In the state of Colorado, you are entitled to 60% of your wages on unemployment. That is as long as you did not make too much money at your previous job. You see benefits are capped at $443 a week, so if you made any more than $38,400 you are out of luck for the rest of the 60%. This means that when middle class folks making around $50,000 a year become unemployed they are getting the shaft, twice. When the Dog was employed he was making $1,025 a week (not how they actually paid it but to compare apples to apples) so instead of getting 60% of that the hound is getting 43%.
Now is this better than nothing? Oh hell yes, it is but it is hardly enough to keep the Dog from desperately looking for work. Getting less than half of the income you used to get means that you have very little chance of actually being able to meet you living costs, let alone pay the debt that nearly every American family owes from the free borrowing and free spending that this nation is famous for.
To hear Republicans talk as though this meager amount of money, which does the job of keeping people from being starving in the street, but little else, is going to be a disincentive to finding work is insulting and flatly insane. When an indicted criminal like Tom DeLay (R-Asshole Town) can go on CNN and say things like:
"You know," DeLay said, "there is an argument to be made that these extensions of these unemployment benefits keeps people from going and finding jobs." When CNN's Candy Crowley described his argument as "a hard sell" to the public, DeLay replied, "It's the truth."
Crowley followed up, asking, "People are unemployed because they want to be?" DeLay again said, "Well, it is the truth."
The disgraced (but unapologetic and unembarrassed) former Republican Majority Leader is not the only one making this argument. Senator John Kyl actually said that since people are being paid not to work, unemployment benefits discourage them from trying to return to the workforce.
That they would make these arguments, and make them with a straight face shows exactly how out of touch they are. No one is paid to be unemployed. You are required to be actively looking for work. In Colorado you have to have a minimum of five applications or contacts about work every week. You are required to file what amounts to an affidavit every week that you have done so in order to get your benefits and you can be audited at any time and required to provide evidence of your contacts. You are being paid something below 60% of your former wages to look for work.
Even more importantly these rich S.O.B.’s have exactly no idea what the employment situation is like nationally. Somewhere between 16 and 25 million people are looking for a job. They are people who have houses and families. Some are young and just out of college, some are middle aged and have been unemployed for the longest stretch of their adult lives, all want a job that will allow them to have a decent life. No one is saying "Oh, I won’t take this 60,000 a year job, I am going to hold out for the something closer to $150,000, since I have unemployment".
It should be a scandal that these Republican politicians can basically tell the workers of America (who their policies put in these straights) that they are lazy and should not get even the small benefits that unemployment provides. They have not felt the helplessness and worthlessness that long term unemployement causes. Americans are an immigrant people, we all have this concept that work defines us and we want to work. There very well may be some small percentage that would like to be paid for doing nothing, but 99% or more of this country would rather work for their money. It is about pride, it is about self-worth and to have criminals like DeLay shit on us like that is unacceptable.
Unemployment is not a cushy ride for anyone. It is there to keep things from being catastrophic when you lose a job. In economic times like these it serves a further purpose of keeping a weak economy going as it gives those without a job money for thinks like shelter and food and electricity. That Republicans, in an election year, could talk about it as some kind of program for the lazy should be shocking, but the Dog has long lost his ability to shocked at the callus mendacity of the Republicans.
What does need to be done is to show the voters, who seem to be flirting with the idea of returning these assholes to power, exactly who they are. They do not care for the people of this nation. In the Republican world view if you need any kind of help from the government, whether it is equal opportunity protections, health care or unemployment you are out of luck. This is what they will bring to a Congress they control. We should not let it happen again.
The floor is yours.
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