[NormsRevenge]

Details of unemployment bill

President Bush signed legislation today extending the federal emergency unemployment program for an additional five months at a cost of $7.25 billion.

Here are some details and background:

--Most states offer 26 weeks of unemployment benefits. Jobless workers who depleted their state benefits last year got an extra 13 weeks of federal benefits that Congress approved.

--That program expired Dec. 28 because Congress couldn't agree to extend it.

--More than 750,000 people in the process of receiving those federal benefits got cut off Dec. 28, before they had received all 13 weeks. Those benefits will be restored.

--In the next few months, 1.6 million people will use up their state benefits. They now can qualify for the extra 13 weeks of federal benefits until June 1.

--About 1 million people have exhausted both state and federal benefits. They won't get any more aid.

--Bush had to sign the bill into law by Thursday to avoid delays in issuing benefit checks.

--Funding for the extension will come from the unemployment insurance trust fund, which has cash reserves of about $24 billion.

[A Citizen Reporter]

Gee, and I thought the newsies told me he was going to sign it tomorrow! Round one goes to the Republicans, and leaves the Dascle/Hilary obstructionists on the mat.

LET'S ROLL!!!

[Uncle Bill]

"The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite."
Thomas Jefferson

"Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated."
Thomas Jefferson

James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, elaborated upon this limitation in a letter to James Robertson:

"With respect to the two words "general welfare," I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators. If the words obtained so readily a place in the "Articles of Confederation," and received so little notice in their admission into the present Constitution, and retained for so long a time a silent place in both, the fairest explanation is, that the words, in the alternative of meaning nothing or meaning everything, had the former meaning taken for granted."

"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the general welfare, the government is no longer a limited one possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one subject to particular exceptions."
James Madison, "Letter to Edmund Pendleton,"
-- James Madison, January 21, 1792, in The Papers of James
Madison, vol. 14, Robert A Rutland et. al., ed
(Charlottesvile: University Press of Virginia,1984).

SOURCE

Hug your kids, the socialists are in charge

[RAT Patrol]

Well, that's more info than I've gotten elsewhere. Thanks. At least it is temporary.

[RAT Patrol]

--Funding for the extension will come from the unemployment insurance trust fund, which has cash reserves of about $24 billion. This is what I don't know. Where did that money come from? Do companies pay BOTH federal and state unemployment taxes?

I think it should be structured in a way that motivates the payee (the unemployed) to find a job FAST!

[afuturegovernor]

Today in addition to the usual Republican and Democratic telephone lines that C-Span uses for callers it had an "unemployed line" for people to call in on. Of course every single caller on the "unemployed line" did nothing but scream about the mean sprited nasty brutish Republicans that how care nothing about the little guy.