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Tag: long term unemployed
WATCH: Brutal Attack Ad Hits GOP Senator On Unemployment Benefits

WATCH: Brutal Attack Ad Hits GOP Senator On Unemployment Benefits

Americans United for Change is hitting the airwaves in hopes of pressuring Republicans to extend emergency federal long-term unemployment benefits.

On Wednesday, the liberal 501(c)(4) “dark money” group released a brutal television ad urging Illinoisans to hold Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL) “personally responsible” for the program’s expiration.

“If you are one of the tens of thousands of people in Illinois who recently lost long-term unemployment benefits, you should know that one man is personally responsible, and can get them restored,” the ad’s narrator says.

“Mark Kirk promised he would vote for an extension if his conditions were met, and when he got what he wanted, Kirk still voted against continuing unemployment benefits,” the voiceover continues.

“He is the deciding vote when the Senate votes again in the coming days,” it concludes. “Call Senator Kirk. Tell him you will remember who cost your family this critical economic lifeline when you were laid off and searching for work, but still couldn’t find a job.”

The “promise” mentioned in the ad refers to Senator Kirk’s declaration that he would vote to extend unemployment benefits if Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) agreed to offset the cost with spending cuts elsewhere. Although Reid acquiesced to Kirk’s demand, the Illinois Republican still declined to vote for the extension — which fell one vote short of overcoming a Republican filibuster.

Since then, Democrats have continued to search for the one Republican vote needed to reach the 60-vote threshold needed to pass the bill. Kirk reportedly remains their number-one target.

There is some reason for Senate Democrats — and Americans United for Change — to believe that they could pressure Kirk into switching his vote. Illinois is a reliably blue state that also has the third highest unemployment rate in the nation, at 8.6 percent. According to a recent Public Policy Polling survey, Illinois voters say they’re less likely to vote for Kirk because of his vote against extending the benfits by a 40 to 31 percent margin, which could greatly complicate his 2016 re-election hopes.

Even if Kirk does flip his votes and help the extension pass, it may be a hollow victory for the long-term unemployed. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives remains extremely unlikely to pass any unemployment bill that comes out of the Senate.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Obama Asks Employers, Congress To Help Long-Term Jobless

Obama Asks Employers, Congress To Help Long-Term Jobless

WASHINGTON — Tapping the bully pulpit, President Barack Obama used the White House backdrop Friday to urge American companies — and Congress — to help the nearly 4 million long-term unemployed.

In a White House ceremony, Obama brought out workers who have been jobless for more than half a year to insert real people into a bitter bipartisan debate over the expiration of benefits for the long-term unemployed.

“Folks who have been unemployed the longest often have the toughest time getting back to work,” the president said, highlighting Misty Demars, a mother of two boys who’d never before depended on government benefits. “It’s a cruel Catch-22: The longer you’re unemployed, the more unemployable you may seem.”

According to one study Obama cited, those who’ve been out of work eight months are likely to get called back for interviews only about half as often as those who’ve been out of work one month, even with identical resumes.

“Statistically, the long-term unemployed are oftentimes slightly better educated, in some cases better qualified, than folks who just lost their job,” the president said. “Just because you have been out of work for a while does not mean that you are not a hard worker. Just means you had bad luck or you were in the wrong industry or you lived in a region of the country that’s catching up a little slower than others in the recovery.”

Earlier Friday, the chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, Jason Furman, met with reporters at a breakfast held by The Christian Science Monitor and stressed that there isn’t any one thing that stands out about these long-term jobless workers other than their duration of unemployment.

“To a first approximation, the long-term unemployed look an awful lot like the labor force as a whole,” Furman said. “This is not some especially disadvantaged or less-skilled group.”

Obama spoke in the East Room of the White House, alongside Vice President Joe Biden, after he met with the CEOs of some of the nation’s largest public and private businesses.

He continued to urge Congress to pass benefits for more than 1 million of the nation’s unemployed. Roughly 3 million long-term unemployed still qualify for benefits.

“Last month Congress made that harder by letting unemployment insurance expire for more than a million people,” the president said, adding that 72,000 people a week are now losing their “economic lifeline.”

Obama also announced a $150 million grant competition through the Department of Labor to support public-private partnerships geared toward helping to prepare and place the long-term unemployed in open positions. Applications will be available in February and awards will be made in mid-2014.

