THE budget deal that Republicans and Democrats cobbled together in December left several pieces of business unfinished. Among them was the fate of extended unemployment-insurance (UI) benefits. First passed in 2008 and extended several times since, these provide workers with up to 47 weeks of federally funded benefits after they have drawn the maximum their states allow (usually 26 weeks). America’s government has enacted such measures in every recession since 1957. The most recent extension expired on December 28th, leaving roughly 1.3m Americans suddenly cut off and setting the stage for a huge political battle early in 2014.

Republicans principally object to the extension’s cost—around $25 billion over the next two years. Some point out that supplemental UI benefits have been in place longer and paid out more than in past recessions. Of course, one reason for this is that a far larger share of Americans remain out of work now than when the recession began. In November 2013 America’s unemployment rate was 7.0%, still a full two points higher than its 5% level when the recession began in December 2007. There remain roughly three applicants for every open job. Even so, Rand Paul, a Republican senator from Kentucky and probable presidential candidate, says that extending UI benefits causes workers “to become part of this perpetual unemployed group in our economy” and “actually does a disservice to the people you’re trying to help.”

Not extending benefits will probably cause the unemployment rate to drop. North Carolina stopped offering them in July; since then its unemployment rate has fallen by 1.5%, compared with a national average of 0.4%. But its labour force also shrank more than twice as much as the national average, suggesting that the fall in the jobless rate came not from people getting hired but because they left the labour force entirely.

Besides, unemployment benefits do not only help the jobless; they also boost aggregate demand. Unlike some other economic stimuli, these benefits tend to get spent quickly on consumer goods. The Congressional Budget Office found that extending UI benefits to the end of 2014 would boost GDP by 0.2% and increase full-time employment by 200,000. So cutting benefits, many say, would cost jobs.

Behind this debate lurks the darker shadow of America’s long-term unemployed. In November 2013 they comprised 37.3% of the total unemployed. Their number is much higher than it was when extended UI programmes ended in the previous three recessions (see chart). According to the Council of Economic Advisers, since 2008 23.9m Americans were out of work for long enough to receive extended UI benefits; without an extension, next year 4.9m Americans will not receive benefits they otherwise would have done. Some blame high long-term unemployment on globalisation for shifting low-skill jobs overseas, or technology for replacing them. Michael Strain, an economist with the American Enterprise Institute, notes that during this recession firms have used temporary lay-offs—in which workers are laid off for a set period of time and then recalled—far less than in previous recessions. But the biggest obstacle faced by the long-term unemployed may well be unemployment itself—a pattern known as “scarring”, where persistent unemployment itself stops them being rehired. A paper from the Boston Fed in 2012 found that, for people who had been unemployed for less than six months, as the number of available jobs rose, the jobless rate declined. For those out of work longer than six months, however, vacancies and the unemployment rate both rose. When one of the paper’s authors sent out 4,800 fictitious job applications, they found that inexperienced but newly jobless workers were far likelier to be called back than the experienced but long-unemployed.