Jobless Benefits, Home Credit Extended

WASHINGTON (TheStreet) -- President Barack Obama is set to sign a $24 billion economic stimulus bill Friday, providing tax incentives to prospective homebuyers and extending unemployment benefits to the longtime jobless.

The Friday signing will come a day after the House voted 403-12 for the measure. The Senate approved it unanimously on Wednesday. The votes came after weeks of what some would call negotiation, and others would call amendment dithering, in Congress.

The bill, which also includes tax cuts for struggling businesses, provides another 14 weeks of benefits to unemployed people who have exhausted their benefits or will do so by the end of the year, estimated at nearly 2 million. Those in states where the jobless rate is 8.5% or above get an additional six weeks.

The extra 20 weeks could push the maximum a person in a high unemployment state could receive to 99 weeks, the most in history.

Prolonging the life of the homebuyer credit has been a priority of the real estate industry, which says it has been instrumental in beginning to turn around a market that was a major cause of the economic downturn. About 1.4 million first-time homebuyers have qualified for the credit through August, and the National Association of Realtors estimates that 350,000 of them would not have purchased their homes without the credit.

The more than $21 billion cost of the tax credits would be funded largely by delaying a tax break for multinational companies that pay foreign taxes.