Congress races to prevent government shutdown – National & International News – THU 30Sept2021

Congress races to prevent government shutdown. Jobless claims rise despite end of benefits. Ex-Nazi, 96, attempts to flee trial. Ecuador: 116 inmates dead in gang war.

NATIONAL NEWS

Congress races to prevent government shutdown

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced a deal for a clean bill to fund the government through Dec. 3 and avoid a potential government shutdown. There are still a few details to be ironed out, but Senators seemed confident that a vote would happen before the deadline at midnight tonight.

Absent from this bill is a provision to raise the federal debt ceiling, which Republicans filibustered earlier this week. Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has said that no Republicans will vote to raise the debt ceiling. This means that Democrats will have to find a way to raise the debt ceiling alone through a filibuster-proof reconciliation process. This will be a complicated procedure, and every day of delay increases the risk of a $28 trillion federal default and a severe downgrade of U.S. borrowing power.

Also likely on hold is a vote in the House of Representatives on the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill. The bill passed with significant bipartisan support in the Senate last month. In the House, the bill has little Republican support and Progressive Democrats say they will not vote for the bipartisan bill until a vote on another $3.5 trillion social safety net bill has passed.

Jobless claims continue to rise despite end of federal unemployment bonus

The number of new unemployment claims has risen week-on-week for the three weeks since the $300/week federal unemployment bonus expired earlier this month. Many commentators had blamed the unemployment bonus for contributing to the nationwide labor shortage in many sectors and expected that employment would rise significantly following its expiry. However, experts had predicted that this would not be the case, based in part on data from 25 states who had ended the benefits earlier. Data from those states revealed only a negligible rise in employment compared to states who kept the benefits in place.

At the beginning of this month, the number of people receiving unemployment benefits plummeted from 11.2 million to about 5 million. That’s because roughly 6.2 million were no longer eligible. These include contract workers in the “gig” economy and those who had been jobless for more than 6 months. Congress had temporarily expanded eligibility for benefits to include those individuals, and that provision ended at the beginning of September.

It’s unclear at present how many of those no longer eligible for the benefits have returned to the workforce. The Department of Labor will publish full employment statistics for September on Oct. 8, but the rising number of jobless claims does not bode well. 

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INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Ex-Nazi concentration camp secretary, 96, attempts to flee before trial

Irmgard Furchner, 96, was set to appear in court in Germany yesterday to face charges of aiding and abetting the murders of thousands of prisoners at the Stuthoff concentration camp. Furchner was 18 when she began working in the camp as a secretary was due to appear in juvenile court. When she did not appear at the hearing, authorities soon learned that Furchner had left her care home in a taxi hours before. She had made her way to a metro station in an attempt to flee.

Authorities soon found Furchner and took her back into custody. A doctor will determine Furchner’s health will allow her to be detained until a re-scheduled hearing on Oct. 19.

Furchner is the first woman to face charges in decades for crimes related to the Nazi Holocaust.

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Ecuador: 116 inmates dead in prison gang war

On Tuesday, prisoners in one wing of a prison in Guayaquil broke into a separate wing. Mayhem ensued between rival gang members, resulting in at least six prisoners being decapitated. Many others fell victim to gunfire and grenades discharged in the chaos. 

Prison officials did not regain control of the prison until Wednesday. After a wing-by-wing check, officials found a total of 116 dead inmates. Amazingly, only two prison officials were injured. On Thursday, 400 police officers arrived to restore order at the prison amid reports of renewed gunfire.

The low number of prison officials injured suggests that this was merely a gang war rather than an attempt at a prison uprising. Inmates in the prison have ties to two major rival Ecuadorean gangs, who in turn have ties to Mexico’s rival Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels.

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