The U.S. House of Representatives on Friday voted to extend payroll tax cuts and unemployment benefits. The vote was 293-132. Minutes later, the Senate approved the $143 billion measure by a 60-36 vote. President Obama said he would sign a bill as soon as Congress passes it.
The measure will allow workers to continue to receive a two-percentage point increase in their paychecks. It also benefits people out of work for more than six months, who will keep jobless benefits averaging about $300 a week.
This legislation also extends current payment rates to doctors through the Medicare health care program. It will add $100 billion to the U.S. deficit.
Ninety-one Republicans and 41 Democrats in the House chamber voted no. Senate Democrats voted unanimously for the bill, while Senate Republicans mostly opposed it.
“We don’t control Washington. Democrats still control Washington - they control the Senate and they control the White House,” said Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., the top House negotiator on the measure. “A divided government must still govern.”
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Police at the U.S. Capitol working with the FBI arrested a man last Friday who they say was planning a suicide attack on the Capitol. Undercover agents gave the man a vest he believed contained explosives. As soon as he accepted the vest he was arrested. Police authorities had been closely monitoring the man’s actions as part of an extensive operation.
The public was never in danger, police said, and an official said the person is not connected to a terrorist organization and was acting alone.
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In a New York Times article, Binyamin Appelbaum and Robert Gebeloff reported that the share of Americans’ income that comes from government benefit programs, like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, more than doubled over the last four decades, rising from 8 percent in 1969 to 18 percent in 2009.
In their article, “Even Critics of Safety Net Increasingly Depend on It,” Appelbaum and Gebeloff say, “The government safety net was created to keep Americans from abject poverty, but the poorest households no longer receive a majority of government benefits. A secondary mission has gradually become primary: maintaining the middle class from childhood through retirement. The share of benefits flowing to the least affluent households, the bottom fifth, has declined from 54 percent in 1979 to 36 percent in 2007, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis published last year.”
In 2009, government benefits accounted for 17.6 percent of personal income. Here is the breakdown:
Social Security – 5.6 percent. Pensions for older workers and survivors, worker’s comp.
Medicare – 4.1 percent. Health care reimbursements, mostly elderly.
Medicaid – 3.1 percent. Health care for low-income adults and children.
Income support – 1.9 percent. Food stamps, disability and earned-income tax credit.
Unemployment – 1.1 percent.
Veterans benefits – 0.4 percent.
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In Scottsdale, Ariz., police investigators were looking into a fatal shooting by a police officer. The officer, James Peters, had responded to a call from people reporting there was a man holding a handgun and threatening to kill a baby.
Peters arrived, confronted the man, John Loxus, 50, and shot and killed him while Loxus held the baby, who was unharmed.
Peters has been involved in six other shootings since 2002, of which five were fatal. Peters received a Medal of Valor in one shooting for rescuing a store employee who was being held hostage.
All of Peter’s previous shootings were ruled justifiable by the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office. They are currently looking into the shooting of Loxus.
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The Labor Department reported that the number of applications for unemployment benefits was 348,000, which is the lowest number in four years.