Welfare or Unemployment Benefits?

This corner has been quiet for several weeks as I sit on the sidelines and view the utterly incomprehensible and inept decisions and statements made every day by the Administration. This is covered daily by both sides of the blogosphere and the cable network adversaries. If I were making a living at this, there would be enough grist to write an article every day. So why the silence?

Well, first of all I don’t want to sound like a right wing nut, or another Obama basher. Frankly, there is nothing I could write in recent weeks that would give this President a fair shake and, therefore, I would be just another member of the chorus. Poor leadership and an uncontrolled propensity for deception, political maneuvering, race baiting, contradictions, and hypocrisy, characterize this man from the Gulf oil spill, to foreign policy, national security, and a worsening economy.

To make matters worse, early this week he paraded out three unemployed people in the Rose Garden to announce another “great accomplishment”, the eighth extension of the unemployment benefits program since the recession began. He also criticized those “evil” Republicans who opposed this great achievement and attempted to block it because they merely wanted to offset the cost ($30B) by cutting some expenditures or taking it out of unspent TARP or Stimulus monies. What a terrible idea! Why this is a mere drop in the bucket, what’s $30B to this year’s $1.4 trillion deficit?

Tell me,at what point does 2 years of unemployment benefits become a welfare program? When will these extensions run out? This exercise is a testament to a failed Stimulus package and a contradiction to the “summer of recovery” touted by our totally clueless Vice President. A record 6.7 million Americans have been out of work for at least 6 months, that’s 45.5% of the total jobless, close to the highest ever recorded. The number was 23.4% in February, 2009. How’s that for recovery?

These results confrm several recent studies which conclude that extended unemployment benefits actually raises unemployment rates. If you pay people not to work, they tend to delay looking or get more selective and pass up jobs to wait for the right one, which never comes along. None of us want to deprive our citizens of support in times like this, but if you’re going to extend benefits you ought to make it deficit neutral because the action will stimulate unemployment rather than the economy.

So the beat goes on and this President, his economic advisors, and this bumbling Congress, continue to make the wrong moves that run counter to getting us out of this rut. I keep watching, trying to say something positive about this Administration, and counting the days until November.