"Our workers need to get back to work _ not just get lost in a bureaucracy of dead-end social services," Chao said at a House Education and the Workforce Committee hearing.

More than 200,000 layoffs have been announced since the Sept. 11 attacks. Democrats complained that no workers were allowed to testify at the hearing.

"We believe it is essential to hear directly from working families whose lives have been so severely impacted by recent layoffs," Democrats said in a letter to Committee Chairman John Boehner, R-Ohio.

Bush's proposal would:

_Extend unemployment benefits an extra 13 weeks beyond the usual 26 weeks in New York, Virginia and other states hardest hit. States would have to show an unemployment rate increase of at least 30 percent.

The federal government would pick up the estimated $5 billion tab. That money is part of $15 billion in unemployment money reserves.

_Expand the Labor Department's emergency grant program by $3 billion for 18 weeks. States can apply for the grants and governors would have discretion on how to spend the money _ including extending health care benefits, offering training programs and providing unemployment benefits to workers who may not qualify under the normal system.

"Rather than creating new programs that may take years to get up and running, we're taking the current structure and turbo-charging it for the crisis we face now," Chao said.

The Labor Department already has distributed a $25 million emergency grant for workers displaced in New York and provided $2.5 million to the state to hire extra people and buy computers to process unemployment insurance claims, Chao said.

Emergency employment offices also have been set up in cities including Atlanta and Washington, D.C., to process claims. The agency's Pension and Welfare Benefits Administration has offered an extension on form filings to employers affected by the attacks.

Senate Democrats' $1.9 million package aimed at laid-off aviation workers failed last week when Sen. Jean Carnahan, D-Mo., tried to attach it to an anti-terrorism bill.

Carnahan had argued that after Congress approved $40 billion in emergency spending and a $15 billion plan to help the airline industry in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, it was only right to provide extended unemployment benefits, health care and training to the estimated 140,000 laid-off aviation workers.