Posted on 12/08/2012 11:15:44 AM PST by Olog-hai
Hovering in the background of the “fiscal cliff” debate is the prospect of 2 million people losing their unemployment benefits four days after Christmas.
“This is the real cliff,” said Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I. He's been leading the effort to include another extension of benefits for the long-term unemployed in any deal to avert looming tax increases and massive spending cuts in January. “Many of these people are struggling to pay mortgages, to provide education for their children,” Reed said this past week as President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, rejected each other’s opening offers for a deficit deal.
Emergency jobless benefits for about 2.1 million people out of work more than six months will cease Dec. 29, and 1 million more will lose them over the next three months if Congress doesn’t extend the assistance again. Since the collapse of the economy in 2008, the government has poured $520 billion—an amount equal to about half its annual deficit in recent years—into unemployment benefit extensions. …
(Excerpt) Read more at bigstory.ap.org ...
what DON”T they want and what WON’T the gop give them?
How about we put FULL approval of the XL Keystone pipeline in the mix? That’s a few thousand jobs!
But I read every day how great it is that tens of millions illegals from other countries have jobs here.
We’re sunk.
They DON’T want to directly or indirectly stimulate the private sector because the mission of Socialists is to make EVERY job a government job. Employed or unemployed, 100% government paychecks is the goal. This keeps the EMPLOYER/CHECK ISSUER (the Socialists) IN POWER!
Yeah... bring Keystone back. And every group of so many added to or kept on the dole has to have so many domestic oil wells okayed. Tie welfare budget to productivity measures that are not just stupid stimuluses.
“99 weeks of UC (Unemployment Compensation) is the equivalent to an Associate Degree from any College in America.” - Rush
can America overcome the Boehnless chicken?
I would assume you read the other day that it was revealed that some 70% of all the new jobs supposedly “created” are government jobs.
Who can “live” on unemployment insurance benefits? The payments are paltry in most states. I weorked as a veteran’s representative at a state unemployment office for 12 years.
I saw it but not everybody might.
There’s a conglomeration of benefits that usually kick in for a dole case. Some states are fairly generous with UI, but there’s stuff like food stamps, Section 8, cash bennies. To be so much of a bum that you couldn’t even be a bum on the dole would be hard.
I demand they be kicked from power.
Problem is, it makes you so weak that you can actually get invaded and conquered. The USSR was heading down that path, but then saw that the number of libs in the USA’s government was on the rise again, and so took advantage by declaring their empire “dissolved” (officially) only to have Putin come back at a later date to put it back together (officially).
This is a classic, if gov bails out one, they are forced to bail out all. This is a lesson learned if we ever survive the recession. Working Americans do ask a good question if jobless bailouts are not approved, “Why does the gov react instantly to bailout banks to the tune of 700 billion, but hesitate when working man ask for a bailout to the tune of 60 billion? Working man is starting to figure it out, gov is for the rich and it spits on the rest”.
This recession is unlike any we faced post WW2, because the past behavior of gov is fueling class warfare. So does the behavior of the CEO’s. Dems do not need to egg the people, they merely are leveraging a bad situation to their political advantage. Old adage, when the middle class is sliding into poverty and become part of the poor, the Dems will gain politically. Look at the last Great Depression where FDR was able to be POTUS four terms despite bad economy. He was even very popular after his death into the 1970’s by the aging Great Depression generation. The GOP needs to understand this dynamics before screaming that everyone learn to be on their own, but have their reps in Congress react to the desires and whims of the corporations and Wall Street. The Tea Party wing gets it, but the establishment GOP does not. The other great GOP of the past also got it, he was Teddy Roosevelt.
I have received UI several times but have never gotten food stamps, or anything else, even after surviving Hurricane Katrina in Biloxi. The food stamp office as much as came out and told me that middle-aged white males ain’t gonna get no help.
The house should pass two bills ASAP. One make permanent the Bush tax cuts up to 250 thousand and the second make permanent the Bush tax cuts over 250. That would eliminate the add ons that the dems are going to insist on and it would take away a major talking point of Obama’s .
Maybe state policies differ. In Ill Noise, getting food stamps is about as easy as showing you have a skimpy income, and the max UI level qualifies.
My late father’s family claims that Mrs. Roosevelt personally intervened when they were starving to death and the local government would do nothing for them. That builds enduring loyalty, no matter what you think of the policies of that administration.
defined as those unemployed from 27-99 weeks (6 months to 2 years)
"Many of these people are struggling to pay mortgages, to provide education for their children,”
Cause = Effect.
Get a f**king job!
People need to understand how the generation of Americans who gave us our independence & written Constitution, handled situations involving legitimate human need. See Thomas Jefferson's account of how Welfare was handled in 1782, Constitutional Overview.
We need to better hone our ability to explain reality to others. We have to convince & convert, or our future will be very bleak, indeed. (See Whither American Conservatism.)
