As early as today, Senate Democrats will be moving to vote to extend the benefits for another three months.
This week, as early as today, Democrats in the Senate will be making a push to hold a vote on a three month unemployment insurance extension to add another three months of benefits for the 1.3 million Americans whose benefits ran out just after the holidays.
As of yet, nothing has been decided, but the Democrat Senator behind the effort said they will make a hard push.
According to Rhode Island’s Senator Jack Reed, who is leading the way in trying to boost up Senate votes for the unemployment insurance extension, “It’s not determined yet, but we’re going to do everything we can.” He added that “Hanging in the balance is probably the right way to say it.” At the same time, though, he did add that the bill was building “momentum”, expressing his confidence in his determination to “work straight through” in order to be able to bring Senators over to his way of seeing things to ensure that it passes.
The unemployment insurance extension legislation is co-sponsored with Republican Senator Dean Heller.
Reed and Heller are working to generate support for the bill from both Republican and Democratic Senators, but at the moment the success for their efforts has been exclusively on the Democrat side. So far, the only Republican Senator who has publicly expressed support for the bill was Heller, himself. When Reed was asked whether he had been able to win over any more Republican Senators to support the legislation, the answer was indirect, at best.
He stated that they have convinced people to say that they are “thinking very seriously about this”. Reed also pointed out that several Republican Senators represent states in which the rates of unemployed workers is quite high. Even if every one of the 55 Democratic Senators place their votes in favor of extending the benefits – which is likely though not guaranteed – they would still require at least five Republicans to vote the same way if this unemployment insurance extension bill is going to pass.
