Extend Unemployment Benefits: Call Congress Today

If Congress doesn't extend unemployment benefits and the payroll tax cut, current benefits will expire February 29.

Nearly 13 million people are unemployed in our country, and there is only one available job for every four people looking. Congress must extend unemployment insurance, which kept 4.6 million Americans out of poverty in 2010.

But some in Congress have proposed to cut the program. Others want to add harmful barriers that would make it harder for ordinary Americans who lose their jobs to access their unemployment insurance. Some have even proposed paying for extending unemployment benefits by cutting other low-income programs, such as the Child Tax Credit.

Your call this week is critical. Please tell your member of Congress to extend unemployment benefits without cuts and without barriers to benefits.

Use our toll-free number—1-800-326-4941—to call your member of Congress today. If you can't call today, please call no later than Friday, February 10.

This week is critical. Unemployment benefits expire Feb. 29 if they're not extended. Now is the time for people of faith and conscience to take action for poor and hungry people. Call today.

David Beckmann is president of Bread for the World.

+Learn more about poverty in the United States and how you can take action.