Senate Faces Another Fight on Extending Benefits

With the Senate scheduled for a two-week recess after tomorrow, there’s another showdown brewing over unemployment benefits—and this time, the Republicans have introduced a bill of their own in an apparent effort to avoid the negative publicity that came with Sen. Jim Bunning’s one-man filibuster earlier this month. Behind it is Tom Coburn, who, one Democratic aide tells the Huffington Post, “has the stamina of three Bunnings.”

At issue, again, is how to pay for the extension of benefits for the jobless. The Republicans want it to come out of stimulus funding, and Coburn’s bill does that. That’s not how Democrats feel, and at least one says they’re prepared to work overtime. “Part of getting a deal is for people to see how strongly we feel,” Oregon’s Ron Wyden says. “So that’s our job, is to show spine.”
(More unemployment benefits stories.)