The Senate is voting now on the motion to proceed on H.R. 4851, a temporary extension of jobless benefits, business left unfinished from pre-recess thanks largely to Tom Coburn, though there's blame to go around on how this issue has been handled. Today's vote is a procedural vote, getting past Coburn's objection to eventually vote on the extension this week.
Because of Coburn's March objections, some 200,000 people lost their benefits and could not apply for additional benefits. Should the Senate approve this procedural vote today (which a few Dems think is possible, and Tom Coburn is predicting) there's still a problem, as Mike Lillis writes.
Trouble is, the House-passed bill isn’t retroactive. That means that Senate lawmakers, if they hope to help those people falling off the rolls early this month, would have to alter the bill on the Senate floor. Depending on whether or not the Republicans agree to speed debate on the bill, passage might not come until the end of this week, leaving tens of thousands more unemployed workers to lose their benefits in the meantime.
And even then, the altered bill would have to return to the House for a second approval.
A spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said today that the Democrats still don’t have a plan for retroactivity.
That means the 200,000 who've been dropped can reapply and start again, but they'll have lost the assistance from the gap period. As long as two or three weeks, possibly, by the time this gets wrapped up. That few weeks will mean the difference between having shelter or being homeless, eating, or paying utilities or taking care of medical needs for many families.
Update: Republicans Snowe, Collins, Brown, and Voinovich voted with the Dems and it passes 60-34.