When federal emergency unemployment
benefits expired last month, the effects ran deep in a Colorado county
marked by two exit ramps off Interstate 25 - one leading to the religio-wingut group Focus on the Family, the other to the Fort
Carson Army post..
Hardly a liberal bastion, El Paso County has
the largest number of people in the state who lost unemployment
benefits, and many aren't happy about it. Plenty of repugicans, too,
depend on jobless aid that repugicans in Congress are hesitant to
prolong. The ideological argument for standing against an extension of
benefits - that the aid can ultimately make it harder to find work -
meets a more complex reality where people live.
.
Democrats
propose to extend the emergency benefits for people who have been or are
about to be out of work for more than six months; repugicans are less
inclined to take that step, particularly if it means the government
borrows more money. The paralysis led to the expiration of benefits for
1.3 million long-term unemployed on Dec. 28. Lawmakers are still working
on a compromise.
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