The Grinches Who Stole Summer

[babylonsister]

The Grinches Who Stole Summer

By Robert Scheer



It was a branding moment. With their lock-step vote against extending unemployment benefits, the Republicans are indelibly marked as not only heartless but also frivolous in their much-professed concern over the soaring national debt. Thanks to the defection of the two relatively enlightened Republican senators from Maine and the quick replacement of the late Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd, unemployment checks that had been stalled for millions of American families since early June will soon resume. But for Republicans, it has been a defining issue that will haunt the party.

There is plenty to criticize in the Democrats’ handling of this economic crisis, mostly cribbed from the GOP playbook, but once again the Republicans seem determined to prove that when it comes to social compassion, they are the worst. How can they defend having supported Republican President George W. Bush giving $180 billion to AIG but draw the line when a Democratic president seeks to spend one-fifth of that amount helping millions of victims of the crisis that AIG was so instrumental in causing?

While holding unemployment checks hostage to demands for compensating budget cuts, Republican leaders claimed to support the extension of benefits. They rejected the argument of some on the harder ideological right that the average payment of $309 per week is the lucrative prize that keeps the unemployed from going back to work. They also conceded the obvious, that money given to the unemployed will stimulate the economy at a high multiplier effect because it is money that will be spent rather than hoarded.

Clearly the unemployed are far more likely to spend the money they receive than would the recipients of tax cuts for the rich that the GOP leadership so blithely recommends. And as House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer, D-Md., was able to crow, while the Republicans demand a cut in spending to cover the costs of unemployment insurance, they make no such demand for their tax-cut proposal: “Our Republican colleagues say, `No, you have got to pay for that, but you don’t have to pay for a tax cut for the wealthiest people in America’ which is about 20 times as much as the unemployment insurance.”

more...

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_grinches_who_stole_summer_20100721/

[SpiralHawk]

1. "Smirk." - RepubliCronies (R)

[liberal N proud]

2. The Blockade Brigade

I sure hope this haunts them in November