No joke that elected Republicans in Congress hate the unemployed. Latest proof is this week’s douche Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl who claimed that tax cuts for the rich are needed more than unemployment benefits. Also it seems that Saint Ronald Reagan was more into wealth redistribution and it wasn’t to regular Americans.
The second highest ranking Republican in the Senate doubled down on a controversial statement he made this weekend, arguing in greater detail that tax cuts for wealthy people should never be offset by tax increases in other areas — but that unemployment benefits need to be fully paid for by either spending cuts or tax increases. In so doing, he claimed candidly that the very existence of unemployment insurance is a “necessary evil,” while tax cuts ought not be paid for by increases in order to make it easier to shrink the size of government.
And the truth about President Ronald Reagan and his economic policy when he took office in 1981:
“Conservative policies transformed the United States from the largest creditor nation to the largest debtor nation in just a few years, and it has only gotten worse since then. Working people’s share of the benefits from increased productivity took a sudden turn down. This resulted in intense concentration of wealth at the top.”
Dear GOP, Just to let you know that real people are being hurt because you hate the unemployed. In this video from my local television station showed that 7500 people in my county will lose their benefits and not all of them are “just lazy”.
On this holiday weekend, please GOP stop hating America.
*Update*
Here is more proof that the GOP talking point about “the lazy unemployed” is full of crap. Jason Linkins at Huffington Post wrote:
But Linder’s example happens to be an exception. The basic reality for America’s job seekers is that currently there are five people looking for work for every job opening. The average unemployment benefit is a scant $290 per week. And, as Arthur Delaney reported on these pages in early June, there are other difficult-to-ignore facts that harpoon the notion that the unemployed are content to live off benefits:
Larry Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute pointed out that only 67 percent of the 15 million unemployed receive benefits. Even if all those people are enjoying the dole, shouldn’t businesses still be able to hire some of the other five million receiving no benefits at all?
Exactly. If unemployment benefits truly tamp down the motivation of job seekers, there would still be about five million people going after the jobs that Sharron Angle believes exist with a rabid intensity.
On Thursday June 24, the elected Republicans in the Senate gave more evidence that they hate the unemployed. The Senate rejected an extension of unemployment benefits for 1.2 million people. People who have never lost a job can decide that others who have no job don’t “deserve” help. Normal people should be outraged about that. But there is other insults the GOP heaped on the unemployed.
Rachel Maddow summed it up best:
MADDOW: We’ve got the worst long-term unemployment since the Great Depression. This is going to have repercussions in our country and in our culture for generations. The political leadership we’re seeing on the right in response to that called the unemployed animals, drug test them, call them bums, say they’re only out of jobs because they’re lazy and want to be. Insult, insult, insult. To add real injury to all of that insult today every Republican in the Senate plus our friend Ben Nelson, blocked a vote on a bill to provide badly needed help to the long-term unemployed in this country.
And as a result, starting tomorrow, more than a million Americans will lose their unemployment benefits. This might sound like something you’ve heard before. This is the sort of thing that’s been knocking around in and out of the headlines for months now. And it’s true. It’s because Republicans have blocked extensions of unemployment benefits before. It’s kind of been a Republican hobbyhorse lately.
But in the past, the measure has always been saved at the last minute. That didn’t happen this time. Senate Republicans and Ben Nelson really are cutting off the benefits for 1.2 million unemployed people and probably tossing at least some of them out on the street. And as an added bonus, they’re giving up the opportunity to stimulate the economy in the most efficient way we know how. Ta da.
This pisses me off. As someone who has been on public assistance in the past and know many who are on assistance or unemployment, I can tell you NOONEWANTSTOBEUNEMPLOYED. Republicans just rehash the old “welfare queen” red herring whenever real people need help. They didn’t bat an eye bailing out the banks and automakers but when real people need help they complain about the deficit.
The Democrats in the Senate don’t get off the hook totally. Why in the hell do you keep letting the GOP screw the pooch? Need 60 votes for unemployment extension? Really? Knock the shit off and act like a majority party. Letting a minority of 41 control things make you all look stupid.
Of course passing out checks without doing anything substantial to solve the economic problem won’t solve the jobs problem in the long run but not putting oil in a car low on oil just because it hasn’t reached 3,000 miles isn’t going to be good for a car either.
