Sometime today, with the swearing-in of Democrat Carte Goodwin to replace the late Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, Democrats expect to have the 60 votes they need to overcome the threat of a filibuster and pass a $34 billion extension of unemployment benefits.

The House previously passed the extension legislation, which would allow a maximum of 99 weeks of combined state and federal benefits to the unemployed. In Missouri, the maximum weekly unemployment check is $320; in Illinois, it's $511.

This shouldn't have been a hard decision. But Senate Republicans have succeeded in turning the issue into a referendum on the federal deficit. This took quite a bit of chutzpah; President Barack Obama noted Monday, "The same people who didn't have any problem spending hundreds of billions of dollars on tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans are now saying we shouldn't offer relief to middle-class Americans."

Lately, 'stimulus" has become a politically dangerous word, but the unemployment extension is, in fact, another round of federal stimulus spending to be financed with borrowing. The GOP has insisted that the $34 billion price tag be offset by cuts elsewhere in the budget.

Having presided over the run-up of huge deficits during the Bush years — tax cuts, new Medicare spending, homeland security spending, two separate wars and a $787 billion bailout of the financial industry — we are asked to believe that Republicans suddenly have repented of their big-spending ways.

Could $34 billion be sliced from elsewhere in the budget to pay for the unemployment extension? Yes, indeed. But deciding where to slice it would take agonizing months of debate.

Are multi-trillion-dollar budgets sustainable? No, indeed. But reducing them means tax reform and tax increases and addressing defense and entitlement spending in serious, grown-up ways.

The country could do all of that, and it should. But, in the meantime, the reality is that people are suffering. The unemployment rate has been more than 9 percent for 14 consecutive months. Some 14.6 million Americans are unemployed; 6.8 million have been out of work for 27 weeks or more. Among them are 1.2 million people whose unemployment insurance maxed out in June.

The economy may not formally be in recession, but you can't tell it by these people. There are now nearly five unemployed Americans for every job opening; before the recession began, there was one job opening for every 1.5 unemployed people.

Some on the right think they know why: Those unemployed people would rather sit around and collect unemployment checks than get a job.

Sharron Angle, the GOP nominee for Senate from Nevada, thinks the unemployed are 'spoiled." Rand Paul, her counterpart from Kentucky, thinks it's time for some "tough love" for the unemployed. Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett, his state's Republican candidate for governor, said, "The jobs are there, but if we keep extending unemployment, people are just going to sit there."

These are astonishingly ignorant statements, but they will find an audience among those whose own prejudices they reinforce. As Mr. Goodwin assumes Mr. Byrd's seat today, the better angels of the nation's nature must prevail and allow unemployment benefits to continue until November.

There's an election then. We will find out just how powerful a combination ignorance and chutzpah can be.