Reprinted with the permission of the Sun Newspapers By Rob Roberts March 8, 2002

On the eve of the six-month anniversary of Sept. 11, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 417-3 Thursday for an economic stimulus package that, among other things, would extend unemployment benefits for 13 weeks.

That's great news for U.S. Rep. Dennis Moore and Lenexa resident Rachel Flener.

Moore, of course, has a job ... at least through next January. But in that post, the Lenexa Democrat has been repeatedly calling for Congress to pass a one-time unemployment extension to benefit out-of-work constituents finding it difficult to find jobs due to the economic fallout from Sept. 11.

Rachel Flener is one of those constituents.

Flener was one of 6,000 Sprint employees who lost their jobs as a result of layoffs announced last November. Those layoffs weren't as directly related to the terrorist acts as were cutbacks in the travel, hospitality and other industries.

"But it's been a tough time for everyone trying to find a job because so many people have been laid off," Flener said.

Flener, who has been applying for as many as a dozen jobs a week without so much as one callback to show for her efforts, is one of three constituents scheduled to appear with Moore today in an attempt to urge U.S. Senate approval of the stimulus package.

Also scheduled to appear this morning at the Best Western Conference Center in Kansas City, Kan., was Lyle Rohlmeier, a Lawrence resident who was laid off by Farmland Industries last year and ran out of unemployment benefits in November, and Overland Park resident Rob Baker.

Baker had been flying commercial airplanes for five years prior to being laid off by TWA shortly after Sept. 11. His benefits are scheduled to run out this month.

Flener, also facing the end of her benefits, said the stimulus package would allow her to continue searching for an employer who could take advantage of her high skill level.

"It would be nice to know that I have more time to continue to look, not just for a job, but for a return to my career," she said. "I need to stay focused on finding a position where I can use my skills ... and bring my self-confidence back up.

"It really does something to your morale and self-confidence when you've been looking for three months and haven't even had a phone interview. You start to ask yourself, 'What am I doing wrong?'"

As a communications specialist for Sprint, Flener worked on company newsletters, supported human resources initiatives and helped maintain five company Web sites.

Thirty-two years old with a master's degree, Flener said her unemployment couldn't have come at a worse time.

She was married in September, she said, and the mortgage loan for the Lenexa home the newlyweds purchased was partly based on the income she was earning at Sprint.

According to Moore, the Kansas City area has been hit particularly hard by Sprint's layoffs, which numbered about 3,500 workers here. It is estimated that 360 Kansans are now exhausting their unemployment benefits each week, with 5,358 Kansans having lost benefits between November 2001 and January 2002, he said.

Prior to Thursday's House passage of the scaled-down stimulus package, Moore had pushed for a stand-alone bill calling for 13-week extensions of both unemployment benefits and COBRA health insurance for workers unable to find jobs.

Jack Martin, a spokesman for the congressman, said a more grandiose economic stimulus package had contained those safety nets but was "going nowhere."

In December, Moore obtained a letter from President Bush indicating the president's support for stand-alone measures such as those Moore was pushing. But with Senate passage of the stimulus package advanced Thursday, that would not be necessary.

Moore hailed the House's overwhelming passage of the package, which he said would also "provide businesses incentives to buy new equipment, spurring economic growth and job creation."

The package would cost $42 billion over 10 years. It would extend all existing 26-week jobless benefits by 13 weeks and allow for additional automatic extensions in states with unemployment rates above 4 percent. Kansas' rate in January was 4.9 percent, compared to a 3.7 percent rate in Johnson County.