Well, if you’ve been following the news at all lately you’ll probably know that the US Senate decided to go on summer recess without extending emergency unemployment insurance benefits to the more than one million unemployed Americans out there looking for work. On Thursday, the US House voted 270-153, largely along party lines, to approve an emergency unemployment benefit extension. On Wednesday, however, Senate Republicans managed to filibuster the extension bill for a third time this month and blocked the extension. As it stands now, unemployment benefits for Americans will start to dry up  and will continue to run out until the Senate decides to extend them. Unless the Senate goes back into emergency session, the earliest the Senate will be in a position to vote on this again is after the Independence Day break on July 12 and, by that time, millions more Americans will have lost unemployment insurance benefits. It’s not clear, at least to me, that Senate Republicans will have a change of heart over the break so it will be interesting to see what happens.

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You’ll remember that in June 2008, early in the current economic downturn, Congress passed an emergency extension to provide unemployment benefits to Americans beyond the standard period funded by the States. Since then, Congress has passed additional extensions without major issue until February 2010, when the proposed extension was held up by Senator Jim Bunning, Republican of Kentucky. Senator Bunning opposed funding the continued emergency unemployment benefits through the Federal deficit, favoring cuts in other Federal spending or tax increases to cover the cost of the benefit extension. Senator Bunning eventually conceded and the extension was passed. The extension was up for re-approval in June and was blocked again by Senate Republicans citing concern about funding the extension by way of deficit spending rather than program cuts or tax increases.

While you may receive NH unemployment insurance benefits through the State (via NH Employment Security), these extended unemployment benefits are funded by the Federal government. Without the Senate approving an extension, your unemployment insurance benefits may run out. Here is a video from WMUR which discusses the impact to NH – in short 20,000 NH residents will lose their benefits over the coming months which means a loss of $75 million to the local community.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zpFrAJh-lw

As Gov. Lynch says in the video, "If benefits are not extended, it will have a negative effect on everyone in the State. We will see a huge loss of economic activity. We will see more foreclosures."

That Senate Republicans would decide to go on vacation rather than pass at a time like this is a sign of the political posturing in Washington and how out of touch politicians can be. Representative Levin, Democrat from Michigan and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee put it this way on Thursday, "There is no excuse for voting no."

If you are affected by this, now is the time to call your NH Senator and let him know!