“The Republicans Do Not Care About the Unemployed in This Country”

[Joanne98]

Eight hundred thousand American families began to lose their unemployment benefits Wednesday morning, after Republican senators blocked an emergency move to continue providing aid to jobless Americans.

Even supposedly moderate Republicans, such as Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown, who had been a critical swing vote in favor of extending benefits, refused to go along this time. More worried about procedure than the fact that the United States has the highest long-term unemployment rate since numbers began to be tracked in the 1940s, Brown chirped: "It's not the way to do business in the United States Senate, and if it is it needs to change.”

The problem is that, as Brown and other Republicans in the Senate prattle on about how to “do business,” millions of Americans are being left with no option at a time when the economy remains stalled. Indeed, cutting the benefits actually undermines economic renewal, as no federal spending circulates more quickly and fully into the economy than that allocated for jobless benefits.

Congressman Jim McDermott, the Washington Democrat who chairs the House Ways and Means Subcommittee that deals with income security, says, “The Republicans do not care.”

McDermott, who proposed the extension of the benefits, was furious. In a round of interviews, including a particularly passionate one with MSNBC’s Ed Schultz.

“There’s nothing on the table except: ‘Take care of the rich.’ That’s what their first priority is. It’s their second priority. It’s their third priority. And it’s their fourth priority. They do not care about the unemployed in this country.”

http://www.thenation.com/blog/156763/%E2%80%9C-republicans-do-not-care-about-unemployed-country%E2%80%9D

[FSogol]

1. True. Repeat often. K & R. n/t

[Andy823]

2. Good for McDermott!

I have always like Jim, even though he is not my rep in the house, he speaks for the people! Every democrat in congress needs to get out on the TV shows and say the same damned thing, and force the republicans to explain their actions! They think they can back the president and congress into a corner and force them to do their will, well I think the president and congress, need to knock them on their ass and show them that they are NOT in charge, and they won't be in charge the nest two years! Force their hand and make them show their true colors and show just who it is that have bought and paid for their votes!

[Ozymanithrax]

3. This is correct, though a bit limited...

Republican/Conservative ideology teaches that poverty is the choice of the weak minded, lazy, and stupid. That ideology maintains that people go on unemployment because they are lazy and just want to lay around and collect free money. If they were hungry, they would find a job.

This belief set was common and widespread before the early 50's. The full conversion to consumerism showed that, if making good wages, people would spend it on stuff and drive the economy. But, the rise of globalism and the flight of manufacturing to cheap labor countries to reduce costs and increase profits along with the rise of a global class of consulmers has caused this belief roar back into favor among conservatives and the affluent as we return to the second age of Social Darwinism.

It isn't just the unemployed they don't care about. They really believe in the social darwinst principal, of survivial of the fitest where the fittest are the affluent and wealthy and the proof of that is they have more money.