Thread: Congress lets unemployment benefits expire: 'What now' and s

Congress lets unemployment benefits expire: 'What now' and six other questions

More than 2 million unemployed people awoke Wednesday to the prospect that they may no longer have unemployment checks to help them pay rent or buy food and gas.

Congress on Tuesday failed to renew an extension of unemployment benefits that it passed at the end of July. Democrats have argued that with unemployment at 9.6 percent, many people still need help. Republicans say they would like to help the jobless, but want the $5 billion per month cost to be funded by a spending cut somewhere in the federal budget.

1. Who is losing their benefits?
One group is unemployed people currently receiving state unemployment checks. When their state benefits expire at the end of 26 weeks, they will not get any more money. According to the National Employment Law Project (NELP), this will affect about 387,000 laid-off workers.

A second group is those who are already collecting under the Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) program, which has four tiers that provide an additional 53 weeks of benefits. The first tier is an additional 20 weeks; the second tier is an additional 14 weeks; tier 3 is an extra 13 weeks for states where unemployment is 6 percent or higher; and tier 4 is for 6 more weeks in states with unemployment at 8.5 percent or higher.

Unless Congress acts, once an individual completes any one of those tiers, they will no longer get any benefits.

NELP estimates this group is about 815,477 jobless people.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2 ... r-benefits

Pay for it out of the stimulus monies. For Democrats to refuse to terminate this useless stimulus "pork" and convert it to extending unemployment benefits as the Republicans requested months ago, is unconscionable and unforgivable, and I hope every unemployed American remembers this in 2012 and in the meantime use their unemployed status to get involved with organizations committed to stopping illegal immigration, reducing legal immigration, passing the FairTax, potecting our trade, ending the War on Drugs and lifting bans on domestic oil and gas drilling.

For this stupid administration and its supporters to wail about deficits commissions who want to increase taxes on Americans who can barely make ends meet now, others who want to slice MediCare and cut SS benefits, and freeze pay increases for government workers, while overspending their own budget by 1.3 trillion a year with absolutely nothing NOTHING to show for it, is just unfrigging believable.

They want to whine on about Americans taking "hard pills to swallow" and "making sacrifices" ... while they all live the life of Riley with not a care in the world as they stystematically sell out every job they can help ship offshore and every illegal alien that can crawl in ... makes me want to puke alligators.

Congress is clueless, corrupt, incompetent and incorrigible.

The only decent representatives we have in DC are those who want to stop illegal immigration, pass the FairTax, protect our trade, end the War on Drugs and stop these bans on domestic oil and gas drilling.

Anyone else who wants amnesty, more immigration growth, any version of a mandated income tax system, free trade treason, a futile, racist failed war on drugs or bans on our domestic oil and gas drillers needs the boot and the hardest kick to the curb we can give them in 2012 or whenever they next run for office.

There is no alternative. These worthless pieces of crap have to be removed from Congress. And those Congress members who support some of the things we need to do but not all of them must be educated and lobbied on the balance of the things we must do to fix our economy and save our country.

Let go America! You know what to do, now lets get out there, do it and get r done.

When the economy has sneezed in the past people took survival jobs----handyman jobs, temporary jobs, low skilled work. This has happened many times in the past.
Now those jobs are occupied by illegal aliens. In our state, which is always hard hit by recessions, the latter are still busy working. I guess the US citizens are trying to weather it out in the trailer parks, maybe?

If you want a job you will have to work for the same as the illegals . Go to the employer and tell them you will do the same work for their pay . It's survival time now and the rules have changed . Take that job that they took illegally . Take it back , let them see how it feels for a change .

So, the bankstahs got to party on without missing a beat, but families will go hungry and homeless because all the jobs are filled? And who filled them by letting millions of illegals in at the low end and millions of foreign guestworkers in for the white collar jobs? And shipping every manufacturing and back office job they could overseas?

Stop funding the two wars. Those wars are costing billions. We need that money here.

Originally Posted by Captainron

When the economy has sneezed in the past people took survival jobs----handyman jobs, temporary jobs, low skilled work. This has happened many times in the past.
Now those jobs are occupied by illegal aliens. In our state, which is always hard hit by recessions, the latter are still busy working. I guess the US citizens are trying to weather it out in the trailer parks, maybe?

You hit it right on the head and I witnessed this

I watched C=Span today and it is any wonder how they get anything done in DC. They just kind of bicker back and forth blaming each other for not passing this or passing that. And today it was about Dems blaming Repubs for not taxing the rich. I would never make it as a politician since I like to get a job done or multitask (as one Dem blamed everyone in Congress for not being able to do several things at one time).

Originally Posted by Hawk

If you want a job you will have to work for the same as the illegals . Go to the employer and tell them you will do the same work for their pay . It's survival time now and the rules have changed . Take that job that they took illegally . Take it back , let them see how it feels for a change .

Yes that's the way it has to be for hubs & I. He was a 99er, then finally got a job in March of this year. We were especially glad because the company used E-varify. Hmm, not good as we thought.
After being there for a month, the director had asked the supervisors if they had a problem working overtime "once in a while" since they were all on salary. Which meant the hours that they worked overtime, didn't get paid for. He had no problem with it because he's done that quite a bit at the other companies he's been at. Well...it turned out to be every day from mon thru sat. They would work on salary from 8am-5pm. Then from 5pm-11pm without pay. So that was 36 hours a week with no pay. And working in the building during the summer heat, it was 105 degrees-up inside, and brutel. But he stuck it out, and I frantically did searches and resumes' for him while I was home. They nearly worked them to death. Then in Aug. they let them all go! Yes, just like that!
Congress's evil decision yesterday really blew my mind. There's nothing out there. The resumes' go into a black hole it seems. And when he goes to look for jobs in person, they're all illegals. Before I got sick I was a cosmotologist. But now I do hair from my home to try to help out. Not enough money for survival, but it's something...I don't know what's going to happen to us...$h1t scared...

Today is the day, please take action:

http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-219875.html