2010 Unemployment Extensions - is America Turning Against the Unemployed?

2010 Unemployment Extensions - With the argument over UI Benefits Extensions going on in the House and Senate for months now, it seems more employed Americans are beginning to take notice. And many now seem to think it time to end the seemingly perpetual extensions for their jobless neighbors.

For nearly a year and a half the main stream media had gone mute over the worsening plight of the unemployed, not wanting to shine a light on their favored President's failed economic policies.

But as the loggerhead in the Senate over UI Extensions and increasing cries from the millions of jobless have escalated, news has begun to get out about exactly how many Americans are unemployed and just how long so many have been receiving unemployment benefits checks from the government.

For those with jobs, it can be very hard to understand. Some don't believe that the unemployed are really trying to get another job, enjoying living lazy on the government dole. Some don't believe the unemployed could possibly be surviving on their unemployment checks, but that they must be cheating the system, enjoying only having to work part time and receiving their real income "under the table" while receiving unemployment benefit checks on top of it.

Others simply think that 99 weeks is plenty of time to find another job. This last is not an unreasonable assumption from their vantage point. They are not in the trenches with the jobless, competing for every scrap of a job with three to five hundred other applicants, being told we are either under-qualified or over-qualified, that the employer won't hire us because we're unemployed, or because we were employed a little too long ago or because they just know we'll leave as soon as a better job comes along (which, of course, is absolutely true). These responses come only if we even get as far as a conversation with an employer, which for me, at least, hasn't even happened in four or five months.

The employed also don't understand that there really are not more jobs out there now for us to apply to. While the media and the government reports job creation, in my experience there seem to be fewer and fewer I can even try for every month. Working Americans also don't have to think about things like the fact that employers are less inclined to hire someone over 50 who will likely cost more in sick leave and medical coverage and could sooner wind up on disability or taking retirement. They don't understand that there may have been a few thousand "shovel ready" temp jobs created by the President's bogus "stimulus" bill, but that, for me, an almost 50 year old soccer mom, and the millions like me - Well, let's just say my jack hammering skills are more than a little suspect.

Still I can't fault my employed neighbors for growing wearing of seeing their tax dollars going to me and to others who are not working. They only know that they have to get up to their alarm clocks early every morning to go off to their nine to fives and that I don't. They probably haven't thought about the fact that I have usually been up most of the night already, worrying. They probably haven't thought that I actually work 14-16 hours every day either searching for jobs that I can try to convince the employer I can somehow do or doing my best to find other ways to make money - Trying to start my own businesses ... Trying to write enough to make a few dollars on the web ... Selling my possessions ... Learning to grow my own food ... Swallowing my pride and begging for help.

But no, even if they don't understand, I don't fault my unemployed friends for resenting having to work and pay taxes which they assume goes to paying us, the unemployed, while we don't hold a regular job.

They may not understand, as I have explained, that most of us are trying very hard to find jobs and that we much rather be among their ranks.

They may also not understand that they, too, are better off if we are at least receiving unemployment benefits so we don't wind up on the street and on other much more permanent forms of government assistance; so we don't wind up losing our homes to foreclosure and lowering their property values further; so we continue to put money into the economy, buying groceries and paying our utilities and our rent and helping to keep them in their jobs.

The truth is, I suspect, that whether they understand any of these things or not, many working Americans may just be downright afraid that they could all soon wind up just like us. Many have become aware, in spite of the Administration's and the Democrat's constant propaganda about it all being Bush's and the Republicans' fault, that this President and this Congress have quadrupled the deficit over just the past 17 months, making Bush's little eight year accumulation look like pocket change. They know that the government simply cannot go on printing money like this and that that debt is going to have to be paid. And many are becoming aware that the Democrats have a plan to pay for it.

Many of the employed know that, come January, Obama and the Democrats are already planning the largest tax increase in U.S. History, which will kill hundreds of thousands more jobs and will send hundreds of thousands more overseas.

They know that this government is hot to pass "Cap and Trade" legislation (as per Obama's pre-election promise to put whole industries into bankruptcy), a gargantuan, punitive tax on all American energy sources, more legislation that will kill more jobs, make us even more dependent on foreign oil and drive prices for gas, electricity, heating oil and every business dependent on them through the roof.

They are becoming aware that Obamacare taxes and punitive fees begin to kick in in the coming months and years and will destroy more jobs as insurers and medical suppliers are put out of business and employers find it too expensive to hire more people that they'll be required to cover the Obama way.

And they know that this administration is entertaining all sorts of ways to take from both the employed and the unemployed, even including a possible value added tax (VAT) on virtually everything by the federal government, all to pay for massive social re-engineering programs.

The working have good reason to be concerned and good reason to object to spending one more red cent on ANYTHING until they see this ship turning away from the falls that Obama has steered it toward. This is why I believe, if they really think it through, the employed have had enough of unemployment benefits extensions. It is not that they are uncaring or unsympathetic. They are scared. And they have simply had enough of unsustainable and economically disastrous deficit spending and all it threatens to take from them with absolutely no benefit to them or the economy or to job creation that anyone can honestly see.

Fortunately, the Republicans in the House and Senate have not turned against the unemployed. Contrary to what the leftist media and the floundering, vote-hungry Democrats continue to report, the Republicans have not voted against unemployment extensions - they have voted against adding any more to the deficit and doing this nation and its economy any more harm, just as thinking and concerned Americans - employed and unemployed - demand.

If the Democrats really want to pass unemployment extensions, all they have to do is trim a little here and there from their self-serving spending and the Republicans are all on board. (Read here, here and here.)

As for the rest of employed America - It is doubtful most would begrudge us, the unemployed, our seat in the unemployment extension lifeboat, if they weren't already terrified watching the whole ship heading for the falls.

Source:

http://www.uschron.com/some-americans-against-an-unemployment-extension/111782/