The Senate on Tuesday passed a bill that would extend emergency unemployment benefits. It’s an effort to renew a program that was in place until the end of last year—providing much-needed relief to more than a million Americans.

But for that to happen, the House must also approve the bill. And that seems unlikely.

A group of conservative thinkers and writers have been telling Republicans that extending unemployment benefits would actually hurt the economy by discouraging the unemployed from finding work. Now some of these wonks say the most-up-to-date data, from the three months since the old extension expired, proves them right.

A case in point is a new article by Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and former chief economist at the Labor Department. “The House of Representatives has the opportunity to stall the economic recovery by following the Senate and passing an extension of unemployment insurance benefits,” she wrote. “Or, the House could help the economy by just letting the bill die.”

To make her point, Furchtgott-Roth points to the labor-force participation rate—that is, the percentage of Americans who are working or actively trying to find work. The rate actually ticked up in March and January—a rare increase in the aftermath of the Great Recession. Furchtgott-Roth attributes it, at least partially, to the expiration of unemployment benefits.