GOP to the Unemployed: Drop Dead (You Bums)

[Better Believe It]

GOP to the Unemployed: Drop Dead (You Bums)
by James Ridgeway
March 1, 2010


The House finally voted to extend benefits on Thursday, after several days of stalling and posturing. But in the Senate, the measure was blocked by Kentucky's Jim Bunning. Politico reported that late into Thursday night, Bunning held out against repeated Democratic attempts to pass the extension by unanimous consent. In response to entreaties from colleagues across the aisle, other Republican senators rose to defend Bunning's right to obstruct the vote, and Bunning himself was heard to utter, "Tough shit."

Nevada Republican Congressman Dean Heller offered another objection to extending unemployment benefits: He believes it might create a nation of bums.

Heller said the current economic downturn and policies may bring back the hobos of the Great Depression, people who wandered the country taking odd jobs. He said a study found that people who are out of work longer than two years have only a 50 percent chance of getting back into the workforce.

"I believe there should be a federal safety net," Heller said, but he questioned the wisdom of extending unemployment benefits yet again to a total of 24 months, which Congress is doing. "Is the government now creating hobos?" he asked.

What makes Heller's statement really stupid, of course, is that people could become hobos if Congress doesn't extend unemployment benefits, rather than if they do. Modest as they are, these weekly benefits are what's keeping thousands-and perhaps millions-of families out of poverty. The benefits that expire first are for people who have been out of work the longest, and are most likely to be living close to the edge already.

The same is true for the other social safety net programs that Republicans tend to despise. For example, without Social Security, according to the Alliance for Retired Americans, "55% of severely disabled workers and their families would live in poverty; 47% of elderly households would live in poverty; another 1.3 million children would fall into poverty; and 2.4 million grandparent-headed households caring for 4.5 million grandchildren would be deprived of most important source of income." Yet Social Security, too, has long been under attack by conservatives-a position that's lately gained bipartisan ground, as reflected in Obama's bipartisan "debt commission," which is aimed at reducing entitlements.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/01-3

[wilt the stilt]

1. People suffering from poverty

Republican wet dream along with the poor house use and child`labor.

[tonysam]

2. Divide and conquer--this time between

working people and the unemployed while obscuring the reality it is REPUBLICAN policies which have created the situation where millions of people are unemployed and needing financial assistance.