Ben Stein had the unmitigated gall this morning to whimper about how failing to renew the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy would be "punishment". "I am not quite sure what my sin is," whined Stein this morning on CBS.
During his diatribe this morning, Stein kept referring to the end of the Bush tax cuts as a tax increase, rather than what it is: the end of a temporary tax cut that was always supposed to be just that: TEMPORARY. Now that we as a society seem to feel it's no longer possible to maintain this entitlement program for the wealthy, Stein chooses to feel aggrieved over no longer getting the gifts he has received from the rest of us over the past eight years.
Lots of children of unemployed parents have had to give up more than their Christmas gifts during this recession. I'll bet most of them endured their losses with a lot less puking and mewling than Stein did this morning.
xaxnar took Stein and others to task for his implicit errors on the tax cut question. To this I add these remarks upon the inconsistencies between Stein's position here and his earlier comments about the unemployed.
As one who has spent 13 of the past 21 months unemployed and the rest temporarily, precariously employed on a part-time or temporary basis, what am I to make of Stein's current claims of "punishment"? When the U.S. Congress debated extension of unemployment benefits for job seekers whose benefits had expired, whose joblessness was no fault of their own, where was Stein's concern about punishment then? He added his taunts and insults to those of Jim Bunning, Alan Simpson and others who charged that the unemployed were in their condition because they were lazy, had bad attitudes, or otherwise didn't have the skills to remain employed.
I rarely have worked harder than I did during the past 21 months. In addition to job-hunting and trying to start my own business, I've delivered telephone books, baby-sat for friends, did customer service during the holidays, mucked out stables, and did whatever I needed to do to keep roof over head and food on table. Yet, without the unemployment benefits I received, without the subsidies for COBRA payments that the Obama administration provided, without the mortgage negotiation assistance provided by the state of Iowa, I would not have been able to maintain my home or my family's health insurance coverage to this point. I'm still not permanently employed, still not out of the woods, but at least I'm working again in my chosen profession and have the chance to recover. I'm lucky. Millions are not. Millions are still living from unemployment check to unemployment check, being belittled by their representatives when they ask what is going to happen when their benefits expire.
If unemployment benefits can be allowed to expire, so can tax cuts. There is no moral reason why Stein should coninue to feed at the public trough while millions of unemployed, whose jobs were shed through no fault of their own, sink into poverty. Or worse.