The Senate Has a Deal on Unemployment Insurance

Sen­ate ne­go­ti­at­ors have reached an agree­ment on ex­tend­ing un­em­ploy­ment-in­sur­ance be­ne­fits to the 2 mil­lion job­less Amer­ic­ans who have not re­ceived their checks since the pro­gram ex­pired in Decem­ber.

The deal was an­nounced Thursday even­ing, just be­fore sen­at­ors re­cess for 10 days.

The agree­ment will ex­tend for five months the fed­er­al un­em­ploy­ment-in­sur­ance pro­gram (which be­ne­fits those who have been out of work for at least six months). Be­cause the new pro­gram will in­clude ret­ro­act­ive be­ne­fits from Decem­ber, the ex­ten­sion would ex­pire for all be­ne­fi­ciar­ies in late May.

The agree­ment is sim­il­ar to one pro­posed by Sen­ate Re­pub­lic­ans just last week.

The bill is paid for by ex­tend­ing cus­toms user fees through 2024 and a pro­cess called “pen­sion smooth­ing” that al­lows em­ploy­ers to re­duce their pay­ments to em­ploy­ees’ pen­sions. The fi­nal agree­ment would not pre­vent in­di­vidu­als from col­lect­ing both un­em­ploy­ment and dis­ab­il­ity be­ne­fits sim­ul­tan­eously, as pre­vi­ously pro­posed by Sen. Rob Port­man, R-Ohio.

The bill also re­forms the over­all pro­gram by ask­ing state and fed­er­al agen­cies in­volved to de­term­ine why an in­di­vidu­al re­mains un­em­ployed and of­fer “per­son­al­ized as­sess­ments” as to how that per­son can im­prove their pro­spects for find­ing work, un­der a pro­vi­sion cham­pioned by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. It also builds on an earli­er pro­vi­sion pushed by Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Jon Test­er, D-Mont., that would pre­vent in­di­vidu­als from re­ceiv­ing the be­ne­fits who earned a gross ad­jus­ted in­come of $1 mil­lion or more the pre­vi­ous year.

Be­cause of next week’s re­cess, a vote is not ex­pec­ted un­til after sen­at­ors re­turn to Wash­ing­ton on March 24. A Sen­ate Re­pub­lic­an aide said that the deal would en­sure that suf­fi­cient Re­pub­lic­an votes will be avail­able for pas­sage (five are needed), but that all sev­en who co-sponsored the GOP ex­ten­sion may not vote in fa­vor of the meas­ure.

The bill is co-sponsored by five Re­pub­lic­ans already: Port­man and Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Dean Heller of Nevada, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mark Kirk of Illinois.

This will mark the fourth time this year that Sen­ate lead­er­ship has brought an un­em­ploy­ment in­sur­ance pack­age to the floor. The last ef­fort, back in Feb­ru­ary, came just one vote short of the 60 needed for pas­sage.

A Sen­ate deal is still far from guar­an­teed to pass the House, where Re­pub­lic­ans have ex­pressed op­pos­i­tion to ex­tend­ing the be­ne­fits. House Speak­er John Boehner has in­sisted he will not bring an un­em­ploy­ment-in­sur­ance fix to the floor un­less it is fully paid for and also in­cludes a sep­ar­ate job-cre­ation pro­vi­sion.

This post was up­dated at 4:15 p.m.