The three-month extension of benefits passed with no room to spare, on a vote of 60 to 37, and some of the six Republicans who voted yes made clear that they wanted the $6.4 billion cost paid for through cuts elsewhere in the budget.
Still, even getting the Senate on to the bill was a victory for President Obama and Democratic leaders, who have tried for weeks to steer away from health care and budget wrangling and onto pocketbook issues, which they say they will use to try to frame the 2014 elections. Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, hailed the vote as a shift in “the tectonic plates of our politics.”
Republicans opposed to the extension will begin offering alternatives on Wednesday. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, one of the Republicans’ potential presidential hopefuls, will speak about poverty and unveil proposals that he says will help the chronically poor without consigning them to a lifetime of government assistance. On Thursday, Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee in 2012, will also speak about a conservative approach to poverty.
A deal that widens Republican support for the unemployment extension would give Democrats weeks to pressure balking House Republican leaders, highlighting fractures in a party offering differing policy answers to poverty and income inequality. Democrats were not terribly optimistic that an accord could be reached, though they said that fiscally conscious Republicans also feeling heat from struggling constituents had been receptive to genuine negotiations.
“We’ll only know that after long discussions without preordained outcomes, and sometimes you only know when you call the vote,” said Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat and co-author of the unemployment bill, with Senator Dean Heller, Republican of Nevada. The senators represent the two states with the highest unemployment rates. “This is still a tough, tough struggle,” Mr. Reed added.
Tuesday’s vote merely got the Senate to consider the unemployment bill formally. The six Republicans who voted yes included moderates like Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, but also conservatives from states with unemployment rates above the national average, like Senators Rob Portman of Ohio and Dan Coats of Indiana.
Leading voices in the Republican Party have questioned extending emergency unemployment benefits that were first passed in 2008, the height of the recession. Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican and possible presidential candidate in 2016, has warned that the benefits are a narcotic for the unemployed, lulled by handouts away from seeking work. Groups like the political action committee Club for Growth and the Heritage Foundation’s political arm, Heritage Action, also warned Republicans against the extension.
Yet most Republicans put aside the “safety net as hammock” arguments, and enough of them were willing on Tuesday to begin the formal process of extending benefits.
“There was enough concern,” Mr. Coats said, “and maybe some legitimate need to do some extension of unemployment benefits, that it shouldn’t have been just shut down.”
Mr. Obama, accompanied by unemployed Americans as he spoke in the East Room of the White House, tried to keep the pressure on congressional Republicans. “We’ve got to get this across the finish line without obstruction or delay,” he said.
But Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio made clear that in addition to demanding that an extension of expired benefits be paid for, he would also tie it to Republican priorities like building the Keystone XL oil pipeline, expanding exemptions from the Affordable Care Act and opening energy exploration on federal land.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/08/us/politics/unemployment-benefits.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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