Arthur Delaney arthur@huffingtonpost.com
Why won't Congress reauthorize unemployment benefits for people who've been out of work for longer than six months?
Apparently, many GOP senators beleive this.
For the past several weeks, Republicans in the Senate, with an assist from Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson, filibustered bills to reauthorize the benefits due to concerns about adding the cost of the aid to the deficit.
Beneath the deficit concerns, however, there's something else: the suspicion that the long-term unemployed are a bunch of lazy drug addicts.
It's not an opinion openly shared by most members of Congress, but a handful of senators and representatives from both parties have said this year that they suspect extended unemployment benefits actually discourage people from looking for work.
It started in March with Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), who said unemployment insurance "doesn't create new jobs. In fact, if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work."
In May, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) said extended benefits undermine the economic recovery because they "basically keep an economy that encourages people to, rather than go out and look for work, to stay on unemployment."
Rep. Jason Altmire (D-Pa.), after pushing party leaders to trim a domestic aid bill, said that in light of four months of job growth, "At some point you have to take a step back and look at the relative value of unemployment benefits versus people looking for jobs."
Altmire said business owners in his district (he declined to say which ones) complained of hiring trouble because potential workers would rather stay on the dole. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said the same thing when she neatly juxtaposed suspicion of the unemployed and deficit worries in a June comment off the Senate floor.
Deficit hawks want the extended benefits, which until 36 days ago gave the unemployed an unprecedented 99 weeks of checks in some states, to be "paid for" instead of passed as emergency spending and adding the cost to the deficit.
Feinstein said that while extended benefits during times of recession have never been paid for, "unemployment insurance has never carried the heavy weight that it does right now, the cost that it does right now, so people are concerned. And there isn't a lot of documentation on this.
Last night for the first time I had somebody from a company tell me they've offered jobs to individuals and they said well, I want to not come back to work until my unemployment insurance runs out. So we need to start looking at these things. And we need to start paying for it."
see the complete story at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/07/unemployment-extension-st_n_637487.html
Subscribe to the Rightardia feed: feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/IGiu
Netcraft rank: 15638 http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://rightardia.blogspot.com
Why won't Congress reauthorize unemployment benefits for people who've been out of work for longer than six months?
Apparently, many GOP senators beleive this.
For the past several weeks, Republicans in the Senate, with an assist from Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson, filibustered bills to reauthorize the benefits due to concerns about adding the cost of the aid to the deficit.
Beneath the deficit concerns, however, there's something else: the suspicion that the long-term unemployed are a bunch of lazy drug addicts.
It's not an opinion openly shared by most members of Congress, but a handful of senators and representatives from both parties have said this year that they suspect extended unemployment benefits actually discourage people from looking for work.
It started in March with Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), who said unemployment insurance "doesn't create new jobs. In fact, if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work."
In May, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) said extended benefits undermine the economic recovery because they "basically keep an economy that encourages people to, rather than go out and look for work, to stay on unemployment."
Rep. Jason Altmire (D-Pa.), after pushing party leaders to trim a domestic aid bill, said that in light of four months of job growth, "At some point you have to take a step back and look at the relative value of unemployment benefits versus people looking for jobs."
Altmire said business owners in his district (he declined to say which ones) complained of hiring trouble because potential workers would rather stay on the dole. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said the same thing when she neatly juxtaposed suspicion of the unemployed and deficit worries in a June comment off the Senate floor.
Deficit hawks want the extended benefits, which until 36 days ago gave the unemployed an unprecedented 99 weeks of checks in some states, to be "paid for" instead of passed as emergency spending and adding the cost to the deficit.
Feinstein said that while extended benefits during times of recession have never been paid for, "unemployment insurance has never carried the heavy weight that it does right now, the cost that it does right now, so people are concerned. And there isn't a lot of documentation on this.
Last night for the first time I had somebody from a company tell me they've offered jobs to individuals and they said well, I want to not come back to work until my unemployment insurance runs out. So we need to start looking at these things. And we need to start paying for it."
see the complete story at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/07/unemployment-extension-st_n_637487.html
Subscribe to the Rightardia feed: feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/IGiu
Netcraft rank: 15638 http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://rightardia.blogspot.com
No comments:
Post a Comment