Action Alert from the Half In Ten Campaign

Tell Congress: don’t cut off a lifeline to the unemployed.

The countdown is over. Starting tomorrow, the federal unemployment insurance program expires. If Congress fails to remedy the situation this situation,2 million workers will lose their benefits by the end of the holiday season, with millions more set to lose benefits early next year.

The stakes are high for these laid-off workers and for our economy overall. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that reauthorizing the unemployment insurance program until the end of next year would create the equivalent of723,000 full-time jobs. Conversely, letting the program lapse would create a downward economic spiral where unemployed workers would spend less on basic necessities. This in turn lowers demand, and forces businesses to contract and lay off more workers. (For a two-minute video explaining this process, click here.)

What’s more, the majority of the public supports continuing unemployment benefits. In a brand new pollreleased by Half in Ten and the National Employment Law Project, 73 percent of voters agreed with the statement, “With unemployment at 9.6% and millions still out of work, it is too early to start cutting back benefits for workers who lost their jobs.”

Continuing benefits would be consistent with history, too. Never before has Congress cut off jobless benefits with the unemployment rate above 7.2 percent. It’s still around 9.5 percent today.

Congress needs to hear from you. Please write your senators today, and tell them to continue unemployment insurance until the end of next year. You can also click here to call your members of Congress, and go to our unemployment resource page for additional steps.

Congress also has yet to take action on the TANF Emergency Fund. Another brand new Half in Ten pollshows that 79 percent of voters support this bipartisan job-creation engine that has allowed states to partner with the private sector to create over 250,000 new jobs for low-income and long-term unemployed workers. This includes 70 percent of Republican voters.

Yet due to a small minority of Senate obstructionists, many of these successful jobs programs are now being shut down. Congress can still act to restore the program for one more year. We have a live alert where you can contact members and urge them to continue the TANF Emergency Fund.

Don’t let anyone tell you we can’t afford to create jobs and help the hardest-hit families. The same people who insist that we pay for a year of unemployment insurance or obstruct the TANF Emergency Fund are telling us we don’t need to pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. These cuts cost nearly $1 trillion over 10 years, and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office ranks them dead last among options to create jobs and grow our economy.

We hope you will stand with us in these critical last few weeks of the 111th Congress. You can click here to sign the Half in Ten pledge as an individual ororganization, or you can connect with us on Twitter andFacebook to stay abreast of campaign developments.

Half of Americans state that someone in their close family is poor, and over 50 million Americans are living in a household struggling against hunger. We need your help now more than ever to build a grassroots movement to cut poverty in half in 10 years.