This is the Quote of the Day over at Deus Ex Malcontent:
To which I am compelled to reply:
Mr. Kyl, NOT extending unemployment compensation ALSO does NOT create jobs.
If you've ever actually collected unemployment - which I did 14 years ago when my employer ran out of money and shut down - you'd know that it's absolutely no disincentive to seeking out work. Unemployment compensation is nowhere near what you make working - by design. In fact, you blow through savings and credit very quickly when you are collecting only a portion of what had been a salary just above the federal poverty level.
The reality is that when you don't have unemployment compensation, you blow through your savings and credit even faster, which means, in this economy, that you lose your home and your insurance and mount up insurmountable debt long before you find another job. With nearly half of all homeowners underwater in my region, that hurts mortgage companies and banks, which hurts businesses, which hurts those who still are fortunate to have jobs.
Failure to extend unemployment compensation does not benefit a single American taxpayer; it does not create a single job, it does not enhance a single business, it does not prevent a single American from losing their homes, and it does not stop a single business from folding.
Extending them helps fourteen million American workers. It helps ten million families keep their homes. It prevents millions of bankruptcies, saving hundreds of thousands of small businesses.
So please don't tell us that not doing it is somehow better than doing it. It's just not.
"(Extending unemployment benefits) doesn't create new jobs. In fact, if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work. 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. And the same thing with the COBRA extension and the other extensions here."
-- Republican Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona
To which I am compelled to reply:
Mr. Kyl, NOT extending unemployment compensation ALSO does NOT create jobs.
If you've ever actually collected unemployment - which I did 14 years ago when my employer ran out of money and shut down - you'd know that it's absolutely no disincentive to seeking out work. Unemployment compensation is nowhere near what you make working - by design. In fact, you blow through savings and credit very quickly when you are collecting only a portion of what had been a salary just above the federal poverty level.
The reality is that when you don't have unemployment compensation, you blow through your savings and credit even faster, which means, in this economy, that you lose your home and your insurance and mount up insurmountable debt long before you find another job. With nearly half of all homeowners underwater in my region, that hurts mortgage companies and banks, which hurts businesses, which hurts those who still are fortunate to have jobs.
Failure to extend unemployment compensation does not benefit a single American taxpayer; it does not create a single job, it does not enhance a single business, it does not prevent a single American from losing their homes, and it does not stop a single business from folding.
Extending them helps fourteen million American workers. It helps ten million families keep their homes. It prevents millions of bankruptcies, saving hundreds of thousands of small businesses.
So please don't tell us that not doing it is somehow better than doing it. It's just not.
It reveals once again how completely out of touch these asshats are with ordinary Americans. I echo your thoughts on unemployment: few people sit around content to collect a fraction of what they were earning. Some people continue to collect while working at whatever they can scratch together, getting paid under the table. But the arrogance of this privileged bastard who never missed a car payment, meal, or doctor's appointment thanks to his taxpayer-funded salary and benefits package is infuriating beyond expression.
ReplyDelete