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- iHaveNet.com: Politics
by Arianna Huffington
It's a terrible calamity that those in charge never should have allowed to happened, it's doing incalculable damage that will last for generations, and even as the destruction continues to spread, the government seems powerless to stop it.
No, I'm not talking about BP and the Gulf. I'm talking about President Obama, the millions of unemployed Americans, and the gulf between what needs to be done to deal with the jobs crisis and what is actually being done. It speaks volumes about our country and our deeply dysfunctional political system that not only have we been unable to bring the unemployment rate down, we can't even pass a bill extending unemployment benefits.
As the
And yet our system seems incapable of doing the obviously right thing. Yes, some of the holdup in extending unemployment benefits has to do with the intricacies regarding the replacement of the late Sen. Robert Byrd. But the fact that something so necessary to the well-being of the country has to come down to arcane
The
Maybe one of the reasons the administration is so reluctant to take on the ludicrous Republican economic arguments currently holding the country hostage is that it has adopted so many of them itself. Which is why we get nonsense like this, from Tim Geithner last week: "This president understands deeply that governments don't create jobs, businesses create jobs."
Has the Treasury Secretary never heard of the
The two main Republican arguments against extending benefits -- that they will add to the deficit, and that they make people less likely to look for work -- are easily shot down.
Economist Dean Baker, co-director of the
"The latest extension of unemployment benefits would have added
As for the claim that unemployment insurance keeps people from seeking a job, a report by
"The best evidence suggests that during this current economic downturn both the unemployment rate and duration of unemployment were minimally impacted by unemployment insurance benefits and the extensions of benefits. To the extent that the unemployment rate even rises, UI may be providing an enormous social benefit by preventing people not from taking jobs, but from dropping out of the labor force altogether (and often permanently), relying instead on more costly programs like disability benefits."
The report also notes that the average weekly benefit comes in at 25 percent below the poverty level for a family of four. So are we to believe that millions of people are not looking for jobs so they can maintain the cushy lifestyles enjoyed by those living well below the poverty rate? Shouldn't the president and his team be banging home the ridiculousness of these claims -- and the hardheartedness of those who make them?
Since the jobs crisis is clearly the most pressing domestic problem facing the country right now, it's hard to figure out what's worse: the fact that our system seems unable to do anything about high unemployment, or the growing acceptance that this is just the way things are in America today.
Available at Amazon.com:
The Disappearing Center: Engaged Citizens, Polarization, and American Democracy
The Virtues of Mendacity: On Lying in Politics
Bush on the Home Front: Domestic Policy Triumphs and Setbacks
The Political Fix: Changing the Game of American Democracy, from the Grassroots to the White House
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