Senate Passes Unemployment Extension; Obama Could Sign By Thursday

(July 21) -- After one last round of debate, the Senate on Wednesday passed an unemployment extension that restores benefits to jobless workers who'd had their checks cut off in June and keeps them flowing through the end of November for qualifying recipients. The House will give its approval to the measure as early as Thursday and speed it to President Barack Obama for him to sign.

Though the outcome was all but certain, the final round of the fight over the bill was no less heated than those that had come before.

On Tuesday, Senate Democrats, with the support of both Republican senators from Maine and freshly sworn-in West Virginia Sen. Carte Goodwin, broke a longstanding Republican filibuster against the emergency jobless relief bill with a 60-40 vote to invoke cloture. But in Wednesday's session, Republican senators introduced several motions -- including several calling for offsetting cuts to cancel out the cost of the unemployment benefits, which will have a $33 billion deficit impact -- and another to repeal the estate tax that pushed the vote back to Wednesday night.

Speaking from the Senate, California Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer criticized the bill's Republican opponents for continuing to hold unemployed Americans "hostage."

Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn, voicing the Republican sentiment, said the GOP opposition is not a "delaying tactic" but rather a "philosophical discussion" over how to remedy the struggling economy.

While the bill has languished, 2.5 million unemployed workers have gone without aid, which under the new bill will be restored retroactively to June 2, when the previous federal benefits package expired. The bill would extend benefits for those who qualify through the end of November but does not include so-called Tier 5 aid for the "99ers," Americans who have already been out of work for over 99 weeks and have therefore had their federal aid discontinued.

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