After a couple months of wrangling, Congress has sent a bill to President Obama that extends through the end of the year payroll tax cuts, unemployment benefits and a fix in reimbursement rates for doctors doing work on Medicare patients.
We speak with Janet Hook, for the Wall Street Journal, to learn how Capitol Hill came to this decision point, who it will affect, and what the next moves will be. We're also joined by Eric; his unemployment benefits just ran out this past weekend.
We speak with Charlie Herman, economics editor for The Takeaway and WNYC Radio, and Marcus Mabry, associate national editor for our partner The New York Times, to discuss the important decisions that need to be made.
Anthony Fraccia hoped that offering a job in Michigan at his small business he'd get plenty of applicants. He's now wondering if extending unemployment benefits was actually bad for business.
This week, Democrats in Congress broke a Republican filibuster and passed legislation to extend unemployment benefits. 2.5 million unemployed people will get payments retroactive to the time they stopped receiving benefits.
Currently, only states with jobless rates above 8.5 percent qualify for 13-week extension in benefits for the unemployed.