The Glade 4.0

Not that I disagree entirely, I would like them to identify where the money to pay for EVERYTHING comes from. That is not going to happen, but I would like to see it. Still, Bunning had the hot seat last month, Coburn this month, who is next?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100326/ap_ ... t_benefits


Senate Republican holds up jobless benefits

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., heads for the Senate floor on Capitol Hill in AP – Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., heads for the Senate floor on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, march 9, …

By ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press Writer Andrew Taylor, Associated Press Writer – 14 mins ago

WASHINGTON – As Congress raced to leave Washington for its Easter recess, a Republican senator blocked a stopgap bill to extend jobless benefits, saying its $9 billion cost should not be added to the national debt.

As a result, some people who have been out of work for more than six months will at least temporarily lose benefits. Newly jobless people won't be eligible to sign up for generous health insurance subsidies.

At the center of the battle is Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who's insisting that the measure be "paid for" so as not to add to the nation's $12.7 trillion debt.

"What we are doing is stealing future opportunity from our children," Coburn said Thursday.

Republicans offered legislation to finance the month-long extension of jobless benefits by rescinding unspent money from last year's economic stimulus bill. The effort was killed on a party-line vote.

Democrats repeatedly sought speedy Senate approval of a House-passed measure that would extend jobless benefits through May 5, but Coburn objected. Republicans said Senate negotiations produced a compromise that didn't pass muster in the House.

Jim Manley, a spokesman for Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the Senate would attempt to retroactively bestow the jobless benefits when it returns from its spring recess April 12.

The practical effect of the lapse in benefits would be limited if they are awarded retroactively. But labor advocates say it produces bureacratic nightmares for state labor departments and that trying to restore the lapsed benefits is easier said than done.

Reid had the option of keeping the Senate in session to force a vote to try to break through the GOP blocking tactics but instead will revisit the issue in 2 1/2 weeks.

The clash comes less than a month after Republicans abandoned a similar battle that led to an interruption in unemployment benefits eligibility for some people and a two-day furlough for about 2,000 Transportation Department employees.

A stopgap law enacted early this month extends though April 5 unemployment insurance for people who have been out of a job for more than six months, provides health insurance subsidies for the jobless and protects doctors from a sharp cut in Medicare payments.

But another short-term extension of the jobless benefits is needed while House and Senate Democrats work through negotiations on a long-term measure that would provide them through the end of the year. Those talks have slowed, prompting Democrats to move to extend benefits for an additional month.

Last month, Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., blocked a similar extension of jobless benefits, but Republicans ended up on the losing end of a public relations battle and Bunning backed away.

The House passed the stopgap bill last week by a voice vote.

Democratic leaders say that jobless benefits are an emergency and don't need to conform to the new pay-as-you-go budget law, which requires new benefit programs to be offset with spending cuts or tax increases so they don't increase the deficit.

"We really believe that the unemployment situation is an emergency economic situation. Republicans do not accept that," said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the majority whip. "They want to cut off unemployment benefits or pay for it with stimulus funds that are creating jobs."

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

I dunno, Micheal. In the first place, I disagree that we should have further extensions on jobless benefits. It is turning what many people felt used to be a paid insurance program into an outright welfare program. In addition, the moneys that must be raised in taxes, or outright printed, in order to pay and distribute these benefits, and the unfunded health care subsidies mandates that many states place on themselves which accompany the benefits, cause even more job loss, as more money is being paid out of what would otherwise have been payroll accounts. In an effort to put a band-aid on a skinned knee, we are amputating the leg. I just can't see a logical reason to do this. And that is only the practical side of the argument. Then you have the political side.

What happened in our congress last week was a show of parliamentary games, and dirty Chicago politics. American life and culture was changed forever, as the very health and lives of it's people and one entire sixth of it's economy comendeered, and placed in the hands of a group of people who champion Social Security, which today the government announced was no longer self supporting, as one of their greatest accomplishments; not on the merits of a mandate from the people, but on a series of parliamentary tricks in which the bill in question was never actually voted on. A room full of lawyers skimming the edges of law, using procedural rules in ways they were never intended, to change our lives forever in a way that has destroyed the fabric of our country and is near to inciting Grecian style riots in our streets.

What happened this week was Republicans playing by the rules established by the Democrats. Fair play is turnabout. Especially if it has the added bonus of shutting down the government to block new spending, which is certainly on the agenda, or to hold together any last vestige of what America used to be by preventing further negative irreversible changes to our borders, or sovereignty, our culture, or our economy.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

It's such an emergency that we have to stop talking about it. Oh, and yup, that unspent stimulus money is creating lots and lots of jobs.


Party Line? Really?
Bipartisan deal falls apart, endangering expiring unemployment benefits

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Don't 50% of unemployment dollars come from companies? No wonder companies aren't hiring, they're busy paying people they laid off 15+ months ago.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Yes.

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Memento Vivere

I have local knowledge.
That sandbar was not there yesterday!