Julie Vogtman, Senior Counsel

As expected, the House voted this afternoon on a balanced budget constitutional amendment, H.J. Res. 2. The good news: it failed, 261 to 165. (A constitutional amendment requires a two-thirds majority to pass.) If you’re wondering why it’s so great that the House rejected an amendment that would require a balanced budget, check out my recent blog post with the top five reasons why the BBA is such a terrible idea. In short, approval of a BBA in the House would have brought us one big step closer to longer and deeper recessions, with major cuts to programs that women and their families depend on.

It’s only been a week since the latest dismal jobs numbers came out, yet with super-committee conflict and the gaffes and misdeeds of presidential hopefuls dominating the headlines, unemployment hardly seems to be the most pressing issue in Washington. But it should be. Though last week’s news wasn’t entirely bad for women, who gained 66,000 of the 80,000 jobs added to the economy last month, such anemic growth is not nearly enough to make a serious dent in unemployment for women or men. Women have actually lost 117,000 jobs since the recovery officially began in June 2009, and their unemployment rate is higher now (8.0 percent) than it was then (7.7 percent). Nationwide, the unemployment rate is an abysmal 9.0 percent.

With the employment outlook still daunting for nearly 14 million jobless women and men, the number of long-term unemployed — those who have been seeking employment for more than 26 weeks — remains at historic levels. As of last month, close to half of all jobless workers had been unemployed for more than six months. Since most state unemployment insurance (UI) benefits expire after 26 weeks (or even earlier in some states), millions of the long-term unemployed depend on federal extended benefit programs that support workers who have exhausted their state benefits.

As we explain in our recent fact sheet, federal UI benefits have been a vital lifeline for millions of women, men and families during the Great Recession and its aftermath. Due in large part to federally funded benefits, UI kept over 3.2 million people (including nearly 900,000 children and over 1.0 million women) from falling out of the middle class and into poverty last year. UI benefits have also supported the fragile economic recovery; because recipients generally spend UI benefits quickly to meet basic needs, the benefits generate approximately two dollars in GDP growth for every federal dollar invested. Nationwide, UI benefits increased employment by an average 1.6 million jobs each quarter between mid-2008 and mid-2010.