As anticipated, Senate Republicans have blocked consideration of a bill that would have granted 13 or 26 weeks of extended unemployment benefits to all eligible unemployed workers.
Update: Congress and President Obama have since approved bills to extend unemployment benefits.
The House had passed the bill on June 12, after Democrats twice submitted it for a vote.
But, because the Bush administration had threatened to veto the bill in its current form for financial reasons, it was anticipated that the Senate would not pass it.
According to the Associated Press (AP), “Congressional Democrats plan to bring the bill back by attaching it to an Iraq war financing measure.”
The bill is entitled “Emergency Extended Unemployment Compensation Act of 2008″. For more about the history of the bill, refer to the blog post entitled “House Authorizes Extended Unemployment Benefits“.
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