In a display of cruelty and callousness, Congressional Democrats have
made clear that they intend to allow federal extended jobless benefits
for over a million long-term unemployed to expire at the end of the
year.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said that the jobless benefits
extension would not be voted on this year in the Senate. Instead, he
claimed that the Democrats would fight for a benefits extension next
year. “We’re going to push here after the first of the year for an
extension of emergency unemployment insurance when the Senate convenes
after the new year,” Reid said Wednesday.
Reid blamed “Republican obstruction” for the decision to postpone the
vote in the Senate to next year. This is a lie. As the Congressional
Research Service notes, “The Senate gives its majority leader the
primary responsibility for deciding the order in which bills on the
calendar should come to the floor for action.” As Senate Minority Leader
Mitch McConnell noted, “He’s the one in charge of the schedule.”
Instead of a vote on extended unemployment benefits, the Senate has
allocated 30 hours to debate a nomination to the D.C. Circuit Court.
The elimination of unemployment benefits, which average about $300 a
week, even as the Federal Reserve continues to hand tens of billions of
dollars to the banks every month, and as corporate profits and the stock
markets are soaring, is a clear example of the class interests defended
by the entire state apparatus. Whatever the declamations of “partisan
gridlock,” the Democrats and Republicans are united on the basic
interests of the corporate and financial elite.
The social consequences will be devastating—first of all for the 1.3
million who will be cut off immediately, since they have already
exceeded benefits offered by the states. This includes 214,800 people in
California, 86,900 in Pennsylvania, 43,800 in Michigan, 64,300 in
Illinois, and 127,100 in New York. An additional 3.6 million people
would be impacted in 2014. The cutoff of this limited economic
assistance will translate into home foreclosures, bankruptcy, hunger and
poverty.
Extending the program through next year would cost $26 billion,
according to the White House. This is a tiny fraction of what is
expended on the military every year, and next to nothing when compared
to the vast wealth of the corporate and financial elite.
The Democrats sent a clear signal that they intend to let extended
jobless benefits lapse when they failed to make funding for the program a
precondition for a budget agreement, which was announced Tuesday by US
House and Senate negotiators. The agreement extends Medicare cuts,
attacks federal workers’ pensions, and imposes regressive consumption
taxes on air travel.
The bipartisan budget proposal is moving rapidly through Congress,
passing a key House panel by a 9-3 majority. Republican leaders said the
deal is expected to pass the House on Thursday before heading to the
Senate next week, despite opposition from hardline conservatives.
President Obama has said he will sign the agreement.
Pundits and media commentators are hailing the agreement as a “first
step,” which sets the stage and political framework for a bipartisan
agreement to slash Social Security and Medicare, the major federal
health care and retirement programs.
By the White House’s own estimates, federal extended jobless benefits
lifted 2.5 million people out of poverty last year alone. The White
House also estimates that for every one person who receives extended
jobless benefits, an average of two additional family members receive
direct support.
Since the initiation of the Emergency Unemployment Compensation
program in 2008, it has been renewed by Congress eleven times. Beginning
in 2011, the program began to be pared back sharply. This took place at
the same time as states throughout the country have been cutting back
on the duration of benefits they provide, with some offering as little
as 14 weeks.
These measures have led to a sharp increase in the number of people
who are unemployed but do not receive benefits. In 2010, about two
thirds of long-term unemployed people received benefits. That number had
fallen to 54 percent by 2011 and was down to about 45 percent in 2012.
Now, only about one in three of the long-term unemployed receive
benefits at all. This does not count those who have given up looking for
work and are no longer counted as unemployed.
The decline in the official unemployment rate provides an entirely
false picture of the real jobs crisis, since it does not take into
account the sharp fall in the labor force participation rate. Long-term
unemployment continues to plague the country. Currently 36 percent of
the jobless population has been out of work for six months or longer.
Prior to the 2008 crisis, the highest-ever recorded percentage of people
out of work in the US for more than six months was 26 percent.
The government now estimates there are 4.1 million people who have
been out of work for a half-year or more. According to the latest jobs
report, the average duration of unemployment increased by more than a
week in November, to 37.2 weeks, while the percentage of the jobless who
have been out of work for more than six months hit 37.3 percent, up
from 36.1 percent in October.
While the Democrats have sought to posture as opponents of cutting
off extended jobless benefits, they have made a calculated decision to
allow them to lapse, or even eliminate them altogether, potentially
throwing millions of people into poverty.
The decision to allow federal jobless benefits to expire comes just a
week after Barack Obama gave a speech in which he called income
inequality the “defining challenge of our time” and declared that “over
the course of the next year, and for the rest of my presidency” his
administration would “focus all our efforts” on narrowing the gap
between rich and poor.
Obama had the nerve to make these claims even as he allowed the
first-ever nationwide reduction in food stamp benefits to take place in
November, backed Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr’s attempts to slash
Detroit municipal retiree benefits, supported a budget that makes
permanent over a trillion dollars in sequester cuts, and now is allowing
federal jobless benefits to expire.
As George Wentworth, senior staff attorney at the National Employment
Law Project, told the WSWS earlier this month, “Unemployment insurance
benefits are intended to create a means for workers to feed their
families while they get to their next job. When you have benefits that
are less than it takes to find a job, it puts pressure on people to take
a worse job.” The cuts in benefits will mean that workers will be
pressured to accept far worse jobs than they had originally lost.
This is entirely of a piece with the overall strategy of the US
ruling class and the Obama administration, which has sought to use the
economic crisis resulting from the 2008 crash to drive down workers’
wages, boost corporate profits, and swell the assets of the super-rich.
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