You might think nearly 3 million unemployed folks can breathe a little easier since the Senate finally managed to bust a Republican filibuster and pass a $34 billion unemployment benefits extension. Not really. Even with the House following suit with a 272 to 152 vote. The repeated fight over this vote is unprecedented, marking the dawn of a new age: don't expect the basics anymore. This was a sign of battles to come, unemployment insurance only the tip of the iceberg. Wait till we get to Social Security and Medicare. A recent Center for American Progress report by Heather Boushey, Christine Riordan and Luke Reidenbach suggests consequences resulting from this new trend:
Never before has Congress cut off benefits when unemployment was so high. This has serious implications for the unemployed, as well as every one of us who still has a job. Economists across the board agree that unemployment benefits are one of the most important counter-cyclical economic policies we have.
The culprits during this round were Senate Republicans griping over heavy debt estimated at $13 trillion. The rapidly foaming pre-election movement of conservative voters and activists eagerly press the debt narrative, pegging both White House and Democratic Congress as monster spenders. Strangely enough, many of those same folks are working class Whites in desperate need of similar benefits. Yet, much can be said for GOP party discipline since deficit spending wasn't a problem under the Bush Administration: Congressional Republicans easily voted for unemployment insurance when their man ran things and there was no spat over debt when Republican legislators appropriated a questionable world war, revenue-sapping tax cuts and a massive prescription drug plan - all draining a surplus for the history books. Government can benefit the military contractors, the wealthy and Big Pharma - but, "we'll be damned" before it benefits anyone else.
It's easy to blame Republicans. Yet, we've reached a moment in the national conversation when the existence of very basic benefits is widely questioned - even at a time when its needed most. Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum offers her take on American entitlement:
To put it bluntly, middle-class Americans of the right, left and center have come to expect a level of personal financial security that -- despite the stereotypes -- most people around the world would never demand from their governments.
Cato Institute economist Michael Tanner suggests unemployment benefits simply encourage the unemployed to ... embrace unemployment. Extending benefits only makes it worse:
Few things are as dangerous as Congress when it tries to be "compassionate."Congress risks turning unemployment into just another welfare program -- with a correspondingly low standard of living for its recipients.
Republicans found an out to soothe guilty conscience. And some Senate Democrats, lacking political fortitude, went along with that -- like ranking Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), as Robert Cruickshank in Calitics quotes:
"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.
These are easy conversations when you're employed, paying bills and able to sip on good life. Applebaum herself, in her Great American Whiners piece, drops a short and snotty reference to personal globetrotting ("If you don't live in this country all of the time, and I don't, here is what you notice when you come home"). Traveling is great, but to brag about it while you're blasting the needs of others lacks some tack.
Senate Republicans are in good company. Despite high unemployment, the unemployed still see their plight as a badge of shame. Society, from consumer binging to social loafing, rubs it in. It's easy to snub the unemployed when you've got air conditioning during a triple-digit heat wave. Ultimately, the politics wore a stench as bad as urine in a stuffy subway station. The unemployed could barely get their meager buy-some-time extension until Wall Street got hooked up first with financial regulatory reform. And while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) gets props for pushing hard early on for the extension, the White House slept on it until they recognized the perfect issue to smear Republicans with - waiting till the final week before yesterday's vote. Hence, ripping Republicans about the unemployed had little to do with compassion and everything about political gain. Expect the same debate in November.
(originally published in Politic365.com)
Follow Charles D. Ellison on Twitter: www.twitter.com/charlesdellison
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SavingandDebt/LearnToBudget/ASurvivalGuideForTheUnemployed.aspx
The national average unemployment check is about $270 a week, and the maximum you can receive depends on your state. In high-cost Connecticut, it's $501 a week; in Mississippi, it's $210.
http://money.cnn.com/2010/06/16/news/economy/unemployed_need_not_apply/index.htm
An apparent disturbing trend is that employers are not interested in hiring the unemployed.
And while there might be jobs somewhere in the country, they may not be anywhere near the unemployed. And when you're unemployed you don't have the money to travel to find work or to relocate if you were fortunate enough to actually land a job elsewhere.
We have trillions to finance war, death and destruction but we can't take care of our own in a time of unprecedented need?
Yes I value our children. And many of our children are in dire need today.
We cannot turn our backs on them.
1) End the wars and cut the military budget by at least 33.3%...most of which can be by closing a number of overseas bases we don't actually need;
2) Force Wall Street to pay through forfeiture of any and all bonuses for the next 10-15yrs to repay the American people;
Last year, the $145 billion their executives took home in bonus money equaled $14,500 for 10 million jobless people. In seven years, our wars have cost over $1 trillion...that's another $145 billion a year to prosecute. What does running some of these overseas military bases costs a year. I would give a fair estimate that just cutting these issues would eliminate over $300 billion a year in spending...Half that amount is $30 billion more than we have spent on jobless benefits over the past 12 months.
It's a wonderful luxury to be able to judge out of your A$$ something you know nothing about.
It's like listening to the opinion of an unmarried marriage counselor... there's no reason to.
