Senate Passes Unemployment Benefit Bill

  Democratic Senators broke through a stubborn Republi-can filibuster Tuesday and  pressed to restart jobless ben-efits for 2.5 million Americans still out of work. Senators voted 60-40 to move ahead on the bill.
      Millions of people's un-employment benefit began running out seven weeks ago as Congress bogged down in an impasse over whether the $34 billion cost of a fresh ex-tension of benefits should be paid for with budget cuts or be added to the $13 trillion national debt.
    In the past year, the recov-ery from the nation's long and deep recession has produced relatively few new jobs so far. Democrats empha-size that the em-ployment money put in the pockets of jobless families would also boost e-conomic revival and that people will spend it immediately. The benefits do provide an impor-tant safety net for people dur-ing these difficult economic times.
       Many Republicans say the economy has added 882,000 jobs so far this year, but many
of those jobs were only tem-porary positions as the gov-ernment geared up to conduct the 2010 U.S. Census. The government is borrowing tens of billions of dollars to pass this bill at a time when the national debt is spinning completely out of control.

WHL
7-21-10
Houston

美參議院通過救助失業法案

民主黨議員本週二衝破共和黨人的頑強阻撓，以60-40的投票結果，通過失業救濟全方案，讓250萬失業人士繼續獲得失業補助。
 七週之前，數百萬的失業人士已經停止獲得支票，國會對延長340億的失業救濟金等問題陷入僵局，同時對這筆巨額支出是否需依靠預算削減或是增加13兆的國債充滿疑慮。
 在過去幾年，從全國長期深陷的經濟危機中復蘇並未產生過多的工作機會，民主黨強調，為失業人士提供救援的資金有助於刺激消費，推動經濟復興。在經濟不景氣的困難時期，這些措施對多數民眾無疑是雪中送炭。
 一些共和黨人士也指出，今年以來，共新增工作882萬個，但不乏2010年度美國人口調查所設的臨時工作，美國政府再次借出百億美元為失業人士解困，又讓狂飆不止的國債幾近失控。

        WHL
         二零一零年七月二十一日休士頓