Jobs & Justice

Record Numbers Of Unemployed Just Giving Up

Charles McMillion — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 13:30:21 -0400

Wednesday’s Bureau of Labor Statistics report on the labor market in every U.S. metro area in June again highlights the effects of long-standing, terrible labor market conditions and the unprecedented numbers of people who are giving up active job search.

Those who stop actively seeking employment are not counted in the official “unemployment” rate. The labor force includes all those who say they are working or actively looking for work. Reflecting the record decline of 1,018,000 people that left the total U.S. labor force over the past year (June/June) and the record net two-year decline of 586,000 people, 40 of the 50 states and 216 of 373 metropolitan areas experienced labor force declines year over year to June.

These increasingly uncounted unemployed are the arithmetic reason that the official BLS national “unemployment” rate, currently 9.5%, is unchanged year over year despite the fact that BLS also reports 919,000 FEWER people employed in June 2010 than in June 2009. (All these data come from the BLS survey of households that provide the unemployment data.)

Of course, the U.S. population also increased by 2.6 million people year over year to June. Eighteen states and 92 metro areas with falling or stable unemployment rates year over year report a loss in employment. This is possible because all had a decline in the number of people counted in their labor force.

For example, the unemployment rate in Lafayette, Indiana fell from 10.6% to 10.2% over the past year and yet it suffered a devastating year over year loss of 7.4% of its employment. This decline in both the unemployment rate and the number of people employed was made possible by the dramatic loss of 7.9% of Lafayette’s labor force as the jobless stopped actively looking for work or left the area.

The unemployment rate in Greenville, S.C., fell from 11.1% in June 2009 to 9.9% in June 2010 even as Greenville lost 1.0% of its employment year over year because 2.3% of Greenville’s unemployed labor force either gave up actively looking for work or moved away.

Racine, Wisc., the site of a recent visit by President Obama, lost 1.2% of its employment year over year, but because its labor force declined by 2.4%, Racine’s official unemployment rate fell from 10.7% in June 2009 to 9.7% in June 2010.

More Than 500,000 Jobs Threatened By Congressional Inaction

Isaiah J. Poole — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 14:41:04 -0400

Two reports released in the past 24 hours paint a dire picture of the consequences of congressional inaction on jobs. In just two sectors of the economy, local government and low-income people in welfare-to-work programs, more than 500,000 jobs could be lost in the coming months if Congress continues to by stymied by right-wing obstruction of jobs spending.

Job losses related to local government cutbacks are documented in a report released today by the National League of Cities, National Association of Counties and the U.S. Conference of Mayors. "Local government job losses in the current and next fiscal years will approach 500,000, with public safety, public works, public health, social services, and parks and recreation hardest hit by the cutbacks," the report said. And for every 10 jobs lost by local governments, an additional three related private-sector jobs are imperiled, the report adds.

Many of these jobs could be saved by the Local Jobs for America Act, legislation that would invest $100 billion into state and local governments to protect the jobs of workers engaged in vital local services as well as create new jobs. But only a provision of the bill that would affect teaching positions has passed the House, and none of the bill's provisions have gotten far in the Senate.

At a news conference on Capitol Hill, Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter and other elected officials spelled out the real-world impact of the failure to approve the Local Jobs for America Act. For Nutter, it meant that on a recent day he found himself in the morning touting a Recovery Act job-creating project in Philadelphia but later that afternoon announcing layoffs of city employees. "The American public is confused by these kinds of actions," he said.

Ilene Lieberman, a Broward County, Fla., commissioner, said that her country government, serving an area where unemployment is 10.1 percent, is slashing jobs and programs to close a $109 million budget gap in a $1.1 billion budget. Some of those service cuts are clearly counterproductive, such as a decision to close public libraries two days a week. "If you need a job and don't have a computer, where are you going to go?" she asked.

