Sacramento Head Start Alumni Association

HELP FOR UNEMPLOYED WORKERS

Mar 14, 2002

After months of partisan wrangling, both the House and Senate have
approved and sent to the President legislation to provide 13 weeks of
additional unemployment insurance (UI) benefits for eligible laid-off
workers. The new measure (H.R. 3090) is part of a dramatically
scaled-back economic stimulus package and represents a compromise
between the major new tax breaks for large corporations and wealthy
individuals initially favored by the House and the tax rebates and
health care support favored by the Senate. The final bill contains $8
billion for the extension of UI benefits for workers in states with
jobless rates above 4 percent, together with tax credits to encourage
reinvestment in lower Manhattan, extension of a variety of current tax
credits, and additional depreciation tax breaks for business. It does
not include the expansion of UI to part-time and newer workers, the
$300-$600 tax rebates for those lower income families who did not get
last year's full rebate, or health care assistance for the newly
unemployed as CDF had urged.