For three weeks running now, Senate Republicans (Ben Nelson, D-NE too) have continued to block a Federal unemployment extension for millions of workers who remain without gainful employment. This is not the unemployment benefit for a worker who just lost his job last week. This is the benefit for building trades workers who haven’t seen steady employment since 2008.

This is the benefit for long-term unemployed workers who formerly held jobs at now-shuttered factories for fifteen, twenty, twenty-five years.

This is the benefit for fifty-five year old workers whose applications are passed over by employers who’d rather hire a younger man for the job.

It’s the benefit for the four out of five workers who do not get the one job available for every five applicants.

It’s also a benefit now lost since early June for a more than 2.1 million families, a number that will increase to 3.2 million by the end of July if no extension gets passed. 

Senate Republicans claim the main reason for blocking the Emergency Unemployment Compensation and Extended Benefits program is their worry about the deficit, although would-be Senate Republican Tea Party candidate Sharon Angle says the 14% of workers in Nevada who are unemployed are lazy. They do not, however, worry about the deficit when it comes to war spending or tax cuts.

What Senate Republicans do not say is they are also opposed to the $24 billion included in the extension bill that would help bail out 46 states so saddled with deficits they have had to make drastic cuts to public services like elder care and public transportation.  (http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=711)  Failure to aid the states has already led to public sector worker layoffs and will inevitably lead to more as pulling this provision from the bill will likely be the only way Senate Republicans will end the filibuster and pass the extension.

To see more specifically what and who have been harmed by this political gamesmanship, the National Employment Law Project has compiled data on state by state impact available here

The spreadsheet lists the Republican Senators who have blocked the extension along with their states’ unemployment rate, number affected and economic impact in dollars on their already burdened state’s revenues (unemployment can be taxed by states. Benefit cuts decreases this source of revenue for the state). It also lists the House members opposing the extension.

So next time someone waxes on about how Congress can’t get anything done, or how Congress won’t pass unemployment extension, ask which member of Congress. There are 535 of them. The vast majority are up for re-election this fall.