More than 6.5 million Americans of the 13.2 million
officially out of work are receiving unemployment benefits under a state-federal program originating 75 years ago as part of the New Deal Republicans hated then and have not stopped hating or trying to undermine ever since.
Even though the percentage of jobless Americans receiving regular or extended benefits has plunged from 75 percent to 48 percent in the past 18 months, Republicans are now eager to chop even more out-of-work people off the benefits roster. This, they say, will spur those they consider to be layabouts to get back into the job market. Never mind that there is only one job for every four Americans seeking one.
The GOP proposal could cut benefits that—in states with the highest jobless rates—now last as long as 99 weeks, to 59 weeks as early as summer. That would yank hundreds of thousands off the roles immediately and mean that hundreds of thousands of others would exhaust their benefits much sooner. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) said Thursday:
“Most Americans feel that unemployment insurance should be somewhere between 26 and 99 weeks, and we're looking at policies that will end up with an employment plan somewhere in that range.”
Reducing the number of weeks workers can get benefits doesn’t sit well with House Democrats, however, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said she can't support a cut that large next year. ...
Ways and Means Committee ranking member Sandy Levin (D-Mich.) [said],
“They are following a path of blaming victims of the economic downturn,” he said. “I can only hope that when Republicans go home this weekend they will talk with unemployed Americans and begin to understand the exceptionally challenging circumstances they face.”
Begin to understand, Congressman? Puhleez. They get it. They just don't care. And Christmas season or not, they aren't going to start now. Republicans have already held the extension of federal unemployment benefits hostage more than once to extract tax cuts and other concessions. And they're not just after extended benefits in this extended economic crisis.
At the state level, where 26 weeks of benefits have been standard for five decades, the GOP is wielding the ax as well. In Florida, benefits for 2012 will be capped at 23 weeks and could drop as low as 12 weeks depending on the unemployment rate. Michigan, Missouri and South Carolina have cut unemployment to 20 weeks. In Arkansas and Illinois, benefits have been reduced to 25 weeks.
Some states have also reduced the amount in each benefits check. For instance, out-of-work Indianans will see a drop in their average check from $283 to $220 next year. The excuse in every case is that the states and businesses taxed for unemployment benefits can't afford to continue joblessness has continued for so long.
The condescending message to the unemployed of this chopping of the already shredded safety net? Get a job, slacker.
There's no doubt the state-federal partnership that makes up the unemployment insurance program needs revamping. For one thing, there are those workers who lose their jobs but aren't eligible at all for compensation. And there is the ever-present fact that those official unemployment statistics, now at 8.6 percent, are an undercount of the real numbers of the jobless, with many who want work having given up looking in despair and falling out the statisticians' sight.
There are other models than the GOP austerity version for assisting the jobless. Denmark's, for instance.
There, as Robert Kuttner has written:
This idea [of an active labor-market strategy] is not just to cultivate a broadly educated population but to subsidize the customized training of workers for emergent technologies, as well as their living expenses so that they can afford to train—and do so at a scale to make a difference. This strategy is combined with a national commitment that there shall be no bad jobs; and that every job shall pay a true living wage, with the productivity to justify it. ...
The Danes call their model "flexicurity"—great labor-market flexibility combined with superb worker security. If that sounds lie an oxymoron, the rest of the Danish model defies the usual economic categories and manages to square several other circles. ...
What makes the flexicurity model both attractive to workers and dynamic for society are six key features: full employment; strong unions recognized as social partners; fairly equal wages among different sectors, so that a shift from manufacturing to service-sector work does not typically entail a pay cut; employer freedom to hire and fire as necessary; a comprehensive income floor; and a set of labor-market programs that spend an astonishing 4.5 percent of Danish GDP on programs such as transitional unemployment assistance, wage subsidies, and highly customized retraining. In return for such spending, the unions actively support both employer flexibility and a set of tough rules to weed out welfare chiselers; workers are understood to have duties as well as rights.
I can hear the peanut gallery guffaws. Ewwwwwwww. How could we possibly look there for anything positive? They're practically commies.
It's true, as I have written previously, Denmark isn't America. A small, homogeneous Scandinavian nation obviously has different issues than a diverse America with nearly 60 times the Danish population.
But if progressives want policies that amount to more than triage during every recession, and policies that are more than GOP-Lite stopgaps, we should be inventing an American version of an active-labor market policy that prevents so many people being jammed through the spirit-killing, economy-wrecking wringer of long-term unemployment. That would be a real jobs program.
