Blogs For Victory

Obama is up on his class-warfare soap box, trying to make some political hay and maybe save a Democrat or two in November:

President Barack Obama will call on Republican lawmakers to stop blocking an extension of unemployment benefits as the Senate prepares to take up the issue again this week…

He condemns us for running up deficits for years but now not being willing to run up a little more for unemployment benefits. Meanwhile, his side was complaining about not paying as you go for 8 years, but now that its time for Democrats to actually set a priority, they are all in a huff that we’re calling them on their own campaign rhetoric. In other words, Obama and his Democrats are just doing the usual, dishonest thing and attempting to sow hatred and division, as that provide their slight hope for staving off electoral catastrophe.

It won’t work as planned – the people are on to this scam and while I’ll bet that a very large majority want unemployment benefits extended, no one who has even half a brain (this would exclude liberals) realizes that its simple common sense to take the money out of current accounts rather than just piling up more debt. If Obama and his Democrats press this issue in public debate, it will backfire on them as badly as ObamaCare, Cap and Trade and border security have.

Buy what should we – meaning, we Republicans – do? After all, at the end of the day we don’t want people without any money at all. On the other hand, who among us hasn’t mentally figured out that if the only jobs available pay less than, as much as or even 10 or 20% more than unemployment, then it would be wiser to remain on unemployment rather than taking the new job?

Remember, if unemployment pays me $250 a week, it would probably take a job paying $350 a week just to make it worth the bother and expense. And with unemployment at 14% here in Nevada, there aren’t a lot of jobs out there paying $8.75 an hour or more. Extend those benefits for two years (as they have been for some people), and you can see the pickle we’re in – where does it end? Or do we just steel ourselves to paying unemployment benefits until a person hits retirement age?

My solution is this – taking money from TARP, stimulus, Department of Energy or some equally worthless and counter-productive government entity, we should extend unemployment benefits. But for anyone who has been unemployed for 6 months or longer, continued benefits require them to present themselves for work with their local government, 5 hours a day, 5 days a week (they do need time to job hunt, so not 8 hours a day). The local governments are free to employ them as they see fit – picking up trash, cleaning graffiti, what have you. Don’t show up, unemployment benefits are terminated.

The concept here is to incentivize the taking of new employment, even if it doesn’t pay all that much. Better to be at work in a regular job than be forever cleaning up trash or doing other grunt work for the city or county. And if there really is just no work at all (as is the case in some localities), then at least some useful work gets done for the area, and the people on unemployment retain their self respect – they are not just taking hand outs, but working hard for the community which is helping them during hard times.

People with a sense of honor and dignity would gladly show up for such work; lay abouts who just want to sit there collecting unemployment would be out of luck. Its a good thing for all concerned, as far as I can see.