COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — When federal emergency unemployment benefits expired last

month, the effects ran deep in a Colorado county marked by two exit

ramps off Interstate 25 — one leading to the conservative religious

group Focus on the Family, the other to the Fort Carson Army post.

Hardly a liberal bastion, El Paso County has the largest number of people in

the state who lost unemployment benefits, and many aren’t happy about

it. Plenty of Republicans, too, depend on jobless

aid that Republicans in Congress are hesitant to prolong. The

ideological argument for standing against an extension of benefits —

that the aid can ultimately make it harder to find work — meets a more

complex reality where people live.

Democrats propose to extend the

emergency benefits for people who have been or are about to be out of

work for more than six months; Republicans are less inclined to take

that step, particularly if it means the government borrows more money.

The paralysis led to the expiration of benefits for 1.3 million

long-term unemployed on Dec. 28. Lawmakers are still working on a

compromise.

The standoff infuriates people such as Lita Ness, who

lost her job as a civilian contractor at Peterson Air Force Base in

August 2012 and just received her final check from the unemployment

office.

“I’m registered as a Republican, but if they continue to

use this not extending our (aid) I’m probably changing to Democrat,”

Ness, 58, said as she took a break from a computer training class at the

Pikes Peak Workforce Center. “People in our district who vote ‘No’ on

this, I’m not going to support them.”

El Paso County is

represented by Republican Rep. Doug Lamborn, a conservative who has

objected to the extension of unemployment benefits unless they are fully

paid for with money from elsewhere in the budget. “It’s $6 billion,

doesn’t do anything to create jobs,” Lamborn’s spokesman, Jarred Rego,

said of the Democrats’ proposal. “House Republicans remain focused on

creating jobs and improving the economy.”

The overwhelmingly

Republican district is considered a safe one for Lamborn. The lone

Democrat who has announced a challenge, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Irv

Halter, accused Lamborn of indifference to his constituents. “This is

just another example of Congressman Lamborn being out of touch,” Halter

said in a statement.

There are no data showing the political affiliation of people who lost their emergency jobless

benefits or tracking them by congressional district. Democratic staff

on the House Ways and Means Committee crunched their own data from 20

states to demonstrate that jobless benefits

have a bipartisan reach. They claim conservative stalwarts such as John

Fleming in Louisiana and Michele Bachmann in Minnesota represent

districts with disproportionately high percentages of people who drew

the emergency benefits.

Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the

liberal Economic Policy Institute in Washington, said those who lost

benefits are “just a cross-section of the unemployed. They’re not going

to be predominantly Democratic or predominantly Republican. They’re just

going to be workers who had the bad luck to lose a job in the worst

recession we’ve had in 70 years.”

Economists generally say the

longer-term unemployed tend to be older — a slice of the population that

has become more supportive of Republicans in recent elections. Older

workers may be more reluctant than younger ones to change fields of

employment and surrender the advantages of years of experience.

Lengthy

unemployment aid can exacerbate this problem by making it easier for

those on aid to hold out for jobs that are similar to the ones they

lost, said James Sherk, an economist at the conservative Heritage

Foundation. “As the benefits draw down, they expand their search to jobs

they wouldn’t consider before,” Sherk said. “But it’s going to be a lot

harder for them to find a job with one year out of work than with three

months out of work.”

“There’s just a lot of places where workers are going to have to make wrenching decisions,” Sherk said.

El

Paso County spreads out beneath Pikes Peak to the arid high plains that

stretch toward Kansas. It is dominated by conservative Colorado Springs

and its surrounding military facilities, which include the Air Force

Academy, NORAD and Fort Carson. The area’s aerospace and defense

industry was hit hard by last year’s automatic cuts in federal spending,

which economists blame for aggravating a persistent joblessness problem.

At the workforce center, desperation for help co-exists with the area’s self-reliant conservative ethos.

One

Army veteran who has been unemployed since his discharge last year

rushed into the center after hearing his benefits may expire shortly.

“If it gets cut off, it’s nothing I’m ready for,” said the man, who

refused to give his name, fearing people would learn he’s getting jobless aid. “I understand, you can’t keep people on it forever. It’s important to get people working.”

Others

feel that after having contributed to society, they are now being

abandoned by the government. “I paid my taxes. I’ve helped people my

whole life,” said Barbara Greene, 59, who lost her job as a medical

secretary in a hospital last year and expects her jobless benefits to end in March, “and now they’re just throwing me to the side.”

Ness

started working as a maid at age 16. She spent her last 17 years in the

labor force working in logistics and acquisitions at the Air Force

base. For the past 17 months she’s been unable to find a job that comes

close to what she had. The only positions she’s been offered interviews

for are in call centers and pay about $9 an hour — less than she made

three decades ago. She’s been stunned at how “incredibly competitive”

the job market is now.

“I find it very offensive when they say

people on unemployment are just milking it,” Ness said. “I’m not a big

fan of rejection and I get rejected every day.”

___

Associated Press writer Brian Bakst contributed from St. Paul, Minn.

___

Follow Nicholas Riccardi on twitter at https://twitter.com/NickRiccardi

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights

reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or

redistributed.

AP Image: In this Jan. 10, 2014, photo, Lita Ness, 58, talks about her unemployment status at her home in Colorado Springs, Colo.