By Molly Young

– The U.S. Senate on Monday passed a bill to extend long-term unemployment benefits, more than three months after the aid expired.

Senate lawmakers voted 59-38 to renew the benefits through May, and cover retroactive payments back to the program’s Dec. 28 expiration.

Still, the measure faces opposition among some House of Representatives’ ranking members, who have said the extension does not do enough to create jobs.

Monday’s vote in the Senate arrived weeks after the bipartisan deal to extend the aid first emerged among a group of 10 Senators, including Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore.

Both Merkley and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., voted in favor of the five-month extension.

The recession-era program was meant to help the long-term unemployed get by as they continued to look for work. State-funded benefits often only last for six months. But the economic downturn meant it often took people much longer than that to find a job.

The federal aid covered extra weeks of payments starting in 2008. Congress most recently extended the benefits for another year at the start of 2013. But lawmakers have disagreed on whether to extend the benefits program again, for another year.

Merkley, in a recent interview with The Oregonian, said the extension would provide a necessary bridge for those facing unemployment and help people avoid a financial chasm. “What we’re doing is we’re stabilizing families, and we’re stabilizing communities,” Merkley said.

As the Congressional debate spills into its fourth month, more and more jobseekers are affected by the ultimate outcome.

Analysts estimate that more than 2 million people have missed out on weekly checks they may have received if the recession-era program was still in place. That count includes roughly 30,000 workers in Oregon, where 1 in 3 jobseekers has been out of work for six months or more.

Supporters of the extension cite that statistic, which mirrors the national rate. Critics of extending the aid contend the economy has improved to a point where it’s no longer necessary.

One in 10 workers were unemployed at the height of the recession in 2009. Today, roughly 1 in 15 are unemployed.

The measure passed a string of procedural votes last week in the Senate before passing the final hurdle Monday.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has said the extension would be difficult to roll out, let alone spur job growth.

Yet Democrats and a handful of Republicans are pressing that the bill be considered in the House.
Supporters, though, face a road block in the calendar. Congress leaves at the end of the week for a two-week break.

Source: http://www.oregonlive.com/money/index.ssf/2014/04/unemployment_extension_deal_passes_in_the_senate.html