Let them eat 鈥淭alking Points鈥�
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has the uncanny ability to find hole-filled arguments and recite them aloud. According to him, people who’re out of work become the victims of their unemployment checks after 26 weeks. It’s a foolish argument.
The reason those people get unemployment benefits in the first place is because they had but lost their jobs. Those jobs paid them much more than their bimonthly checks.But that doesn’t matter to Paul.
“When you allow people to be on unemployment insurance for 99 weeks, you’re causing them to become part of this perpetual unemployed group in our economy,” he added.
It’s really doing them a “disservice” to have allowed those checks to stop. Paul, and many of his fellow Republicans, are all in on providing that disservice. But after the extension of federal unemployment benefits were allowed to end in late December, Republicans have hatched a new plan.
Instead of implying that the long-termed unemployed are so lazy they’ve learned to enjoy their paltry jobless benefits, they’re now sharing “talking points” designed to soften the rhetoric, and, instead to sound reasonable, while still objecting to extending unemployment for 1.3 million Americans.
“For every American out of work, it’s a personal crisis for them and their family. That’s why House Republicans remain focused on creating jobs and growing the economy,” says the first bullet-point in the memo sent out to all congressional Republicans by the House Republican Conference. Whoever wrote that was probably unaware of the great irony contained in that statement.
In the first sentence, they talk about the “personal crisis for them and their family,” but in the second sentence, they talked about a long term goal for the country.
Many of the people who’ve had their benefits cut are having to face foreclosures, evictions, repossessions and hunger today — right now. They don’t have time to ponder the benefits of “creating jobs and growing the economy.” Immediate need doesn’t know politics.
The mere fact that Republicans are resorting to using talking points is a clear indication that they know the Rand Pauls of their party have made the most vulnerable among us nothing more than political scapegoats.
There’s no denying the country has a fiscal crisis. But as of late December, there are 1.3 million fiscal crisis — all over the country.
It’s not the Democrats who’ve argued against raising the minimum wage; for cutting food stamps, or for allowing long term unemployment benefits expire. It’s not the Democrats who’ve made numerous feeble attempts to gut Obamacare that has now begun to help millions of Americans.
Being out-of-touch with the real lives of common-folk leads some Republicans to speak before they think, and not just Rand Paul. One of Pennsylvania’s Republican congressional representatives just announced he’s leaving Congress after 12 years. Rep. Jim Gerlach, who represents a district near Philadelphia recently announced he won’t seek re-election.
It was Pa.’s Republican Party Chairman, Rob Gleason, who spoke on Gerlach’s behalf. He told a newspaper, “It’s a tough job. You don’t make a lot of money.”
Gerlach makes $174,000 a year plus benefits. Gleason should be told that’s more than three times the medium household income in the United States.
The same when in 2011, another Republican, Rep. Denny Reherg of Montana tried to assure his constituents he could relate to money problems, because, after all, he and his family “are struggling like everyone else.” His net worth was $56 million.
Back in 2010, Paul, in another one of his command performances on Fox News, claimed, “You get out of a recession by encouraging employment, not encouraging unemployment.
That, in one sentence, encapsulates the serious problem Republicans have when they put politics before people. Nobody is trying to “encourage” unemployment. They’re trying to help people survive. Something Paul and his party doesn’t seem to understand, regardless of the “talking points.”
Edward A. Owens is a three-time Emmy Award winner and 20-year veteran of television news. Email him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net