Having been in the shoes of the team at the White House, I feel for them right now. Every group, business, and constituency in America that cares about tax and budget policy (i.e. most of them) is banging on them to do this or that, or more importantly not do this or that.

The media are hyping the so-called “fiscal cliff” deadline. The folks on Team Obama have just been through a tough re-election campaign and have to be just exhausted. It’s Christmas time and they want to see their families.

They just want the big showdown to be over so that they can catch a well-deserved nap (and maybe even see their kids at Christmas), and get on to the next exciting thing. Having been in the Clinton White House when issues were sometimes maddeningly unresolved for months at a time, I definitely remember the feeling of being so tired of an issue fight that I just wanted it to be over regardless of the outcome, so I am very sympathetic. I can also relate to the feeling of being squeezed by multiple trade-offs in policy, knowing that whatever deal you end up striking with right wing Republicans is inevitably going to have some bad things in it -- been there, done that too.

Just to prove I’m capable of being nuanced (something most of my friends and my wife doubt very much), I also want to say this about the White House proposal: There are certainly a lot of things to like in it from a progressive point of view. They are for example working very hard to preserve Medicaid, extend Unemployment Insurance, and hold other key programs that help the poor harmless.

I appreciate how hard they are working to preserve many of the things we progressives hold dear. The President and his team have a lot to be praised for in this confusing mess of budget negotiations, and I have a lot of understanding regarding what they are going through.

However, not everything we hold dear is being preserved, and I think the Obama team is going down the wrong path, specifically on Social Security benefit cuts. There are two major things that I think are moving them in the wrong direction.

Continue reading »

Even for a Texas Republican, he's stupid. Here he is, trying to explain the deficit. Would someone please explain to him what a fiat currency is?

I suppose it's a good thing that I don't live in Texas, because I would probably spend a lot of time in jail for slapping Republicans. They're both stupid and shameless, and they seem to lack the capacity to learn a damned thing. Via Raw Story:

A Republican congressman from Texas on Monday suggested that many people were too lazy to get a job because unemployment benefits had “incentivized” them not to work.

“We’ve got to the point in this country where we incentivized people not to work, instead of incentivized them to work,” Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-TX) told KFYO’s Tom Collins and Laura Mac. “And with unemployment benefits going for as long as 99 weeks, we’ve seen food stamps in this country increase 44 percent in the last four years. And so basically, unfortunately, there’s not a lot of incentive for some people to work. And that’s a reason we’ve got to reform some of these programs.

“We shouldn’t be allowing people to game the system by maybe only working part time so that they can get these other benefits,” he added. “In some cases, there may be full-time employment offered to them, but they’ve figured out a way to work part time and still get these additional benefits.”

But at the same time, Neugebauer questioned government figures that said jobs were being created and unemployment was going down.

“We’ve seen a large number, millions of people are dropping out of the workforce,” he explained. “And so these unemployment numbers are misleading. I think overall when you look at the economy for job growth in this country, we’re still very weak. We’re not creating enough jobs to keep up with just the normal population growth that’s in our country.”

So can you explain to me again how people are too lazy to work, but there aren't enough jobs?

Listen to the congressman’s full explanation here (the relevant section starts at around 4:50).

It continues to astound me that the gentle members of Congress have no sense of urgency about the millions of people whose lives are hanging by a thread right now. None whatsoever. And of course, the Republicans will block any attempt to help them because, well, that's what they do.

I actually feel sorry for those politicians. Imagine being the kind of person whose accomplishments are all about blocking other people's solutions to actual problems - in other words, choosing the dark path of destruction every time. What empty souls they must be:

WASHINGTON -- President Obama took a question on the campaign trail Monday from a little boy who asked if his father, an unemployed construction worker, would find a job before his unemployment insurance runs out.

The president responded that he hoped the boy's father would find work, but that if he doesn't, he hoped the unemployment benefits would still be there.

"Now, we tried to extend unemployment insurance beyond normal right after the recession hit," Obama said. "We were able to extend it again in 2010. It's been harder now to get Congress to extend it further."

"And so we'll continue to negotiate with Congress to make sure that unemployment is there," the president added. "But the most important thing I want to do is make sure your dad can get a job."

Two million people will be cut off from benefits when federal unemployment insurance expires the week between Christmas and New Year's Day, according to the National Employment Law Project, a worker advocacy group based in New York. But Congress is not ready to worry about it. The Huffington Post asked lawmakers on Tuesday if preserving unemployment insurance in 2013 is on their radar.

"No, it's not," Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chairman of Senate committee that oversees unemployment insurance, said as he boarded a Senate elevator. "Not yet."

No, because none of the banking lobbyists have asked for it, Max thought to himself!

"I have not heard any discussion about what we can do there," said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who has made a lot of noise lately about safety net programs like food stamps and Social Security Disability Insurance. "I have not given thought to what precisely we ought to do, whether it's phasing down or what. The fundamental thing is we need to create more jobs … and everybody has got to be out hustling to find work. There’s just no other way to make America productive."

Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, you can kiss my ass. "Hustling to find work?" You are truly an affront to human decency, and to the men and women struggling to survive. Better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and prove it.

But in Congress, unemployment insurance is overshadowed by other financial matters, including the expiration of Bush-era tax cuts, the end of a 2 percentage point reduction in the Social Security payroll tax, and scheduled cuts to defense spending that Republicans are desperate to avoid. Lawmakers call it the "fiscal cliff."

"It's unfortunate," said NELP senior staff attorney George Wentworth. "You're talking about 2 to 3 million Americans for whom losing unemployment insurance is their fiscal cliff."

Three million Americans losing their sole source of income? Nah, no economic effects there!

Because Congress put restrictions on extended benefits in states in which the unemployment rate has dropped*, as many as a quarter of a million people will lose their benefits much sooner than expected. I'm not even going to comment on this except to tell you to go read the comments section. Just heartbreaking:

Hundreds of thousands of out-of-work Americans are receiving their final unemployment checks sooner than they expected, even though Congress renewed extended benefits until the end of the year.

The checks are stopping for the people who have the most difficulty finding work: the long-term unemployed. More than five million people have been out of work for longer than half a year. Federal benefit extensions, which supplemented state funds for payments up to 99 weeks, were intended to tide over the unemployed until the job market improved.

In February, when the program was set to expire, Congress renewed it, but also phased in a reduction of the number of weeks of extended aid and effectively made it more difficult for states to qualify for the maximum aid. Since then, the jobless in 23 states have lost up to five months’ worth of benefits.

Next month, an additional 70,000 people will lose benefits earlier than they presumed, bringing the number of people cut off prematurely this year to close to half a million, according to the National Employment Law Project. That estimate does not include people who simply exhausted the weeks of benefits they were entitled to.

Separate from the Congressional action, some states are making it harder to qualify for the first few months of benefits, which are covered by taxes on employers. Florida, where the jobless rate is 8.7 percent, has cut the number of weeks it will pay and changed its application procedures, with more than half of all applicants now being denied.

I would recommend that the next phase of the Occupation should be to move into your congressperson's local office, and set up a campground in their parking lot.

*Please note: This is a real perversion of the original requirement, because so many people have dropped off the rolls since they couldn't find jobs. The U-6 measure of unemployment includes those people, plus part-timers who wish they had full time work. In April, that rate was 14.5%.

The American social safety net is back in the news, and not just because Mitt Romney acknowledged, "I'm not concerned about the very poor." This week, the libertarian Mercatus Center at George Mason University revealed that a third of Americans now receive Medicaid, food stamps or other means-based government assistance, a number that climbs to 148 million when Social Security, Medicare and unemployment benefits are factored in. The next day, the conservative Heritage Foundation fretted that its "Index of Dependence on Government" rose 8.1 percent last year. Then on Sunday, the New York Times detailed that the so-called safety net now delivers most its benefits to middle class Americans, including many who denounce the very government programs which now sustain them.

But while the torrent of new reports provides fodder for partisans of all stripes (myself included), the picture of the frayed U.S. safety net is a complex one. What conservatives routinely decry as government largesse for the undeserving poor is a hodge-podge of programs which increasingly support the middle class and, above all, the elderly.

Here, then, are five things I found caught in the safety net.

1. Universal Programs vs. Means-Tested Benefits

Eager to reinforce their narrative, conservatives tend to play fast and loose with what's actually in the safety net. As this Politico summary of the Heritage Foundation 2012 government dependency index shows, safety net critics intentionally conflate universal programs like Social Security and Medicare with means-tested aide like food stamps, housing assistance and welfare payments:

Since the 2008 index, the American people's dependence on government has grown a whopping 23 percent.

One in five Americans -- or slightly more than 67 million -- now relies on federal assistance...Overall, about 70 percent of the federal government's budget is directed to individual assistance programs. And nearly half of the population, or 49.5 percent, don't pay any federal income taxes, according to the survey.

Of course, virtually all working Americans pay Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes; programs whose growth accounts for most of the expansion of federal domestic spending. Since 1965, Social Security and Medicare have helped reduce poverty among the elderly by two-thirds. (Just as important, bipartisan support for the Earned Income Tax Credit and other tax credits have trimmed the numbers of working Americans who owe Uncle Sam each year.) That's why it was so refreshing to see at least one right-wing blogger react to Sunday's New York Times piece by complaining, "Wait - Medicare is now a "safety net" program? I thought that, like Social Security, it was an earned benefit - we all paid our taxes, and we are all eligible."

2. Complain and Ye Shall Receive

To be sure, the conservative commentariat is none too happy to see The New York Times once again highlight the hypocrisy of government spending critics happily (or often, unknowingly) receiving payments from Washington. For example, there's the case of Ki Gulbranson, a Minnesotan who earns $39,000 a year and, The Times claims, "wants you to know that he does not need any help from the federal government":

He says that too many Americans lean on taxpayers rather than living within their means. He supports politicians who promise to cut government spending. In 2010, he printed T-shirts for the Tea Party campaign of a neighbor, Chip Cravaack, who ousted this region's long-serving Democratic congressman.

