Senate does not extend unemployment benefits

The Senate Thursday adjourned until April 12 without extending unemployment insurance benefits — which expire for some jobless Americans at the end of the month — after Democrats rejected Republican Sen. Tom Coburn’s demand that they pay for the aid by redirecting federal funding or cutting spending.

The Senate voted 49-to-39 to adjourn without the extension of benefits, with four Democrats joining 35 Republicans in voting against. Another 12 senators, split evenly among Republicans and Democrats, did not vote.

Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, blocked the Democrats’ bill from coming to the floor for a vote, after Democrats rejected a Republican effort to pay for the $10 billion in benefits with unspent money from the $787 billion stimulus bill.

Coburn said in a nearly hour-long speech on the Senate floor Thursday afternoon that to bypass the pay-as-you-go law signed by President Obama in February – which Democrats wanted to do for the fourth time since then by declaring the expenditure an emergency – would be “immoral.”