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A lesson I learned early in life is you don’t kick someone who is already down. Never, in our nation’s history has unemployment benefits been denied when jobs are so difficult to find. The national unemployment rate stands at 9.7 percent. For every job that becomes available there are at least five people applying. Yet, some politicians, like Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle maintain that unemployment insurance makes people lazy and they don’t look for work. If that statement were true there would not be five applications for every job.
The best way to deal with the Republican’s obstructionist politics about unemployment insurance is to un-employ them. Voters should stand united against the obstructionists in voting booths this November.
Actually, the Senate’s actions are not meant to punish the unemployed but to secure their own futures. The Senate Republicans believe if they obstruct the other party’s efforts to turn the economy around they can win back a majority in Congress and the presidency. This winning back, what they believe was unjustly taken away from them, is all they seem to care about. They have forgotten they are in Washington to represent us, not their own interests.
The Democrats are guilty of much the same, but at least they seem to have a hearts beating in the chests, and they can see the bigger picture. Virtually every study done has shown unemployment benefits have little, if any, effect on people looking for work. Yet the Republicans use this as an excuse. They use this excuse because they have no solid reason to justify their actions.
They also believe that if they say if loud enough and often enough people will begin to believe them; it has worked in the past. It worked in Iraq. Remember Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and most of the rest of the GOP telling the nation about the dangers Saddam posed with weapons of mass destruction? They presented charts and graphs and intelligence reports to back their claims, which turned out to be fabrications.
They were lying then and they are lying now. This time, however, instead of using Saddam as a scapegoat, they are using the unemployed. These obstructionists have no conscience or real plan for America; they only want to stop American from succeeding, and they want to do that because the Democrats and President Obama will get take credit for it. If Republicans had an ounce of fairness or any foresight they would realize they too, could take credit for economic recovery, but they don’t want to share the limelight, even if it helps the people they represent.
How many jobs have we actually lost? Well, if the private sector added 218,000 new jobs per month from this point forward, it would take five years to fill the void left by the Great Recession, according to a Center for American Progress study. Yet, the Senate Republicans would have us believe the unemployed are lazy and there are plenty of jobs out there if only they would get up from their lazyboy chairs and look for them.
As of June 4, about 1.2 million unemployed people lost benefits, thanks to Senate Republicans. Before summer's end, labor statistics project that number would increase to 3 million.
Economists agree across the board that unemployment insurance in a critical component of any serious effort to hamper harmful economic hardships brought on by a recession. They also agree that denying benefits removes billions of dollars from the economy. That’s billions of dollars spent on food, rent, clothing, medical benefits, car payments and fuel – some of the staples of our economy. Taking that money out of circulation not only hurts the unemployed but it endangers those who have remained employed because the need for many services drops off as people run out of money.
A January CNN poll showed 83 percent of Americans approved of unemployment insurance and health insurance for those who lost their jobs through no fault of their own. A recent Hart Research study asked the question “With unemployement close to ten percent and million still out of work, is it too early to start cutting back benefits and health coverage for workers who lost their jobs.” To that question, 74 percent of those polled agreed it is too early to pull the plug.
We hear Congress throwing around the term, “the American people want,” but the fact of the matter is, they either don’t know or don’t care what the American people want. If they knew what the American people wanted they would not be punishing the unemployed.
