After a bill to reauthorize unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless failed last week by just one vote, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said all would be well as soon as the late Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) can be replaced.
"We will vote on this measure again once there is a replacement named for the late Senator Byrd," said Reid.
When will the replacement happen? Every week that passes, several hundred thousand people who've been out of work for longer than six months miss checks they expected to receive when they began drawing benefits. When the Senate returns on Monday, it'll be 2.1 million people. By the end of next week, 2.5 million people.
West Virginia governor Joe Manchin (D) said on MSNBC Friday morning that he needs guidance from the state legislature about when to make an appointment to Byrd's seat and when to hold a special election. "It's possible by next week or the week after that we can have a direction that the legislature's clarified it and I'll make an appointment," he said.
So next week, when the U.S. Senate convenes, there will be only one senator from West Virginia?
"There's a possibility that might be the case," Manchin said. "I want to make sure if we have any legal ramifications, I'm not putting somebody in under the cloud of a legal dispute. Hopefully that will be cleared up Monday or Tuesday and go from there."
If Manchin names an appointee on Monday morning, it's possible the Senate could approve the House-passed unemployment reauthorization and send it to the president as soon as Friday. When the bill becomes law, people who missed checks will be paid retroactively. ( 99ers, people who exhausted all 99 weeks of checks available before the lapse, will continue to receive nothing).
Waiting for Byrd's replacement is, apparently, an easier path forward than attempting to persuade Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson to join his party and support the bill. Senate Democrats repeatedly rejected alternative Republican bills that would have offset the $33 billion deficit impact of the extended benefits, which have never been "paid for" in times of recession.
Unemployed people affected by the congressional delay are painfully conscious of timing. Jim Cain of Pomona, NJ, said he lost his job in December -- making him ineligible, by a matter of days, for the federally-funded benefits that lapsed at the beginning of June due to the GOP's and Sen. Nelson's deficit concerns. Without the federal benefits, layoff victims are eligible for only 26 weeks of state-funded benefits.
The federally-funded benefits provided up to 53 weeks of benefits broken into four "tiers." Because of the lapse, in June the unemployed lost eligibility for their next tier but continued to receive what's left in their current tier or state benefits. That's why the number of people prematurely exhausting benefits increases every week.
Cain said his final check arrived this week.
"It's all in the timing. If I'd had moved my getting-canned date up by about a month I might end up being eligible for five more months of compensation," said Cain, 61. "When I pay my bills at the end of July I'll have to dip into my retirement savings. That'll kill me."