As Congress Debates Unemplyment Benefit Extension Yet Again...
by: Les Carpenter
Rational Nation USA
Purveyor of Truth
Given the continuing and relatively elevated unemployment figures, which we all know are really understated, it is understandable why the Federal Government is concerned with extending yet again unemployment benefits.
After all people need a safety net when they fall on hard times and unfortunate circumstances such has been the case for millions since what, 2008?
While most, but by no means all, will actively look for work, job retraining, and or both, some will sit it out and look to the continuing goodies from the tax payers they are confident the Democrats (progressives) in Congress will demand for them. This of course without any urgency to actually find work.
Now, before going further I am unequivocally saying that I AM IN FAVOR OF A TEMPORARY EXTENSION OF JOBLESS BENEFITS at this time and the three month time frame ks reasonable.
However, the question that needs to be asked is, what if circumstances do not change? Do we extend benefits further? Should there be a limit to the number of times and the maximum length benefits should be extended to? Is it even reasonable to have the discussion as to the effect a long eligibility for unemployment benefits has on a person's desire to work?
I certainly don't know the answers to these questions for certain. What I do know is that I, as well as most of you are possessed of common sense.
Whatever the Congress, and the People of this nation decide, be prepared to pay the cost of a decision to extend benefits. Either in the form of spending cuts elsewhere in the budget or tax increases on those still working.
It is after all time to cut the bullsh*t and do what is right for the long term best interests of this nation. I'm quite frankly beginning to believe this may very well be fast approaching an impossibility.
Read the rest of the article below the fold.
Via: Memorandum
Rational Nation USA
Purveyor of Truth
Nevada.jpeg) |
| Dean Heller |
Given the continuing and relatively elevated unemployment figures, which we all know are really understated, it is understandable why the Federal Government is concerned with extending yet again unemployment benefits.
After all people need a safety net when they fall on hard times and unfortunate circumstances such has been the case for millions since what, 2008?
While most, but by no means all, will actively look for work, job retraining, and or both, some will sit it out and look to the continuing goodies from the tax payers they are confident the Democrats (progressives) in Congress will demand for them. This of course without any urgency to actually find work.
Now, before going further I am unequivocally saying that I AM IN FAVOR OF A TEMPORARY EXTENSION OF JOBLESS BENEFITS at this time and the three month time frame ks reasonable.
However, the question that needs to be asked is, what if circumstances do not change? Do we extend benefits further? Should there be a limit to the number of times and the maximum length benefits should be extended to? Is it even reasonable to have the discussion as to the effect a long eligibility for unemployment benefits has on a person's desire to work?
I certainly don't know the answers to these questions for certain. What I do know is that I, as well as most of you are possessed of common sense.
The Daily Beast - Dean Heller is no big spender, yet he talked five fellow Republicans into breaking his own party’s filibuster of extended unemployment benefits.
Before the Senate voted 60 to 37 Tuesday to end a Republican filibuster on a bill to extend jobless benefits for the next three months for the long-term unemployed, just one Republican senator went out on his own to speak in favor of it, the bill’s lone Republican co-sponsor, Sen. Dean Heller of Nevada. Republicans Kelly Ayotte, Dan Coats, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Rob Portman joined Heller to move the bill forward, along with all Senate Democrats.
“Helping those in need should not be a partisan issue. Providing a limited social net is one of the responsibilities of the federal government,” Heller said. “Unfortunately, instead of planning ahead and figuring the best way to do that, we are now forced to decide whether or not to reinstate these benefits after they’ve expired.”
Heller’s push for the emergency aid makes sense, given Nevada’s 9.3% unemployment rate, the highest in the nation. But his willingness to champion the bill put the former stockbroker on the opposite side of nearly every Republican in Washington, including powerful conservative groups like the Club for Growth and Heritage Action, which announced Monday they would “key vote” against the measure.
His unambiguous push for the aid bill also highlighted the competing visions within his own party of how, and even whether, to help people still struggling in the nation’s uneven economic recovery, even as Washington Democrats push to exploit Republican opposition to aid measures going into the 2014 elections.
On unemployment benefits specifically, most GOP senators said Tuesday they would have supported the bill if the $6.5 billion cost had be paid for with cuts elsewhere in the federal budget.
Whatever the Congress, and the People of this nation decide, be prepared to pay the cost of a decision to extend benefits. Either in the form of spending cuts elsewhere in the budget or tax increases on those still working.
