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Unemployment Insurance Extension Returns To Senate

Senate negotiators revamp bill, restart unemployment insurance debate. National Journal: "Sen. Dean Heller of Nevada—a Republican who has been working closely with Democratic Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island for more than a month to construct new legislation—said the announcement will likely come next week. The bill will restore unemployment-insurance benefits for five months and will not include retroactive checks for the unemployed who stopped receiving benefits in December ... The timing on when the bill will come to the Senate floor is dependent on the ongoing battle over appropriations. Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski of Maryland is supposed to have the floor for the next three weeks to pass the nation's spending bills through the chamber, but a fight over amendments could derail that, putting unemployment insurance on the floor as soon as next week."

Employers starting to hire long-term unemployed. Bloomberg: "Faced with a shrinking pool of available workers and incipient wage pressures, companies are starting to give the longer-term unemployed a second look. The number of Americans without a job for 27 weeks or more fell to 3.37 million in May from 4.35 million a year earlier, though some of that drop reflects people leaving the workforce ... President Barack Obama also has stepped up efforts to help the long-term unemployed, ordering federal agencies to end hiring practices that put those would-be workers at a disadvantage and establishing a $150 million grant program for organizations that help them find jobs."

Adelson, Murdoch Push Immigration Reform

Republican mega-donor writes Politico oped "Let’s Deal With Reality and Pass Immigration Reform": "As a Republican, it’s my view that efforts to complete immigration reform should be led by our party. Some on the outer fringes of the GOP may disagree, but the truth is we are humans first and partisans second. Frankly, the Democrats don’t have a monopoly on having hearts."

"Rupert Murdoch is immigration reform's biggest booster, and obstacle" writes The Week's Peter Weber: "...he reiterated his pro-business pitch for comprehensive immigration reform legislation in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal — a newspaper he owns that broadly shares his views on the subject ... [But] along with The Wall Street Journal, Murdoch's News Corp. owns Fox News ... Fox News viewers are the biggest opponents of immigration reform ... If Murdoch wants immigration reform to pass, he should sit down and have a talk with Fox News' editorial pacesetter, Roger Ailes."

Breakfast Sides

Kaiser survey shows most Obamacare enrollees previously uninsured. NYT: "...six in 10 were previously uninsured ... Most of the uninsured had been without coverage for two years or more ... it appears that many people receiving federal aid may be unaware of it. In the Kaiser survey, 46 percent of people with insurance purchased through the exchanges said they were getting help from the government to pay premiums. That is significantly less than the share reflected in official data ... The Obama administration reported this week that most people buying insurance on the federal exchange were paying less than $100 a month in premiums."

EPA defends climate regs to House subcommittee. The Hill: "The head of the EPA’s air and radiation division, Janet McCabe, received no warm welcomes from House Republicans on the Energy and Commerce subcommittee on power ... She said that the coal industry as a whole is already in a transition. 'The coal fleet is aging; half of the nation's plants are in their 40's,' McCabe told the subcommittee. 'There is a transition going on in the industry already.' McCabe went on to say that states will be able to focus on coal plants that have a long life ahead of them, but should consider not investing in their oldest plants."

"BofA Fails to Win Dismissal of U.S. Mortgage Fraud Suit" reports Bloomberg: "Bank of America Corp. failed to win dismissal of a U.S. Justice Department lawsuit in which it’s accused of misleading investors about the quality of loans tied to $850 million in residential mortgage-backed securities. U.S. District Judge Max O. Cogburn Jr. in Charlotte, North Carolina, gave the Justice Department 30 days to revise the suit after a magistrate judge earlier found the government’s complaint was deficient and recommended it be dismissed."

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