Congress holds fate of nation’s unemployed in its hands

It’s hard to find people who are living high off the hog on their unemployment benefits.

Typically, they’re receiving less than $300 a week, which they spend on food, rent or mortgage payments, car payments and other bills. And it’s not like the recipients are loafers who are averse to work; to be eligible for unemployment payments, they first had to be employed — and had to lose their jobs through no fault of their own.

Which makes it difficult to understand why so many members of Congress make it difficult to extend unemployment benefits at a time such as this, when the nation is still struggling to dig out of the deepest recession since the Great Depression.

Nonetheless, as Congress reconvenes in its lame duck session, one of the challenges facing those who believe this isn’t the time to allow benefits to expire for millions of long-term unemployed is to win passage of yet another extension.

Two such extensions have been passed this year. This one would cost $12.5 billion and provide an extension through Feb. 28 for about 2 million people who are about to lose coverage. Without passage, those people will see their last check before Christmas.

This measure would not reinstitute coverage for any of the hundreds of thousands of people whose benefits have already run out. Those folks are already facing dire straits and limited prospects at a time when the national unemployment rate continues to hover at 9.6 percent. The hard fact is that there aren’t enough jobs in the United States today for all the Americans who are in the work force.

Dollars and sense

And while the holiday timing makes it easy to appeal to the emotions in arguing for an extension, it simply makes good economic sense to continue to provide people at a time such as this with enough money to keep their heads above water.

Maybe it doesn’t make sense in North Dakota, where the unemployment rate is reported at 3.8 percent. Or even Vermont, where it is 5.7 percent. But the rate is below 7 percent in only 11 states, so in four out of five states, unemployment is an obvious problem. And in two out of five states (including Ohio) it is above 9 percent, which makes it a big problem.

Republicans blocked an extension bill in the House before Thanksgiving, but they accuse the Democrats of playing politics and of refusing to make $12.5 billion in cuts elsewhere to cover the cost.

Again, philosophical debates about the need to balance the budget on this issue may play well in low-unemployment areas. Not so much here, where the combined unemployment rate for Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties was 10.9 percent last month. That’s good only by comparison to a year ago, when it was 12.7 percent.

And while there are signs that the local economy is improving, the last thing the Mahoning Valley — or any area like it — needs is to lose the influx of unemployment payments that not only help families survive, but that have a positive effect on the area economy.

There are a few more important things the 111th Congress has to address in the waning days of its existence than extension of unemployment payments. But not many.

Members of Congress — none of whom could maintain their standard of living on $300 a week — should consider helping the unemployed part of the job.