Amid much self-congratulation about bipartisan cooperation, the state Assembly voted 76-0 Monday to allow the federal government to extend unemployment insurance benefits by up to 20 weeks.

This rare bit of unanimity followed some minor changes in the legislation that had stalled earlier. And it reflected the simple fact that lawmakers could assist jobless Californians with what they regard as free money billions of federal bucks that, of course, Washington will be borrowing since it’s running big deficits.

There’s no such unanimity indeed, not even a hint of consensus on what to do about a far more serious unemployment insurance issue, the vaporization of the state Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) that pays basic weekly payments to hundreds of thousands of jobless workers.

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