Filibuster Blocks Recession Relief, Further Complicates State Budget
A Republican filibuster has prevented the Senate from voting on its version of jobs legislation. The cloture motion (to end the filibuster) got 57 votes last week, but it needed 60 to pass. A clear minority of the Senate has, at least for now, successfully said “no” to recession relief for jobless people and budget relief for states. As a result:
Eighty-thousand unemployed workers in Illinois won’t receive unemployment insurance (UI) benefits. They will not be spending those benefits, as they always do, in stores and businesses close to home. Thus there will be no boost for the local economy or help for local businesses to avoid layoffs. More than 2 million people nationwide will lose these benefits if Congress fails to act before leaving for the July 4 recess.
Illinois won’t receive $545 million in desperately needed federal assistance in the coming year, which had been assumed as part of the revenue available to the state in the recently passed budget. This creates the immediate threat of even deeper spending cuts than we’ve already endured. Those cuts also cause private- and public-sector job losses and raise the risk of a double-dip recession as the loss of spending power ripples through the economy. Without more federal aid, state budget-cutting actions nationwide could cost the economy 900,000 jobs in the public and private sectors next year.
Illinois will have to end prematurely its Put Illinois to Work program. This is funded by the TANF Emergency Fund, which would have been extended by the bill the Senate could not vote on. It has already created 22,000 jobs in Illinois through September 2010 and would have created more had it been extended.
Congress should not leave for the July 4 holiday until it extends unemployment benefits, provides additional funding to states, and extends TANF funding for emergency jobs programs.
