Tag: extending unemployment benefits
End Poverty? Reduce Inequality? What Republicans Must Do First

End Poverty? Reduce Inequality? What Republicans Must Do First

The latest fad among would-be Republican presidential contenders is to proclaim their deep commitment to fighting poverty and inequality – which sounds as plausible as a promise by McDonald’s to abolish greasy food.

Decades of abuse of the nation’s poor and working families, which reached a crescendo in Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” campaign in 2012, hasn’t left much space for Republicans to follow the public morality of Pope Francis. Yet for the moment at least, they seem to think that they must.

They also seem to believe that reminiscing about bread-bag overshoes, like Senator Joni Ernst, or jeering the wealth of the Clintons, like RNC chair Reince Priebus, will somehow transform them into Franciscan populists. But such delusional ploys only make them look ridiculous.

So in the gracious spirit of the pontiff, who told us that even atheists can be saved, let’s help our Republican brothers and sisters.

Actually, there is a very easy way for people like Romney, his former running mate Rep. Paul Ryan, Gov. Chris Christie, Senator Marco Rubio, Rick Santorum, and every kindred right-wing politician to start reforming themselves. First, they just have to stop doing almost everything they’ve done for the past 10 or 20 years.

Just stop.

Stop smooching the behind of every predatory billionaire who shows up with an open checkbook and a loud opinion, from the Koch brothers and Paul Singer to Jerry Jones and Sheldon Adelson.

Stop pretending that the best way to reduce inequality – or poverty – is to lavish more trillions of tax breaks on those very same billionaires, as the infamously plutocratic Ryan budget would. Do they really think every blustering donor at the very top of the income scale needs another million dollars? Stop defending capital gains loopholes, offshore accounts, and all the other scams that rig the game for the likes of Romney.

Stop snatching bread from the mouths of small children and their mothers, with gratuitous cuts to the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance and WIC programs, as if that would appreciably reduce the federal deficit — or be worth the moral cost even if it did. The Ryan budget proposes to reduce food stamps by 20 percent or more, which would mean either terminating benefits for millions or reducing benefits below their already meager level. (It would be interesting to see how the Wisconsin Republican and bodybuilder got by on $1.40 per meal.)

Stop ripping up unemployment checks for families whose lack of remunerative work Republicans have always blamed on Barack Obama, not them. Unemployment insurance kept at least 2.5 million Americans, including hundreds of thousands of kids, above the poverty line in recent years. If joblessness truly isn’t the workers’ fault, why decimate them and their children?

Stop rejecting Medicaid, the literal lifeline for poor Americans who have no other health coverage. And stop “repealing” the Affordable Care Act, whose actual repeal would cruelly end coverage for tens of millions of Americans – and in some cases, end their lives.

Stop undermining Medicare and Social Security, the two most successful anti-poverty programs in the nation’s history, which have vastly reduced the impoverishment and early mortality of elderly Americans. And stop telling voters that the endless attempts to cut, privatize, block grant, and otherwise diminish those programs is how you intend to “save” them.

Stop legislating cutbacks in Pell Grants, federal student loans, and other assistance to young people from modest backgrounds — whose educational advancement lifts them toward greater financial security and independence. Anyone who honestly cares about reducing inequality supports aid for higher education.

And please stop mouthing so much meaningless, self-flattering rhetoric on this vital issue — as Romney did when he assured the Republican National Committee that “Republican principles” will “break the cycle of poverty.”

Sorry, but that hasn’t been true under any Republican administration for the past hundred years. Instead, Republicans should consider the unpleasant but undeniable fact that unemployment and poverty have increased every time a president of their party occupied the White House.

Then, by all means, they should get back to us with those “conservative” plans to end poverty. Someone might even believe it.

Poll: Huge Majority Favor Extending Unemployment Benefits

Poll: Huge Majority Favor Extending Unemployment Benefits

Congressional Republicans could face an electoral backlash if they fail to renew Emergency Unemployment Compensation, according to a Hart Research Associates poll released Thursday.

The poll, which was conducted on behalf of the National Employment Law Project, finds that 55 percent of American voters believe Congress should maintain federal unemployment benefits. Just 34 percent believe they should cut the program.

The poll also suggests that Republicans could face serious political problems in 2014 if they block an extension of the benefits, which they fought to keep out of the budget deal that President Obama signed into law on Thursday—55 percent of respondents with a history of voting in off-year elections support an extension, while just 35 percent oppose them. Furthermore, 39 percent of those surveyed say they are less likely to vote for a member of Congress who votes to cut off unemployment benefits, while just 21 percent say such a vote would make them more likely to support their incumbent (35 percent say it will not affect their vote).

The GOP should be especially worried by the fact that its base is driving the support for an extension. Seniors — a critical demographic on which the GOP’s hold is already loosening — favor an extension by a 61 to 31 percent margin, greater than any other age group. White voters who did not attend college favor an extension 52 to 37 percent, and white women favor extending benefits 53 to 33 percent.

The Hart Research survey echoes the results of a recent Public Policy Polling poll, which also found that House Republicans could face an electoral backlash for blocking an extension.

Republicans will soon have an opportunity to engage with the issue head-on. Although the benefits will expire for 1.3 million Americans on December 28, Senators Dean Heller (R-NV) and Jack Reed (D-RI) have introduced a bill that would extend them for three months. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has promised to bring the bill up for a vote no later than January 7, and the White House has signaled that the president will sign it if it reaches his desk.

If Republicans block the extension in the Senate or, more likely, in the House of Representatives, then they will hand Democrats a golden political opportunity. Given that Democrats are already telegraphing their plans to make inequality a central theme of their 2014 pitch, Republicans could come to regret living up to the caricature of a party that only cares for the rich.

More importantly, refusing to extend unemployment benefits would cast a blow against the tepid economic recovery. According to the White House Council of Economic Advisers, failing to extend unemployment benefits could cost 240,000 jobs in 2014, while reducing GDP by 0.2 to 0.4 percent.

AFP Photo/Saul Loeb