Don't Push The Long-term Unemployed Over Fiscal Cliffs: Extend Emergency Unemployment Benefits

You'd think Repub's would have learned after last year's failed Tea-party planned budget debacle:
American's aren't keen on hostage taking tactics. But we're talking GOP here, and that was then. This time around they're narrowing their focus and bullying a much smaller group of citizens: the 1.3 million long-term unemployed.

Seeking a 'tit-for-tat trade-off' the party of "our way or no way!" is again tying doing the right thing to getting their own way. Feigning fiscally motivated outrage, Boehner and Co. are calling for ways that will off-set the cost of continuing with emergency unemployment extensions - before continuing them. Some of us see this as just another blatant Republican ransom demand with the by now expected payment requirement: repeal Obama-Care.

While Party leaders drone on about long-term solutions and job creation, the more immediate concerns occupying an unemployed persons thoughts remain: "how will I pay this months rent and power bill? What will I feed my children for dinner tonight?"

While the end-result of all governmental aid should include preventing someone from having to go on the dole in the first place - stuff happens. 3 applicants for every job opening counts as 'stuff' happening' to at least 2 of the people responding to a Help Wanted ad. Safety nets are needed for this reason.  Frankly it is immoral to use an individual's misfortune as a bargaining chip in the game of politics. It is also bad business.

What kind of voodoo math are they using in the House to determine taking away money as a means to improve someones financial circumstance? Kicking people off the unemployment rolls before they have found work does not translate into an automatic increase in jobs numbers. It's a shell game that's just moving recipients around. Take away the insurance stipend (average benefit $300 per week) and the statistics may jump in other areas, notably social service counts for food stamps, Medicaid, and the like.  The long term unemployed are facing fiscal cliffs of their own every day and that weekly unemployment check  is the only thing keeping many of them from going over the edge.