U.S. Congress - H.R.3404 Emergency Unemployment Compensation Extension Act of 2009
H.R.3404 - Emergency Unemployment Compensation Extension Act of 2009
To amend the Assistance for Unemployed Workers and Struggling Families Act and the Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2008 to provide for the temporary extension of certain unemployment benefits and the temporary availability of further additional emergency unemployment compensation, and for other purposes. view all titles (3)
All Bill Titles
- Official: To amend the Assistance for Unemployed Workers and Struggling Families Act and the Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2008 to provide for the temporary extension of certain unemployment benefits and the temporary availability of further additional emergency unemployment compensation, and for other purposes. as introduced.
- Popular: Emergency Unemployment Compensation Extension Act of 2009 as introduced.
- Short: Emergency Unemployment Compensation Extension Act of 2009 as introduced.
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Displaying 61-90 of 3062 total comments.
I know what you mean. I am sick of both parties. I am registered as “Independent” but independent candidates never seem to win. I think it is time to get rid of parties so the politicians don’t feel pressure to vote on things a certain way and can vote for what they think is right. I’m blanking out on the guy’s name right now but remember that Senator who switched from Republican to Democrat because of all the flak he got from his party for voting for the stimulus?
Also, then people won’t be registered as a certain party and feel like they have to vote a certain way. Then maybe we could have true elections where the number of people who vote count. Not the electoral votes.
Independents are just closet republicans♠
Actually, I need to correct that. I think I am registered as “No Party Affiliation.”
I change my registration often based on the individuals I choose to support in the local primarys for local government, for offices such as mayor, sheriff, city council, the DA and the county commissioners. I live in a state that does not have open primaries so if you are not a member of a party you have no vote. As far as national politics they have a racket and unless you have millions if not billions of dollars you have no voice anyway so i don’t get to involved.
I voted for Obama not so much because I thought he was the best candidate but because I thought he was the better between him and McCain. If I was going to vote for anything other than Democrat or Republican, I might as well not vote. Everything is geared towards the 2 parties. Red or Blue. What about green or white or orange or something?
Arlen Specter from PA, long-time Repub switched to Dem.
The scary thing is if you are unemployed and still have a good credit history, your history will show you are still employed therefore you will qualify, I sure didn’t buy anything, can you imagine the repos ahead in our future?☺
Time to start e-mailing, faxing etc. if we start now might have something by Nov. Ditto to HR6867? Am in favor of all states qualifying – every one is hurting!
So this won’t be voted on until congress gets back in Sept? I wonder if they will back date it. Or will we all start the 13 weeks after it passes, if it does.
If the McDermott version holds through the final votes and through the Senate, that bill (read it here on OC) specifically states that the process starts when the bill is signed. So it might back date to the date of signing, but not back to any exhaustion of previous benefits.
The House of representatives could have suspended the rules and could have already voted on this, they do not have to wait they are messing with us. Pelosi sets the schedule she decides what and when things get voted on. She screwed us last year why wouldn’t she be screwing us again this year?
This is a bad bill, if 6% unemployment was enough to justify an extension in the last administration 6% is enough to justify an extension now. Things are worse now then they were then.
I always worry when they just say “extension”. Like all the hype about the stimulus providing an “extension of 20 weeks” when all it was extend the deadline on the current 20 week extension. So does Obama support a new extension or does he support extending the deadline?
With all respect to everyone here, I wish everyone would read the bill for this forum for HR 3404 if they haven’t already, since some questions are answered right in the bill. The entire bill at this point is only 9 pages long.
Briefly, the bill as it stands now provides for a lot more than the extra 13 weeks extension for the long term unemployed in 9% states (yes, we all wish it were lower). It also provides a major extension of all the ongoing benefits programs, even for newly unemployed, because the stimulus UI programs will be running out sometime at the beginning of next year. That’s why this bill is around 60-80 billion, not the approx. 8 billion or so that it would take just to provide those of us soon to exhaust EB with another 13 weeks or so.
Nancy, I understand this bill is for a new extension. People have been saying Obama “supports an extension.” I was wondering what type of extension he supports.
Never mind. Bl5 posted something on 6787 which seems to answer my question. It looks like he supports a NEW extension. I’m not bashing Obama – I voted for him – but I remember on his campaign he promised an immediate extension of 13 weeks to all states but most states didn’t get that until their rate reached a certain level.
IF he supported an extension we would have one already, there is no one to stop him from getting what he supports, except for Nancy Peloci and I think they are on the same team.
I think a lot of the problem is that thought process some people have. Where they think people aren’t getting jobs because they would rather collect unemployment. I think they wait until the current extension runs out and then a month or two later when the rate keeps going up it finally gets through their heads that people aren’t getting jobs because there aren’t any, not because they don’t want one. Then they give another extension.
