The Abandonment of the Unemployed

It's a sad commentary on the state of U.S. politics that there seems to have been a near complete abandoment of the unemployed. The most glaring disconnect is, of course, amongst Republicans and their Christianist allies who give great lip service to worshiping religion and the Bible, but who seem to have utterly forgotten the Gospel message of giving aid to the poor and unfortunate. Too me, it is yet another aspect of so-called conservative Christianity becoming an increasingly self-centered and hate based belief system where anyone outside the Christianist tent is deemed expendable - if not in need of eradication. Many are unemployed through no fault of their own - I have a friend who lost his job in the mortgage industry who spent months looking for work before securing a less than desirable job. Rather than deal with this serious problem, the GOP prefers to defend DOMA and push insane bills like that of Randy Forbes discussed in previous pot this morning. Paul Krugman has a column in the New York Times that looks at this disturbing phenomenon. Here are some highlights:
*
More than three years after we entered the worst economic slump since the 1930s, a strange and disturbing thing has happened to our political discourse: Washington has lost interest in the unemployed.
*
Jobs do get mentioned now and then — and a few political figures, notably Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the House, are still trying to get some kind of action. But no jobs bills have been introduced in Congress, no job-creation plans have been advanced by the White House and all the policy focus seems to be on spending cuts.
*
So one-sixth of America’s workers — all those who can’t find any job or are stuck with part-time work when they want a full-time job — have, in effect, been abandoned.
*
[W]e’re well on the way to creating a permanent underclass of the jobless. Why doesn’t Washington care? Part of the answer may be that while those who are unemployed tend to stay unemployed, those who still have jobs are feeling more secure than they did a couple of years ago.
*
Yet polls indicate that voters still care much more about jobs than they do about the budget deficit. So it’s quite remarkable that inside the Beltway, it’s just the opposite. What makes this even more remarkable is the fact that the economic arguments used to justify the D.C. deficit obsession have been repeatedly refuted by experience.
*
I still don’t know why the Obama administration was so quick to accept defeat in the war of ideas, but the fact is that it surrendered very early in the game. In early 2009, John Boehner, now the speaker of the House, was widely and rightly mocked for declaring that since families were suffering, the government should tighten its own belt. That’s Herbert Hoover economics, and it’s as wrong now as it was in the 1930s. But, in the 2010 State of the Union address, President Obama adopted exactly the same metaphor and began using it incessantly.
*
So who pays the price for this unfortunate bipartisanship? The increasingly hopeless unemployed, of course. And the worst hit will be young workers — a point made in 2009 by Peter Orszag, then the White House budget director.
*
So the next time you hear some Republican declaring that he’s concerned about deficits because he cares about his children — or, for that matter, the next time you hear Mr. Obama talk about winning the future — you should remember that the clear and present danger to the prospects of young Americans isn’t the deficit. It’s the absence of jobs. But, as I said, these days Washington doesn’t seem to care about any of that.