Meanwhile, thousands more jobs could be lost if Congress does not reverse course and reauthorize a program that subsidizes jobs for low-income people who might otherwise be on welfare, according to a paper by LaDonna Pavetti at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities that was published Monday.

The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Emergency Fund was created as part of the Recovery Act economic stimulus program. But the program is set to expire on September 30, and the Senate has already rejected one attempt to extend the program.

"States are using funds from the TANF Emergency Fund to provide jobs to individuals least likely to find employment on their own: TANF recipients, the long-term unemployed, and low-income youth. These also are the individuals who are most likely to spend virtually all of the money they earn, thus making this an effective mechanism to stimulate the local economy," Pavetti's paper said.

So far, "officials in the 37 states (including the District of Columbia) operating these jobs programs estimate that by September, they will have placed more than 240,000 unemployed parents and their teenage children in subsidized jobs funded in whole or in part by the fund," the paper said. If Congress does not act to continue the program, "tens of thousands of individuals participating in the programs will lose their jobs when the programs close."

The irony of this particular program cut is that, as Arthur Delaney notes in a Huffington Post story today, the TANF Emergency Fund is an job-creation approach favored by conservatives. But, he reports, Senate Republicans now are not only using the it-will-increase-the-deficit argument but are also saying "it pays poor people not to work and that it represents a backdoor effort to undo welfare reform."

That's right: In the new right-wing Senate lexicon, paying people to work is paying people not to work.

Fortunately, the type of lunacy that seems to have overcome the right in Congress has not taken hold among the masses of unemployed people.

I asked Nutter if he has heard any objections from struggling families in Philadelphia to the idea of the federal government spending more money to stimulate the economy and put people back to work. "Are you serious?" he responded. "People need jobs. They want jobs. They want to get to work, and no one is thinking about [the deficit]. It is a fiction of those who want to have a political debate about something else that has more to do with the election than anything to do with putting Americans back to work."

"This is not a question of the debt," said Rep. Phil Hare, D-Ill., whose district includes Decatur, a community where the unemployment rate was 15 percent in January but has since fallen to just under 11 percent. "We can handle [ending] these tax cuts for the wealthiest people, if we can stop subsidizing corporations for leaving overseas and taking jobs with them, if we stop the hemorrhaging and start investing in our manufacturers, in our cities and the people who work there ... we will be a better nation for it and we will see a terrible price paid years down the road for letting our children down when they need us the absolute most."

High Unemployment And Falling Wages, Or Job Creation And Help For Cities?

Amy Traub — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 10:56:12 -0400

Left to itself, the U.S. economy may not return to its pre-recession rate of unemployment until 2021, says a new study from the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Even under the more optimistic growth assumptions of the Congressional Budget Office, we’ve got five more years of high unemployment coming, as CEPR notes.

If that’s not troubling enough, consider this: millions of jobless Americans means lower wages for those lucky enough to be employed. Median wages rose just 0.8% over the last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, failing to keep up with even the low 1.8% rate of inflation. In real (inflation adjusted) terms, that’s a wage drop. “Excess supply in the labor market — 14.6 million Americans were unemployed as of June — has helped keep wage growth in check,” the Wall Street Journal explains. Or, in the more gleeful terms used by a financial analyst quoted by Bloomberg news last month:

“Companies are getting higher-productivity employees for the same or lower wage rate they were paying a marginal employee. Not only are employees higher skilled, you have a better skill match. You have a more productive and more adaptive labor force.”

That’s great for business – and helps explain the 44% increase in corporate profits this year – but considerably worse news for anyone trying to work for a living. Without more job creation or growing wages, economic recovery doesn’t translate into anything that benefits the vast majority of Americans.

