Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
As Congress continues to negotiate unemployment benefits legislation, Bloomberg has a story this week noting what few others have: that the so-called extension of benefits isn’t really an extension of benefits at all. Rather, it’s an extension of the filing deadline to apply for existing benefits, which have been capped at a maximum 99 weeks since last fall. And Congress has no plans to lengthen that span.
That, Bloomberg writes, spells bad news for a growing group of long-term unemployed workers who have exhausted all available help.
[Lawmakers] are quietly drawing the line at 99 weeks of aid, a mark that hundreds of thousands of Americans have already reached. In coming months, the number of those who will receive their final government check is projected to top 1 million.
As we noted recently, there’s really no group keeping a tally of how many Americans are exhausting their benefits. The Labor Department, for example, defines “long-term unemployment” as anything beyond 27 weeks, meaning that some workers falling into that category could have 18 months of benefits remaining. And a recent study from the Pew Charitable Trusts revealed that roughly 3.4 million people have been out of work for at least a year — which again, does nothing to indicate how many folks have exhausted their government benefits.
Bloomberg, for its part, based its estimates on state figures, which paint a pretty dismal portrait of the long-term unemployment problem.
Interviews with state officials found that in New York, 57,000 people have received their last check. In Florida, 130,000 are no longer eligible as are about 30,000 Ohioans.
Those numbers will grow, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc, which projects that more than 400,000 may soon begin losing benefits every month.
For all the uncertainty surrounding the economic recovery, this much seems clear: Congress has no plans to extend unemployment benefits beyond their current length.
“You can’t go on forever,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, of Montana, whose panel oversees the benefits program. “I think 99 weeks is sufficient,” he said.
“There’s just been no discussion to go beyond that,” said Sen. Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat.
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