Citing Improved Economy, GOP Does Not Extend Jobless Benefits

[papau]

Citing Improved Economy, GOP Does Not Extend Jobless Benefits
By Jim Abrams Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Citing the improving economy, Republicans decided Monday against extending federal unemployment benefits before Congress leaves for the year. Democrats said it would mean a joyless Christmas for tens of thousands of jobless Americans. <snip>

Federal unemployment benefits, which supplement state payments to the jobless, have been extended three times since March 2002. Without legislative action, they will be phased out beginning Dec. 21.

House Republican Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said extending the benefits was unjustified when unemployment is going down in the country. "It's a question of whether we continue to be in an extraordinary unemployment environment, and we are not," Blunt said.

Most states provide up to 26 weeks of aid to people who lose their jobs. In March last year, after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and a downturn in the economy, Congress voted to add 13 weeks in federal benefits, with extra help for jobless Americans in states with high unemployment rates. That emergency help has been extended three times. <snip>

[papau]

1. Follows Wall Street Journal ed board advice on how to get UE rate down

Today's Wall Street Journal ed board says that paying unemployment benefits provides a disincentive to take the jobs that will be created by the recovering economy, keeping the jobless rate artificially high...

[Frodo]

2. Oh, now I get it.

They're saying that paying unemployment out to someone for too long causes a dis-incentive to work and therefore they will be more likely to go out and get a job. But doesn't there have to BE a job out there for you to go get it?

That was a great idea when the economy was creating millions of new jobs. The welfare reforms of the 90's DID get a lot of people back to work, but it is less true today that "laziness" is a big contributing factor to unemployment. Things may be improving marginally, but that doesn't mean that there aren't skilled people out there unable to find a job through no fault of their own. That was less true in the 90's.

[ramapo]

3. How very Republican of them

What more needs to be said?

[stevebreeze]

4. It's the GOP way

You must punish lazy workers to force them to work harder. On the other hand the only way to get the wealthy to work is to further subsidize them thruough tax cuts. It seems the wealthy are so only thrugh their vastly greater morality.