So what’s to be done? It would be easy to move from economic despondency to political despair: although smart job creation measures from Congress could brighten the economic picture considerably, the tremendous difficulty of passing even a six-month extension in bare bones unemployment insurance has convinced many analysts that additional federal job creation measures are off the table. Ezra Klein, however, suggests a glimmer of hope: if the Senate is unwilling to pass a job creation bill based on deficit spending, why not call Republicans’ bluff and try to fund specific job creation measures with tax increases the American people support? It all reminds me of the American Jobs Plan the Economic Policy Institute unveiled last year, which proposes a stock transfer tax to fund a local-level public jobs program, budget relief for city and state governments, and investments in school facilities and transportation infrastructure. Just seeing the fight to pass a visionary plan like that would be enough to dispel some gloom.

Wait 11 Years For A Jobs Recovery? I Don't Think So

Isaiah J. Poole — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 14:14:47 -0400

Two depressing reports today show the depth of today's jobs emergency, both immediately and in the long term. The message that these two reports convey is clear: We are in a deeper hole than much of the rhetoric coming from either end of Pennsylvania Avenue suggests.

One is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and it is a report that some mainstream media headlines like this one is couching as a positive: "Unemployment falls in 39 states in June."

But you don't have to get too far into the story to see its dark side. As is true nationally, the reason the unemployment rate is falling is that many people are just giving up working for work. In fact, as this chart shows, there are 14 states in which the size of the labor force has shrunk by at least 1 percent since June 2009. The state with the most labor force shrinkage is West Virginia, down 2.6 percent. Delaware's work force is down 2.5 percent, and both Indiana and Colorado have seen work force drops of more than 2 percent.

Many of the states that are seeing a growing labor force, on the other hand, are seeing a higher unemployment rate. Texas, whose labor force grew 2.1 percent from June 2009 to June 2010, also saw its unemployment rate grow from 7.8 percent to 8.2 percent in the past year. Similar story in Rhode Island, where a 2 percent labor force increase led to an 8 percent increase in the unemployment rate.

Finally, while it is good news that only 11 states have experienced unemployment increases in the past month, the fact remains that in 25 states the unemployment rate was still higher in June than it was in June 2009. That's all on President Obama's watch, and all while the president's economic stimulus plan was in effect. Those states include Nevada, New Mexico, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Florida, California, Texas, West Virginia, Arizona, New Jersey, Virginia and Illinois.

Meanwhile, the Center for Economic and Policy Research released a report on "The Urgent Need For Job Creation" this afternoon that laid out the stark reality of how far the economy has fallen for job-seekers and shined a light on the scale of effort needed to get the job machine working at the level it must.

The most sobering conclusion: If the economy returned to the level at which it performed during the best four years of President Bush—think top-end tax cuts, limited government infrastructure spending, deregulation and the bubble in the housing market—it would take until April 2021, taking into account labor-force growth, for the unemployment rate to get to the 5 percent it was in December 2007, before that house of cards collapsed.

Even if the economy was able to grow at the much faster rates it did during its bounce-backs from 1970s and 1980s recessions, it would take until the fall of 2012 before the job market returned to December 2007 conditions.

Congressional conservatives are pushing for a repeat of the Bush economic formula, but the Bush economic formula at its best performance means that we will be waiting 11 years before the job market reaches some semblance of near-full employment. We simply don't have 11 years to wait for the job market to recover.

In February on our site we began calling for a plan to create 402,000 jobs a month over three years. It is true that such a level of job creation, sustained month after month, would be extraordinary by today's standards. But if President Obama and Congress had at least tried, the political arguments at center stage would be over bold interventions that would make working-class people in Nevada, Michigan, California, Rhode Island, Florida and Mississippi—all states where the June unemployment rate was 11 percent or higher—believe that some real leadership was being exerted on their behalf.

Instead, Democrats are congratulating themselves that they have successfully gotten extended unemployment benefits past the "hell-no-you-can't" Republicans, but are not marshaling themselves or the progressive base in fighting what should be the real war: a program that moves the economy toward that 400,000-jobs-a-month goal through investments in infrastructure, investments in people, clean energy legislation and rational tax policies.

