Unemployment Benefits Headed for Friday Senate Vote By Niels Lesniewski March 26, 2014, 8:41 p.m. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call) The Senate is moving ahead with much-anticipated votes on an extension of unemployment insurance benefits that lapsed at the end of last year. Majority Leader Harry Reid set up a procedural vote Wednesday to jumpstart Senate debate on the bipartisan deal that would extend the jobless benefits for a total of five months. Without an agreement, that won’t happen until after a confirmation vote on John B. Owens, a California attorney who President Barack Obama’s tapped for a seat on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Before closing for the night, Reid moved to limit debate on the Owens nomination and set the gears in motion to take up the unemployment measure, setting up a vote sequence that could start automatically on Friday, even without an agreement. Reid warned of possible weekend work right at the beginning of the week, a threat that’s been quite common but seldom carried out. This time weekend work seems possible if there’s no agreement to truncate the debate, but Reid said on the Senate floor that “additional votes could occur later in the day.” That usually means the majority leader is looking forward to some sort of a deal that would allow senators to make a quick exit. Given the number of procedural motions and associated votes, without an agreement the unemployment bill would linger into next week. That’s all even though the deal has the backing of five Republicans, which means it should eventually overcome any hurdles. There’s also the matter of the regularly scheduled draconian cuts in payments for doctors who treat Medicare patients. Reid is waiting for the House to move forward first on the “doc fix” legislation, but the fate of a one-year patch seemed in doubt Wednesday evening.
Posted on: Thu, 27 Mar 2014 02:20:52 +0000
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