Catherwood LibraryILR School

By a margin of 265 to 150 the House of Representatives yesterday voted to instruct its negotiators in House-Senate negotiations over an airline aid measure to accept an extension of unemployment benefits for industry workers included in the Senate version (see WIT for April 2, 2003). The $3.2 billion Senate version sets aside $225 million for the provision of twenty-six weeks of additional unemployment insurance benefits to laid off airline industry workers---115,000, fifteen percent, of whom are currently unemployed. While the Bush administration pressured Congress to eliminate "this objectionable provision" and continues to call both the Senate aid package and the $2.7 billion House package "excessive," many Republican Congressmen have come out in favor of the aid (see WIT for April 3, 2003).