WASHINGTON — Many jobless workers in danger of losing their unemployment benefits would get a 13-week reprieve under legislation approved by the House on Tuesday.
The House bill, which applies to 27 states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico with unemployment rates of 8.5 percent or higher, would add to the record levels of benefits that have been available to the jobless as the country struggles to recover from its prolonged economic malaise.
It would not, however, give any extra benefits to the longtime unemployed in states that have lower levels of joblessness, including Colorado.
The bill passed easily, 331-83, although the two parties cast the measure in different lights. Democrats said the relief was still needed despite positive signs that their policies were reviving the economy. Republicans said the high jobless rate proved that the Obama administration’s economic strategies weren’t working.
The bill, if enacted, would offer a reprieve to more than 300,000 jobless workers who are slated to run out of unemployment compensation at the end of September and the more than 1 million expected to exhaust their benefits by the end of the year.
