WASHINGTON — The bipartisan Senate duo that has pushed all year to renew long-term unemployment insurance is reviving the stalled effort with new legislation on Tuesday.
Sens. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and Dean Heller (R-Nev.) will unveil a bill that would provide jobless aid to workers who use up the standard six months of benefits available in most states. But unlike the previous effort, this new bill would not give retroactive benefits to the 3 million Americans who have missed out since December.
According to a draft of the bill obtained by HuffPost, the measure’s cost would be offset with the same revenue increases from the previous legislation — offsets that were crucial to winning enough Republican support to pass the Senate.
But the bill faces the same obstacle as before: House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who showed little interest in the legislation and was happy to run out the clock after the Senate passed it in April. A spokesman for Boehner told HuffPost on Tuesday that the speaker’s response would remain the same.
The new bill also comes with the old bill’s reforms to the unemployment insurance system, such as a prohibition on benefits for people who earned more than $1 million in the previous year.
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