Congress Gets to Party

while the unemployed go without. By the way, the WSWS needs to realize there is NO "Tier V" being proposed, so those of us who have been unemployed the longest will be running out of ALL benefits in the next few months, if not already, because Congress refuses to do its goddamned job and help people.

The last "extension" was last November when tiers III and IV were added.

The US Senate left Washington on its two-week spring vacation last Friday without passing a $10 billion extension for jobless benefits, due to expire April 5. The Senate’s failure to approve the measure means that more than 200,000 people who have been out of work for more than six months will have their checks cut off beginning next week.

If no extension is eventually passed, some 1 million of the 11 million people now receiving benefits will see them run out by the end of the month. With the official jobless rate hovering just below 10 percent nationwide, the Senate’s inaction demonstrates the callous indifference in Washington to the plight of the millions of workers and their families who have been devastated by the loss of work and its attendant miseries.

Failure to pass the extension also means that COBRA benefits, which provide a 65 percent subsidy for health insurance for the unemployed, will expire this Wednesday. While the cut-off won’t affect people already on the COBRA program, people who lose their jobs in April would be ineligible for the subsidy.