It is hard to believe, as the holidays approach yet again amid economic hard times, but Congress looks as if it may let federal unemployment benefits lapse for the fourth time this year. Lame duck lawmakers will have only one day when they return to work on Monday to renew the expiring benefits. If they don’t, two million people will be cut off in December alone. This lack of regard for working Americans is shocking. Last summer, benefits were blocked for 51 days, as senators in both parties focused on preserving tax breaks for wealthy money managers and other affluent constituents. This time, tax cuts for the rich are bound to drive and distort the debate again. Republicans and Democrats will almost certainly link the renewal of jobless benefits to an extension of the high-end Bush-era tax cuts. That would be a travesty. There is no good argument for letting jobless benefits expire, or for extending those cuts.
Before I get too far along, I should offer (once again, and in the spirit of full disclosure) that I’m among this nation’s unemployed. This will not, nor is it intended to, be an impartial examination of this issue. Though a modicum of impartiality might go a ways toward helping to understand why we’re even having this conversation, I personally think this situation calls for some righteous indignation. And Lord knows I’m feeling me some righteous indignation right about now….
I suppose it would be unrealistic to expect Congress, half of whom are millionaires, to have even the barest shred of empathy for the unemployed. When you make a six-figure salary, you’re generally not going to be worried about where your next Big Mac is coming from, are you? Yet that’s exactly the situation that millions of Americans find themselves in…and Congress is about to send them a succinct two-word message: F—K YOU.
During the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, there are those who honestly believe that people are unemployed because they want to be and because they’re just too damn lazy to do anything else. This philosophy holds that the way to end unemployment is to administer some “tough love” to force the unemployed to take a job- any job- because it’s not the job of government to subsidize the “lazy” and “shiftless”. This stunning lack of compassion is bad enough, but the fact that it flies in the face of truth and reality only compounds the heartlessness.
Some opponents of unemployment benefits — mostly Republicans but a few Democrats as well — would have you believe those figures are evidence of laziness, enabled by generous benefits. They conveniently ignore three facts. One, there are five unemployed people for every job opening — a profound scarcity of jobs. Two, federal benefits average $290 a week, about half of what the typical family spends on basics and hardly enough to dissuade someone from working. Three, as unemployment has deepened, benefits have become less generous. Earlier this year, lawmakers ended a subsidy to help unemployed workers pay for health insurance and dropped an extra $25 a week that had been added to benefits by last year’s stimulus law.
Other opponents would have you believe that the nation cannot afford to keep paying unemployment benefits: a yearlong extension would cost about $60 billion. The truth is, we cannot afford not to. The nation has never ended federal benefits when unemployment is as high as it is now, and for good reason: Without jobs, there is inadequate spending, and that means ever fewer jobs. A wide range of private and government studies show that unemployment benefits combat that vicious cycle by ensuring that families can buy the basics.
In a situation such as the one this country finds itself mired in, you’d think that our elected leaders could find it within themselves to do the right thing. Under normal circumstances, unemployment benefits are limited to 26 weeks. Yes, under normal circumstances, six and a half months would seem a necessary and sufficient bridge. These are anything but normal circumstances, however, and for Congress to be seriously entertaining cutting millions of Americans off at the same time they’re considering extending the Bush tax cuts is simply unconscionable.
Anyone with any degree of economic knowledge and understanding recognizes that you don’t cut and save your way out of a recession. Austerity, while seemingly the magic bullet to deficit hawks, does nothing to support markets and get the economy moving. Study after study has shown that there’s nothing more stimulative when it comes to government spending that unemployment benefits. Why? It’s because these benefits are spent almost as soon as they’re received, putting money back into the economy. Unemployment benefits aren’t so lavish that people are banking them for a rainy day. This IS the rainy day, and unemployment benefits at best support a “paycheck to paycheck” existence.
Unemployed Americans aren’t looking for handouts. We’re not looking for government to support us as we suck down Coronas and party with supermodels on a white sand beach. We want to work…and yet we (not unreasonably) hope for meaningful work that pays well enough to allow us to support our families and pay our mortgages. Those who’ve convinced themselves that those of us who are unemployed are simply too lazy and stupid to find a job should really remove their anteriors from their posteriors. Perhaps if they could trade places, they’ve develop a measure of understanding that they currently seem to lack.
Then again, compassion has never been the strong suit of those who have convinced themselves that the unemployed are morally inferior sluggards. I could rail against this lack of compassion and the arrogance, but what’s the point? They don’t get it, they’re not going to get it, and in too many cases they just don’t care enough to get it. I can only hope that they have a safe, happy, and bounteous holiday season…and that they never have to experience what millions of their fellow Americans currently find themselves dealing with. Trust me; it’s no fun.
I just have one question for all y’all: How is it that we can fully fund two wars and advocate for extending the Bush tax cuts…and yet we can’t spend the comparative pittance that would be require to extend unemployment benefits?
WE DESERVE BETTER.