It is after all time to cut the bullsh*t and do what is right for the long term best interests of this nation. I'm quite frankly beginning to believe this may very well be fast approaching an impossibility.
Read the rest of the article below the fold.
Via: Memorandum
Sooner or later ALL politicians come to the sad realization that they cannot maintain their integrity if they hope to stay in office. The public -- aka the electorate -- positively DEMANDS political corruption. They cannot abide the Truth.
ReplyDeleteWHY?
Because -- thanks to the Marxian-Socialist-Fabian-Lberal-Progressive-Statist thinking that exploits the worst elements in human nature, and has thus completely taken over the Democratic Party -- and only to a faintly lesser degree the GOP Establishment as well -- our dear legislators have cast themselves in the role of Santa Claus, and the public now expects to celebrate the Receiving End of "Christmas" EVERY day of EVERY year. They've been skillfully conditioned to feel "entitled" to it.
Anyone with the unmitigated gall to DARE oppose this now-firmly-entrenched policy is derided as s "grinch," a "louse" a dirty-minded, miserable old "meanie" and is, therefore, very likely to suffer the moral equivalent of being tarred, feathered and ridden out of town on a proverbial rail.
No one with a cushy job loaded with perks and opportunities to take graft and gleefully betray their former constituents after leaving office is willing to risk that, and so we are in grave danger of spending more and more on increasingly demanding, increasingly undeserving grievance groups.
It won't stop until every last penny is drained from every last pocket and we are dead broke -- a condition to which we are perilously close already.
Prosperity is only an illusion when it's fueled with FIAT (i.e. counterfeit) money.
Our TRUE rate of unemployment is close to 12% -- and that's by conservative estimate. [Not politically conservative, but conservative in the sense of reserved, restrained, cautious, pointedly modest, etc.]
IF the "progressives" are right, that means that "reality" is only what we decide it SHOULD be. In other words there IS no "Reality" -- no Truth -- no Principle -- no Right or Wrong. Life then becomes nothing but a Free-For-All. Civilization will die, and return to the feral state from which we slowly evolved will return more quickly than most of us could possibly imagine.
No society yet has ever been able to break this sorry cycle.
I certainly do not have the answer, perhaps nobody does. I do know that neither the progressives OR the conservatives have that one ideal answer. Perhaps if the smarties in both camps put their heads together and worked out a plan (of course that would require compromise, something neither are interested in) maybe we could solve our problems.
ReplyDeleteNOT holding my breath. I'm quite certain I'll be long dead before that happens.
See FreeThinke, nobody, literally nobody save you and I commented on this post. Of course I anticipated this would be the case. There is NO real desire to have the honest discussion that needs to occur. There is NO desire to actually resolve issues. Only POLITICS, IDEOLOGY, WINING, and the gaining of and or retention of POWER is ALL that matters.
ReplyDeleteIt matters NOT whether one is progressive or conservative the driving motive is the CONTROL that POWER affords political parties.
Once upon a time, men of sincerity and good conscience felt constrained to set aside their own selfish interests in favor of PRINCIPLED behavior in the making of public policy. That, very sadly, is no longer true. I could treat you to a long recital of reasons why I believe we have degenerated, but this is no place to do it. If you've read me over the years, I've already explicated my thinking on that repeatedly.
DeleteEnlightened individuals in former times seem always to have known the pitfalls we're apt to step into -- the veritable land mines that lurk everywhere we tread.
"In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will cultivate, and improve. Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe their minds must be improved to a certain degree."
~ Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
The phrase "... their minds must be improved to a certain degree" tells the whole story. Instead of improving those minds, unscrupulous fiends with a smart line of seductive, meretricious patter set about the task of PERVERTING them -- and all in the name of Doing GOOD!
In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries certain wily, unscrupulous malcontents and mischief-makers realized that the Establishment could be unseated and Power and Control could be obtained by appealing directly to people's basest instincts, and in effect legitimizing instead of vilifying the long-regarded deadly sins of Envy, Spite, Malice, Deceit and the Lust for Revenge against those more fortunate, more talented, more enlightened, more ambitious, more successful, etc.
Sadly too many gobbled this up, and said in effect, "YEAH MAN! Let's GO for it. Let's bring those rotten bastards who've been oppressing us DOWN."
The result has been what we suffer with today.
Get rid of the extensions. A person who lost their job through no fault of their own should be qualified until they find a new position.
