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Strategies & Market Trends : Galapagos Islands -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Oral Roberts who wrote (13938)	11/21/2002 11:49:43 AM
From: Lost1	Respond to of 57110

LOL!!! I saw him sing a geritol version of that on my extreme stupor tour to Branson

To: Oral Roberts who wrote (13938)	11/21/2002 12:51:43 PM
From: MulhollandDrive	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 57110

Unhappy holidays: Congress fails to act on jobless benefits By Mike Dorning Chicago Tribune WASHINGTON — More than 800,000 jobless workers, including 50,000 in Washington state, face a cutoff of unemployment benefits three days after Christmas because Congress left town for the year without an agreement on extending benefits. Both Democrats and Republicans — who last week completed legislation giving themselves a 3.1 percent pay raise — say they believe unemployed workers should continue to receive assistance. But because neither House nor Senate leaders would budge over terms, idled workers will be the losers. As a result, beginning Dec. 28, jobless workers will be limited to six months of unemployment compensation, rather than the nine months they are eligible to receive now. The impact will fall on workers who first went on unemployment after April 1. In Washington, about 50,000 jobless workers will be in the midst of their final 13 weeks of benefits when the extension expires Dec. 28. That number is expected to increase by about 10,000 a month if the economy continues to idle, say advisers to Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., who had been pushing for a six-month extension. At the Capitol, the Senate recessed for more than an hour yesterday for a last-minute flurry of negotiations spearheaded by Senate Republican Whip Don Nickles of Oklahoma. Senators from both parties blamed the impasse on House Republicans, saying the House leadership would not budge. Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota adjourned the chamber for the year with a final dig at House leaders, calling on President Bush to persuade the House to act when it meets for a perfunctory session tomorrow to ratify changes made in the homeland security legislation. "I have to say I think it's a story right out of Charles Dickens," Daschle said. "Ebenezer Scrooge had a last-minute conversion. I would hope that our colleagues in the House would do so." But a spokeswoman for House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said House leaders had no intention of changing their position. "The House already acted on unemployment benefits," said the spokeswoman, Paige Ralston. The breakdown covers an additional 13 weeks of unemployment benefits Congress temporarily authorized in March because of the greater difficulty laid-off employees have finding new jobs during the recession. Workers ordinarily are eligible for 26 weeks of jobless benefits, but Congress frequently authorizes extensions during periods of high unemployment. Jobless workers received extended benefits from November 1991 through April 1994 during a previous recession. The failure of Congress to act on the extension means about 10 percent of the 8.2 million jobless workers in the United States no longer will be eligible for assistance. The average benefit check is worth $256 a week, according to the National Employment Law Project, and that would subtract more than $200 million from the economy during the week of Dec. 29. Washington state's benefits are more generous than most states, providing 30 weeks of basic insurance (compared with the typical 26) at a maximum of $496 a week. Even without the extension now due to expire, the state's 6.7 percent unemployment rate makes it eligible for 22 weeks of extensions, or a total of 52 weeks of unemployment insurance. With an extension, Washington state beneficiaries would be entitled to an additional 13 weeks, or 65. The disagreement between the House and Senate is over the length of time that extended benefits would be available to workers and a demand by House Republicans that any benefits for the jobless also protect doctors from a planned reduction in Medicare reimbursement payments. The House last week passed legislation that would have extended the additional benefits until Feb. 2. But workers who exhausted their regular 26 weeks of benefits after Dec. 28 would not have been eligible for those unless they lived in one of three high-unemployment states: Alaska, Washington or Oregon. Also, the House legislation would have reversed a 4.4 percent reduction in Medicare reimbursement rates scheduled for Jan. 1. Both Republican and Democratic senators objected to the provision. The Senate legislation, also passed last week, would have continued the extended unemployment benefits until April 1. The Senate version would have cost the unemployment trust fund an estimated $4.9 billion, while the cost of the House measure was estimated at $900 million. Nickles brokered a bipartisan compromise that scaled back the period of the extension to match the Feb. 2 cutoff of the House legislation, but House leaders rebuffed the offer, Senate aides said. "In our opinion, the House missed the opportunity to take this issue off the table," one Republican Senate aide said. Although the loss of income could be devastating for the families affected, it probably won't worsen Washington's economy, said Gary Kamimura, a state economic-policy analyst. "The economy is already pretty flat, and we're not looking at any imminent recovery, so it's not as if it's going to put in a dent in a robust economy." Information from Seattle Times staff reporter Shirleen Holt and The Associated Press is included in this report. Copyright © 2002 The Seattle Times Company