Budget Deal Won't Extend Unemployment for 40,000 Ohioans

The U.S. Congress is on its way to a budget deal—a couple weeks ahead of the January 1 deadline. But the deal doesn’t include extending emergency unemployment benefits. That means 40,000 Ohioans could see their payments end this month. Congress put together the Emergency Unemployment program early into the Great Recession to help out the long term unemployed. Basically, when state unemployment expires, this federal program swoops in with up to 14 extra weeks of help. The program was last renewed in 2012, and Ohio U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown is one of the people calling for another renewal as soon as possible. "We know that unemployment insurance has a real ripple effect in the economy, that people that receive unemployment benefits, which they’ve earned, are spending that money in the hardware store in Springfield and the grocery store in Huber Heights and the auto body shop in Dayton, and that money circulates and creates other economic activity and creates jobs," Brown says. But Democratic negotiators in Congress agreed to keep this unemployment extension off the table in order to get a budget deal on the table. As it stands, about 1.3 million people across the country could get cut off at the end of the month.