Most economists believe that the actual unemployment rate is 19% and the economy needs to create at least 22 million jobs to even get close to full employment.

Many of those unemployed are long term and many have reached the end of their jobless benefits term.  However, their plight is being dismissed even by some smug Senate Democrats who belong to the millionaires 100 club in addition to receiving six figure salaries, top flight health care coverage, great retirement plan and other benefits courtesy of the taxpayers....the people they are dissing.

Anne Lowery explains at The Washington Independent that those people who have exhausted jobless benefits seeks recourse.

"The joblessness crisis — in the average duration of unemployment, if not the absolute unemployment rate — is unprecedented in the postwar United States. Of the 15 million unemployed in America, over 7 million have been out of work for more than six months, nearly 5 million for a year and over 1 million for two years — the worst statistics since the government started keeping count in 1948. The proportion of the unemployed out of work for more than six months has doubled in the past year, to more than 46 percent. The jobseekers-to-jobs ratio, which tells how hard positions are to get, remains around 5.6 to 1.

"For 23 years, 58-year-old Cindy Paoletti of Salina, N.Y., worked in the corporate accounting division of J.P. Morgan Chase, balancing payroll accounts in an upstate office of the Wall Street bank. In December 2007, Paoletti was let go in a wave of layoffs that eventually shuttered the entire Syracuse operations center. “My job went to India,” she sighs.

"Soon after, she started collecting unemployment benefits and severance while searching for a job in earnest. “I apply for everything out there,” she says, estimating she has applied to hundreds of positions over the past 30 months. “But 95 percent of the time, the company you send your resume to does not even acknowledge that they’ve received it. The majority of the time, if you do get an interview, they tell you that you are overqualified. It seems like as soon as they find out your age, everything goes down after there. The age discrimination is horrendous. And everybody in that baby boomer age group is experiencing the same thing.”

"For 99 weeks, Paoletti accepted New York state and federal unemployment benefits. This spring, they ran out. Now, she is drawing down her IRA to stay afloat, underwater on her mortgage and without health insurance.

"She’s not alone. Indeed, Paoletti is one of a million 99ers, as the long-term unemployed who have exceeded the maximum number of weeks of benefits are known.

"....99ers like Paoletti do not just struggle with the immediate effects of joblessness — including, in many cases, the slide from the middle class into poverty. They also struggle with the lingering deleterious effects.

"The senators from Paoletti’s home state — Democrats Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand — have both indicated they might be willing to extend unemployment benefits to 100-plus weeks.....o create a fifth tier of benefits.

"But the Senate as a whole is less than willing. Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, has indicated that he will not vote for a fifth tier, as have others. “You can’t go on forever. I think 99 weeks is sufficient,” Baucus tolddismissed the idea. “There’s just been no discussion to go beyond [99 weeks],” he said. And the Senate leadership, without explicitly shooting down a fifth tier, has nodded in agreement. Bloomberg News. Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) likewise

"Paoletti argues that Washington recognizes the enormity and seriousness of the problem but is turning its back on some of the nation’s neediest. The recalcitrance has led her to go activist...."

"She hopes that a hearing on Thursday might prove the turning point for the 99ers. Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), the head of the subpanel on income security and family support for the House Ways and Means Committee, is holding the first hearing on policy responses for long-term unemployment. “Our first step to respond to long-term unemployment is obvious — continue the emergency federal unemployment programs to prevent millions of workers from losing their benefits,” McDermott said in a statement. “If we can afford wars, tax cuts and bank bailouts, then we can certainly afford to maintain programs for workers who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own. An increasing number of Americans who have worked hard and played by the rules are now finding themselves with no job, no savings and no support. We must not abandon these workers and their families.”

“ 'Out of all the people [I know] that got laid off the same time as me, I think only three have found jobs,' Paoletti says. 'The rest are still all have exhausted unemployment or they’re getting close to the end of it. Someone’s got to do something.' ”