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.
Compassion as well as common sense demands a more reasonable approach to how the nation spends its money. When the choice is between tax cuts for the rich and unemployment benefits for the needy, the moral choice could not be more glaring.
We have to wonder what drives Republicans to make such choices for the rich over ordinary or out-of-work Americans. And it's not just the Bush tax cuts for the top 2 percent that they want to keep. They also want to keep the incredibly low 15 percent tax rate on the incomes of fabulously wealthy hedge fund managers (under the "carried interest" tax on capital investments), and the greedy profit margins of big banks, credit-card companies, health insurers and pharmaceutical giants. At the same time, they are pushing for cuts not just in unemployment aid, but also Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid and education.
It doesn't add up. Indeed, it's an obscene and immoral fiscal policy. And it's concentrating ungodly wealth at the tip-top even as it kills this nation's working classes in the bottom 90 percent of incomes. If Republicans were true to the values they claim, they would help change that, not further it.