Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the Republican whip, argued that unemployment benefits dissuade people from job-hunting “because people are being paid even though they’re not working.”
Unemployment insurance “doesn’t create new jobs. In fact, if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work,” Kyl said during debate over whether unemployment insurance and other benefits that expired amid GOP objections Sunday should be extended.
“I’m sure most of them would like work and probably have tried to seek it, but you can’t argue that it’s a job enhancer. If anything, as I said, it’s a disincentive. And the same thing with the COBRA extension and the other extensions here,” said Kyl.
Senator Kyl, with his background as a son of a congressman and his previous life as a corporate lobbyist, has no empathy for working folk.
Once, about 7 or 8 years ago, I collected unemployment benefits for a very short duration (about 2-3 weeks). I received about $200 per week (which was less than my father received back in the 1970s, during his bouts of unemployment when he worked in the steel mills of Pittsburgh). That paltry sum could not even cover the mortgage payment, let alone the cost of COBRA, which, for a family, amounted to almost as much as the monthly unemployment disbursement.
