AP reports
The Senate by a single vote rejected an election-year effort yesterday to extend federal unemployment benefits.Democrats tried to attach the measure to a corporate tax bill. On a 59-40 vote in the GOP-controlled Senate, they fell just shy of the 60 votes needed to overcome objections that extending the benefits violated last year's budget agreement.
Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, was the only senator who missed the vote. Kerry was campaigning in Kentucky.
The amendment would have offered emergency federal unemployment benefits for six months, temporarily giving 13 weeks of extra assistance to people who exhaust their state benefits -- typically 26 weeks.
Perhaps he didn't want to extend unemployment?
Oh wait...
A Kerry spokesman said: "John Kerry has fought again and again to extend unemployment benefits for workers left behind in the Bush economy. The reason we haven't succeeded is because George Bush opposes extending unemployment insurance and so do his allies in the Republican House of Representatives and 39 Republican senators."
Guess Bush isn't the only one.
