Senate Democrats Restore Jobless Benefits

Last updated at 3:46 p.m. ET

Legislation to restore unemployment benefits to millions who have been out of work for more than six months broke free of Senate Republican delaying tactics on Tuesday.

Senators voted 60-40, clearing the way for passage of the bill later on Tuesday. The measure would restore jobless checks for 2.5 million people whose benefits started running out seven weeks ago in a stubbornly jobless economic recovery.

The vote was a modest victory for President Barack Obama and Democrats, whose more ambitious hopes for a jobs agenda have mostly fizzled in the face of GOP opposition in the Senate. A battle has raged for months over whether jobless benefits should be financed with additional federal debt as Democrats want or through cuts to other government programs as most Republicans insist.

The vote came moments after Carte Goodiwn was sworn in as a successor to West Virginia Democrat Robert Byrd, who died last month at the age of 92. Goodwin was the crucial 60th senator to defeat a Republican filibuster that has led to a lapse in benefits for 2.5 million people.

The Senate gallery was packed with Goodwin supporters, who broke into applause as he cast his "aye" vote.

Two Republicans, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, voted to end the filibuster. Ben Nelson of Nebraska was the lone Democrat to break with his party and vote to sustain it.

Mr. Obama and his Democratic allies have been pressing the issue for maximum political advantage, blaming Republicans for the impasse that halted unemployment checks for people unable to find work as the jobless rate remains close to 10 percent.

Mr. Obama launched a fresh salvo Monday, demanding the Senate act on the legislation - after a vote already had been scheduled - and blasting Republicans for the holdup.

Republicans say they do favor the benefits but are insisting they be paid for with spending cuts elsewhere in the government's $3.7 trillion budget. After initially feeling heat this winter when a lone GOP senator, Jim Bunning of Kentucky, briefly blocked a benefits extension in February, the GOP has grown increasingly comfortable opposing the legislation.

But the president has fired back by saying that Republicans have a double standard, CBS News White House correspondent Chip Reid reports.

"The same people who didn't have any problem spending hundreds of billions of dollars on tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans are now saying we shouldn't offer relief to middle class Americans," the president said.

After a final Senate vote, the House is expected to approve it and send it to President Barack Obama on Wednesday.

"This bill is about jobs because unemployment insurance goes to people who will spend it immediately," said Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont. "That would increase economic demand. And that would help support our fragile economic recovery."

But Republicans say that while they support the benefits extension it should be paid for with cuts elsewhere in the $3.7 trillion federal budget.

"We've repeatedly voted for similar bills in the past. And we are ready to support one now," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. "What we do not support - and we make no apologies for - is borrowing tens of billions of dollars to pass this bill at a time when the national debt is spinning completely out of control."

Millions of people have been unemployed longer than six months - and longer than both economists and job-seekers expected because an economic recovery has been slow in coming, reports CBS News business and economics correspondent Rebecca Jarvis.

"When they lose those $309 checks on a weekly basis, it not only has an impact on them individually, but it also has an impact on the economy overall," Jarvis said. "That's because when people get unemployment check, research has shown it usually goes directly back into the economy. So if you're unemployed, you get a check, you spend that check immediately as opposed to putting it in the bank and letting it sit there."