The Department of Transportation furloughed nearly 2,000 employees without pay Monday as Senate Republican Jim Bunning continued to filibuster a key spending bill to extend unemployment and COBRA benefits for hundreds of thousands of Americans. The blocked bill also affects several governmental agencies, rural television customers and doctors receiving Medicare payments. Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the Republican whip, defended Bunning’s opposition to the bill. Kyl said unemployment benefits dissuade people from job hunting because “people are being paid even though they’re not working.” Due to Bunning’s filibuster, forty-one highway projects were shut down yesterday because federal inspectors were off the job. The Obama administration ordered Medicare billing contractors not to pay any claims from doctors for the first ten business days of March. On Monday, when a producer from ABC tried to ask Bunning why he was blocking the unemployment benefits, Bunning flashed him the middle finger.