Congress

No one likes a Grinch. Especially this time of year.

With overwhelming bipartisan support, the Senate just passed a bill temporarily extending federal unemployment insurance programs that expire on December 31. But now, House Republican leaders are threatening to kill the bill, cutting off this vital support for millions of struggling families. Read more »

As the House and Senate sort out the final details of the final appropriations bill, it looks like there are not many surprises. Which is both great and bad news. Read more »

The deadline to extend federal unemployment benefits (UI) is rapidly approaching, but it is still not clear when Congress will get around to addressing this extremely critical issue. Meanwhile, some Members of Congress have indicated that they would vote against a bill to extend UI unless it changes the funding structure to let states use more money on non-benefit spending , meaning that money that should be dedicated to paying benefits can be used for paying back deficits, cutting employer taxes, and for other purposes.

That’s bad enough, but the justification offered for seeking this change in the UI funding structure is even more frustrating: The current structure, in the words of Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC), “[is] discouraging people who can go back to work from going to work … [T]he program needs to be reformed to encourage people to get off it instead of encouraging them to stay on it.” It doesn’t take much to get what Senator DeMint is implying – that UI recipients are lazy, unmotivated, and would rather depend on government benefits for as long as possible than go back to work. As Senator Franken (D-MN) put it at today’s Senate hearing on long-term unemployment, this characterization is “offensive.”

Recent research has shown that claims that unemployment benefits discourage recipients from seeking jobs are exaggerated and that UI recipients are more proactive than non-recipients in looking for work. If that isn’t enough to debunk claims like Senator DeMint’s, the testimony at today’s hearing of Donna Stebbins, a long-term unemployed worker from Phoenix, really puts the lie to the notion that recipients of unemployment benefits are unmotivated:

Donna began her working life at age fourteen, when she began working summer jobs to earn spending money. Since that time, she and her husband Rick have done everything right. They paid their mortgage, put money away for retirement in a 401(k), and provided for their daughters. In April 2010 Donna was laid off and has been unable to find work. Read more »

Congressional coverage this week has focused on the continuing debate in the super-committee and the just-passed spending bill that counts tomato paste on pizza as a vegetable in school lunches. It’s hardly a wonder that Congress’s recent approval ratings have been as low as 9 percent; more people approve of turning the U.S. into a communist country than approve of the job Congress is doing.

But there really are Members of Congress who are trying to do the right thing for the country – like helping the nearly 14 million women and men who are unemployed. Last week, I wrote about the Emergency Unemployment Compensation Extension Act, which would maintain vital federal unemployment benefits for workers who have been unemployed for more than six months. And this week, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) introduced the Pathways Back to Work Act (S. 1861), a bill that would create employment and training opportunities for jobless workers, including those who have exhausted UI benefits or who have insufficient work experience or earnings to qualify for UI. (Rep. George Miller has introduced a similar bill, H.R. 3425, in the House.)

The $5 billion Pathways Back to Work Fund established by the bill includes: Read more »

Yesterday, Speaker Boehner and his allies in the House of Representatives acted shamefully: they passed H.R. 358, a dangerous bill that would undermine women's health and even put women's lives at risk. As we told you earlier this week, H.R. 358 is so extreme that some women facing pregnancy complications could die as a result.

The bill is not expected to pass the Senate, and President Obama has promised to veto it even if it does, but this vote was more than symbolic — these provisions are likely to surface again, either as standalone legislation or as amendments to other bills.

Put your Member of Congress on notice. Find out how she or he voted, and let's express our thanks to those champions who stood up for women's health and make clear our disappointment with the others. Read more »

The contrast couldn’t be more striking.

Today, the Senate is expected to address the most urgent deficit facing this country: the jobs deficit. Senators will vote tonight on the President’s plan to put people back to work and get the economy moving again. The plan would keep teachers and first responders on the job, invest in rebuilding our nation's infrastructure, provide job training, create incentives to hire the long-term unemployed, provide help for disadvantaged workers, extend emergency unemployment benefits, and prohibit discrimination against jobless workers.   Read more »

It's about jobs. You know that the most urgent deficit facing this country is the jobs deficit. It's time for Congress to do its job and pass a plan that creates jobs for the millions of Americans who are desperately looking for work.

We expect the Senate to vote tonight on whether to allow debate to begin on President Obama's jobs plan. It couldn't be more timely or important. Last week, we got some news about the job market, and it's not a pretty picture. Women gained just 4,000 of the 103,000 jobs created last month. The main reason? Cuts in funding for public services are disproportionately eliminating jobs held by women. Since the recession officially ended in June 2009, women have actually lost jobs and their unemployment rate has risen. Read more »

Most people’s eyes glaze over when they hear terms like “disaggregated data.” Wonk, wonk. But advocates should take note. Disaggregated data is crucial to measuring progress for girls and a battleground issue in the school reform debate.

When schools disaggregate data, it means that they keep track of test scores for specific subgroups of students. When you don’t break down the numbers you can’t measure the success of different populations. If you don’t disaggregate – then researchers and journalists (and wonks) can’t tell how kids of color or girls are doing in school because they get lumped in with everybody else. Robert Reich, who is 4’ 10”, once quipped that he and Shaquille O’Neal have an average height of six feet. Disaggregating that data is pretty crucial to evaluating their respective dunking prospects. It’s also a key component in demonstrating student achievement and in making schools accountable for the success of their entire student population. Read more »

Trust me: it's no fun being the bearer of bad news.

I recently told you that since the recession officially ended, women's unemployment rates have actually increased. But that's not the only grim reality: today the Census Bureau released new data, and NWLC's analysis finds that record numbers of women are living in poverty — and extreme poverty. Read more »

With the Labor Day holiday around the corner, today’s jobs data leaves no room for celebration. This month, the modest recovery ground to a halt – with no jobs added to the economy in the month of August. Our analysis shows that the news was even worse for women, whose unemployment rate inched up in August. While both women’s and men’s small gains in the private sector were wiped out by public sector job losses in August, since the start of the recovery in June 2009, men have gained 984,000 jobs, while women have lost 345,000 jobs. Read more »