Failure To Reauthorize Unemployment Benefits Will Hurt Economy, Say Economists

[cal04]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/09/failure-to-reauthorize-un_n_781021.html?ref=tw

The economy will suffer if the lame-duck Congress fails to reauthorize extended unemployment insurance for the long-term jobless, according to economists.

Zach Pandl, an economist with Nomura Securities International, estimates that the nation's growth in Gross Domestic Product will take a 0.4 percent hit without the extended benefits, which currently provide five million long-term unemployed with about $300 per week.

"We know a little bit more about what the impact would be because we experimented with this already," Pandl told HuffPost.

(snip)
"I'd been submitting 20 to 30 job applications a week, and finally I got a job. But, after working for only 2 weeks, my car was repossessed, and without any transportation to get to work, I lost that new job," wrote Hancock in a post on the National Employment Law Project's website. "If Congress hadn't let those benefits lapse last summer, I'd still have my car and my new job. Now I have neither. What happened to me could happen to almost anybody."

[jaxx]

1. The repukes will fight this and force more people on to public aid.

They'll have even less and people will suffer. I don't think teabaggers are jobless.

[gratuitous]

2. So, Republicans see this as a win-win

Their corporate overlords will be most pleased.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

3. The CBO rates extending unemployment benefits as BY FAR the most effective way to boost

to boost GDP and job growth. Of 11 possible fiscal optionss, extending unemployment benefits ranked first and extending extra Bush-era income tax breaks ranked dead last.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated ranges of possible effects of all 11 fiscal policies. Comparing best and worst estimates for both options, extending unemployment was 5 to 7 times as effective in raising GDP and 4 to 6 times as effective in boosting jobs per million dollars spent on each of the two options. See http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9518706 .

[SidDithers]

4. K&R...nt

Sid