Bush offers more jobless benefits

10/05/2001

By G. Robert Hillman
The Dallas Morning News

WASHINGTON – Facing rapidly rising unemployment since the terrorist attacks, President Bush on Thursday proposed an extension of jobless benefits and an additional $3 billion in emergency aid.

The 13 extra weeks of benefits – beyond the 26 weeks usually provided – would be for workers who lost their jobs after the Sept. 11 attacks in states where unemployment has increased by 30 percent in the last three weeks.

The White House said Congress must approve that extension, which would expire in 18 months.

The $3 billion in new grants would go to states hardest hit financially and be used at the direction of the governors to help pay health care premiums and other services for the unemployed, including child care, transportation and job training.

Mr. Bush needs congressional approval for the health care component. The money would come from the $40 billion Congress has already approved for national recovery.

Additionally, states could apply for expedited federal review of proposals to expand health care coverage through Medicare and the Children's Health Care Insurance Program, which Mr. Bush said has $11 billion in available funds.

"We hear the cries of those who have been laid off," the president told employees at the Labor Department, where he made the announcement.

"We worry about the shock waves throughout our economy ... and we're going to do something about it."

The Labor Department on Thursday announced that new claims for jobless benefits shot up last week to the highest level in nine years, with the travel and tourism industries especially hard hit.

On Friday, the unemployment figures for September will be released, and economic analysts see little ahead but more bad news.

The national jobless rate already had risen from 4.5 percent to 4.9 percent in August and is likely to easily top 5 percent for September.

"We're going to have unemployment rates that are going to track higher for some period of time," Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill said Thursday on CNN.

"People should not be surprised to see October numbers not be good," he added, "and November numbers will probably be a little worse, and December."

On Capitol Hill, Democrats who have been pushing for more aid welcomed the president's action Thursday.

But they vowed to continue pressing their case.

"I'm not sure that it covers all of the different needs we have with regard to people who fall through the cracks," said Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D.

In the House, Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., noted that only about 38 percent of those workers who lost their jobs in the airline industry and related businesses are eligible for full employment benefits because they work part time or seasonally.

"There is no safety net," he said.

Mr. Gephardt said that those workers should be a top priority – something that Democrats want to include in the airline security legislation still stalled in Congress.

Republicans, however, have been reluctant to go along.

And Mr. Bush, in his announcement, pointedly urged Congress to help newly unemployed workers with existing programs.

"We don't have time to try to invent new programs," he said.