The Kansas City Star has a reminder for DC.
In just one week and in just one state — last week in Missouri — more than 8,300 people fell through the unemployment insurance safety net.
Actually, their nets were removed.
The result: Those who have lost jobless benefits already are turning in greater numbers to food pantries and other emergency aid programs, both government and nonprofit.
"We're hearing from more people needing assistance," said Ron Howard, spokesman for the United Way of Greater Kansas City. "Our 2-1-1 call center is seeing an increase in calls, especially from first-time callers.
"Without a doubt, the loss of that unemployment check is a contributing factor."
....
Eddie Gleason, who lost his job as a transportation coordinator at Ceva Logistics in December 2007, is frank about having exhausted his jobless benefits: “The indignities are many.”
Since Gleason’s unemployment benefits eligibility ended in February, the 55-year-old Kansas Citian said he’s gone to food pantries, sold “everything of value that I possessed,” and counts on his adult children’s help.
He said it cut him deeply to hear on the news that a congressman referred to the long-term unemployed as “hobos,” citing the belief that jobless benefits encourage idleness.... “I can honestly say I never foresaw myself in this situation,” said Gleason who, despite suffering a stroke and having heart surgery still has tried to land work. “I’m not bitter. Business is business. I understand why corporations would shy away from me.”
....
School teacher Susan Waldron, out of work for more than a year, has found a temporary $10-an-hour job as a canvasser for a candidate in a Missouri political race, but she said it’s the kindness of friends and a local church that helps her survive.
She’s getting electric and gas bill help through a federal agency, and she got toilet paper, dish soap and toothpaste — items that food stamps don’t cover — plus some food from a church.
Her 80-year-old parents are helping her pay her $525-a-month rent, and friends have filled her car with gas, paid her phone bill and bought Target and QuikTrip gift cards for her.
“I have made $65 so far selling my belongings and furniture,” Waldron said, adding that “will go towards Time Warner to keep my computer running.” She wants to keep the computer particularly for job applications so she doesn’t have to drive to use computers in a public library.
She also got a poverty discount card to be treated for her osteoporosis at Truman Medical Center, Kansas City’s publicly funded hospital.
That's the personal, individual side. Multiply that by millions, and you have a sense of the crisis, the epidemic that long-term unemployment is in this country. One in ten people in this country is out of work. There's one job opening for every five people who are looking for work. This is the first time since the 1950s "that extended benefits have been allowed to expire when the national unemployment rate is above 7.2 percent."
What does that mean, big picture, for the economy? How do you answer the deficit peacocks who say this aid can't be extended because it will cost that nation too much at some point in the future?
Advocates for continuing unemployment benefits note that the Congressional Budget Office has ranked unemployment insurance as the most effective form of economic stimulus.
“It gets money into the hands of the people who are most likely to spend it,” [Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute] said. “It goes straight into their local economies when they use it to pay for their food and housing.”
One study indicates that $10 billion of unemployment insurance spending creates or saves 100,000 jobs.
“Do the math,” Shierholz said. “Failure to approve the $35.5 billion unemployment program translates into 350,000 jobs that aren’t happening. Whatever your feelings about unemployment insurance, you can’t ignore that there’s a drain on public assistance in other ways.”
It means more jobs lost. It means less revenue for the government, it means less demand for goods and services in the country, which in turn means higher unemployment.
We need jobs. That every Democrat, including the President, isn't screaming that from the rooftops every day is an ongoing political mystery. But as much as we need jobs, we need to to keep some level of stimulus flowing, and that's what keeping unemployment insurance flowing will do.