Temporary Unemployment Benefits – Now for 99 Weeks!

Unemployment benefits have been in the United States in one form or another since 1932. For most states, the maximum benefit period was 26 weeks. However, you can now draw unemployment benefits for 99 weeks in some states. That's just less than two years. If you lost your job through "no fault of your own", then you would be able to stay out of work for 99 weeks and receive a check from the government. Of course this check isn't as large as your standard paycheck, but it is a paycheck. The government has extended this benefit period through a number of "emergency extensions" that are set to run through the current economic crisis.

A few weeks ago, Senator Jim Bunning (Republican –Kentucky) objected to a bill that included an extension to the unemployment benefits. This was billed as another heartless Republican trying to screw the common man. However, Bunning had a legitimate concern. Early in February, President Obama signed into law a Paygo bill. This means any new spending must be offset with some sort of savings to pay for the bill. Democrats in the Senate labeled the bill an emergency bill meaning it is exempted from Paygo (for the record, every bill the Democrats have tried to pass since Paygo passed has been considered an emergency bill). However, Bunning had a solution: take the funds from the unspent portion of the Stimulus bill. That would be approximately $15 Billion for the recent bill out of the $787 Billion stimulus bill.

Not every Republican supported Bunning in this effort. John Kyl said that while he didn't agree with holding up the bill, he did feel that Senator Bunning had a point. According to the Washington Post, "…about 11.4 million out-of-work people now collect unemployment compensation, at a cost of $10 billion a month. Half of them have been receiving payments for more than six months, the usual insurance limit. But under multiple extensions enacted by the federal government in response to the downturn, workers can collect the payments for as long as 99 weeks in states with the highest unemployment rates -- the longest period since the program's inception." Also according to the Post," …14.9 million jobless Americans have been out of work an average of 29.7 weeks, just below January's 30.2-week average. Those levels are the highest since the government began keeping those records in the 1950s…"

The point of this post is not that we should stop all unemployment benefits. My point is that 99 weeks is very excessive. Our Senate and Congress can't figure how to pay for an extension to the program, let alone the full 99 weeks for those people on it. When they are offered a chance to pay for it, they resort to dirty political tactics to charge the bill to the taxpayer credit card. Our Congress and our President are fighting the wrong problem. If they would learn to drop their white whale of a Health Care bill, and focus on creating jobs, we wouldn't need a 99 week unemployment benefit period.