Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is once again trying to get an emergency unemployment aid extension through the Senate, using a House bill as a vehicle:
Reid filed the motion to end debate on H.R. 3979, the Protecting Volunteer Firefighters and Emergency Responders Act, which the House passed earlier this month.
H.R. 3979 aims to exempt volunteer firefighters and EMTs from being considered full-time employees under ObamaCare mandates. Reid will use that bill as a way to send a five-month unemployment insurance (UI) extension bill back to the House.
Since Reid filed cloture, that would set up a vote as soon as Friday but Democrats are hoping to reach an agreement to hold the vote Thursday evening.
A five-month extension means that even if the Senate passed the bill as soon as possible and the House took it up immediately—extremely unlikely since Speaker John Boehner has made his opposition clear—most of the jobless aid distributed would be retroactive, since the program expired in late December. The current bill has its problems, but the need is so much greater.