Getting the Little People Back on Their Feet
News reports today are doing sound bites on the Republicans’ refusal to extend unemployment benefits for about 2 million people about to lose them. The GOPpers say they are sympathetic; but, that any money spent on these long-term unemployed must come from some other current recipients of government largesse. (That’s not exactly how they phrased it.) In short, no borrowing says Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown, it has to come from the “savings account” of current spending not the “credit card” of deficit spending.
Sounds good – good sound bite.
At the same time, the Republicans are holding firm to their conviction that rich people deserve equal protection when it comes to the Bush tax cuts; after all they are the engine of economic recovery, the investors that must be motivated to jump start our return to greatness. They neglect to say that maintaining the tax cuts requires the government to use the “credit card” of continuing deficit spending. I’m not hearing any clamor to cut government spending from the “savings account” to match the amount of taxes that won’t be collected.
I suppose they have a point, Wall Street bonus babies were in the news last week with stories about how they were going to spend their seven figure year end checks. I especially liked the one about hiring a midget for a buddy’s bachelor party. It’s good to see that some little people are reaping the benefit of Republican economic policy.
2 comments:
If we make the rich even richer, they might hire us to mow their lawns. That sounds like the basis for a simply marvelous economy.
I wonder -frequently -if any of our astute politicians has ever been on the receiving end of unemployment? If so, the bounties of their current lifestyle has apparently overshadowed any memory of how difficult it can be to try to juggle expenses when one's income level has been cut back by at least a third of what it was prior to the unemployment checks coming in. I also wonder if there is any government program that requires many just good solid common sense to be set up and administered that these elected wonder people can't manage to somehow screw it up and make thing/life just a tad bit more difficult for the other guy. I do believe that any elected official who HAD a good dose of common sense to start with found it all flew out the window once they landed in either Washington or their own state capitol (if they held state office before moving upward bound!
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