Unemployment benefits are one of the things that the hostage-takers of the Republican party are most committed to taking hostage, and they have done so repeatedly, leading to battle after battle for short-term reauthorizations of extended unemployment benefits, while the people who depend on that lifeline are left hanging again and again. And the federal extended unemployment insurance program once again runs out, on Dec. 31.
We're not talking here about extending the number of weeks it is possible to collect benefits for—the 99ers are still screwed even if the current program is extended in a timely fashion. What's up for renewal here is the emergency and extended benefits that allow workers to collect unemployment insurance for longer than their regular state benefits provide. If this isn't extended, then people start losing their unemployment checks after collecting for 26 weeks. That would mean that in January, more than 1.8 million people, many of whom have only been unemployed since July, would lose their benefits. A new report from the National Employment Law Project (PDF) details how disastrous that would be.
Cutting off those 1.8 million people would obviously be devastating for them and their families, already struggling to make ends meet on an unemployment check that is, on average, less than what the average family spends on housing. It would also be another blow to our already troubled economy: Studies have found that every dollar of unemployment benefits provides $1.60 to $2.00 in benefit to the broader economy.
- Due largely to the federal extension, in 2010, unemployment insurance kept 3.2 million people (including nearly one million children) from falling into poverty. Were it not for unemployment insurance, the number of people falling into poverty would have more than doubled in 2010.
- The federal unemployment insurance programs have saved or created millions of jobs since first enacted in July 2008, including more than 1.1 million jobs in the fourth quarter of 2009 alone.
Cutting off benefits at this point would also be unprecedented:
- Since the data were first reported in 1948, the nation has never experienced the record stretch of high unemployment and long-term joblessness that now plagues the economy. Currently, the unemployment rate has been above 8.5 percent for more than 31 months, and for nearly two years, over 40 percent of the unemployed have been out of work for more than six months.
- Congress has never cut back on federally-funded unemployment insurance when
unemployment was anywhere near this high for this long. The highest unemployment rate when federal benefits were cut by Congress was in 1985, at 7.2 percent. Today, the unemployment rate stands at 9.1 percent.
In the past two years, Republicans have repeatedly held unemployment insurance extensions hostage—whether for an extension of the Bush tax cuts to the wealthiest or out of spite. Unemployment has proven such an effective hostage that it would be no surprise if they tried it again, though as we know they've found other hostages to be equally effective in recent months.