Congress Cuts Lifeline to Long Term Unemployed

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) March 16, 2010 -- NEW YORK, NY, MARCH 16, 2010:

Congress is cutting the lifeline to the hardest hit and most suffering group of long term unemployed by excluding them in the current HR 4213 bill. The excluded group contains those who will soon exhaust their tier four benefits extension or who had not qualified for tier four benefits and reached the current 99 week maximum. The current benefits end the week of March 28 – ironically the same week that Congress leaves for their two week Spring Recess; by their return, this excluded group will be out of luck and cut off. Both offices of New York Senators Schumer and Senator Gillibrand say there are no plans to provide for this group in the current bill and there are no plans to initiate another bill to add benefits for this group. Senator Reid’s office says that he is aware of the issue and it is “on his radar”; Representative Nancy Pelosi’s office had no comment.

H.R. 2847 (Jobs Hire Act) has been mentioned as a possible vehicle to add the extensions; however, there is no indication that an amendment has been drafted to this bill to provide for a lifeline for the millions of unemployed who will be out of luck and left in the cold at the end of March.

Those who are set to lose their unemployment benefits are going to simply fall out of the system without any alternate plans. Since Congress has not addressed this issue there will be no way to count this group in the unemployment figures – this will lead to false positive reports of a drop in the unemployment numbers.

The Economic Policy Institute of Washington, D.C. reported this month that the length of time it is taking unemployed people to find work is the highest since federal records started being kept in 1967. Currently, job seekers are vying for positions which receive hundreds and sometimes thousands of resumes.

The Reality of H.R.4213:

What the bill provides: The bill extends the filing deadlines for existing tiers of unemployment benefits and COBRA health care subsidies until Dec. 31, 2010 for the unemployed. To translate, those that have recently joined the ranks of the unemployed or those who have not exhausted the available Government extensions will continue to collect unemployment benefits through the remainder of 2010.

What the bill does NOT provide: Anyone who will soon exhaust their tier four benefits extension or who had not qualified for tier four benefits and reached the current 99 week maximum are left out