California's Finest Vote Against Food Money For The Poor

by David Dayen [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

Yesterday the House came very close to passing a bill extending unemployment insurance for 13 weeks.  Under suspended rules they needed a 2/3 majority to advance the bill, and they came up 9 votes short.  They might as well have gone for the 2/3 vote right away, because Bush is likely to veto the bill.  And every rubber stamp from California's Republican House delegation voted with the President.

Bush claims unemployment is not high enough and the economy not bad enough to justify extending UI for workers who can't find new jobs. Yet the total number of long-term unemployed is higher than it was the last two times Congress enacted federal extension programs (October 1991 and February 2002). In addition, joblessness is growing. May saw the biggest one-month jump in the unemployment rate in more than 20 years.

Right now, some 1.55 million workers have used up their benefits without finding work and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates about 3.5 million unemployed workers will exhaust their benefits this year.

You can't come up with a more effective economic stimulus than extending benefits for long-term unemployed Americans who need it the most.  That money gets directly injected back into the economy and makes far more sense than giving random $600 checks to everyone.  It's targeting with a laser and not a cannonball.

Americans United For Change blasted California Republicans prior to the vote.

"Voting to extend unemployment benefits to nearly 702,000 California workers is the very least Reps. Dreier, Bilbray, Bono, Calvert and Rohrabacher could do after voting time and again to enable President Bush?s failed policies that have contributed to and even exasperated the economic downturn," said Jeremy Funk, spokesman for Americans United for Change. "The U.S. economy is slipping further and further towards recession after five consecutive months of negative job growth. We understand that Reps. Dreier, Bilbray, Bono, Calvert and Rohrabacher believe that more Bush tax cuts for millionaires are the only prescription for the ailing economy - tax cuts that never manage to ?trickle-down? to the people who really need it. But, we hope they can make an exception this time and vote to extend a helping hand to the Californians hit hardest by the Bush economy."

They chose to stand with Bush.

The Democrats are going to try this one again.  It's so mind-bendingly simple that there's probably no way that these California legislators come to their senses and vote in the interests of struggling out-of-work constituents instead of the President they adore.

UPDATE: This just passed the House under normal rules (meaning it needed just a majority vote).  The count was 274-137.  Yesterday was 279-144, so a handful of Republicans took a walk today.  Roll call isn't up yet...

...My bad, 274-137 is exactly a 2/3 majority, so they got this through under suspension of the rules.  The roll call is up, and sure enough, all CA Republicans voted against it again.  Challengers, feel free to blast your opponents.