Tell Congress: Don't Push Jobless Americans Off the Cliff!

[Dulcinea]

With all the talk of the looming "fiscal cliff" that the country is facing at the end of this year, politicians and the media are paying precious little attention to the real, dire financial cliff that millions of U.S. workers and their families will face if Congress fails to renew the Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) program before the year's end.

If Congress fails to reauthorize the EUC program, two million workers receiving federal unemployment benefits will be abruptly cut off after the benefit week ending December 29.

Nearly one million more workers will run out of state unemployment benefits with no access to federal EUC by the end of the first quarter of 2013. In all, more than five million workers will be unable to collect federal UI benefits next year if Congress fails to act.

With 40 percent of the unemployed looking for work for six months or more, it is imperative for Congress to put partisanship aside and come together to reauthorize EUC for 2013.

http://unemployedworkers.org/sites/unemployedworkers/index.php/

[customerserviceguy]

1. Thanks for bringing that up

There's the Medicare doc fix to deal with, as well. I can see armies of protesting seniors when their doctors refuse to see them because reimbursement rates have gone down.

However, it was the threat to the unemployed and the seniors that caused the President to go along with a two year extension of the Bush tax cuts, and that was when he had a Democratic lame duck Congress to work with a couple of years ago. I doubt the Rethugs will give him any clean legislation extending coverage for the two smaller issues, they will want to hold those groups hostage to some sort of grand bargain that really screws us all.

I hope the President is a better card player than he used to be.