Late on Thursday evening, Democrats were arguing on the House floor over the size of a jobs bill that was two days overdue for a vote when word started to filter through the chamber that the Senate had adjourned and was leaving for the Memorial Day break. With no Senate, there could be no bill.
"People were astounded. I mean stunned," said freshman Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.). "We're in the midst of this debate and trying to find a path to doing the right thing and they went out on recess? Without addressing these issues? Some of which have deadlines? I mean, there are going to be unemployed Americans who will not have their unemployment extended".
On June 1, several programs, including extended unemployment benefits, will expire. By the end of the week, 19,400 people will prematurely stop receiving checks, according to data from the Department of Labor. How long will it take the Senate to finish the bill? With Republicans promising to stand in the way, leadership will need to file at least one time-consuming "cloture" motion to break the filibuster and to set up a vote by the end of the week in the best-case scenario. By the end of the following week, the number of premature unemployment exhaustions will climb to 323,400. The week after that, 903,000. By the end of the month, 1.2 million.
"But the numbers really don't tell the story," said Marc Katz of the National Association of State Workforce Agencies. "The states are going to get calls from very concerned claimants about what's going on, what's the outlook. That's the real story. And it puts claimants through real anguish. It's just terribly unfair to them".
It will be the third time this year that lawmakers have allowed extended unemployment benefits to lapse, and the second time they've decided to leave town for recess fully knowing the lapse would cause panic and confusion among blameless layoff victims -- not to mention what Katz calls a "huge" administrative burden on state workforce agencies.
