What now?
That's what 15,300 Idahoans have been asking themselves since early June when extended federal unemployment benefits expired. They are part of an estimated 1.3 million laid-off workers nationwide who have not seen benefits restored.
All spring long, Congress wrung its hands about the size of the federal deficit, played political posturing games and did nothing while the nation's primary safety net for the unemployed threatened to unravel.
Now it has.
Late yesterday, the U.S. House voted to extend benefits, a vote that is meaningless because the measure is stalled in the Senate, which had already adjourned for the holiday.
This failure to act means that unemployment checks will vanish for the 229 Blaine County residents currently collecting extended unemployment benefits.
It means that others who exhaust the 10 to 26 weeks of state benefits will not be eligible for extended benefits. Eventually, this will affect the total 930 local workers who are receiving unemployment if they do not find a job within that time.
So, while Idaho's congressional delegation, which to a man has opposed the extension, will be celebrating Independence Day with picnics and parades, their unemployed constituents may be facing a slide into poverty or homelessness.
It isn't only the unemployed who will suffer as a result.
The Idaho Department of Labor estimates that every dollar paid in unemployment benefits has an economic impact of $1.63. Jobless benefits are not saved; they are spent on food, groceries, gas, rent or mortgage payments.
In Blaine County alone, expiration of extended benefits means that $358,339 a month that would have circulated through the local economy just disappeared. That's roughly $4.3 million a year.
The loss of that money in an already struggling economy will affect everyone from grocery clerks to landlords.
Extensions of unemployment benefits since the Crash of 2008 have been part of the federal economic stimulus program, which has become fashionable to hate because of federal borrowing that has pushed the budget deficit to record highs.
The deficit is making elected officials queasy and political strategists gleeful, but they should not reduce the unemployed to political pawns. Behind each check are striving individuals and families who are jobless through no fault of their own.
They deserve more than steely-eyed "no" votes and speeches about pulling themselves up by their bootstraps.
