Bill Statistics

The Middle Class Position

The middle class supports.

How They Voted

95% with middle class
4% against middle class
1% did not vote
Pie Chart

Grades

Grade A
Senate

The Senate receives a grade of A for its support of the middle class on this piece of legislation.

100 Senators voted for the middle-class position; 0 voted against.

Grade A
House

The House receives a grade of A for its support of the middle class on this piece of legislation.

409 Representatives voted for the middle-class position; 19 voted against.

See how each member voted on this bill:

House Senate

H.R. 2185

Unemployment Compensation Amendment of 2003

Introduced:
05.21.2003 [House]
Enacted into Law: 05.28.2003
Senate: Yea-100, Nay-0
House: Yea-409, Nay-19
The Legislation: 

The Unemployment Compensation Amendment of 2003 amends the Temporary Extended Unemployment Compensation Act of 2002 (TEUCA) to allow those whose unemployment insurance expired prior to December 31, 2003 to receive an additional 13 weeks of federal benefits. In 2003, there were almost 2.5 million beneficiaries of federal unemployment insurance who exhausted their benefits by the end of the year. This bill granted an additional 13 weeks of benefits to jobless Americans who exhausted both their 26 weeks of state aid and 13 weeks of federal aid in 2003.

The Middle-Class Position: 

The Middle Class Supports: Unemployment insurance provides a vital safety net to out-of-work Americans, particularly those in two-income families who depend on the earnings of both adult members to meet basic fixed costs. This bill provided support to the millions of Americans enduring an average of 20 weeks of sustained joblessness by extending federal unemployment benefits to out-of-work Americans by an additional 13 weeks in a time of the most profound job loss since the Great Depression.

From the Experts: 

“Fighting to extend benefits is winning politics for progressive elected officials and their allies looking for a way back to majority status. Extending unemployment insurance is an issue with great appeal to middle class, unaffiliated voters as well as blue collar workers upstate, it is also a great point of entry to start redefining the terms of the debate about tax fairness in New York… It’s also the only thing standing between tens of thousands of working families and poverty…” – Jonathan Rosen, Founding Director, New York Unemployment Project (December, 2002)

Beyond this Bill: 

In March 2004, as the Department of Labor reported its greatest quarter of sustained job growth in nearly two years with 308,000 new jobs, roughly the same number of jobless Americans exhausted their unemployment benefits with no planned extension in sight. Legislators concerned with the economic security of out-of-work middle-class Americans should not only support a recently introduced plan to extend unemployment benefits– the Emergency Unemployment Compensation Amendment of 2004–but they should work to create well-paying jobs for the more than 8 million unemployed Americans who want to work.

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