COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — When federal emergency
unemployment benefits expired last month, the effects ran deep in a
Colorado county marked by two exit ramps off Interstate 25 — one leading
to the conservative religious group Focus on the Family, the other to
the Fort Carson Army post.
Hardly a liberal bastion, El Paso
County has the largest number of people in the state who lost
unemployment benefits, and many aren’t happy about it. Plenty of
Republicans, too, depend on jobless aid that Republicans in Congress are
hesitant to prolong. The ideological argument for standing against an
extension of benefits — that the aid can ultimately make it harder to
find work — meets a more complex reality where people live.
Democrats
propose to extend the emergency benefits for people who have been or
are about to be out of work for more than six months; Republicans are
less inclined to take that step, particularly if it means the government
borrows more money. The paralysis led to the expiration of benefits for
1.3 million long-term unemployed on Dec. 28. Lawmakers are still
working on a compromise.
The standoff infuriates people such as
Lita Ness, who lost her job as a civilian contractor at Peterson Air
Force Base in August 2012 and just received her final check from the
unemployment office.
"I’m registered as a Republican, but if they
continue to use this not extending our (aid) I’m probably changing to
Democrat," Ness, 58, said as she took a break from a computer training
class at the Pikes Peak Workforce Center. "People in our district who
vote ‘No’ on this, I’m not going to support them."
El Paso County
is represented by Republican Rep. Doug Lamborn, a conservative who has
objected to the extension of unemployment benefits unless they are fully
paid for with money from elsewhere in the budget. "It’s $6 billion,
doesn’t do anything to create jobs," Lamborn’s spokesman, Jarred Rego,
said of the Democrats’ proposal. "House Republicans remain focused on
creating jobs and improving the economy."
The overwhelmingly
Republican district is considered a safe one for Lamborn. The lone
Democrat who has announced a challenge, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Irv
Halter, accused Lamborn of indifference to his constituents. "This is
just another example of Congressman Lamborn being out of touch," Halter
said in a statement.
There are no data showing the political
affiliation of people who lost their emergency jobless benefits or
tracking them by congressional district. Democratic staff on the House
Ways and Means Committee crunched their own data from 20 states to
demonstrate that jobless benefits have a bipartisan reach. They claim
conservative stalwarts such as John Fleming in Louisiana and Michele
Bachmann in Minnesota represent districts with disproportionately high
percentages of people who drew the emergency benefits.
Heidi
Shierholz, an economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute in
Washington, said those who lost benefits are "just a cross-section of
the unemployed. They’re not going to be predominantly Democratic or
predominantly Republican. They’re just going to be workers who had the
bad luck to lose a job in the worst recession we’ve had in 70 years."
Economists
generally say the longer-term unemployed tend to be older — a slice of
the population that has become more supportive of Republicans in recent
elections. Older workers may be more reluctant than younger ones to
change fields of employment and surrender the advantages of years of
experience.
Lengthy unemployment aid can exacerbate this problem
by making it easier for those on aid to hold out for jobs that are
similar to the ones they lost, said James Sherk, an economist at the
conservative Heritage Foundation. "As the benefits draw down, they
expand their search to jobs they wouldn’t consider before," Sherk said.
"But it’s going to be a lot harder for them to find a job with one year
out of work than with three months out of work."
"There’s just a lot of places where workers are going to have to make wrenching decisions,"
Sherk said.
El
Paso County spreads out beneath Pikes Peak to the arid high plains that
stretch toward Kansas. It is dominated by conservative Colorado Springs
and its surrounding military facilities, which include the Air Force
Academy, NORAD and Fort Carson. The area’s aerospace and defense
industry was hit hard by last year’s automatic cuts in federal spending,
which economists blame for aggravating a persistent joblessness
problem.
At the workforce center, desperation for help co-exists with the area’s self-reliant conservative ethos.

One
Army veteran who has been unemployed since his discharge last year
rushed into the center after hearing his benefits may expire shortly.
"If it gets cut off, it’s nothing I’m ready for," said the man, who
refused to give his name, fearing people would learn he’s getting
jobless aid. "I understand, you can’t keep people on it forever. It’s
important to get people working."
Others feel that after having
contributed to society, they are now being abandoned by the government.
"I paid my taxes. I’ve helped people my whole life," said Barbara
Greene, 59, who lost her job as a medical secretary in a hospital last
year and expects her jobless benefits to end in March, "and now they’re
just throwing me to the side."
Ness started working as a maid at
age 16. She spent her last 17 years in the labor force working in
logistics and acquisitions at the Air Force base. For the past 17 months
she’s been unable to find a job that comes close to what she had. The
only positions she’s been offered interviews for are in call centers and
pay about $9 an hour — less than she made three decades ago. She’s been
stunned at how "incredibly competitive" the job market is now.
"I
find it very offensive when they say people on unemployment are just
milking it," Ness said. "I’m not a big fan of rejection and I get
rejected every day."
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Associated Press writer Brian Bakst contributed from St. Paul, Minn.
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