"Many lawmakers, policymakers, and economic commentators do not appear to recognize the depth of the current labor-market recession," CEPR's report says. But it's not too late for them to present an anxious public with a clear choice between the policies that will extend the nightmare of long-term joblessness into the next decade and policies that will get the working class working again.

President Obama, Make Congress Stay In DC Until They Pass Jobs Legislation

Dave Johnson — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 12:47:10 -0400

The Constitution of the United States, Article II, Section 3: "He may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them..."

We have a jobs emergency and the Congress has not acted. Almost everything the Senate does is being blocked by an obstructionist minority that is trying to tank the economy, hoping a demoralized public will blame the other party and won't bother to vote, which will help them take power in November.

The government is not governing and the consequences for working (and out-of-work) people are severe. Millions of unemployed are not finding jobs. People can't pay their mortgages or rent and are losing their health care. Small businesses are reaching the end of their ability to hold out. Communities, even whole states are out of money to cover even basic services.

The President has the the power to do something about this. He has the power to show the public where he and his party really stand on doing something about the jobs crisis. He has the power to show that he can put his foot down and demand action.

The Congress is planning to go on recess in August and the President has the power to make them stay until robust jobs legislation is passed.

This is an opportunity to apply pressure to get badly-needed job creation and further stimulus underway. This is an opportunity to show the public who is acting and who is blocking. This is an opportunity to clarify for the voters who is working to get jobs going and who is keeping the Congress from acting.

The President has the opportunity to lead. He has the opportunity and the responsibility to govern.

This is an emergency. Make them stay.

We Need Leaders, Not Accountants

Robert Borosage — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 09:45:34 -0400

The following was originally published by Politico

With more than 20 million people unemployed or underemployed, deflation looming, trade deficits rising and the economy staggering, American elites are hyperventilating about balancing the books.

While most economists talk about the need for short-term stimulus, this looks increasingly difficult. Republicans filibuster unemployment insurance, demanding spending cuts to offset the costs. Billionaire Peter Peterson’s longtime campaign to rouse deficit hysteria seems to be succeeding. President Barack Obama has set up a deficit commission with a charge to balance the budget by 2015, while calls for a three-year freeze on domestic spending outside entitlements embolden Blue Dog Democrats’ opposition to immediate jobs measures.

Erskine Bowles, the New Democrat co-chairman of Obama’s commission, darkly warned governors, “The debt is like a cancer.” That wasn’t enough for his co-chairman, former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson, who said the federal government was bankrupt and could give states no more help. “The pig,” Simpson declared, “is dead. There’s no more bacon.”

In the short term, with threats of double-dip recession looming, such hysteria is folly. Congress and the president should be pressing a renewed effort to put people to work — with direct employment programs, particularly for the young; aid to states and localities to forestall brutal layoffs of teachers and police officers; and expanded investment in rebuilding America’s infrastructure. This on top of what should be routine — like extended unemployment insurance, support for Medicaid, food stamps and more. All this could add far less to the long-term debt than a double-dip recession.

But even more striking is how inadequate the elites’ consensus is for the long term. It is as if America’s elites had turned into bookkeepers rather than leaders. They are abandoning the centerpiece of what has made America exceptional — an optimism and confidence that we can create a better future.

Consider the last time the country was deeply in debt, as it emerged from the Great Depression and World War II. Our debt as a proportion of gross domestic product then was more than 120 percent — well over twice the burden it is now.

The country had suffered through a decade-long depression and a global war. Troops were coming home, but the economy was still mobilized for war. Europe and Japan were devastated. Fear of a new depression was widespread.

But having won the war, America had the confidence to build a new economy. Our leaders saw themselves as “present at the creation” of a postwar order. Congress passed the Employment Act of 1946, committing the federal government to use its powers to “foster continuous, useful employment for those able, willing and seeking to work.”

These weren’t just words. Congress passed the GI Bill, sending former soldiers to college or advanced training and subsidizing home loans that helped build the suburbs. Government financed the transformation of military factories into civilian production, investing in industries — from aerospace to automobiles — that would dominate the world. The Truman administration created the Bretton Woods system to structure the global economy, controlling capital flows and regulating exchange rates while encouraging trade.