More than 300 companies, including 80 of the nation’s largest businesses, have agreed to a new policy spelling out ways they’ll try to recruit and hire the long-term unemployed, the president said. They’ll ensure that advertising doesn’t discourage or discriminate against the unemployed, and they’ll review recruiting procedures, encourage all qualified candidates to apply and share information about hiring the long-term unemployed within their companies and across their supply chains and the business community.

Obama signed a presidential memorandum to ensure that government adopts the same practices.

“The federal government is America’s largest employer. While seeking to employ a talented and productive workforce, it has a responsibility to lead by example,” the memorandum said, spelling out new guidelines for hiring.

In another step to help workers, Furman said, Obama’s fiscal 2015 budget plan will propose expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit, now available for lower-income workers with children, to include lower-income workers without them.

“That is very much a work-oriented approach. It’s very much about increasing the reward for work, and we expect it to have many of the same benefits in terms of participation and (economic) mobility,” Furman said. “That’s what he is going to be out there proposing.”

Companies and organizations that committed to expand efforts to recruit or hire the long-term unemployed include LinkedIn, Skills for America’s Future, National Fund for Workforce Solutions, Skills for Chicagoland’s Future, Per Scholas, Goodwill Industries, JPMorgan Chase, AARP Foundation, Platform to Employment and Pacific Gas & Electric.

AFP Photo/Brendan Smialowski

Shaft The Long-Term Unemployed And The GOP’s Other 2014 New Year’s Resolutions

Shaft The Long-Term Unemployed And The GOP’s Other 2014 New Year’s Resolutions

Right now, Republicans are thrilled with themselves.

In 2013, they prevented both gun safety and immigration reforms, while enjoying the adrenaline rush of holding the economy hostage and actually shutting down the government for 16 days.

And because HealthCare.gov got off to such a craptastic start, they’re currently poised to keep their House majority, which they were able to retain in 2012 even though their nominees received more than a million fewer votes than Democratic candidates.

So what’s this merry band of total bummers planning for 2014? More of the same.

Here are five New Year’s resolutions you can be sure the GOP will do its best to keep.

1. Cut 1.3 million people off unemployment insurance.
Congress has extended unemployment insurance benefits more than a half-dozen times since the 1950s, and it has never cut them off when the long-term unemployment rate was higher than 1.3 percent. It is currently 2.6 percent and Republicans in both chambers are refusing to extend the emergency benefits for the long-term unemployed that first went into effect ion when the Great Recession began, even though George W. Bush extended emergency benefits multiple times. Even in nearly every Republican-held swing district, a majority of the public wants these benefits extended. But the Republican mania to cut the deficit, even though it has been cut in half, continues.

For some Republicans — like Senator Rand Raul (R-KY) — cutting off those who can’t find work when there are two applicants for each open job is doing them a favor. But there’s no evidence that backs up that cruel claim.

2. Deny five million of the hardest-working Americans health insurance.
Medicaid expansion was designed to help those who work but earn too much to qualify for basic Medicaid. This encourages Americans to rise out of poverty and is the closest thing to a “public option” in Obamacare. Thanks to the Supreme Court, states can opt out of the program — even though the government covers 100 percent of the costs at first and 90 percent in perpetuity — at any time. And 25 Republican-led states have done just that, leaving nearly five million in a “coverage gap” where they cannot afford any coverage.

They’re doing this knowing they’re denying billions of dollars that would grow their states’ economies, driving up the cost of insurance in their marketplaces and endangering the lives of 27,000 residents in the process.

3. Try to cancel millions of Americans’ health insurance.
Republicans are just as committed to the repeal of the Affordable Care Act now as they were before their failed attempt to defund it by forcing a government shutdown. Any GOP candidate who suggests that we should simply fix the health care law instead of completely ripping its existence from the fabric of history is forced to retract the statement and repent. The problem for Republicans now is that repeal is no longer theoretical. Repeal now means canceling the coverage of the three million young adults on their parents’ plans, the more than three million people who have signed up for Medicaid or the State Children’s Health Insurance Program and the at least one million people who have selected paid private plans through the health care exchanges.
Savvy Republicans who recognize this may not be the smartest move could simply try to repeal the individual mandate, the least popular part of the law. Then they’ll be arguing to raise the rates of millions of Americans by as much as 27 percent. while leaving millions more uninsured.

