It's been a classic contest of conservatism vs. liberalism — but of course the conservatives in question are on the public dole, so their sermons about individual toughness, and independence from government rang hollow during weeks of debate over extending unemployment-insurance benefits.

Finally, on Tuesday, Senate leaders rounded up enough votes to move the extension along; a final vote could take place before the end of the week.

While spouting truisms about responsibility, money not growing on trees and all that, Senate Republicans agreed with majority Democrats that, yes, times are tough — and finding a job to replace a lost one is tougher. But ...

Some remarked in private that they might, toward the end of their six-year terms, face joblessness themselves (har, har); but what with porkbarrel power and other perquisites of incumbency, few of the exalted hundred have to worry about losing an election. And in the meantime, they'll squeeze by on their $174,000-a-year salary, plus what their spouses pull down as lobbyists, lawyers and the like — and most senatorial expenses paid.

So it shouldn't have been surprising that those posing as guardians of the Treasury would cavil over keeping unemployment checks coming to the hundreds of thousands of Americans for whom this recession feels like a depression.

But senators such as New Mexico's Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall worked away at the jobless-benefits bill — on behalf of out-of-work Americans everywhere, including our state where the unemployment rate is approaching 8 percent.

Were their minority-party colleagues unaware that, around the country, 7,000 willing but unhired workers are exhausting their benefits every week? Did it occur to some that their recent control of Congress and the White House had lots to do with it? And does it matter to them?

Not as much, to some, as making sure that ACORN, that bunch of do-gooders-gone-bad, at least in one or two egregious cases, is cut off from every federal dollar. Or not as much as stopping someone here illegally from getting a federally subsidized bite to eat ...

By this week, the forces of fiscal harrumph looked around — and realized that, far from the 41 votes they needed to stall the extension, they were down to a dozen or so. The Democrats, and their newfound allies from across the aisle, pounced.

For New Mexicans, the final vote — once it takes effect and state bureaucrats do all the wire-splicing it seems to take for jobless fellow citizens to contact them — will mean 14 more weeks of tiding over.

How many, after that, will be back at work? There's the real test of economic recovery — not empty statistics from Washington, or "up" days for the Dow-Jones Industrial Average.

The benefits would be paid for from the federal unemployment fund, built on a payroll tax companies pay for their individual employees. Those employers, obviously, would rather be doing well enough to have their workers on the job; little by little, maybe, they'll rebuild the work force. For now, Congress is correct to treat the economy as the emergency case it is. We salute Sens. Bingaman and Udall, and the rest of the New Mexico delegation, for their serious and persuasive attention.