While Congress was on spring break the past two weeks, federal unemployment benefits expired for an estimated 200,000 jobless Americans. Each day, another 30,000 join the ranks of those who are both out of work and out of benefits. It did not have to come to this.
The House and Senate have passed bills that would extend benefits for many months. When time ran out to reconcile the bills before the break, the House passed a one-month extension to keep benefits flowing. Senator Tom Coburn, a Republican of Oklahoma, stopped that in its tracks, insisting that any additional benefits be paid for with offsetting budget cuts.
It was the second time this year that a Republican senator ignored the harsh realities of joblessness, holding up unemployment checks to make a point about the deficit.
Never mind that so many Americans need the help to hold on to their homes or keep their families fed. Never mind that the economy needs the spending to counter what would otherwise be a devastating slump in consumer demand — and more joblessness as a result.
On Monday, the Senate overcame a procedural hurdle in moving the one-month extension forward, upping the chances for passage this week. Leaders in both parties must not tolerate further delays. Jobless workers can’t wait. And the calendar must be cleared so that lawmakers can complete work on more comprehensive job measures — including aid to states and small businesses and money for infrastructure spending.
To do that, they must counter the posturing with facts: With unemployment at 9.7 percent — and the average jobless episode lasting a record 31 weeks — getting help to unemployed Americans and creating more jobs is the top priority right now.
Emergency help — like unemployment benefits or aid to the states — should not be offset with budget cuts, because that would reduce the economic boost that such measures are intended to provide. Congress’s sensible pay-as-you-go rules sensibly do not apply to emergency spending.
Those rules do apply to nonemergency spending — like the recently passed health care reform or long-term job creation efforts. It is time for lawmakers to stop posturing on the deficit and start coming up with economically sound ways to offset the cost of new programs.
We have two good places to start. Congress could raise $28 billion over the next decade just by closing the loophole that allows wealthy private equity and hedge fund managers to pay a lower rate of tax than most other Americans. It could be enacted immediately without harming the economic recovery. The people to whom it would apply would not be hard pressed even if their taxes rose.
Another good area for savings is President Obama’s proposal to bring the enforcement powers of the Labor Department and the Internal Revenue Service to bear on employers who evade taxes when they misclassify employees as independent contractors. That would raise $7 billion over 10 years.
Unless something is done to address the deficit, the American economy will be hobbled for generations to come. But denying benefits to the unemployed is the wrong place to start. The good news is that there are a lot of other ways to save money and raise revenues. We are waiting for members of Congress to come up with their own sensible ideas.
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