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Our Broken Politics on Full Display
The Unemployment Benefits Stalemate
By Arianna Huffington :
Huffington Post: July 12, 2010
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 Huffington Post's Arthur Delaney points out, by the end of this week,
Congress' failure to act will bring the total number of long-term unemployed
prematurely cut off from aid to 2.5 million. According to the Bureau of
Labor Statistics' June 2010 numbers, the unemployment rate is currently 9.5
percent. Almost half of those out of work have been looking for a job for
over six months. What's more, the only reason the unemployment rate went
down .2 percent in June is because over 650,000 people had become so
discouraged they left the workforce altogether and are no longer being
counted. Also not being counted are the underemployed -- those hoping for
full-time work who've had to settle for part-time jobs. When you factor them
in, you have nearly 26 million people who are unemployed or underemployed.
And, over the next few months, upwards of 700,000 Census workers will be
looking for a job, their services not required for another ten years.
And yet our system seems incapable of doing the obviously right thing. Yes,
some of the hold-up in extending unemployment benefits has to do with the
intricacies regarding the replacement of the late Senator Robert Byrd. But
the fact that something so necessary to the well-being of the country has to
come down to arcane Senate procedures is a gigantic warning sign of how
seriously out of whack our nation's priorities have become.
The White House has the ultimate PR weapon -- the president's bully pulpit.
But he seems unwilling to use it on this issue. Why isn't his administration
doing everything possible to make it impossible for Congress not to pass the
extension? If you'd told the members of Obama's team during their first week
in office that, come the summer of 2010, unemployment benefits, which were
routinely extended under President Bush, would be allowed to expire for over
40 days and counting, they -- to borrow a phrase from Richard Clarke --
would have been running around with their hair on fire. And rightly so. Yet
does anybody see that kind of urgency coming out of the White House? Not
just about extending unemployment benefits, but about creating jobs.
Instead, the administration keeps reminding us how much worse things were
before it took office. "Understand," Robert Gibbs said Sunday on Meet the
Press, "the last six months of 2008, we saw an economy that shed three
million jobs. The first six months of 2010, the economy has created 600,000
private sector jobs...We think if you take a look backwards and look
forwards, there's no doubt that we're on the right path." We may be on the
right path, but we're traveling down it at a snail's pace when we should be
putting the pedal to the metal.
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 Civilian Conservation Corps,
the Works Progress Administration, and the Tennessee Valley Authority? If
so, why is he cynically mouthing GOP claptrap?
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.
Dean Baker makes quick work of the deficit argument:
"The latest extension of unemployment benefits would have added $22 billion
to the debt by the end of 2011. This means that the debt would be
$9,807,000,000 instead of $9,785,000,000 at the end of fiscal 2011, an
increase of the debt to GDP ratio from 65.3 percent to 65.4 percent."
As for the claim that unemployment insurance keeps people from seeking a
job, a report by Congress' Joint Economic Committee found it to be less than
credible:
"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.
***
From: SANCHEZ In MONTEBELLO
THERE's ALWAYS MONEY FOR WAR...
NOT FOR EDUCATION or the JOBLESS:
Pentagon warns Congress: accounts running dry
Wed Jul 14, 6:31 pm ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon said on Wednesday it may be forced to
take extreme measures -- like not paying salaries -- if the Democratic-led
Congress fails to pass a $37 billion defense spending bill before lawmakers
begin an August recess.
A senior Democratic aide said lawmakers would find a way to get it done. "We
will pass it this work period. We have to," the aide said.
Tensions are growing in the Pentagon about the fate of the bill, which has
languished in Congress despite repeated pleas for action by Defense
Secretary Robert Gates, who needs to fund a 30,000-troop surge for the
Afghan war.
The White House has added to the drama, threatening to veto the bill over
$800 million in education spending cuts that were added by the House of
Representatives.
"While we hope and expect the Congress will get this done, we also are
obligated now to begin seriously planning for the possibility that they
don't," Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell told reporters.
He noted that "absent more drastic action" certain Army and Marine Corps
spending accounts would run dry in August.
The Defense Department would do everything in its power, Morrell said, to
continue to protect the United States and support troops "deployed in harm's
way."
"It may involve asking a lot of hard-working people in this department to
report to duty without an ability to pay them or other extreme measures we
would rather avoid," he said. "But we will get the job done, including in
Iraq and Afghanistan and where else we operate around the world."
Gates raised his concerns with Republicans at closed-door talks on Capitol
Hill on Tuesday and afterward Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said,
"this is a true emergency."
"Secretary Gates is not involved in the politics of the add-ons, but he
wants the funding for the troops. And he told us clearly today that it has
to be done by the end of this month or he will not be able to pay the
troops," McConnell said.
(Reporting by Phil Stewart and Thomas Ferraro; Editing by Eric Beech)
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