely to extend the deadline anytime soon, many more unemployed Americans will run out of their extended federal benefits in coming weeks. About 2 million people are expected to stop receiving checks in December. Though President Obama on Tuesday called on Congress to extend unemployment benefits, lawmakers are still fighting over the expense. Sen. Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, introduced a bill Monday night that would extend benefits through next year at a...

WASHINGTON – Republicans in the House have blocked a bill that would have extended jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed beyond the holiday season. The most recent extension of jobless benefits expires Dec. 1. Two million people will lose benefits averaging $310 a week nationwide by the end of the year.

Hey, it's Friday night. Time to kick back and enjoy some—unintentional—humor, courtesy Ed Schultz. Big Ed sees soup lines around the corner if those evil Republicans reclaim power. His solution to stave off disaster? The extension of unemployment benefits. . . . "endlessly." View video here.

Unemployment benefits provide a small amount of help to a number of people who desperately need it. But some economists have gone too far by claiming that unemployment insurance is stimulating the economy. Unemployment insurance is jointly administered and financed by the federal and state governments, offering funds to “covered” people who lost their jobs and have as yet been unable to find and start a new job. The program has been around for decades, but this recession has created an especially large group of laid-off workers who, despite an extensive search, genuinely cannot find another job. With no new...

After nearly a year without work, Gary LaPlante was happy to take a three-week construction job. What he didn’t know was that the job would cost him more than two-thirds of his benefits when he went back on unemployment. LaPlante, a union carpenter, is among thousands of unemployed in Massachusetts and across the nation who are discovering an unexpected kink in the system that can mean drastic cuts in their unemployment benefits. Workers who seek to renew their benefits for a second year - not uncommon during this recession - are finding that their new benefits are based on their...

TOLEDO — Senator Barack Obama on Monday expanded his economic platform, including proposals to spur new jobs, to give Americans penalty-free access to retirement savings to help them through the downturn, to urge a 90-day moratorium on home foreclosures and to lend money to strapped local and state governments. Mr. Obama also is calling on Congress to double $25 billion the government loan guarantees for automakers and to temporarily eliminate taxes on unemployment benefits. ... Senator John McCain, his Republican rival, also gave an economic speech in Virginia Beach, Va., but he had no new policy prescriptions, having rejected his...

The one-vote defeat of an extension of unemployment benefits last week has sparked fear among Democrats that Republicans have developed a legislative model that will cast Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) repeatedly in a bad light before the election. The extension needed 60 votes to pass in the Senate, and 12 Republicans made sure the final tally was 59-40, with only one absentee, presidential candidate Kerry. At least one Republican senator, Elizabeth Dole (N.C.), was prepared to switch to a no vote to make sure the measure was defeated even if Kerry returned to cast his vote, a Democrat charged....