GOP’s ulterior motive on unemployment: Economic sabotage?

[DonViejo]

There's more to Republican opposition to extending unemployment benefits than conservative principles

BRIAN BEUTLER

Congress returns from the holidays in earnest today, more than a week after allowing emergency unemployment compensation to lapse for millions of jobless Americans, which raises the critical question of what lies behind the GOP’s reluctance to do the obviously correct thing.

Senate Democrats hope just a handful of Republicans will break away from the opposition later today, to pass legislation that would renew the lapsed benefits, and pressure John Boehner to follow suit, but they’re having a hard time finding the votes.

What gives?

It’s tempting to attribute the GOP’s skittishness to the right’s broader aversion to subsidizing poor people, but I don’t think that’s what’s going on here. At least not entirely.

Congress has never cut off these benefits when unemployment has been as high as it is right now, and the long-term unemployed and the chronically poor aren’t equivalent populations. So there’s got to be more going on than just conservative indifference.

more
http://www.salon.com/2014/01/06/gops_ulterior_motive_on_unemployment_economic_sabotage/

[lastlib]

1. I'm absolutely convinced that there's economic sabotage afoot.....

...the Repugs want nothing more than to torpedo Obama's economy to try to make him and the Democrats look bad to the uninformed voters. That has been their plan since Jan. 2009. They don't care how many millions of people hurt so they can try to ruin one black man.

[Cosmocat]

2. Absolutely

pretty clear, too.

Why the people in this country don't punish them for it is beyond me.

[apnu]

4. They're just figuring this out now?

By my clock its been going on since election night, November 4th 2008.

[hollowdweller]

3. I've had no doubt about that since day one.

I mean a slight economic downturn after 9/11 warranted a huge tax cut that ran up the deficit? Yet we can't afford anything to get us out of this economic crisis?

What amazes me is despite their success Obama won a second term. I think the voters know it to a degree.

[sendero]

5. I realize it might be difficult.....

.. but Obama needs to find a way to end-run Congress on this. I don't know what it would be, but where there is a will there is a way.

[UCmeNdc]

6. This is definitely the motivation for the GOP's push to stop unemployment payments

Slow down economic activity in the US economy