Support Extension of Payroll Tax Cut and Unemployment Insurance

Recipient: Conferees

Dear Conferee
on H.R. 3630, the Temporary Payroll Tax Cut Continuation Act of 2011:

On
behalf of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, we urge you to
support a clean extension, through the end of 2012, of the federal emergency
unemployment insurance (UI) program and the payroll tax
cut. These provisions will alleviate hardship for the most vulnerable while
fostering economic growth for all. Congress must pass a proposal that ensures
relief for 79 weeks, or 99 weeks in hardest-hit states. It must also reject any
effort to impose burdensome new restrictions on who may obtain relief, or cuts
off other relief for those who most need it.

We
urge you to immediately extend the federal emergency unemployment insurance
program through December 31, 2012. The current extension of this program
expires at the end of this month, putting millions of vulnerable workers and
families at risk. Extending UI will help the economy recover while providing
badly needed assistance in today’s historic economic crisis. As documented by
the Congressional Budget Office, the extension of UI also provides the most
significant boost to the economy and job growth of any policy option being
debated by Congress. Similarly, the Economic Policy Institute has found that an
extension through 2012 would create or save more than 500,000 jobs.[i ] In
addition to providing an urgent safety net, the extension of UI has this
positive effect because the money is usually quickly spent, particularly by the
long-term unemployed.

It would be unprecedented for Congress to allow the
program to expire at current unemployment levels. Congress has provided
emergency UI relief in every major recession since the 1950s, and has never allowed
the program to expire when the unemployment rate was higher than 7.2 percent.

In addition to extending UI, we urge you to extend the
payroll tax cut enacted in the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance
Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010. If this tax cut is allowed to
expire, the economic forecasting firm Macroeconomic Advisors predicts that it
will decrease the GDP by 0.5 percent and result in the loss of 400,000 jobs by
the end of 2012.[ii ] Countless
numbers of working families will be pushed deeper into poverty, and the
purchasing power they bring to the economy will be further weakened,
undermining a nascent economic recovery. Our recovery could also be
strengthened if you refuse to cut off small entrepreneurs’ access to unlicensed
spectrum in the pursuit of shorter-term deficit needs, and instead allow them
to utilize this public resource to create innovative services and high-tech
jobs.

As Congress moves forward with these extensions, it must
reject any effort to put additional strings on relief that do not address the
real causes of the current unemployment crisis, such as the expansion of drug
testing or GED requirements. Congress must also reject any effort to offset the
cost of the extensions by simply cutting away other safety nets for low-income
Americans. In particular, the House-passed restriction on eligibility for the
Child Tax Credit would amount to a tax increase on many of the lowest-income families,
would penalize millions of children, and would be counterproductive to our
national economic recovery. It is especially unconscionable because there are
far less harmful alternatives to offset the payroll tax cut – even the most
modest increase in taxes on millionaires would result in higher offsets,
without jeopardizing the ability of low-income parents to feed, clothe, and
shelter their children.  

For these reasons, we urge you to support a clean
extension of unemployment insurance and the payroll tax cut. These vital forms
of relief will help the most vulnerable Americans while also helping to sustain
our country’s recovery.

Sincerely,

Wade Henderson
President & CEO

Nancy Zirkin
Executive Vice President