President Obama delivers the State of the Union address on Tuesday, where he said he wanted to work with Congress to extend unemployment benefits.(Photo: USAT)
WASHINGTON<span style="color: Red;">*</span>— President Obama proposed an<span style="color: Red;">*</span>expansion of unemployment benefits Saturday, saying he'll fight to help working families<span style="color: Red;">*</span>"with every last day of my presidency."
Obama used his weekly radio address Saturday to put some specifics<span style="color: Red;">*</span>behind an unusually expansive<span style="color: Red;">*</span>State of the Union address Tuesday, when he identified unemployment insurance as an area where he hoped he could work with the Republican Congress. "Now, I’m guessing we won’t agree on health care anytime soon.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>But there should be other ways both parties can improve economic security," Obama said in his address to Congress.
Obama wants to<span style="color: Red;">*</span>require all states to provide at least 26 weeks of unemployment insurance<span style="color: Red;">*</span>— creating a new mechanism to trigger 52 weeks of benefits in states with sudden high unemployment. In the past, Congress has voted to authorize the longer benefits when there's a recession, but the White House says Congress is often too slow to act when a recession hits.
The plan would also create a separate wage insurance program providing up to $10,000 in benefits,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>expand retraining and career counseling programs,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>and encourage states to pay to relocate jobless workers or subsidize new jobs.
"If a hardworking American loses her<span style="color: Red;">*</span>job, regardless of what state she lives in, we should make sure she can get unemployment insurance and some help to retrain for her<span style="color: Red;">*</span>next job.," Obama said in his weekly address.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>"It’s a way to give families some stability and encourage folks to rejoin the workforce<span style="color: Red;">*</span>—<span style="color: Red;">*</span>because we shouldn’t just be talking about unemployment; we should be talking about re-employment."
The proposal released Saturday is remarkable in that Obama is seeking to increase unemployment benefits even as applications for those benefits are near record lows. The<span style="color: Red;">*</span>
Labor Department said this week<span style="color: Red;">*</span>the number of people collecting benefits is 2.3 million<span style="color: Red;">*</span>— down 6.3% from a year ago.
But even as the economy creates new jobs each month, White House officials say people still feel insecure in those jobs.
"People still feel a sense of unease," said Valerie Jarrett, a senior Obama adviser, at a luncheon with reporters hosted by Bloomberg News Friday. "They're concerned about their security.
"So what can we do to give people who have just gotten through the worst financial crisis of all of lifetimes that sense of security for the long haul?" she said. "That is what the president is determined to address in his last year in office."
The White House didn't say how much the proposal would cost or how<span style="color: Red;">*</span>it<span style="color: Red;">*</span>would be paid for, saying those details would be released when the president sends his fiscal year 2017 budget<span style="color: Red;">*</span>to Congress on Feb. 9.
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