By John Lyon
Arkansas News Bureau

LITTLE ROCK — Federal unemployment benefits for Arkansans out of work for more than a year run out Monday because Congress failed to pass legislation to extend the benefits before the Senate went into Easter recess.

Federal health insurance subsidies for the unemployed and some tax breaks also have not been extended. The federal government’s contributions to COBRA, the program that allows laid-off workers to remain on their former employers’ insurance plans for a limited time, expired Wednesday.

“We can’t control what Congress does, and we can’t replace those benefits ourselves,” said Matt DeCample, a spokesman for Gov. Mike Beebe’s office.

“But we are telling people that are calling with concerns to keep those claims open. Congress comes back a week after these expire, so there is a possibility that additional action could be taken when they return on the 12th,” DeCample said.

Justin Nickels, a spokesman for the Arkansas AFL-CIO, said many of the state’s unemployed will suffer without the extension.

“It will be devastating to those that can’t receive their benefits. It will be devastating on a personal level to a few thousand people” in the state, Nickels said.

State Department of Workforce Services employees did not respond today to phone messages and e-mails asking how many Arkansans would be affected.

Nickels said he would urge people to call their representatives in Washington and ask them to extend the benefits as soon as possible.

Both the House and Senate have passed bills to extend the benefits, but the Senate recessed on March 25 without acting on the House version of the bill. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., objected to bringing up the bill, saying it would increase the deficit.

“There’s people who won’t be able to provide health benefits for their family in case they get sick,” Nickels said. “It’s going to have probably a pretty devastating effects on the local economy when those people who don’t have unemployment benefits … have to choose certain things over other things to make sure they have enough money to feed their children.”

Sens. Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor, both D-Ark., have said they intend to work to extend the benefits, retroactively, when they return from the recess.

Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, who is challenging Lincoln’s re-election bid in a Democratic primary, has criticized Lincoln for going on “vacation” and allowing the benefits to expire.

Lincoln said last week that it was Republican opposition that kept the benefits from being extended. If the Senate had not gone into recess, President Obama could not have made recess appointments, and “a lot of people … are very interested in the presidential recess appointments,” she said.