Posted on 12/08/2012 11:15:44 AM PST by Olog-hai
Hovering in the background of the “fiscal cliff” debate is the prospect of 2 million people losing their unemployment benefits four days after Christmas.
“This is the real cliff,” said Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I. He's been leading the effort to include another extension of benefits for the long-term unemployed in any deal to avert looming tax increases and massive spending cuts in January. “Many of these people are struggling to pay mortgages, to provide education for their children,” Reed said this past week as President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, rejected each other’s opening offers for a deficit deal.
Emergency jobless benefits for about 2.1 million people out of work more than six months will cease Dec. 29, and 1 million more will lose them over the next three months if Congress doesn’t extend the assistance again. Since the collapse of the economy in 2008, the government has poured $520 billion—an amount equal to about half its annual deficit in recent years—into unemployment benefit extensions. …
(Excerpt) Read more at bigstory.ap.org ...
My late father’s family claims that Mrs. Roosevelt personally intervened when they were starving to death and the local government would do nothing for them. That builds enduring loyalty, no matter what you think of the policies of that administration.
defined as those unemployed from 27-99 weeks (6 months to 2 years)
"Many of these people are struggling to pay mortgages, to provide education for their children,”
Cause = Effect.
Get a f**king job!
People need to understand how the generation of Americans who gave us our independence & written Constitution, handled situations involving legitimate human need. See Thomas Jefferson's account of how Welfare was handled in 1782, Constitutional Overview.
We need to better hone our ability to explain reality to others. We have to convince & convert, or our future will be very bleak, indeed. (See Whither American Conservatism.)
William Flax
it was actually Newt Gingrich that said that in a Debate during the Primaries
This whole fiscal cliff thing is a sham.
They’ve had all year to work on this - ever since the “debt ceiling” debate and the “supercommittee” malarkey.
The American people didn’t vote twice to have Pearl Harbor bombed.
Want to see the unemployment rate start coming down for real? Don’t extend unemployment benefits.
There’s lots of stuff expiring on the 31st. And the payments to the layabouts are on the list.
The House should pass a single bill to extend all the Bush tax cuts for year and then adjourn. If the president calls the House back into session, a quorum should sit on their hands until the New Year.
Thanks for the correction; I don’t know how I mis-attributed it from Google.
For some reason, it’s very obvious to me that 0bama is deliberately trying to extinguish the private sector. This should be talked about more, and he should be called on it. You can’t kill our free-market capitalist Republic without squashing the private sector. His actions clearly point to building an army of government employees, to the detriment of the private sector.
Repeal the taxes on Social security.
hmmm...so “jobless” is the new “unemployed” eh? How PC of them.
Extend it until easter, then they can cry that their insurance runs out on Easter and get another exteension until Christmas.
Trying to make the Republicans look cold if they don’t agree.
Put the pipeline in and put AMERICANS to work.
These idjits think unemployment benefits are good for the economy as their policies detroy jobs
Those jobless benefits and the threat of a tax increase are all a smokescreen, what Zero really wants is the power to SPEND money without the Congress’s approval. What has that body of gutless wonders ever denied Zero?
I am certain Bonehead and Cantor will bend over and give Obama
whatever he wants. After all, they are all members of the DC Party,
the party of never ending spending and tax increases.
It’s 99 weeks now. Almost two years. Now they want to extend it even longer Lots just make it permanent. Once you are on it you stay till you die. That solves everything. /sar
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