http://www.salon.com/2014/01/06/gops_ulterior_motive_on_unemployment_economic_sabotage/
Congress returns from the holidays in earnest today, more than a week after allowing emergency unemployment compensation to lapse for millions of jobless Americans, which raises the critical question of what lies behind the GOP’s reluctance to do the obviously correct thing.Senate Democrats hope just a handful of Republicans will break away from the opposition later today, to pass legislation that would renew the lapsed benefits, and pressure John Boehner to follow suit, but they’re having a hard time finding the votes.What gives?It’s tempting to attribute the GOP’s skittishness to the right’s broader aversion to subsidizing poor people, but I don’t think that’s what’s going on here. At least not entirely.Congress has never cut off these benefits when unemployment has been as high as it is right now, and the long-term unemployed and the chronically poor aren’t equivalent populations. So there’s got to be more going on than just conservative indifference.Some Republicans would claim the deficit is too high to renew benefits, but we know that’s not true because the deficit is shrinking fast, and there are myriad, painless ways to defray the cost (which, for a year-long extension, run north of $20 billion) over a decade.The Senate bill, authored by Jack Reed, D-R.I., and Dean Heller, R-Nev., would last for only three months.
Pres. has cut deficit in half you have and never will hear republicans admit that because it kills all the above BS reasons they claim now. like Science if they admit it then they would be forced to regulate, denial is one group saying no and the rest of the world saying "REALLY"?
Other Republicans argue incorrectly that the benefits create a significant work disincentive, and claim to believe that allowing them to lapse will stimulate the labor market — even though the problem isn’t complacency but rather that there are three unemployed workers for every job opening in the country right now.
this is another one of those things trhat were never problems almost automatic until republicans declared their number one job was to deny Pres. a second term and not help him look good at anything creating the party of "NO", the only thing different in these last two elections is the winner was not traditionally White.
Republicans might want to get back to normal. But you know what the opposite of normal is? A depression. It’s hard to square the view that it’s time to return to pre-crisis policy with the recognition that in some parts of the country there hasn’t been a recovery at all.Let’s assume for argument’s sake that McConnell’s diagnosis is correct — that there are thousands of Kentuckians out of work, not through any fault of their own but because the hand of big government has crushed their jobs and left them without any options.Maybe if Obama hadn’t been reelected, he could argue that Republicans intended to replace unemployment benefits with regulatory relaxations that would put these residents back to work. But Obama won, which means regulatory relief is at least three years away.If they’re not habitual moochers, and their problem isn’t a work disincentive but rather a severe, depression-level absence of jobs, and the spending can be offset, what’s the rationale for taking away their unemployment compensation now?By process of elimination, we’re left with politics. Unemployment benefits make people’s lives better and buoy a fragile, but possibly accelerating recovery. Some Republicans are apparently reluctant to give Democrats and the economy a shot in the arm right now.
of all you just read there was no mention of republicans caring about you over their own petty manufactured reasons why it's not them that caused it, prolongs it, and has no plan or desire to stop it. we can Nov. 4th 2014
