HARRISBURG — A bill to preserve up to 13 weeks of emergency jobless benefits for an estimated 45,000 Pennsylvanians drew one step closer to the finish line on Thursday, as a debate over Pennsylvania’s deep debt to the federal government for the cost of unemployment benefits looms later this year.

The state House of Representatives unanimously passed the bill and sent it to the Senate, where a vote was scheduled for today. A spokeswoman said Gov. Tom Corbett would sign the bill if it arrives on his desk.

Lawmakers have known for four weeks that they had a deadline of this week to preserve the federal benefits without interruption, but still ran their votes into the final days as they looked for ways to trim the future cost of benefits.

If nothing is done, not only would the 45,000 people now receiving the benefits lose them, but 90,000 others could miss out on the 13-week benefit before the end of this year, when it expires.

Preventing the loss of the benefits required a small, technical change in state law made necessary by Pennsylvania’s recently dropping unemployment rate.

Lawmakers also inserted several provisions in the bill to begin whittling away at Pennsylvania’s $3.7 billion debt to the federal government for the cost of unemployment benefits during and after the recession.

“It stops the growth of the debt possibly, or slows it,” said state Rep. Ron Miller, R-York, chairman of the House Labor and Industry Committee. “It’s significant, but it’s not going to fix solvency. We know that, and we recognize that we have to address solvency in a more global manner.”

Those discussions in the Republican-controlled Legislature will include ways to tighten the definition of which Pennsylvanians can receive jobless benefits if they were fired for misconduct or quit for personal reasons, Miller said.

The debt, which began accumulating in 2009, is the second-largest in the nation behind California’s, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. However, negotiations between lawmakers and representatives of labor unions and business owners since then have yielded no broad agreement on how to repay it.

Beginning with tax payments due in 2012, the federal government will begin imposing penalties on employers to repay the principal and interest on the debt.

More than 400,000 Pennsylvanians were receiving unemployment compensation benefits at the end of April, according to state figures.

The bill that passed the House contains provisions that House Majority Leader Mike Turzai, R-Bradford Woods, called the most significant changes to Pennsylvania’s unemployment compensation system since 1988.

The state Department of Labor and Industry estimates the provisions would save the state almost $1 billion through 2018, and they include limits on the maximum size of benefit checks, a requirement that recipients look for work through the state’s CareerLink system and a penalty against benefits on severance pay of more than $17,850.

The limits on the maximum size of checks would freeze this year’s top benefit of $573 for another year in 2012, after which it could grow by only 1 to 1.5 percent a year until 2018 or until Pennsylvania’s unemployment compensation fund reaches solvency, whichever comes first.

The maximum weekly benefit is pegged to the state’s average weekly wage and has grown by an average of 4 percent a year in the past three decades, according to information from the state Department of Labor and Industry.

The bill also would limit benefits for lower-wage earners and people with shorter terms of employment, changes that were criticized by Sharon Dietrich of the Philadelphia-based Community Legal Services, which advocates for the poor.

The AFL-CIO issued a statement saying that the savings in the bill will be achieved at the expense of people who lose their jobs in the future.

“Workers have done their part,” Pennsylvania AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Frank Snyder said. “Now it’s time for businesses to step up to the plate and make the sacrifices needed to keep unemployment compensation stable.”

However, Miller said he views the savings in the bill as a way to help employers cut costs and hire more workers, while the state works to rein in a program meant to be a bridge from job to job.

“It’s almost become an entitlement program, so we’re striving to put into place some common-sense stuff,” he said.

The current average weekly benefit in Pennsylvania is about $310.

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