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24 Dec, 2009 Us news

Senate Democrats said today that Republicans “have sought to slow an extension on unemployment benefit for political purposes,” The Hill reports. Sens. Debbie Stabenow (Mich.), Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.), and Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) blasted their GOP colleagues for trying to attach amendments on pet issues to a bill to extend unemployment benefits. “I am disappointed to be starting another week here in the Senate without passing an extension of unemployment benefits,” Shaheen said during a conference call with reporters. “If the American public understood what’s holding up this bill, they would be outraged — and rightly so.”

The senators expressed anger that amendments on issues such as making E-Verify permanent or on depriving funds to the community organizing group ACORN had held up a vote on the package, which is expected to make its way to the Senate floor this week.

They feel confident the bill can be passed this week, however.

Stabenow meanwhile predicted the bill would pass when it’s brought up for a vote this week.

“The good news is that we’ll move to this, and I believe there are the votes to pass it this week,” she said. “It’s up this week, we need to get it done, we need to get it to the president as quickly as possible.”

The bill is the Unemployment Compensation Extension Act (H.R. 3548).

Update (10/28): Members are still at an impasse over amendments to this bill. At this point, Democratic leaders will only agree to votes on two amendments dealing with a housing tax-credit extension and tax loss carryback. Republicans want a few other non-germane amendments which is why this bill is still procedurally stuck. They say they’d only require a short amount of debate time before a vote on those non-germane issues, but Democrats are refusing to agree. If no agreement to cut the “post-cloture” time short is reached, a vote on the motion to proceed to the unemployment bill would occur after midnight.