Obama to GOP: Restore benefits

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama took aim at Republican lawmakers Monday, accusing them of holding the public hostage to Washington politics by blocking extended unemployment benefits for millions of out of work Americans.

Lawmakers have battled for weeks over legislation extending unemployment benefits to workers who have been out of a job for long stretches of time. The last such extension expired at the end of May, leaving some 2.5 million people without benefits, with hundreds of thousands more losing benefits each week.

The Senate is set to take up the measure again Tuesday, immediately after the swearing in of a replacement for the late Sen. Robert Byrd. Filling that seat will give Democrats the 60 votes they need to block a Republican filibuster.

Obama’s argument has become a familiar one, as Democrats try to use the Republican blockade of unemployment benefits as a wedge issue heading into the November midterm elections.

On Monday, he sought to cast his Republican opponents as hypocritical for having voted for extensions of unemployment benefits when his Republican predecessor, President George W. Bush, was in the White House, but not now.

Tags: us business, business, employment