As the President and congressional leadership continue to negotiate a bipartisan deal to reduce our debt, Mark Udall, along with Senators Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Jon Tester (D-MT), wrote a letter asking them to include in the final deal an end to unemployment insurance payments to those making over a million dollars, thereby saving taxpayers over $100 million over the next five years."Unemployment benefits are intended as a social safety net for people who lose their jobs, not to provide extra cushion for the financially well off," the senators wrote to the President. "As Congress works with you to make the difficult yet necessary decisions that will define our nation’s fiscal priorities, we believe leaders would be remiss to not include this bipartisan and commonsense reform."
Earlier this year, the senators had introduced an amendment to end federal unemployment payments to jobless millionaires and billionaires. The Senate unanimously approved it in April, but the underlying bill it was attached to was not adopted.
