Congress fails its bosses once again

The miserable overpaid political “leaders” of this country have failed the people that employ them once again. This time they have concluded that 1.3 million of their fellow Americans are not deserving of any financial help in staying afloat while they look for work. Specifically, they refused to extend unemployment benefits to those people beyond today’s expiration date.

I blame both sides. The Republicans largely think the unemployed are moochers living in hammocks, not willing to look for work until they’re desperate. The Democrats apparently think the unemployed are bargaining chips whose benefits can be cut to keep the Republicans from throwing a tantrum.

Both parties are covering themselves with mud, not glory.

3 Comments

  1. It’s most especially egregious because nobody has done anything to actually work on bettering the job market, and actually have an economy where there are jobs for the people on Unemployment Compensation.

    These people who think that cutting off UC will somehow “give incentive to” those people to go out & get jobs, are living in a fantasy land where they think there are jobs to go to. There certainly are not enough jobs for everyone who would want one.
    Even still, if one is worried about some minority of people who need aggressive incentives to seek work, when they would perhaps choose not to if they could, is jobs that offer good wages! That most big companies do not offer good wages, I’d say that’s the biggest impediment to encouraging people to take jobs, if that were the problem.

  2. Remember when Eric Cantor (House Majority Leader) came in to the new Congress in January of 2013 saying “we’re going to focus on jobs, jobs, jobs” and then did nothing but bring up attempts to repeal Obamacare over and over again? They really don’t care about the middle and lower-income people in this country, only about their corporate masters.

    There are roughly 3 applicants for every job currently on offer. Maybe the way to explain it to Congressional representatives would be to say “there are three people jumping in to primary you.”

  3. Very sad, but it’s very true. They seem completely unconcerned with regular people. High unemployment is not bad for big business, and as long as politicians’ primary purpose is to raise campaign funds from big business and big donors, there is no incentive for them to actually work for the people they’re supposed to be representing.

    They say it’s gone down to 3 unemployed job seekers for every job on offer… I’m sure that varies by the region, of course. But I can’t help but think that’s an optimistic figure.
    The unemployment rate seems dodgy to me too.

    Like I wonder if I’m considered among the “unemployed”. To me, I’m not working right now. But technically, I’m employed and on seasonal leave without pay.

    But I don’t get UC benefits, because the season I work is not long enough to allow qualification for UC benefits.
    1 year ago, they increased the minimum qualification time/earnings/etc, in a base year to prevent more people from qualifying in the first place.

    I like how they calculate unemployment in Germany. They include the underemployed, and people working part time (or perhaps seasonal which amounts to part-time), who would like to be more employed, as part of the unemployed.

    What’s interesting about that is that Dean Baker has pointed out on a number of occasions how news stories equate Germany’s official unemployment rate to ours… when it’s based on a completely different calculation, and therefore not an accurate comparison at all.

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