Ah, another Congressional recess without addressing the unemployment benefits crisis. According to the Huffington Post’s count, it’s now been 37 days since the impending specter of that final benefit check was hung over the collective heads of the millions of unemployed Americans. I hate to say it, but it doesn’t look like it will be resolved any time soon. Of all the issues dotting the political landscape these days, the sad tale of the fate of the unemployed is perhaps the one that affects the most people and is also one of the most pressing.
It may not be as flashy an issue as health care reform, or more recently the Arizona law that was officially challenged by the Obama Administration this week, but at its core, the unemployment issue needs to be dealt with or the economic recovery will not happen for a while at least. With our economy based so heavily on consumer spending, we cannot recover until the unemployment problem is addressed. Of course, as Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman points out in his New York Times editorial, there’s a simple catch-22, a version of the classic “chicken or the egg” question: we can’t have much of an improvement in consumer spending until unemployment is addressed, but many companies won’t feel like hiring again until there are signs that consumer spending is rebounding. I believe that at the core, unemployment benefits are the key to breaking into this loop; by giving the unemployed a lifeline and a bit of cash they can use to buy groceries, pay bills, and so on, they are able to put money back into the system and contribute to a rebound in spending which should hopefully lead to more job openings. Even beyond that, lawmakers are playing with fire by not renewing the unemployment benefits.
Hidden Social Costs to the End of Benefits
By not renewing the benefits, lawmakers are risking more than a political backlash in the midterm elections. Mark my words, if the benefits are not renewed, in a matter of months or a year or so we will see a resurgent housing crisis and worse. If the nation’s unemployed are forced to live without benefits, unless the jobs picture improves- and improves fast- we will see a great strain on social welfare organizations; homeless shelters, food banks, and the like will all be forced to provide their services to an increasingly needy and desperate population.
News flash to the members of Congress who seem to have a careless attitude toward money: at the individual level, money is not limitless, as it often appears to be at the Federal level. When it runs out, it runs out, and honestly, when it runs out, people are screwed. History tells us what happens when people get to be that desperate…
Unfortunately, it appears as though there is little hope for any sort of relief this year. There is a bill in the Senate that would restore the benefits, at least partially, but it has run into the reality of the new reluctance to spend in Congress. Just when we should be spending more to prevent a “double dip” recession, the words “spend” and “stimulus” become the latest dirty words in Congress. That’s what the Republicans want you to believe; the reality is something worse. Much worse.
Heck, according to the Huffington Post, the renewal of unemployment benefits won’t even add that much to the deficit. In fact, several organizations most concerned with the deficit, including prominent fiscal conservatives, agree on that fact and even urge the passage of the renewal measure because of its beneficial effect on the economy. Thus, one thing is crystal clear to me, and should be to every American: the Republican Party does not care about the unemployed.
For the moment at least, it seems as if Congressional Republicans are only interested in scoring political points with a narrow segment of the base. This kind of childish behavior is something that needs to stop, and there’s one way for the message to be sent. While the Republicans in Congress are largely responsible for this behavior, this time, it was Senator Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska) that was effectively responsible for stalling the unemployment benefits. Were it not for his ‘no’ vote on the measure before the Independence Day recess, the benefits could have started flowing again by now.
As I stated in an earlier post, the Democrats in Congress need to stand up to an opposition party that would seem to be for bringing this country down if it would get them a few more high marks from their base. The GOP members of Congress are certainly entitled to their opinions, but honestly, if they are going to play the game of steadfast, blanket opposition to anything that hits the floor, the Democrats need to be playing the same game. It isn’t pretty, I know, but if we’re going to have this sort of behavior, the Democrats need to try and muscle through the rest of their agenda by any legitimate tactic available to them.
The Playing With Fire by The New Age of Politics, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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