Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX)
House Republicans are talking about bringing an unemployment insurance extension for a vote, but it definitely won't be the bipartisan Senate bill. While that was crafted to meet the demands of several Senate Republicans, it doesn't contain nearly enough poison pills to make House Republicans happy. It's not clear yet what they'll be looking for to tie to jobless aid and they're not in any hurry to get specific, but they seem to have
plenty of ideas:
House Rules Chairman Pete Sessions of Texas and other senior Republicans are pushing proposals to tie the extension of emergency unemployment insurance to jobs measures and the extension of some tax breaks in an attempt to bring the plan to the House floor. [...]
Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., chief deputy whip and a senior tax writer, said no decision had been reached on add-ons, but that some lawmakers were floating ideas. “There’s a lot of discussion of merging UI to this or to that, energy and other things,” Roskam said.
Great. House Republican energy plans (drill! Keystone XL!) and House Republican jobs plans (tax breaks for businesses! Keystone XL!) in exchange for a short-term extension of unemployment aid that will be almost entirely retroactive by the time they're done taking recess and coming up with a list of demands. Still, the fact that they're even talking about putting forward any unemployment extension is a sign that they're feeling some pressure.
Sign and send a petition to your member of Congress: Restore unemployment benefits now.