June congressional wrap-up.
Continued Delays on UI Extension, House Passes War Supplemental
Congress has adjourned for the July recess, leaving most of their work unfinished. Most notably, Members of Congress left town without extending the federal expanded unemployment insurance (UI) program originally authorized under the Recovery Act, despite the fact the unemployment rate continues to hover near ten percent. Congress’ continued failure to extend federal UI benefits – which expired in early June – is already having a significant impact on out-of-work Americans and their families: the Department of Labor estimates that more than 2 million individuals will lose access to benefits by July 10, and that more than 3.2 million will lose their benefits if Congress does not complete the extension by the end of July.
Following three failed efforts to pass a UI extension as part of a broad tax ‘extenders’ bill, the Senate on June 30 came up just short of approving a stand-alone version of the bill that would have extended benefits through the end of November 2010. The measure, which also included an extension of the homebuyer’s tax credit, was able to attract votes from two Republicans – Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine – who had voted against the broader package, but continued resistance from Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson and the death of West Virginia’s Robert Byrd left Senate Democrats one vote shy of the sixty votes needed to end debate and move to a final vote on the measure. The House was able to advance its own stand-alone UI extension by a vote of 270-153 on July 1, but the Senate adjourned for the July Fourth recess without taking up the House version. The Senate will likely return to the bill once Senator Byrd’s replacement is named, assuming this will give them the 60 votes they need.
In addition to the UI bill, the House also approved on July 1 an amended version of a Senate-passed supplemental spending bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, adding a range of domestic spending provisions including $10 billion in aid to states to preserve education jobs, $5 billion in additional funding for the federal Pell Grant program, and funding to support employment and training activities through the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) for workers impacted by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. However, it is unclear at this time whether there are sufficient votes on the Senate side to support the House amendments. Senate leaders were not very supportive of efforts to include domestic spending in their version of the bill this spring, rejecting an effort by Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) to include $23 billion for education jobs in the measure, and concerns about the federal deficit have only worsened since then.
As part of the supplemental spending bill, the House also adopted a one-year budget measure setting the overall discretionary funding levels for federal programs in Fiscal Year 2011. The “budget enforcement resolution” would cap overall discretionary spending at about $7 billion below the $1.128 trillion level proposed by President Obama in his February budget request. The Senate Budget Committee had approved a five-year budget resolution in April that would cap discretionary funding at about $4 billion below the president’s requested level, but committee chair Kent Conrad (D-ND) has suggested that the Senate may now move to a one-year resolution to better align with the House.
