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- iHaveNet.com: Politics
by Clarence Page
It was a scene that would have made Hollywood director like Frank Capra proud. Republican Sen. Jim Bunning of Kentucky stood up courageously to stop
It was one of those congressional moments that tells you everything you need to know about why Washington doesn't seem to work these days: Neither side sounded like they were listening to themselves, let alone to anybody else.
The former baseball star Bunning objected to a request from a fellow Republican, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, to pass a 30-day extension of jobless benefits and other expired measures included in a
By blocking the measure, which also would extend health insurance benefits, highway funding and
Bunning said he was fed up with
Although Bunning immediately became a hero to fiscal conservatives and certain mad-as-hell talk show hosts, when reporters sought reactions from his fellow Republican senators, most of them ran for the tall grass. It's not great politics to hold up aid to jobless workers during an election-year recession.
When Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona tried to offer a silver lining of sorts on the floor of
Unemployment insurance "doesn't create new jobs," he said. "In fact, if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work."
In fairness, Kyl said he was not calling the laid-off a bunch of slackers. "I'm sure most of them would like work and probably have tried to seek it, but you can't argue that it's a job enhancer. If anything, as I said, it's a disincentive." Same thing for the bill's extension of COBRA health insurance and other benefits, he said.
Kyl's reasoning is sound, I am sure, in the supply-side economists' universe, but his rhetoric showed little connection to the reality inhabited by today's unemployed.
For one thing, whatever you may think of government assistance, unemployment benefits are not a welfare check. Limited to those who have lost their jobs, unemployment payments pay too little to discourage very many of the laid-off or let-go from seeking new work, especially if they're trying to keep a family afloat.
That common-sense observation is supported by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. A February CBO analysis of policy options to increase economic growth and employment concluded that extending unemployment benefits would spur economic activity and employment in a timely way. As CBO Director Douglas W. Elmendorf reported to
Although extending pay and health benefits "could dampen people's efforts to look for work," the CBO report said, "that concern is less of a factor when employment opportunities are expected to be limited for some time." With the jobless currently outnumbering available jobs about five-to-one, according to Sen. Max Baucus, the Montana Democrat who chairs the Finance Committee, those opportunities are likely to be limited for some time to come.
Bottom line: the CBO estimates those policies would raise employment and productivity over the next five years by as much at
No question that it will enhance the household budgets of those who receive the benefits, however modest they may be.
Available at Amazon.com:
The Political Fix: Changing the Game of American Democracy, from the Grassroots to the White House
AMERICAN POLITICS
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Senator Jim Bunning: GOP's Gift to Democrats | Clarence Page
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