I understand your emotion on the pushback against unemployment insurance. No one likes to hear about people who cannot get a job or who are in difficult economic conditions. However, I think there is a valid concern that 99 weeks on UI is a lot. And with a 13tn in debt, we need to start really looking at the implications of just piling debt upon debt.
There will come a time of reckoning, as there was with Greece, we can no longer run deficits with impunity. We need to either raise taxes, which most economists agree hurts GDP growth (read that to mean jobs) or we have to borrow...borrowing has its own impact on the economy and when you borrow too much, as we have now, it starts to work against you.
K
fanned
I am a 99er, and unless you have been living under a very large rock, this is the worst job market since the Great Depression of the 30's. There are close to a million and a half people like myself (whose numbers are growing each day someone uses up their 99th week of federal UI) who still cannot find meaningful work. As far as borrowing with impunity, for the 40 billionth time, the Republicans have been doing tha all eight years of the Bush adminstration funding wars, bailouts, and tax cuts for everyone making a paltry sum of, oh, about a billion dollars a year it seems. As far as Greece is concerned, your lack of understanding there is evident. as well. I am Greek American (mom and dad born there), and the folks there were getting more money from early pensions, unemployment benefits, their version of Social Security, etc than we do getting the same, if not close to the same, benefits. So no wonder that country is in the shape it's in.
You are right in one regard. It is a time of reckoning, only it will be from myself and the other 99ers and as that great philosopher (lol) Dee Snider from Twisted Sister said once, we're not gonna take it anymore.
Thanks for you’re the consideration that went into your response.
I realize the economy is bad, I was out of a job for nearly 2 years myself and am now in a job that underemploys me and pays less than what I got before. I had saved, and lived off my savings, not UI.
Both the Republicans & the Democrats have been equally complicit borrowing for the last several decades (please do not just point to who was in the whitehouse at the time since that doesn’t take into account the other party’s control of congress, etc). Regardless of who is running for an election now, accrued debt and unfunded entitlement programmes are very serious problems. I will support anyone that puts a stop to it now. Republicans seem to have woken up to it.
Sure we are better off than Greece, we have a less onerous welfare system but we also have 115tn in unfunded entitlement obligations. Social Security has turned into a Ponzi scheme.
How much was the recent UI extension bill, 33Bn+/-. Our debt servicing expenses pad to date are as below. We will spend 354Bn on paying interest this year. See where debts starts to restrict a county’s ability to operate. I feel for you but…
Interest Expense Fiscal Year 2010
June $106,661,088,328.82
May $23,787,106,572.94
April $22,484,761,216.04
March $20,787,112,806.56
February $16,893,440,780.68
January $18,856,851,343.86
December $104,631,821,540.22
November $17,928,110,784.85
October $22,831,444,696.60
Fiscal Year Total $354,861,738,070.57
An economic recovery is dependent on many people participating, having jobs, earning money, and circulating the wealth by buying goods and services. The money has to come from somewhere. If you train an entire generation that they have to look out for themselves otherwise the rich folks and Wall Street are going to scam you for all you have, then eventually people wise up and they can say goodbye to the easy spending and good times from the lower rungs of the scale that created all the wealth at the top.
Good luck top 2%. Let's see how you do in the coming decade.
Interesting point. One that a lot of people share.
The rich are not dumb, they just have options. The rich will move and take their money with them... Actually, by punitively taxing the rich, all you do is make them leave and take their productive capital with them. Unlike the poor they have choices. I know that it is politically advantageous to blame the rich for all the problems we face today...but If you really wanted to help the poor you would encourage them to stay in the US and reinvest their money here. We do not do that...bye bye jobs.
Having the second highest marginal corporate tax rate in the world, it makes me wonder why people would think that companies would even want to open here. For long-term growth people need to re-think there aversion to tax cuts, especially capital gains taxes and marginal corporate tax rates. Otherwise companies will continue to do what they have been doing and move operations overseas, everything ceterus paribus. Bye Bye jobs.
It is grandstanding politicians not the rich that are the problem.
Kai
Sorry to weigh in gain without giving you a chance to respond. But I just thought of a good analogy while I was on my way into work.
I have a friend who is Australian, who is moderately rich. He moved to the States to be with his gf who was going to school in NYC.
He started to invest in the US but after one year uprooted and left. I asked him why? Basically he can invest his money anywhere in the world and they will welcome him with open arms, mostly because they want the job creation output and tax that his investment represents. In order to attract his money, they have very low capital gains tax and relatively minor corporate tax rates, income tax etc. The United States’ taxation system was too punitive. He took his ‘wealth’ and his investment and the jobs that money would have created and invested in China.
Let me ask you? Who was the loser in that situation? Up front, because America has a higher tax rate, you would think America gets more taxation dollars. Not the case. We lost the investment in our country, the taxation it would have supplied, and, most importantly, the jobs it would have created. In the end America was the net loser and a victim of its own war on the rich.
Keep attacking the rich. It is only the poor that pay. He is still laughing all the way to the bank.
Kai.