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Jamie Dupree's Washington Insider

Posted: 9:25 p.m. Sunday, March 28, 2010

Plenty Of Blame 

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By Jamie Dupree

Lawmakers in Congress left town last week without resolving a dispute over extended jobless and COBRA health benefits, as well as some other items that expire in coming days.  It's likely to spark a lot of finger political finger pointing before the House and Senate return in two weeks.

Why are we seeing a repeat of this battle again?  Why can't Congress get its act together on this?  Is it really that hard to pay for $9.2 billion in benefits?

The short answer is 'Yes' - and there is plenty of bipartisan blame to go around.

First off, Democrats have not been interested in finding offsetting budget cuts or taxes to pay for this spending for a very basic reason - neither party has made any significant effort to pay for extra jobless benefits.

I looked through the Congressional Record for the time frame of 2001-2010, and found every law that extended unemployment benefits.  None of them were paid for when the GOP was running the show and none of them were paid for when Democrats were in charge either.

Go back to 2002, when the Congress extended unemployment assistance as the nation dealt with the aftermath of the September 11th attacks.  There is no provision to pay for the extra benefits.

The next year, the Unemployment Compensation Amendments of 2003 made no mention of offsetting the cost of six months of extra jobless benefits.

The Emergency Wartime Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2003 included extra jobless benefits as well, with no offsetting cuts to pay for them.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the Congress stepped in with extra jobless assistance for those along the Gulf Coast.  There were no offsetting budget cuts then either when that bill was approved in March of 2006.

Two years later, after the elections of 2008, Democrats moved a bill to provide for additional emergency unemployment compensation.  There is no mention in that bill of any provision to pay for those extra benefits.

The economic stimulus law went one step further in early 2009, as that bill allowed for a limited period in which the federal government took over the share of unemployment benefits usually paid by the states.

And as readers of this blog know, the stimulus law certainly wasn't paid for with offsetting budget cuts or tax increases.

This list of examples is not meant to frown upon the effort of those Republicans who want the extra benefits paid for.  It is just a reality check to demonstrate that Democrats aren't doing anything different than Republicans did when the GOP was running the Congress.

So with Congress gone until the week of April 12, COBRA health benefits actually expire first, on March 31.  Extended jobless benefits expire the next week on April 5.

One more interesting note about this matter.  In the last month, we have now seen Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) and Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) take up the mantel of budget hawk and block extra jobless and COBRA health benefits.

So what about Republicans in the House?  Have they raised any objections like their counterparts in the Senate?  How did they vote?

Well, this is evidently a Senate Republican event only.  Both bills in the last month that got sidetracked in the Senate on extra jobless benefits made it through the House on a voice vote.

A voice vote.

Tomorrow, we'll look at the other items expiring in this legislation.  As usual, there is more than meets the eye.