From Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/17/house-democrats-unemployment_n_4612641.html?ncid=txtlnkushpmg00000037
WASHINGTON — Despite demanding House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) keep the House of Representatives in session to deal with expired unemployment insurance, Democratic lawmakers aren’t going to hang around now that the House has adjourned.
House lawmakers will leave town for 10 days without having considered legislation to restore compensation to the 1.3 million people whose benefits expired in December. Boehner, for his part, is off to a fundraiser in unemployment-ridden Las Vegas for Rep. Joe Heck (R-Nev.).
Democrats said they wanted to stay to work out a deal with Republicans. But HuffPost contacted dozens of them, and of those who responded, none said they would stay in D.C. now that there won’t be any official House action. Most said they could accomplish more at home than in Washington.
“I have plenty of work I need to be doing in my district,” Rep. Danny Davis (D-Ill.) told HuffPost in an interview. “But I will make every effort to galvanize, activate, organize people to keep the pressure on Speaker Boehner and the Republican leadership to have something ready when we return from this work period.”
Davis is one of more than 100 House Democrats who signed a letter by Rep. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) asking Boehner to keep the House in session. HuffPost reached out to members who signed the letter to ask if they would stay to draw attention to the issue regardless of whether the House adjourned.
Rep. Sandy Levin (D-Mich.), the highest-ranking Democrat on the House committee that oversees unemployment insurance, has been making noise about the expiration of federal benefits since early November.
“Republicans should absolutely have stayed in Washington and allowed a vote to extend unemployment insurance — that’s why Rep. Levin signed that letter,” Levin spokesman Josh Drobnyk said in an email. “And now that Republicans have left, Rep. Levin will be highlighting at home how the Republican opposition to renewing the program has harmed millions of Americans laid off through no fault of their own.”
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