TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Any hope of increased jobless benefits for Floridians likely died Tuesday in the state House of Representatives.

Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, D-Orlando, said it now would take “extraordinary measures” to enact a bill that would increase unemployment compensation from a maximum $275 a week for 12 weeks.

Florida’s ranking as one of the worst states — many emphasize the absolute worst state — for jobless benefits became illuminated last year upon the onset of the coronavirus pandemic and the layoffs it produced, particularly in tourism-heavy Tampa Bay and Central Florida.

Yet the Republican-controlled House has advanced no bills that deal with unemployment compensation.

So with less than two weeks left in the legislative session, Smith said he and Democratic colleagues in the House saw HB 1463 — which focused on the state’s notoriously plagued online unemployment-benefits system — as perhaps the last chance to pass unemployment-benefits legislation.

Smith and Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando, attempted to add to that bill three amendments whose provisions fell short of what they called for in a bill that the House never considered.

Smith said their amendments would have made more Floridians eligible for jobless benefits, increased the maximum weekly benefit to $375 a week and increased the eligibility period to 22 weeks — still fewer than the 26 weeks that most states offer.

But voting along party lines, the House blocked all three amendments.

“These were very modest proposals that we put forward, and we are very disappointed that they were not adopted because this bill is the only legislative vehicle in the 2021 session” that could carry those amendments, Smith told Spectrum News on Tuesday.

He called the rejection by Republicans “so disappointing and frustrating” and the status of Florida’s unemployment system “so much more than a broken website.”

“It's about increasing the number of weeks that are eligible for benefits for unemployment, and it's also about increasing that weekly benefit,” Smith said.

The apparent doom to increased unemployment benefits this year comes despite bipartisan support in the Republican-controlled Senate for a bill that would increase the maximum weekly amount to $375 and the duration to 14 weeks. That bill breezed through two committees and stands poised to pass the full Senate.

Yet that means nothing without a companion bill in the House and support from Gov. Ron DeSantis, who last week said unemployment compensation was “fine” as it stood and that “our goal is to get people back to work.”

Sen. Linda Stewart, D-Orlando, suggested that DeSantis’ remarks could have made Republicans in the House of Representatives think twice about supporting any last-minute unemployment-benefits legislation.

“I just think when you make statements like that, it causes a ripple effect, and that effect is that the House just doesn’t want to touch it,” she said.

Before Tuesday’s House action, Stewart said she wasn’t giving up.

“We can’t give up,” she told Spectrum News. “The citizens deserve the strongest working product that we can provide. And we’re not going to give up.”

Stewart said the fate of increased employment benefits stood with a Republican — Seminole County Sen. Jason Brodeur, sponsor of the Senate bill that includes such provisions.

Stewart said Brodeur had told her that he “is definitely trying to make his case to the governor” to support his bill. After the Senate failed to consider her own bill, which called for $400 a week and 26 weeks of benefits, Stewart joined Brodeur’s bill as a co-sponsor and said she worked to increase the duration of benefits from 12 weeks to 14 weeks.

“He said he’s going to need to talk to the governor to see if he can get him to accept this paltry amount of money,” Stewart said, referring to the increase to $375 a week.

Brodeur’s office did not reply by Wednesday afternoon to two requests on Tuesday from Spectrum News for comment. Also, DeSantis’ office didn’t reply to a request for comment on whether the governor would even consider signing any unemployment-benefits legislation into law.

But as Rep. Smith pointed out, support from DeSantis wouldn’t matter without similar unemployment-benefits legislation in the House.

“At this point in the 2021 legislative session, it would require extraordinary measures for the legislature to pass a bill that increases unemployment benefits or extends the number of weeks,” Smith said Tuesday.

The office of House Speaker Chris Sprowls, R-Palm Harbor, didn’t respond to a Tuesday email asking where he stood on the question of increased unemployment benefits.

Before the House rejected her amendments on Tuesday, Eskamani told Spectrum News in a text message that Speaker Sprowls "has told me it really matters what the senate does." That could mean that if the Senate passes the legislation and wants it badly enough, the House might find a way to follow suit through negotiations and tradeoffs, she said.

Advocates of further strengthening jobless benefits have pointed to a Republican-controlled legislature that voted to require out-of-state online retailers to collect Florida sales taxes, which will be used to replenish the state’s Unemployment Compensation Trust Fund. That will help Florida business owners avoid an increase in unemployment taxes.

DeSantis signed that legislation into law this week.

“I think it’s just going to look really bad if all we do is give businesses the tax breaks that they may need or may not need — I’m not going to argue that fact,” Stewart said. “But when you give nothing — nothing — to the individuals who are unemployed, it's just not… it’s insane.”