WASHINGTON - House Speaker John Boehner said Friday that he thinks a bipartisan Senate deal to renew expired benefits for the long term unemployed isn’t feasible, a remark that suggested the agreement is in trouble in the Republican-run House.
Asked Friday what he thought of the Senate compromise, he said, “You mean the one that can’t be implemented?”
Asked whether his comment meant he didn’t like the measure or that he wouldn’t bring it to the House floor for debate, Boehner, R-Ohio, said, “I didn’t say that.”
He gave no details about the bill’s perceived problem.
An aide to the speaker later said Boehner believes that making the jobless benefits retroactive to when that program expired in late December, which the Senate deal would do, isn’t workable.
Boehner also is unhappy that the Senate proposal lacks provisions for creating jobs, the aide said, a condition Boehner has said must be part of any plan extending the benefits. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to publicly discuss Boehner’s comments.
On Thursday, senators from both parties said they had reached a roughly $10 billion compromise that would renew emergency jobless benefits that ended Dec. 28 and would be paid for by raising revenue. Coverage would be retroactive to Dec. 28 and would last for five months, meaning it would run through May.
The emergency benefits are for people who have exhausted their regular state unemployment coverage, which generally lasts 26 weeks. So far, more than 2 million people out of work for at least half a year are not getting emergency benefits because the program expired.
The measure will need 60 Senate votes to overcome Republican procedural tactics aimed at killing it. But with Democrats having 55 votes - including those of two usually supportive independents -supporters seemed to have a strong chance of reaching that threshold because five Republicans co-sponsored the announced deal.
They are Sens. Dean Heller of Nevada, Susan Collins of Maine, Rob Portman of Ohio, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mark Kirk of Illinois.
Lawmakers said the proposal was fully paid for, with the bulk of the money raised by extending some customs fees through 2024 and delaying some companies’ contributions to their pensions, in effect increasing their taxes now but reducing them later.More federal revenue would be raised by letting some companies make earlier payments to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., which guarantees workers’ pensions.
The deal would end jobless payments to out-of-work people who had earned more than $1 million in the previous year, or about 0.03 percent of taxpayers.
The agreement also has a provision aimed at improving programs that help the long term unemployed find new jobs and strengthening how the government verifies that they are eligible for unemployment benefits and assistance in finding jobs.
Jobless Americans can qualify initially for state-sponsored unemployment benefits, which generally run for 26 weeks. After that, they can receive emergency federal coverage that lasts from 14 weeks to 47 weeks, depending on how high unemployment is in their state.
When the emergency program expired Dec. 28, 1.3 million people immediately lost those benefits. Since then, an average of 72,000 people weekly exhausted state benefits and could not receive emergency coverage, according to the liberal National Employment Law Project, bringing the current total to just more than 2 million.
Average weekly emergency benefits last year were $287, the group said.
Information for this article was contributed by David Espo of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 03/15/2014