Lawmakers Cut Deal to Help Unemployed, While Keeping Stereotypes of Jobless Alive [View all]

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http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/12750/deal_provides_aid_to_jobless_but_myths_on_uemployment_live_on/

Federal unemployment benefits—and the jobless families relying upon them for survival—have long been the subject of all-out attacks by Republicans, typified by House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) remark, “The safety net should not become a hammock.”

The war of words has been backed up by a landslide of legislative proposals to make the lives of the jobless harder—for example, a proposed February 29 cut-off of extended unemployment benefits that would hit about 2 million jobless workers and their families.

Republicans threatened the cut-off unless Democrats in Congress buckled and accepted a set of onerous new conditions—detailed below—for receiving unemployment benefits.
However, as of Tuesday night a House-Senate conference committee reached a tenative deal under which Democrats and Republicans agreed to extend unemployment benefits to 75 weeks, maintain the payroll tax reduction (worth about $40 a week to a typical worker) and create higher Medicare payments to doctors being underpaid by the system.

Republicans have long attempted to isolate the unemployment-benefits extension so that they could inject a set of new rules stigmatizing the jobless while reducing their eligibility for extended federal benefits. This comes at a time when numerous states have cut their share of unemployment insurance to reduce budget shortfalls.


House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) at a news conference in December 2011. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)