William Flax
it was actually Newt Gingrich that said that in a Debate during the Primaries
This whole fiscal cliff thing is a sham.
They’ve had all year to work on this - ever since the “debt ceiling” debate and the “supercommittee” malarkey.
The American people didn’t vote twice to have Pearl Harbor bombed.
Want to see the unemployment rate start coming down for real? Don’t extend unemployment benefits.
There’s lots of stuff expiring on the 31st. And the payments to the layabouts are on the list.
The House should pass a single bill to extend all the Bush tax cuts for year and then adjourn. If the president calls the House back into session, a quorum should sit on their hands until the New Year.
Thanks for the correction; I don’t know how I mis-attributed it from Google.
For some reason, it’s very obvious to me that 0bama is deliberately trying to extinguish the private sector. This should be talked about more, and he should be called on it. You can’t kill our free-market capitalist Republic without squashing the private sector. His actions clearly point to building an army of government employees, to the detriment of the private sector.
Repeal the taxes on Social security.
hmmm...so “jobless” is the new “unemployed” eh? How PC of them.
Extend it until easter, then they can cry that their insurance runs out on Easter and get another exteension until Christmas.
Trying to make the Republicans look cold if they don’t agree.
Put the pipeline in and put AMERICANS to work.
These idjits think unemployment benefits are good for the economy as their policies detroy jobs
Those jobless benefits and the threat of a tax increase are all a smokescreen, what Zero really wants is the power to SPEND money without the Congress’s approval. What has that body of gutless wonders ever denied Zero?
I am certain Bonehead and Cantor will bend over and give Obama
whatever he wants. After all, they are all members of the DC Party,
the party of never ending spending and tax increases.
It’s 99 weeks now. Almost two years. Now they want to extend it even longer Lots just make it permanent. Once you are on it you stay till you die. That solves everything. /sar
Not sure why the Democrats want to extend unemployment benefits AGAIN .... the easier thing for them to do is let them fall off the rolls, watch the unemployment rate fall (because millions are no longer counted as "unemployed") and declare success at re-vitalizing the economy!
(/extreme sarcasm)
Sounds like the GOP loses either way. Truth of the matter is that FDR exacerbated the depression by making all of the wrong moves. Looks like Obama is headed in the same direction.
With the media covering for him I sure the GOP will get the blame either way. However, I don't believe that pretending to be an innocent bystander is the answer.
Let's just throw the brakes on this whole fiasco. The reason the economy is a mess is because Obama has strangled it with left wing idiocy. If we continue to let him cannibalize one industry after another we'll never recover.
No to unemployment, all or nothing on the Bush taxes, no increase in national debt. Yes to Simpson-Bowles and congress keeps a firm hand on the national purse and we start hard nosed negotiations on job creation.
It’s interesting, but the average unemployment check is greater than what one would make at a minimum wage job, and some folks do live on that. Granted, one would likely have to curtail one’s lifestyle, but it can be done.
You seem to suggest that the purpose of unemployment benefits is to keep one in the same financial position one was in prior to being laid off. That would be a pretty sweet deal.
That’s a good deal if one doesn’t have a lot of debt or obligations. Hell, a married couple with no mortgage or rent obligation could do alright on unemployment benefits and food stamps, provided they didn’t spend frivolously.
The problem is that most of the bailouts were aimed a those who are represented by government employee unions. This group lives in la la land, because unemployment doesn't touch them.
At this point the Speaker of the House should go on national television during prime time, and point out that The House has passed budgets over the past two years, Senator Reid has refused to let the peoples representatives in the Senate vote on these budgets, and that the latest budget submitted by the President to the Senate was voted down by a vote of 98-0, by the same bipartisan Senate that Reid will not allow to vote on the House budget.
He should also point out that the President and the Democratically controlled Senate want to continue taxing the elderly, and tax everyone, not just the rich.
The House should then adjourn, and let Obama and Reid explain why they want to increase taxes, and why they insist upon taxing those who are retired.
“We’re sunk.”
**********
Not yet, but we’re rapidly approaching the iceberg.
No, I’m not suggesting that at all. But let me give you a weird example. One day I had a veteran come to see me at my suburban office to register for work. As I normally would do, I took a look at his wages for the last four quarters on my computer. His were in the multi-millions every quarter! Curious, I asked him about that. He said he had sold his insurance company (company, not just an agency) to a French firm and as part of the sale had agreed to stay on as an employee for six months. Now he was at our office to apply for UI since it was the first time he’d ever been an employee of someone else and eligible to apply. Do you think he really needed our $250 a week? LOL But no, it wasn’t designed to live on, only to barely tide you over as you looked for another job.
Why?
Go to Wikipedia....look up BNSF Railroad. (Burlington-Northern/Santa Fe). Look at their track map. Look at who owns it. The BNSF Railway is a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is known for its control by investor Warren Buffett. Connected the dots yet?
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