ReplyDeleteRighto Mr. Sanders, righto. Predictable, and wrong headed as usual. But of course in your mind NOBODY would abuse that, nope.
DeleteJeez, give me a minute. It's the first chance I had to sit down for a minute!
ReplyDelete(I could swear I did reply earlier to this post, by the way)
We may not have the political ability to deal with broader issues of trade, but there is one thing we could do to grow the economy for the masses, and that would be to literally GROW. To do so, we'd invest in the physical and institutional infrastructure and easing the burdens of higher education and healthcare. This simple and tangible plan would definitely grow the economy. After all, if you build it...
JMJ
Nope ya didn't. Hell the post was up for two days jmj. Well, almost. Ya must of been damn busy! :-)
DeleteI assume you recognize ObamaCare ain't the answer? From my experience thus far the quality of health care is gonna hit the skids.
But hey, Unicorns and Rainbows are certainly nice.
I don't fixate on Obamacare like you cons, so whatever. The rate of inflation has slowed since Obamacare passed, and that will make for general economic growth, it has already made life better for millions of people, and we have yet to see what the rest of the program will produce. So that's that. Anyone who says they have it all figured out is a liar or has been lied to. It will take time. The only thing that seems certain is that it did not go far enough and do some things that need to be done.
ReplyDeleteJMJ
Nor do I. You see I really don't care about the POS legislation. It is what it is, it will be what it will be, and since the dunderheads who crafted the POS legislation have it in their best interest to lie about it you are right, the lies will continue.
DeleteThere are a lot of good things in the bill. Eventually, hopefully, we'll have single-payer and that will be that. The ACA tries to work within an existing system that is not very good and already extremely complex. So no wonder it's complex.
DeleteJMJ
So, when you have something complex, and you want to replace it with something you are hawking as better you... MAKE IT EVEN MORE COMPLEX.
DeleteWho knew jmj, thanks for that wonderful insight.
Yes. of course is simpler when a few people at the top make these decisions instead of the way it should be: families and individuals make the decisions. Moving further along in that direction, a dictatorship is even more simple. However, I consider such matters as pragmatism, avoiding destructive policies, and protecting our rights to be much more important as to whether or not a policy is "simple" or "complex"
DeleteJersey said: "The only thing that seems certain is that it did not go far enough"
DeleteI strongly disagree. I don't think this is "certain" at all. Do you, RN? The ACA as it passed is actually a lot less destructive/damaging because it goes "less far" thanks to the efforts of moderates who kicked the fangs off the beast as it when through Congress.
Anyway, want to give Jersey a megaphone so he can tell as many people as possible his idea that the ACA is a stepping stone to complete government control of healthcare? The more people that hear his thoughts (whether or not it is really true), the more people will turn against the ACA.
The ACA kicked some of the fangs off the beast, but left others. We need to shoot, kill and bury the beast (the private health care insurance industry) by passing single payer. Jersey is 100 percent correct. Anyway, many people (such as myself) hope that the ACA is a stepping stone to single payer. Whether that is true or not is up in the air, but I think the more people hear this idea and see it as a possibility... the more people will throw their support behind the ACA.
DeleteYep, sure did... In the effort to "help" the few the fangs got longer and deeper into the hides (read pocketbook) of the middle class. The wealthy will be fine, feeling the ever so slight annoyance of a knat and the poor and indigent will get the free stuff (understanably). As always the middle class gets zapped.
DeleteThe way to completely kill the ACA is to sell it as a "stepping stone" to a complete monopoly. Hardcore progressives/ left-fascists will throw their support behind it then, because their goal is maximizing the power of the rulers no matter what the cost (and health care be damned)... but the rest of us, outside of this angry fringe, will bury the beast.
DeleteThose areas of healthcare in which the government has enmeshed itself have risen in cost exponentially while those in which the government has stayed out of have actually declined in price. Single payer is as brain-dead and diseased a construct that has ever existed. a) It gives more and more power to the unimaginative and ruthless politicians and idiotic bureaucrats (the undersecretary of the undersecretary of the...) and b) it creates a scenario in which the only 2 ways to bend the cost-curve are rationing and low-balling providers to the point in which the majority of them will probably opt out. The way that I see it, small l libertarians, moderates, and think outside the box liberals (people like Wyden and Claire McCaskill) really need to get together come up with a much more market oriented approach and kick these moronic progressives to the curb.
ReplyDelete