2 Million Lose Unemployment Benefits As Holidays Arrive

Ebenezer Scrooge looks pretty loving and charitable compared to the Congressional Republicans who are blocking an extension of unemployment benefits for 2 million Americans - even as they threaten to block ALL legislative action unless and until the Bush tax cuts for the top 1% of Americans are extended. The cost of unemployment benefits is $18 billion. The cost of the tax cuts for the 1% richest Americans is $700 billion. But guess which expenditure the GOP insists be payed for while the bigger ticket items gets funded via deficit spending. It's ridiculous, but guess who is missing in action in terms of using his bully pulpit. You guessed it, the spineless Liar-in-Chief. The man truly makes Jimmy Carter look like the most forceful of presidents. Nancy Pelosi condemned the GOP's f*cked priorities but not so the White House. With the threat from the GOP Senate contingent one would think Obama would finally get his head out of his ass, but apparently not so based on his smiling idiot routine when discussing his meeting with GOP representative the day before - where NOTHING was accomplished. Here are highlight from the Washington Post on what the GOP is doing to real, everyday Americans. It's obscene and readers need to read the full article to see what is happening to people whom the GOP apparently sees as less than human since they are not multi-millionaires (and people ask why I left the GOP?):
*
Shawn Slonsky's children know by now not to give him Christmas lists filled with the latest gizmos. The 44-year-old union electrician is one of nearly 2 million Americans whose extended unemployment benefits will run out this month, making the holiday season less about celebration than survival.
*
Things used to be different for Slonsky, who lives in Massillon, Ohio. Before work dried up, he earned about $100,000 a year. He and his wife lived in a three-bedroom house where deer meandered through the backyard.
*
Then they lost their jobs. Their house went into foreclosure and they had to move in with his 73-year-old father. Now, Slonsky is dreading the holidays as his 99 weeks run out.
*
The GOP didn't pay any political price for stalling efforts earlier this year to extend jobless benefits that provide critical help to the unemployed - including a seven-week stretch over the summer when jobless benefits were a piece of a failed Democratic tax and jobs bill. But bad publicity because the benefits end over the holidays has long been forecast.
*
Ninety-nine weeks may seem like a long time to find a job. But even as the economy grows, jobs that vanished in the Great Recession have not returned. The private sector added about 159,000 jobs in October - half as many as needed to reduce the unemployment rate of 9.6 percent, which the Federal Reserve expects will hover around 9 percent for all of next year.
*
"When you try to apply for retail or fast food, they say 'You're overqualified,' they say 'We don't pay that much money,' they say, 'You don't want this job,'" she said.