Republicans say they want to help
This one’s from the heart. I do have a heart, you know. Not like those empty-chested U.S. Senate Republicans who keep blocking extended unemployment compensation benefits for millions of our fellow Americans. Republicans claim they want to help, but they keep saying they’re standing on “principle.” “We’ve got to get a handle on deficit spending,” they say. I say bunk.
Ask an out-of-work line worker if they care about the deficit, when they’re being forced to find new ways to pay their rent. I’d like to see a “principled” Republican walk up to a mother struggling to make ends meet, and explain to her how important it is to cut deficit spending.
Middle-class families have been deficit spending for a number of years. Republicans have tried repeatedly to curtail unemployment compensation extension benefits. That helps to “firm up the base.”
Some have even claimed people who’ve lost their jobs are happy to get their weekly checks that just may be a fraction of what they made (an average of $300 a week) before they were let go. There are Republicans who want to drug test the unemployed, but wouldn’t that government testing program add to the “deficit?”
Recently there’ve been numerous attempts to pass extended benefits, and with each new vote in the Senate, every single Republican voted against them.
As of last week, 1.2 million people have lost their benefits (200,000 with each passing week) – while Republicans have pondered the state of the economy and prevented the Dem-ocrats’ will to help suffering people. These people would come across a house fire and give the residents a lecture on fire safety. Then they’d call the fire department and tell them they knew where there was a fire – last night.
People are hurting. Republicans are hurting them. And they’re doing it in the name of “fiscal responsibility.” Last February, a single Senate Republican, Jim Bunning of Kentucky, prevented a vote on extended unemployment compensation and COBRA (health care) benefits. He finally relented, but not before he’d jeopardized the well-being of millions of American families.
This time, the entire Senate Republican delegation is playing that game. The original bill has been trimmed down by billions of dollars (from $80 billion to about $35 billion), in an effort to attract the votes of some Republicans. None has voted for it. This is a dangerous game.
Yet, hard line conservatives don’t seem to care. Last weekend, George Will claimed that giving unemployment benefits to people who’ve been out of work for a long time doesn’t stimulate the economy. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office thinks otherwise. It claims that for every dollar of unemployment compensation that’s paid out, $1.90 worth of economic stimulus is generated. The only thing that isn’t stimulated is George Will’s empathy.
Why should he feel anything for the less fortunate? He can simply hideaway in his $1.9 million Chevy Chase, Md., mansion and prepare his weekly TV musings on the need to “cut the deficit.” We’re all quite fortunate he takes the time to sound the alarm for the protection of the economy, while he dismisses those people who’ve contributed to it for so long.
There’s little doubt that the long-time unemployed will get their much-needed compensation. It’s just that they have to wait while Senate Republicans play their mean-spirited politics, with the hopes that the American public will somehow figure out that it’s the “free-spending” Democrats who are really at the root of their problems.
But hungry people can’t eat politics. You can’t pay your rent or your mortgage with them. There are no doctors or hospitals that will accept politics for their payments. Try looking for a job on an empty gas tank, and paying for your fuel with some Republican political “principles.” It just doesn’t work that way.
The Republicans in the U.S. Senate should start every session by Republicans singing that Wizard of Oz tune, “If I Only Had a Heart.”
Or more appropriately, they’d do us all a favor and open up with, “If I Only Had a Brain.”
Edward A. Owens is a three-time Emmy Award winner and 20-year veteran of television news. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.