On the Senate floor earlier this week, Illinois' own Sen. Dick Durbin rebuked his Republican colleagues for effectively blocking an unemployment benefit extension by objecting twice to a parliamentary manuever that would speed up debate. "They have no sensitivity to these people," he said, "who lost their job or are struggling to keep their families together under the most difficult circumstances."

Just how many families are exhausting their benefits every day the Senate fails to take action? According to the National Employment Law Project, a whopping 7,000. From a brief they released on Thursday (click the button in the upper righthand corner to expand):

According to an analysis from the National Employment Law Project, 400,000 workers exhausted their federally-funded jobless benefits in September and another 200,000 will do so by the end of this month, resulting in an average of 7,000 workers a day seeing their benefits end. By year’s end, 1.3 million workers will exhaust their jobless benefits, reflecting today’s record rates of long-term unemployment.

Using NELP's previous (PDF) estimates on federal extension exhaustions by state, we calculate that each day approximately 348 Illinois families are losing their benefits -- weekly payments that protect the jobless from economic collapse. And while that number might not seem low, it adds up quickly; in the 23 days since the House passed its version of the bill, over 8,000 Illinois households have likely used up their allotted assistance.