As blogger digby noted:
I have thought from the beginning of the crisis that this was a problem. I could tell from some conversations I was having that people were under the misapprehension that the deficit caused the recession and that ending the deficit is the only way to fix the economy. Many wingnuts are making that explicit claim.
This is one of the reasons why I have been so frantic that the administration was feeding into the deficit hysteria. They don’t seem to get that people don’t actually care about “the deficit,” they care about “the economy” and they fail to make a distinction between the two, especially since we have right wing wrecking crew that makes a point of conflating the two.
I just don’t have time for people who are soooooo full of themselves, who lack any minimal amount of compassion, and who refuse to see the world outside their self involved bubble.
Here is an example:
Missouri farmer David Jungerman has raised the hackles of local residents with a politically-charged sign he’s placed on his “45-foot-long, semi-truck box trailer” on his farm. The trailer reads: “Are you a Producer or Parasite Democrats – Party of the Parasites.” Now, the Kansas City Star reveals that Jungerman has been the recipient of over a million dollars of federal farm subsidies since 1995
Trying to defend himself, Jungerman told the press, “That’s just my money coming back to me. I pay a lot in taxes. I’m not a parasite.”
What this Einstein doesn’t know or refuses to know is even people on welfare pay taxes. They may not pay income taxes but they do pay sales tax plus they paid taxes when they did have a job. Don’t they deserve to get back the taxes they paid?
Jungerman reminded me of those morons during the health care reform town halls when they shouted they didn’t want government run health care while admitting they were on Medicare.
What should really make a normal human mad is that the extension only would have added 0.00043 percent to the national debt.
The other day it was reported that Congressman Dennis Kucinich had said he would vote no on the Senate version of the Health Care Reform bill. It’s the version that more than likely will be passed if a vote is taken. On the MSNBC show “Countdown” the founder of the Daily Kos blog Markos Moulitsas called out Kucinich for his principled stand and even suggested he be challenged in the next election for suggesting the bad Senate bill be killed. One can not like the man, disagree with his views, but don’t be a dick about it. Markos is being a dick about it.
The attack continued on Moulitsas’ twitter feed calling Kucinich ineffective and his supporters – robots. He asked for one piece of legislation Kucinich had sponsored that passed and when one was pointed out (H.J. 26) Markos dismissed it out of hand.
Then today in his regular posting on Daily Kos he wrote:
No ambiguity — MoveOn members want to pass the bill. We spent the last several months fighting to make it better, and we did. It’s not great, but it’s better. And as Howard Dean wrote yesterday, the fight for better health care reform isn’t over.
Dennis Kucinich may rather make common cause with the GOP and Rush Limbaugh, but sane progressives have to realize that this is a step forward. And once the foot is in the door, tweaks can always be made. But our foot must be in the door, and that’s why the GOP and insurance companies are fighting this with all their might.
He basically is calling anyone who shares Kucinich view on the bill insane including progressives who agree with the congressman – like me.
What is ironic is that as late as December Moulitsas held the same view of the Senate bill and also called for it to be killed.
My take is that it’s unconscionable to force people to buy a product from a private insurer that enjoys sanctioned monopoly status. It’d be like forcing everyone to attend baseball games, but instead of watching the Yankees, they were forced to watch the Kansas City Royals. Or Washington Nationals. It would effectively be a tax — and a huge one — paid directly to a private industry.
Without any mechanisms to control costs, this is yet another bailout for yet another reviled industry. Subsidies? Insurance companies are free to raise their rates to absorb that cash. More money for subsidies? More rate increases, as well as more national debt. Don’t expect Lieberman and his ilk to care. They’re in it for their industry pals.
…
Strip out the mandate, and the rest of the bill is palatable.
The mandate is still in the bill and Markos now is towing the party line that the bill has to be passed since it is better for the party than nothing.
Normally I agree 90% with the views of Markos and Daily Kos but the people who gave up on getting a better bill to pass the crap Senate version just so they can claim “victory” leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I understand that Moulitsas personally doesn’t like Dennis Kucinich but he doesn’t need to be a douche about it and let it cloud his public comments about the man especially someone who hasn’t changed their mind all of a sudden like Markos seemed to have done.
After hearing about another right winger loon killing people in the name of “Amerirka”, I decided to put together an all star list of right wing pundits who don’t care what they say, don’t take responsibility for their words, and just hate America and what it stands for. Feel free to print out my poster and post around your community to warn them of these chowder heads because they help victimize everyone.
I really wish these people would be victims of the economic melt down.
