Still waiting longer..............

President Obama's signature bill to fund an extension of unemployment benefits along with other measures took a hit the other day, falling three votes short of passing, 57 to 41. No Republicans voted for the bill. This was a complicated bill and had within it a variety of funding streams. The unemployed and Black farmers got the short end of the congressional stick. Looks like there is definitely a political spin to this as well.

Here is a paragraph from a CBS news article that summarizes the things we discuss on these pages. Read the article in its entirety here.

"The catchall measure also includes farm disaster aid, $1 billion for a youth summer jobs initiative and an extension of a bond program that subsidizes interest costs for state and local infrastructure projects. It would levy a new tax on investment fund managers but extend tax breaks such as lucrative credits that help businesses finance research and develop new products, and a sales tax deduction that mainly helps people in states without income taxes.

The death of the measure would mean that more than 200,000 people a week would lose their jobless benefits because they would be unable to reapply for additional tiers of benefits enacted since 2008. People seeking the popular homebuyer tax credit would be denied a paperwork extension approved by the Senate last week. And state and local governments would lose subsidies on bonds they issue to finance infrastructure projects.

It also includes $4.6 billion to settle a long-running class-action lawsuit brought by black farmers against the Agriculture Department for discrimination and another by American Indians involving the government's management and accounting of more than 300,000 trust accounts. By the end of this week, more than 1.2 million people will have lost their jobless benefits since a temporary extension expired at the beginning of the month, according to Labor Department estimates."