Word: bille
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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With the job outlook grim, unemployed workers received an unexpected boost this week as President Obama signed legislation authorizing a six-month extension of the COBRA health care subsidy program that was part of the economic stimulus bill passed in February. "That makes me pretty happy," says Don Hall, 56, who lives outside Sandusky, Ohio. A supervisor with an MBA at an automotive parts supplier to Ford Motor Company, Hall was laid off in October 2008. He recently sent a letter of hardship to Wells Fargo to try to save his house from foreclosure. His subsidized COBRA payment has been...
...struggling to get by." Workers who were involuntarily terminated from their jobs between September 1, 2008 and Dec. 31, 2009 are eligible for the subsidy that helps individuals and families continue on employer-sponsored health insurance. The new legislation, part of the $636.3 billion fiscal year 2010 defense spending bill, extends the subsidy from nine to 15 months and opens the program to workers who will be laid off between Jan. 1, 2010 and Feb. 28, 2010 as well...
...this year, Graham has found himself a popular man with Democrats. While he wouldn't consider signing on to health care reform, he got together with Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, to co-sponsor an alternative health care bill. He crossed party lines to become the sole Republican supporter in the Judiciary Committee of Sonia Sotomayor, Obama's nominee to the Supreme Court. And he's been reaching out to Dems on social security reform and immigration - an issue expected to be tackled next year. Do a search on Congress's legislative database and more than 200 hits come...
...where Graham is really stepping up is on climate change. Without Graham's support the bill would likely have already died in the Senate. The idea of passing what most Republicans call a "massive new energy tax" on top of already record federal spending, especially less than a year before midterm elections, has little appeal to folks on either side of the aisle: except for Graham, no other Republicans have endorsed a cap-and-trade system for carbon dioxide, and Dems are worried that passing it alone, a la health reform, will hurt them next November. And yet Graham...
Graham's Republican colleagues have grown to trust his leadership, which is why he can boast that if he signs on to the final climate bill, several other GOP senators will follow. "I'm fairly confident that there's a point that he won't go past and there's a question of whether that's a satisfactory ending point for the debate," says Senator Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican. Graham, after all, knows when to draw the line. Earlier this year he was the only Republican willing to work with the Administration to close Guantanamo. But when...