WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration says that if Congress fails to reauthorize extended unemployment insurance, 6 million people will lose benefits next year.
Starting in January, laid-off workers will be ineligible for further federal benefits after they've used up 26 weeks of state benefits (some states now provide fewer than 26 weeks). The average unemployed person as of August had been out of work for more than 40 weeks.
Over the course of 2012, the White House says, 6 million people will find themselves still unemployed after exhausting their state benefits -- an estimate that reflects the bleak prospects for a speedy economic recovery. The administration included a reauthorization of the benefits in the $450 billion jobs bill it sent to Congress last week.
Congress, which routinely grants the jobless extra weeks of benefits during recessions, gave the unemployed up to 73 additional weeks of benefits in response to the downturn that started in 2007. Congress has never dropped extended benefits with a national unemployment rate above 7.2 percent, but Republicans have said they are opposed to keeping the aid for another year because of its $50 billion cost.
Even if the benefits are reauthorized, the money will be no help to the more than 2 million people who have already been out of work for 99 weeks or longer.
Cheryl Greene of Sheboygan, Wis., told HuffPost that she lost her job at a Holiday Inn back in September 2009 and that her unemployment benefits ran out earlier this year. She said she and her husband are three months behind on their rent and afraid they'll be evicted.
Greene said they've been bouncing from job to job for the past decade, and debt has been a constant problem. "We both can't get a job at the same time," said Greene, 49. "It's never been enough to ever get ahead."
She said they both applied for jobs this summer at a new grocery store that opened in town last week. A spokesman for the Festival Foods company told HuffPost that "several thousand" people applied for the store's 230 new jobs. The Greenes didn't make the cut, though Cheryl Greene said her husband recently landed a minimum-wage job at a packaging company.
Without the unemployment income, Greene said, they don't have enough money to pay the electric bill, the gas bill and the rent. "You either pay this or pay that," she said. "It's either-or."
Greene is one of the 4 million Americans who the White House estimated would run out of benefits without finding work this year.
Arthur Delaney is the author of "A People's History of the Great Recession," HuffPost's first e-book.