Many people still have that thought process. Look at the comments under unemployment extension news – many think this way(employed, of course). I was so pissed at what James Sherk from heritage.org said this week. He stated that if the unemployed ran out of benefits, we would be forced to make “tough choices” if we didn’t have an incentive like EB..Puhleeze! I’d like to see him live off of unemployment benefits. None of us want to be here! And, where are those jobs?
To many of those people “tough choices” mean that you can no longer afford to send your kids to the most expensive college in the city, or you can’t afford that summer home in the country, or you can’t eat out at exclusive restaurants quite as often. Even some newspaper articles use items like this as examples of how tough things are getting. There’s no real recognition among many of them (not all) of tough choices like no money for prescription medicine, or no money for the rent or mortgage for several months, or no money to repair the old car. Their imagination can’t seem to go there because if they didn’t work for a couple years they would still have enough invested to live comfortably for several more years. Lack of imagination all around.
Here’s an article from Mr. Sherk. This was written early 2008. He still shares the same view point even in this economy.
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Economy/wm1777.cfm
But critics such as James Sherk, a labor economist at the Heritage Foundation, say extensions aren’t good for the jobless or the economy because the money cushion allows people not to take painful steps such as moving to another state or changing lines of work.
“It’s not laziness,” Sherk said. "But as long as (unemployed workers) have the check coming in, they don’t have to make difficult choices.
I can gather what we all think of this!
ETA: The comments underneath the link are from the Detroit news this week re: HR 3404. Heritage.org is a conservative platform.
EGADS! So now we have the “cloaked” unemployed bashing. Oh, no, it’s not laziness—it’s feeling too comfortable, i.e., lacking incentive, i.e., sitting on the couch, i.e., not “pulling up the bootstraps,” i.e.—LAZINESS! Give me a x$%&# break! On top of that, a second insult—assuming we’re too stupid to get the “hidden” insult!
Yet ANOTHER bullseye plastered over my tv screen. :)
Mr. Sherk has me profiled perfectly. My $275.00 a week has living the good life….free and easy, not a care in the world and better than the smell of napalm in the morning. I have had to make some tough choices though….had to give up my estate in the Hampton’s,no cruise to the south of France,can’t enter the George Hamilton coco butter open tanning contest in Aruba….sigh. But don’t worry Mr. Sherk I’ll be ok because I know that economists like yourself have it all figured out…ha ha…“If brains we gas you couldn’t drive an ants go cart around the inside of a cheerio once”. Take your med’s and go bad to sleep Mr. Sherk.
I am so tired of those “how to survive unemployment” news articles that include helpful hints such as “subscribe to netficks and quit going to as many movies” or “brew your coffee at home instead of going to Starbucks everyday”, this one is my favorite “when you go out to eat order water with your meal” it does make you wonder what planet these people are from.
Ok, abaratar, THIS one we can agree on! :)
I’m also tired of the endless cooking shows that show how to prepare “inexpensive” meals—sorry, I know just how much those extra ingredients cost, the ones that supposedly are already in your cupboards like spices and condiments, plus the local actual prices for the main ingredients. And if I had to prepare those meals every day I’d be homeless even sooner than I fear.
Planet Employed still doesn’t have the slightest idea. If and when this misery is over, maybe those of us in Planet Unemployed will have better awareness of how to function economically than “they” will!
the closest thing I have seen to indicate that Obama supports an extinsion is the quote from Geithner saying
The Obama administration may have to look at extending unemployment benefits toward the end of the year to deal with a stubbornly high jobless rate and the looming expiration of aid to more than a million unemployed people.
“I think that is something that the administration and Congress are going to look very carefully at as we get closer to the end of this year,” Geithner said.
the closest thing I have seen to indicate that Obama supports an extinsion is the quote from Geithner saying
The Obama administration may have to look at extending unemployment benefits toward the end of the year to deal with a stubbornly high jobless rate and the looming expiration of aid to more than a million unemployed people.
“I think that is something that the administration and Congress are going to look very carefully at as we get closer to the end of this year,” Geithner said.
Here’s a couple but it’s not the quote that I was referring to earlier. I read it the day the bill came out, somewhere? Either way, you make some valid points – not enough is being done.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/08/02/obama-adviser-its-gonna-be-a-long-hard-slog-getting-out-of-this/
and another one:
Officials to seek unemployment benefits extension
(AP) – 2 hours ago
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s top economic advisers say the administration will work with Congress to extend unemployment benefits for millions of Americans.
The head of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, Christina Romer, said Sunday that the administration is already looking ahead at an extension of benefits as that money runs out.