Congress Watch: Spending Bill and Unemployment Compensation

(Joe Jansen has a decade and a half of experience working as a staff member on Capitol Hill.  He has worked in almost every legislative capacity in both the House and Senate. Joe will be a frequent contributor to TPA’s blog.) Since I came to Washington, D.C. in 1995 there have been at least six different Senate majority leaders.  The vast majority of them have been Republicans, so I might be biased in my assessment.  But, I have never seen a Majority Leader seem as out of touch with reality as Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) appeared to be last week.

Prior to the weeklong recess leading up to the President’s State of the Union Address, Congress considered a couple of priority bills.  To the chagrin of budget hawks, Congress was successful in enacting a $1.012 trillion spending bill to fund the government through the rest of this fiscal year (read TPA’s previous postings about the bill here and here).  But, the Senate failed in its attempt to move an extension of expiring unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed.

Passage of the spending bill was no surprise.  The fight on that matter ended back in December when Congress passed the budget agreement hammered out by Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Senator Patty Murray (D-WA).  The only questions were how many votes it would receive and whether Republicans would drag the process out as long as possible.  It passed both Houses easily.  And, ultimately, senate Republicans did not hold up the process.

But try as he might, Senate Majority Leader Reid (D-NV) was unable to shoehorn an extension of the Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) program through the Senate.   Enacted in 2008, the EUC was a “temporary” Federal program that paid unemployment compensation to individuals who had exhausted their state benefits.  It has been extended a few times, the last as part of the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012.  At the end of December, the EUC expired leaving some 1.5 million Americans considered long-term unemployed with no federal unemployment benefits.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is insisting that it must be extended once again.  And, he is not troubled at all about the prospect of extending it without paying for it.  In fact, he agreed in a floor speech on January 16 that Republican insistence on taking money from other programs to pay for it is “appalling.”  He is also dead set against allowing debate on any measures that might actually get to the root of the problem – amendments aimed at actually spurring economic growth and job creation.

The national debt is more than $17 trillion.  It has grown by $10 trillion in the last decade alone.  The U.S. Treasury just reported that China now owns more than $1.3 trillion in debt.  Last week, Congress passed a bill that allows the federal government to spend approximately $62 billion more over the next two years in discretionary funds than it spent last year.  And Senator Reid finds it appalling that Republicans would actually want to pay for an extension?  That is appalling.

Frankly, just as appalling is his reluctance to consider any amendments that might actually end the need for these unemployment benefit extensions.  If your doctor continually prescribed a weak painkiller for your broken leg and repeatedly failed at setting the bone, you’d be pretty upset to say the least.  And, your doctor would be guilty of malpractice.  How is this any different?  It’s clear that Senator Reid and his Democratic colleagues have no clue how to spur economic growth.  It’s time to try some new ideas.

For their part, Senate Republicans have been doing an excellent job of alienating, well, everyone.  Rather than sticking to the reasonable arguments outlined above, they’ve been busy arguing that the unemployed are becoming dependent on government handouts and that Harry Reid won’t let them offer any amendments.

It is no wonder that the American people are wondering where the adults in Washington are.