Both Democrats and Republicans say they want to help the jobless by extending unemployment benefits for an additional three months – on top of previous extensions.
But when that issue came up for a vote in the House recently, Democrats demanded that the $12.5 billion extension in benefits be “paid for” by adding to our crippling $13.7 trillion national debt rather than by cutting spending elsewhere. They rejected a Republican proposal to pay for the additional unemployment benefits by pulling back unspent funds from the failed, $862 billion so-called “stimulus” package that Democrats approved last year.
By insisting that new unemployment benefits be funded with more borrowing, Democrats essentially killed the effort to extend those benefits to millions of jobless Americans. Now the benefits are slated to run out for about 2 million people next Wednesday.
“The fact is, we can both provide this help and pay for it by cutting less effective stimulus spending,” Rep. Charles Boustany, R-La., said during the debate in the House. Yet Democrats preferred to pile on more debt rather than admit that the stimulus is a boondoggle that should be de-funded.
Look beyond this particular spending debate for a moment, though. What does it tell you about Democrats’ overall commitment to reducing massive federal spending if they will not cut just a tiny percentage of the spending from the disastrous “stimulus” – to help millions of people who are about to lose unemployment aid?
If Democrats will not make even such a small concession in their big-spending ways, why should we think they are serious about real reform of federal spending? The cuts that are ultimately going to be necessary to get our nation’s fiscal house in order will be far larger than just a painless $12.5 billion taken from a stimulus program that isn’t helping our economy anyway. (The stimulus was supposed to keep unemployment under 8 percent; joblessness is now 9.6 percent.)
How can we possibly get annual deficits and our total national debt down if even the most modest proposed cut – a cut that would help millions of the jobless – is rejected out of hand?
Despite their huge losses in the recent congressional elections, it appears many Democrats still have not gotten the message that the American people are tired of needless deficit spending.