| Virginia House Rejects $125M in Stimulus Cash |
| Thursday, April 09, 2009 |
AP
Virginia's Republican-run House of Delegates rejected a proposed expansion of unemployment benefits Wednesday, along with $125 million in federal stimulus cash to pay for it.
On a mostly party-line 46-53 vote, the House turned down amendments by Democratic Gov. Timothy M. Kaine that were necessary to make Virginia eligible for the federal aid.
The vote mirrored a debate raging in state capitols across the nation over whether to accept the federal stimulus cash to cushion soaring unemployment rates in the worst economy since the Great Depression.
Republican governors in several states, including Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina, Alaska and Texas, say they will reject at least part of the cash because of mandates by a Democratic Congress and President Barack Obama to broaden state unemployment insurance programs.
Wednesday's vote makes Virginia among the first states to definitively repudiate the unemployment insurance expansion.
The vote was also a stinging rebuke to Kaine, Obama's hand-picked chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and becomes a major issue in Virginia's elections this year for governor and all 100 House of Delegates seats.
The putative Republican nominee for governor, Robert F. McDonnell, on Wednesday came out in opposition to Kaine's enhanced benefits proposals.
Kaine's amendments would have expanded jobless benefits for the first time to part-time workers and doubled the period during which people who have lost their jobs can receive benefits if they are in retraining programs.
Virginia's unemployment rate of nearly 7 percent in February is almost double its 3.8 percent rate one year earlier, but 34 of the state's 136 localities had double-digit rates.
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