Republicans in Washington – and those on their way to the Capitol in January – keep stoking their demand to lavish an extended and unaffordable tax cut for the top 2 percent of the nation’s wealthiest Americans at the cost of $700 billion in needless deficit spending over the next 10 years. We wish they would, instead, rise in defense of the nearly 2 million Americans who have lost their jobs in the Great Recession and will prematurely loose their unemployment benefits at the end of the month if Congress fails to act in their behalf.
The economic argument for extending their unemployment benefits is far sounder than the quackery Republicans claim in behalf of extending tax cuts for the wealthy, more than half of whom earn more than $8 million a year.
Economic analyses have shown time and again that benefits for the unemployed are among the surest, most measurable forms of effective stimulus spending in a stalled economy. The unemployed immediately spend every benefit dollar to pay their bills, stay in their homes, search for jobs and simply exist. The very wealthy, by contrast, largely use their tax cuts to boost their savings.
Cutting off unemployment benefits imposes additional costs on society, as well. Those who lose unemployment aid may quickly loose their homes to foreclosures, which further depresses the housing market and adds incrementally to the economic stall.
Rather than buying food, clothing, shelter, gas and health care, they typically come to need charity from hospitals, food banks and shelters. If they cannot find the jobs that allow them to contribute to the economy, they become anchors on it.