Senate To Work On Extending Jobless Benefits

STEVE INSKEEP, host: Congress is still moving to try to get some help to people who are unemployed. The jobless rate, of course, is still high, and that prompted the House to pass a bill last month extending unemployment benefits. Since then, about 400,000 people have seen their benefits end, as infighting in the Senate has slowed down a similar bill. Last evening, the Senate voted to take up the measure, but some differences still remain, as NPR's Audie Cornish reports. AUDIE CORNISH: Partisan bickering stalled this bill for nearly a month. First, many Democrats argued that the House bill, aimed just at states with the highest unemployment rates, was too narrow. New Hampshire Senator Jeanne Shaheen was among those Democrats who pushed to broaden the provision. Representative JEANNE SHAHEEN (Democrat, New Hampshire): Unemployment isn't a New England problem or a Montana problem or a Southern problem. It's a hardship that hits every community in every state, in every part of our country. CORNISH: So the version moving to the Senate floor would provide an additional 14 weeks of unemployment benefits to all states. Where the jobless rate is more than eight-and-a-half percent, the extension would run 20 weeks. Lawmakers will pay for the $2.4 billion addition by extending the unemployment tax employers are already paying. But in the last few weeks, Republicans have proposed other amendments to the bill, measures related to immigration or the bank bailout program or to ban funding to the controversial community group ACORN. Majority Leader Harry Reid claims that this is what really slowed things down… Representative HARRY REID (Democrat, Nevada; House Majority Leader): Republicans decided to make a political statement by demanding completely irrelevant amendments, amendments that have little, if anything, to do with unemployment or even the economy, generally, and they decided that the political statement was more important than helping their const