From 1948 to 1951, Washington donated $13.2 billion to Europe’s recovery through the Marshall Plan — transferring the equivalent of 2.5 percent of our GDP at its height. A Republican president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, the hero of the war, put a lid on military spending while building the interstate highway system.

With occasional exceptions, the country continued to run annual deficits, and the accumulated debt continued to rise. But the country grew at a faster rate, and the broad middle class — the triumph of U.S. democracy and the largest in the world — was forged. Debt as a percentage of GDP declined steadily, to less than 32 percent when Ronald Reagan took office.

U.S. politics then was as poisonous as now. The Republican Senate leader, Robert Taft, opposed virtually all of President Harry S. Truman’s efforts. Conservatives railed about deficit spending. The right conjured up preposterous conspiracy theories, launching witch hunts of communists and trampling basic liberties.

But a confident America was not distracted by the timid or the crazed. Our leaders built a new foundation for the postwar economy, vital to a prosperous future.

Eisenhower reaffirmed the New Deal reforms. Social Security was preserved; finance remained tightly regulated; top-end tax rates stayed at 90 percent; labor’s right to organize was weakened but not gutted. A broad middle class replaced the extreme inequality that contributed to the Great Depression. We all grew together.

The contrast with today’s elite consensus could not be starker. Then-U.S. leaders, burdened by far greater debt, facing an uncharted transition from wartime mobilization to peacetime economy, focused on what would be required to build a full employment and a growing economy. They didn’t get every answer right — but they got the question right.

Today, our elites aren’t asking what is required to rebuild a vibrant economy of shared prosperity. They are focused instead on how we balance our books. They seem intent on rousing fears about the deficits and debt to convince Americans it is time to cut back Social Security and Medicare, the core of our social contract.

They have it wrong. This country must build a new economic foundation — revive cutting-edge manufacturing, modernize infrastructure, revitalize education and training, invest in research and development, find ways to shackle speculation and drive private investment into longer-term horizons and empower workers to gain a fair share of the productivity they help generate.

We need leaders, not accountants; vision, not bookkeeping. Today, our greatest deficit is in vision — not in budgets.

Standing With The Unemployed

Isaiah J. Poole — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 15:34:44 -0400

Today's image from the Rose Garden was a potent one: President Obama, standing with three of America's long-term jobless, calling on Congress to end the Republican filibuster of unemployment benefits and calling out Senate conservatives for their hypocrisy. In today's political climate, it's an image that ought to be displayed a lot more often, especially when coupled with concrete, progressive proposals to put those unemployed people back to work.

Obama's appeal comes as Congress appears poised on Tuesday afternoon to finally vote to continue extended unemployment benefits that have been cut off due to 48 days of Senate conservative stonewalling. If Senate Democrats get the 60 votes to proceed to a final vote as expected, it will only be because of the appointment of Carte Goodwin to fill the seat of the late West Virginia Democrat Robert Byrd.

By Obama's side were Jim Chukalas, Leslie Macko and Denise Gibson. Chukalas has exhausted his unemployment benefits, according to the White House; Macko and Gibson are about to. All three are feeling the consequences of a job market that Leo Gerard today describes as "a cruel game of musical chairs," in which five unemployed people compete for a seat as an employed worker.

In his six-minute address, Obama laid out in succinct terms the contrast between the majority in both houses of Congress seeking to continue extended unemployment benefits and the position of the obstructionist minority.

And for a long time, there’s been a tradition –- under both Democratic and Republican Presidents –- to offer relief to the unemployed. That was certainly the case under my predecessor, when Republican senators voted several times to extend emergency unemployment benefits. But right now, these benefits –- benefits that are often the person’s sole source of income while they’re looking for work -– are in jeopardy.

