Jobless Benefits for Millions to End in January- Unemployment
About one million laid-off workers will see their unemployment benefits end in January unless Congress acts quickly to renew existing federally paid extensions, according to a new survey and legislators and state officials.
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A man waits to use a free telephone to speak with an adviser about collecting unemployment benefits in Calexico, Calif.
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Standing in line at a job fair sponsored by Monster.com in New York City earlier this month.
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The record extension of emergency benefits that was signed into law on Nov. 6 was widely praised as a lifeline for hundreds of thousands of Americans who had spent a year or more in fruitless searches for jobs.
The new law provided up to 14 weeks of federally paid aid to unemployed people who had exhausted existing state and federal limits, benefits that already lasted up to 79 weeks in many states. And for the majority of states with particularly high unemployment, it added six more weeks of payments, bringing the potential total to 99 weeks.
But many legislators, state aid officials and struggling workers apparently failed to read the fine print. The added federal benefits were built on a series of previous extensions that are slated to end on Dec. 31, unless Congress renews these programs. People who lost their jobs after July 1 of this year, for example, would receive no federal extensions once their customary six months of state aid ran out.
While discussions have started, Congress is not yet considering a specific proposal. And unless it acts before the Christmas break, officials warn, the extensions will end. If Congress, now caught up in the health care overhaul, delays action until next year, millions would face gaps in aid that many thought would be automatic.
There are six people looking for every available job, and these payments are enabling people to pay their mortgages and put food on the table, said Representative Jim McDermott, Democrat of Washington, who championed the Nov. 6 law and hopes to light a new fire under Congress.
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http://www.pbs.org/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/ Other rich countries have universal health care. Why don’t we? FRONTLINE travels to five countries in search of a universal health care system that could work in the U.S. in “Sick Around the World,” coming April 15 to PBS and online at
http://www.pbs.org/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/ To design a new comprehensive health care system, officials in Taiwan looked abroad for ideas, borrowing from the best and avoiding the worst—including what they found in the U.S. Watch “Sick Around the World,” April 15, 2008 on PBS and online at http://www.pbs.org/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/ .
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http://www.pbs.org/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/
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