For Immediate Release
April 18, 2008

Contact: Dorinda White
(202) 225-7084

Lois Hill Hale/Sharita Moon
(323) 965-1422

Washington, DC— Rep.  Watson announced her support for bipartisan legislation (H.R.5749, Emergency Extended Unemployment Compensation Act) to provide an immediate 13-week extension of unemployment benefits nationwide.  This legislation would extend unemployment benefits for 3.2 million jobless Americans who are looking for work, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

“Today, the Labor Department announced that the unemployment rate for California went up to 6.2% in March 2008. That is why I am supporting this legislation moving through Congress to provide much-needed relief to unemployed workers to assist them with rapidly rising gas and food costs, while they continue to struggle to find work in the slowing economy," stated Rep. Watson.

“The strain of the economic downturn on middle-class families demands a second growth and relief package now.  Yesterday, President Bush announced his interest in ‘work[ing] with Congress on pieces of legislation that’ll actually help people.’  That announcement is a hopeful sign that the President will now agree to work in a bipartisan manner on a second package, which includes unemployment benefits for millions of out-of-work Americans.  With projections that unemployment will continue to increase through the end of this year, economists agree that additional unemployment compensation will be the most cost-effective and immediate way to jumpstart the economy,” continued Rep. Watson.

 The Emergency Extended Unemployment Compensation Act will:

·         Immediately provide up to 13 weeks of extended unemployment benefits to workers exhausting regular unemployment compensation in every state. 

·         Provide an additional 13 weeks (for a total of 26) in States with high unemployment (six percent or higher).

·         Run through January 2009 and be financed by the federal unemployment trust funds, which now have more than enough reserves to cover the cost.

 Over the last three months, the U.S. economy has lost 232,000 jobs and over the past year the number of unemployed has grown by over one million.  The number of long-term unemployed workers is nearly twice as high as it was at the beginning of the last recession (March 2001).