And I have to say, after years of championing policies that turned a record surplus into a massive deficit, the same people who didn’t have any problem spending hundreds of billions of dollars on tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans are now saying we shouldn’t offer relief to middle-class Americans like Jim or Leslie or Denise, who really need help.

Bloomberg reported earlier today that the Senate conservatives who once chided Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., this past spring for being the first and most vociferous opponent of extending unemployment benefits without offsetting budget cuts are now bear-hugging his position. Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., is quoted as saying effusively, "Our party caught up with the people Bunning was already with.”

But they happen to have left behind the majority that disagreed with Bunning. In both the Washington Post/ABC News and CBS News polls, more than 50 percent of Americans agreed with President Obama's position that extended unemployment aid should be continued in today's economy, even if that means adding to the deficit.

We've been saying repeatedly that much of the political tumult elected officials are feeling as they enter the fall election season is because people are looking for their elected officials to stand up for Main Street and a recovery for working people that matches the recovery that's happening on Wall Street. Standing with unemployed Americans in opposition to block-and-blame conservatism is not only right on principle, it is also good politics.

What Members Of Congress Say About Unemployment Benefits

Darrell Robinson — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 15:00:10 -0400

What Members of Congress Who Support Unemployment Benefits Say

"When the economy turns down, there's a compact that we have, that there's unemployment insurance for people who, through no fault of their own, lose their jobs."
— House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Associated Press, July 1, 2010

“Economists say one of the most effective ways to put money into our economy is unemployment benefits,”
— Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), The Hill, July 2, 2010

“"It's a class warfare issue. ... Wall Street is saying to them, 'These deficits, they're making problems, we need to get this deficit down. So the very people who took the money and were stabilized because we created deficits are now turning around and biting the hand that feeds them, that is, the taxpayers. It's unconscionable."
— Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.),The Huffington Post, July 1, 2010

"It is past time for congressional Republicans to stop standing in the way of relief for our families and start standing up for our middle class."
— House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), The Hill, July 1, 2010

“Somehow the politically correct position on the deficit has become cut, cut, cut, irrespective of the economic consequences,”
— Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), The New York Times, July 4, 2010

What Conservatives Who Voted Against Unemployment Benefits Say

“[jobless insurance] doesn’t create new jobs. In fact, if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work.”
— Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Arizona), All Voices, July 8, 2010

“[extended benefits] basically keep an economy that encourages people to, rather than go out and look for work, to stay on unemployment.”
— Sen. Judd Gregg (R-New Hampshire), All Voices, July 8, 2010

“Even when businesses are willing to hire, nearly two years of unemployment benefits are too much of an allure for some ... the evidence is mounting that so-called stimulus policies rammed through Congress are doing more harm than good.”
— Rep. John Linder (R-Georgia), All Voices, July 8, 2010

“A lot of people are saying ‘Hey, it’s about time. Why do we keep giving money to people who are going to go use it on drugs instead of their families?’”
— Sen Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), All Voices, July 8, 2010

Senators, The Unemployed Have A Job For You

Isaiah J. Poole — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 06:30:48 -0400

LISTEN

Three unemployed people — Ed Zibrida of Indiana, Jyl Forsyth of Michigan and Jeff Sumner of Kentucky — discuss the effect of the Senate conservative filibuster against unemployment benefits on their lives and their demand for urgent congressional action.

Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, what will you say to Jeff Sumner of Louisville when the lights go out in his house at the end of this week? How proud will you be of your votes against extending unemployment insurance to him and millions of other workers?

Sumner is one of the more than 2 million people who have lost their unemployment benefits because of a weeks-old Senate filibuster against their extension led by McConnell, the chamber's minority leader. If the Senate does not break that filibuster this week, Sumner, who lost his extended unemployment benefits when Republicans blocked their continued authorization in early June, loses the utilities in his house. Shortly after that, he told me Friday for this audio report, he will lose his house. He will be homeless.

