unemployment

The federal budget deal announced this week is a welcome reminder that bipartisan compromise is still possible on Capitol Hill. The agreement averts a government shutdown, undoes some of the indiscriminate “sequestration” budget cuts and continues to reduce the budget deficit.

But for those who’ve been hardest hit by the Great Recession — the 1.3 million long-term unemployed Americans who are receiving federal jobless aid — the deal amounts to a lump of coal in their Christmas stocking. That’s because congressional negotiators failed to renew federal Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC), even though the economic recovery remains stubbornly slow and there are still nearly three job seekers for every job opening.