11:36 am How long should people be paid not to work
Until recent years, most states ended unemployment compensation after 26 weeks. This helped people who were laid off, but encouraged them to seek work as well.
That understanding has been greatly undermined in the last three and a half years.
According to the Wall Street Journal, unemployment benefits have been extended eight times in many states to a record high of 99 weeks.
“So now taxpayers pick up the check for as much as two years of not working, even as jobs become easier to find,” the Journal said in an editorial.
This is costly.
Extending unemployment insurance during the recession has cost taxpayers $200 billion and likely prolonged unemployment as well.
But President Obama and his party are insisting that the payroll tax deal include yet another extension of jobless benefits. That would cost another $30 billion.
And it’s money Americans don’t have. They’re $15 trillion in debt.
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives suggested cutting the time limit on jobless benefits to 59 weeks.
Senate Democrats insisted on 93 weeks.
The still-developing deal seems to be heading for a maximum of 63 weeks in states where the jobless rate is at the national average or below, and 73 weeks in states where unemployment is above the national average.
The Journal charges that Democrats “have kept the jobless rate higher for longer by trying to turn jobless insurance into a long-term entitlement” — the better to get votes for supposed compassion.
Compassion for whom?
Great rafts of people in this country do everything they can to stay off welfare.
Making them pay others not to work isn’t compassionate at all.
—Charleston (W.Va.) Daily Mail
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