Editorial: GOP wants benefits for wealthy, not jobless

Editorial: GOP wants benefits for wealthy, not jobless
Copyright by The Chicago Sun Times
June 28, 2010
http://www.suntimes.com/news/commentary/2438950,CST-EDT-edit28a.article


The economy is still in the dumps. An election is around the corner. People are hurting bad.

You'd think extending unemployment benefits for millions of jobless workers for another six months would be a no-brainer for Congress.

Instead, the extension was killed Friday in the Senate by Republicans who argued that it, along with tax provisions included in the package, would have added $33 billion to the federal deficit.

Earlier this month, the GOP used the same argument to justify stripping $24 billion for increased Medicaid funding.

As we said then, lawmakers are absolutely right to want to control deficit spending. But the more pressing need right now is for continued economic stimulus.

That's a lesson as old as 1937, when President Franklin Roosevelt tried to trim the deficit in the midst of the Great Depression and made bad times worse.

We fear the same will happen if Congress fails to restore unemployment benefits to 1.2 million people whose emergency jobless benefits expired June 2. By the end of the year, more than 2 million people will have lost their benefits.

Republicans' resistance to deficit spending is especially offensive considering how little concern they show about generating tax revenue to slow or reduce the deficit. On the contrary, the GOP just can't seem to wait to reduce -- or kill -- an estate tax on the wealthiest Americans when a one-year lapse on the tax ends next year.

On Friday, Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) raised the possibility that Republicans might play ball if the extension on unemployment benefits were presented as a stand-alone bill without the tax provisions.

In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Snowe rightly noted that "unemployment checks inject money directly into the economy, invariably assisting in the economic recovery we all agree must be accelerated."

A spokesman for Reid, however, said Snowe's letter wouldn't change his decision to abandon all efforts to extend unemployment benefits and move on to other matters.

We hope Reid will reconsider. On this one, he's on the right side of history and ordinary people.

Millions of Americans are unemployed through no fault of their own during the worst economic times in generations. All they're looking for is for a little more help in weathering the storm -- something for the groceries and the mortgage.

Meanwhile the GOP, while stiff-arming ordinary Americans, runs to the defense of the wealthiest Americans and -- for that matter -- an international oil company responsible for destroying the economy and environment of the Gulf.

Why are so many Republicans so outraged that President Obama has compelled -- not forced -- BP to set aside money for legitimate claims?

Extending federal jobless benefits won't free up a check from a lobbyist. It's just the decent thing to do.