Throw Us a Lifeline

Job creation is only part of the stimulus package now pending before the U.S. Senate. As Tami Luhby of CNNMoney.com writes, the package is also designed to provide benefits for those who cannot find work.

The bill, writes Luhby, proposes

• "increasing and extending unemployment insurance;


• "expanding coverage to more low-income and part-time workers;


• "subsidizing health insurance coverage;


• "and recharging state unemployment insurance trust funds, which are running dry as layoffs climb."

In other words, it's a lifeline for those who feel they are slipping beneath the waves. Many feel they're going under for the last time.

New jobless claims reached their highest level in more than a quarter century last week, nearly 50,000 more than the experts anticipated.

Is that all the unemployed are now — numbers? It seems that the only thing economists find regrettable is that their estimates are off — not the fact that real people are behind those numbers.

That reminds me of an episode of the TV series "M*A*S*H," titled "The Grim Reaper," in which a colonel in the Army seems to blithely predict the number of wounded who will be brought to the 4077th, much to the disgust of Hawkeye. The colonel and Hawkeye get into a scuffle, and the colonel decides to court-martial Hawkeye, but he changes his tune when he is among those injured.

To accomplish the same thing with some of the senators who are kicking up a fuss about the stimulus package, we would need to have another election scheduled in a few weeks or months, and there would need to be ample evidence that the voters are about to toss those obstructionist senators into the unemployment line.

Perhaps that is the kind of fear that is required to get the action that is desperately needed. Unfortunately, the next election is nearly two years away.

To his credit, President Obama gets it. And he is expressing confidence, according to both administration and congressional sources, that the Senate will pass the stimulus package by the end of the week.

Perhaps they will. Certainly, the unemployed — whose numbers are certain to climb when the new figures are announced — hope the president is right.

And they hope the package passes in time to help them.

For God's sake, the Senate had better hurry.