Senate passes bill reviving jobless aid

The Senate passed legislation Monday that revives expired long-term unemployment benefits for five months, sending the bill to an uncertain future in the House.

The final vote was 59-38, with several Republicans voting to support the measure. Democrats needed to muster just a bare majority to pass the bill, having narrowly cleared a series of 60-vote threshold procedural hurdles last week with the support of several deal-making Republicans.

Monday’s vote marked an end to a nearly four-month saga in the Senate, where lawmakers at points appeared on the verge of passing the bill only to become bogged down in arcane arguments over Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s denial of votes on GOP amendments to the bill. Even though senators were eventually able to reach a deal, the fight is only beginning in the House, where Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has said the legislation has “serious problems” and is “unworkable.”

Shortly after passage, President Barack Obama praised the Senate’s compromise legislation but needled the House GOP for its lack of urgency.

“Washington needs to put politics aside and help these hard-working, responsible Americans make ends meet,” Obama said in a statement. “I urge House Republicans to stop blocking a bipartisan compromise that would stem this tide, take up the bill without delay, and send it to my desk.”

Senate Republicans who backed the legislation will push Boehner to follow their course.

“We’re going to continue working,” said Sen. Dean Heller of Nevada, the chief GOP sponsor of the Senate bill. “I told my staff: Get me a meeting with Speaker Boehner. And let’s see if we can figure out what would motivate them to move this piece of legislation forward.”

An aide to Boehner said the speaker had no meeting scheduled with Heller as of Monday. A Boehner spokesman criticized the bill for not including job-creation provisions.

“We are willing to look at extending emergency unemployment insurance as long as it includes provisions to help create more private-sector jobs — but, last week, Senate Democratic leaders ruled out adding any jobs measures at all,” said Michael Steel. “The American people are still asking, ‘Where are the jobs?’ and House Republicans are focused on our jobs agenda for families and small businesses.”

The Democratic push on unemployment benefits is part of a broader election-year strategy to highlight income inequality. The Senate will vote later this week on legislation aimed at ensuring paycheck equity for men and women and will consider legislation to raise the federal minimum wage after Easter.

Democrats crafted this strategy expecting to earn political dividends if Republicans blocked the proposals during an election year. But Heller and other Republicans surprised Democrats in January by opening debate on the bill and then blaming Reid’s vise-like procedural grip on the Senate for the legislation’s stops and starts.

The GOP group’s work across party lines muddied Democratic messaging on the jobless package and eventually pushed Democrats off their position that the bill not be paid for. The $10 billion bill is paid for by extending U.S. Customs fees and making changes to federal pension programs. It also prohibits millionaires from drawing benefits and boosts some programs for job seekers.

The bipartisanship began when Heller and Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) were randomly placed at the same table during a holiday party last year. The lawmakers bonded over their state’s woeful unemployment rates and decided to combine forces in order to keep unemployment checks flowing. After working for months on the issue with little to show for it, by March Heller and Reed entered crunchtime, working to pick off enough Republicans to lift the jobless package over the Senate’s 60-vote barrier for legislative success.

A series of failed votes this winter stymied Heller and Reed, leaving them disheartened.

“There’s always frustration in trying to put together a deal like this; I wish it hadn’t taken three months,” said Heller, who voted to extend benefits even when they weren’t paid for, unique among Republicans.

On March 13, Heller and Reed had their breakthrough and announced a deal on unemployment benefits backed by five Democrats and five Republicans, a coalition that ensured the bill could pass the Senate. Along with Heller, GOP Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Rob Portman of Ohio, Susan Collins of Maine and Mark Kirk of Illinois all co-sponsored the bipartisan agreement, bucking their party because of a shared belief that long-term jobless rates remain stubbornly high even as the economy recovers.

“We’re at the longest levels of high unemployment that we have seen,” said Murkowski, whose state’s jobless situation was never as dire as that of Rhode Island and Nevada. “I’m trying to figure out what it is that we can do so that we can make sure that these people have opportunities for unemployment. I also recognize that the safety nets that we’ve put in place serve a purpose.”

Reed became the point person for Republicans who were seeking a Democratic deal maker other than Reid, whose hard-nosed rejection of having votes on any GOP amendments continued into last week, when an expected final vote on the bill was punted from Thursday to Monday in order to avoid voting on an amendment from Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.).

“I’m talking to Jack, not Harry. His brother Jack, he’s easier to deal with,” Portman quipped of Reed and Reid during a furious round of March deal making.

Reed returned the favor, praising his Republican co-sponsors as consistently honest brokers, despite the fits and starts.

“They were all thoughtful about it. What they could do, what they couldn’t do,” Reed said of his GOP co-sponsors.