Life Without Jobless Benefits: Watching, Searching And Praying --- There's a small frame hanging on the wall near the computer Josie Maisano uses to search for work. Inside there's a picture of her at this year's State of the Union address and a blue ribbon that Democrats wore that night to highlight the plight of people like Maisano, whose unemployment benefits stopped at the end of December. -- "Oh, my God. It was just a once-in-a-lifetime experience," says Maisano. "Listening to President Obama, it was just very, very heartwarming." -- That night, as Maisano looked down from the gallery, Obama called for Congress to renew the federal benefits program for the long-term uninsured. --- "This Congress needs to restore the unemployment insurance you just let expire for 1.6 million people," Obama said to loud cheers. -- But two months later, even more people have lost benefits. The Senate is expected to vote early next week on a bipartisan bill that would restore the program, but its fate in the Republican-controlled House is far from certain. And that leaves more than 2 million people in limbo. -- "I thought that something would have happened a lot sooner," says Maisano. --- Every day Maisano, 60, goes to her computer and applies for jobs. She lives in St. Clair Shores, Mich., and worked as a secretary in the auto industry from the time she graduated high school until 2008. -- Since then, she's been on and off unemployment and even went through a federal retraining program, only to discover she didn't have enough experience to land a job in the field she studied. Maisano says since her $179 weekly unemployment checks stopped coming, she and her husband have fallen behind on their mortgage. She's signed up for food stamps. -- "I've almost rubbed my crucifix, rubbed the gold right off of it," says Maisano, touching a gold pendant she wears around her neck. "All I do is pray that something good will come along, and it's just not happening." - More, NPR, at: http://www.npr.org/2014/04/04/299182870/without-unemployment-benefits-jobless-watch-search-and-pray