Sumner is also one of the 6.75 million people who have been unemployed for more than six months. These are the people, according to some Republican leaders, who believe that the extension of unemployment benefits is responsible for so many unemployed people being out of work (as Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle said, the unemployed are "spoiled" by those benefits), not the fact that there were only 3 million job openings (in April 2010) for nearly 15 million unemployed workers.

But even the least crass of the conservative justifications for this obstruction—that continued federal spending on unemployment benefits should be "paid for" by cuts elsewhere in the budget—is a cruel fiction for the people, like the ones featured in our audio report, who have applied for hundreds of jobs, have shown themselves willing to do almost anything for a paycheck, and yet are not being given a chance to grasp even the bottom rung of the economic ladder. As Jyl Foster, a former radio announcer who has been out of work for over a year, told me in reaction to the conservative's oft-used line about not passing today's debt to their grandchildren, "There are so many people right now who are hurting, and they're worried about their kid's grandkids? That just makes my blood boil. It hurts my heart."

Not to mention that devastating the lives of today's unemployed workers is a helluva way of showing how much you care for future generations.

Yet conservative leaders believe that today's high unemployment is the right vehicle to continue their assault on government. How else to explain the resurrection of Arthur Laffer in the Wall Street Journal last week, he of the now-discredited "Laffer curve." This time, he was not only asserting, with no obvious basis in fact, that extending unemployment benefits makes "being unemployed either more attractive or less unattractive, and thereby lead to higher unemployment," but he was suggesting that the government should instead "declare a federal tax holiday for 18 months," which he says would cut federal revenues by $2.4 trillion annually. The entire federal budget in 2010 was $3.5 trillion. You see what he's up to. (The Seminal, like me, found it "hard to know where to begin in tackling the various strawman and out right fallacious arguments Laffer uses in this opinion piece.")

Laffer may be on the edge of conservative thought on his tax holiday idea, but basically Laffer and conservatives holding up unemployment extension and job-creation legislation in the Senate are on the same twisted wavelength. Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl, a member of the unemployment-checks-make-you-lazy coalition, on Sunday said that while extended unemployment benefits should not be allowed to add to the federal deficit, tax cuts should. He said this in response to a question about continuing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, which if Congress opts to cancel their planned expiration would add $678 billion to the deficit.

There you have it. Benefits totaling $35 billion to keep unemployed people from being evicted from their homes for facing some other financial calamity is an expense we can't afford. But we can afford to let wealthy people and corporations continue to escape paying $678 billion in taxes. Or we can afford to eliminate the estate tax, another conservative obsession. Or we can afford to continue to tax billionaire hedge-fund managers and other Wall Street gamblers at a lower rate than the five-figure secretaries in their offices.

The unemployed do not ask for much. They want conservatives in Congress to stop caricaturing them and using them to score ideological points. They want Congress to act with the same urgency with which they acted in 2008 and 2009 when the banking system was melting down. This week, it is time to break the filibuster against unemployment benefits. Next, authorize aid to the states to cover the mandatory Medicaid and children's health care costs that are forcing therm to cut vital programs elsewhere in the budget. Then, pass the Local Jobs for America Act, which would pour $100 billion into states and localities to support public service jobs in both government and the private sector.

The choice is clear: Address the needs of the unemployed for immediate aid and an eventual job, or watch the economy continue to fester as conservatives succeed in dragging the nation backwards.

Unemployed Tell Congress: Get Working For Jobs

Isaiah J. Poole — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 15:40:05 -0400

As Congress returns from its Fourth of July recess, it must face the consequences of inaction on a bold jobs agenda. Three of the nation's 6.8 million long-term unemployed tell their stories to OurFuture.org: Ed Zibrida of Indiana, Jyl Forsyth of Michigan and Jeff Sumner of Kentucky. They talk about their jobs searches and how they have been affected by a Senate Republican-led filibuster against extended unemployment benefits. They share a common message to Congress: Make the jobless your top priority by passing extended unemployment benefits and then enact programs that put people back to work.