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).
See MARTHA McNEIL HAMILTON, The Washington Post, April 8, 2003