4. Continue to demand cuts to Social Security and Medicare benefits without asking the rich or corporations to give up any tax breaks.
There’s a simple way to solve the Social Security “crisis.” First, admit that there isn’t a crisis. The program is fully funded for decades (and would be funded even longer if we passed immigration reform). Then either raise the cap on the payroll tax or tax millionaires slightly more to keep America’s greatest poverty-reducing program funded forever.

Medicare is a bit more complex.

President Obama has proposed reforms to the program, which would instantly be more viable with simple progressive fixes like negotiating for drugs the way the Veterans Administration does for its health care plan. But making cuts to Medicare benefits right now would be reckless given that the reforms to the program in the Affordable Care Act have shrunk the growth of costs over the past year to zero percent — yes, zero. If this trend continues, we’ll have essentially eliminated our entire long-term debt problem. Still, many Republicans demand cuts to benefits, asking America’s seniors to pay more while refusing to give up the massive tax breaks we give to millionaire investors, owners of second homes and corporations that offshore jobs.

The budget deal forged at the end of the year will likely delay any cuts for two years. But you can be sure that Republican candidates for Congress will campaign for “entitlement cuts” in 2014. And instead of asking the richest to pay more, most will be touting “tax reform” that will ask them to pay even less.

5. Show up for work even less often than they did in 2013.
The House of Representatives was only in session for 126 days in 2013, leading to the least productive American Congress in recorded history. How will the Republican leadership top itself in 2014? By working even less.

Just 113 days of work await members of the House in 2014, a reduction of about 9 percent, which is coincidentally nearly identical to Congress’ approval rating.

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

Obama Jobs Plan To Target Long-Term Unemployed

The six million Americans who have been jobless for half-a-year or longer are the intended beneficiaries of President Obama’s new jobs push this fall, according to reports. One program the White House is expected to plug is the Georgia Works initiative, where those not working collect unemployment benefits while training at local businesses in hopes of landing a real position:

The 44% of the unemployed who have been out of work for six months or more are of special concern. Economists fear their detachment from the workforce will prevent them from returning to work even after the economy recovers.

Under the Georgia Works program, workers continue to collect unemployment benefits, plus a small stipend to cover transportation and other expenses. After eight weeks of training, the company may hire the person, or not. It can amount to a free tryout.

The president called it a “smart program” at a town-hall meeting last week in Atkinson, Ill. “You’re essentially earning a salary and getting your foot in the door into that company,” he said.

The concept resembles welfare-to-work programs of the 1990s, where welfare recipients were encouraged and in some cases required to work in exchange for benefits.

Then, the economy was strong. Today, free training might offer little incentive to businesses that already have many well-qualified applicants and don’t necessarily see the need to add workers, said Lawrence Katz, a labor economist at Harvard University. He added that while Georgia Works appears to have had success, it hasn’t been rigorously evaluated by researchers.

“If we had more rapid job growth, this would be a very good way of getting employers to take extra chances on people,” said Mr. Katz. Still, he said the program could be successful depending on how it is designed.

Michael Thurmond, the former Georgia labor commissioner who created the program, claims 33 states have inquired into how it works.

“Employers are so risk-averse now, and because profit margins are so thin, the biggest mistake you can make is to make a bad hiring decision. This reduces the risk and lowers the cost of hiring new workers,” he said.

Jared Bernstein, former chief economist for Vice President Joe Biden and White House economic advisor, said on Tuesday the program could be good for the long-term unemployed, but wouldn’t move the needle on the poor jobs outlook.

“The biggest problem we have right now is job creation. This program doesn’t scratch that itch at all. It is surely the case that some of the long-term unemployed could benefit from retraining. But remember, if you provide someone with retraining and no job, they’re essentially all dressed up with nowhere to go.”

“A better idea would be a true wage subsidy. This is something that worked pretty well under the Recovery Act. Under Temporary Assistance For Needy Families (TANF), there was a really quite effective wage subsidy program where the Recovery Act paid a significant portion of workers’ wages but employers had to have some skin in the game. That’s important; under Georgia Works, employers don’t have to contribute anything to get folks at their worksites. It could easily be abused and it’s very important to prevent that. What you don’t want to do is provide essentially free labor that’s not under the rules of the Fair Labor Standards Act and, if done the wrong way, that could happen here. It’s got to have have some oversight.”