Politics

Club for Growth: Don’t extend unemployment benefits without spending cuts

Alex Pappas Political Reporter
Font Size:

The influential conservative group Club for Growth is urging lawmakers to vote against extending expired unemployment benefits to Americans who can’t find jobs because it fails to offset the spending with cuts elsewhere to the federal government.

The Senate is expected to take up a procedural vote on Tuesday to reinstate payments to more than 1 million unemployed Americans that expired at the end of the year.

The Heller-Reed plan would extend these unemployment benefits for three months “with no spending offset,” Club for Growth lobbyist Andy Roth pointed out in a memo to lawmakers on Monday.

“Congress should end the federal unemployment insurance program and return the authority back to the states, which already have programs in place,” Roth wrote. “Absent this, Congress should pay for this extension by cutting spending elsewhere in the budget.”

He added: “After six years, an extension can no longer be called an ‘emergency’ with any credibility. There is plenty of waste in the federal budget from which to find an offset.”

Roth said the organization will consider lawmakers vote on the issue on its 2014 Congressional scorecard.

Follow Alex on Twitter