Yet this year, as in each of the past three years, Mr. Gulbranson, 57, is counting on a payment of several thousand dollars from the federal government, a subsidy for working families called the earned-income tax credit. He has signed up his three school-age children to eat free breakfast and lunch at federal expense. And Medicare paid for his mother, 88, to have hip surgery twice.

Gulbranson has plenty of company within the ranks of the Tea Party. 2009 data from Public Policy Polling revealed that while 39 percent of all Americans responded that the government should "stay out of Medicare," 59 percent of self-identified conservatives and 62 percent of McCain voters hold that oxymoronic view. As The New York Times reported on its joint survey with CBS of Tea Party members in April 2010, "Despite their push for smaller government, they think that Social Security and Medicare are worth the cost to taxpayers." 62-year-old Tea Party supporter Jodine White acknowledged to The Times what her desire to slash government spending would produce:

"That's a conundrum, isn't it? I don't know what to say. Maybe I don't want smaller government. I guess I want smaller government and my Social Security." She added, "I didn't look at it from the perspective of losing things I need. I think I've changed my mind."

Continue reading »

I don't think this is as simple as people faking injuries in order to stay afloat. A lot of middle-aged people with disabilities would rather work, and used to be able to find jobs that made working possible. Now the options have been choked off (along with their health insurance) and health conditions are getting worse, as they tend to do with age. But of course that's not how the politicians will spin it. The Wall St. Journal:

Many poor Americans seek Social Security disability payments as a financial life preserver when their unemployment benefits begin expiring, preliminary research by two economists shows.

The findings, released by the Obama administration Thursday, are based on interviews with unemployed workers for a study conducted by White House Council of Economic Advisers Director Alan Krueger and Andreas Mueller of Columbia Business School. Mr. Krueger recently joined the White House from his post teaching economics at Princeton University.

The findings offer a new window both into the struggles of the poor and the growing financial strain of one of the country’s largest entitlement programs.

Their research found that close to 10% of Americans between the ages of 50 and 65 who didn’t have access to at least $5,000 applied for Social Security disability benefits by the time their unemployment benefits were set to expire. The percent of this group seeking the benefits rose precipitously in the weeks leading up to the exhaustion of benefits, as it was below 1% with 50 weeks left in unemployment benefits.

Jobless Americans in this age range who had access to at least $5,000 were much less likely to seek SSDI benefits at any point while collecting unemployment benefits.

There has long been a relationship between unemployment rates and applications for disability benefits, with more Americans seeking entry into the program when it’s harder to find a job.

It's never been more obvious that the unemployed have no one looking out for them. This is really a shocking story and if you still have a Bank of America account, this might finally motivate you to move your money:

CORDOVA, S.C.-- Shawana Busby does not seem like the sort of customer who would be at the center of a major bank's business plan. Out of work for much of the last three years, she depends upon a $264-a-week unemployment check from the state of South Carolina. But the state has contracted with Bank of America to administer its unemployment benefits, and Busby has frequently found herself incurring bank fees to get her money.

To withdraw her benefits, Busby, 33, uses a Bank of America prepaid debit card on which the state deposits her funds. She could visit a Bank of America ATM free of charge. But this small community in the state's rural center, her hometown, does not have a Bank of America branch. Neither do the surrounding towns where she drops off her kids at school and attends church.

She could drive north to Columbia, the state capital, and use a Bank of America ATM there. But that entails a 50-mile drive, cutting into her gas budget. So Busby visits the ATMs in her area and begrudgingly accepts the fees, which reach as high as five dollars per transaction. She estimates that she has paid at least $350 in fees to tap her unemployment benefits.

"It really boggles my mind," she said. "This bank is taking little bits of money out of thousands of pockets, including mine."

Bank of America recently aborted plans to charge ordinary banking customers $5 a month to use their debit cards in the face of national outrage. But the bank has quietly continued to mine another source of fees: jobless people who depend upon the bank's prepaid debit cards to tap their benefits. Bank of America and other financial firms -- including U.S. Bank, Wells Fargo and JP Morgan Chase -- have secured contracts to provide access to public benefits in 41 states. These contracts typically allow banks to collect unlimited fees from merchants and consumers.

In short, the same banks whose speculation delivered a financial crisis that has destroyed millions of jobs have figured out how to turn widespread unemployment into a profit center: The larger the number of people who are out of work and dependent upon the state for sustenance, the greater the potential gains through administering their benefits.

Not that this study will make much of an impact anyway, because we all know worry about job growth isn't the real reason the House majority won't extend unemployment benefits. They simply want people to be so desperate, they'll even vote for Republicans:

Generous unemployment benefits have had little effect on the unemployment rate, according to a new study that may help ease concerns that benefits give sidelined Americans a disincentive to hunt for jobs.

Yes, because not being able to pay your mortgage, buy food or put gas in the tank isn't quite disincentive enough. Sometimes I think these economists would get better results if they became voodoo doctors.

Unemployment insurance, which is available for up to 99 weeks in some states, nudged the jobless rate up 0.2 to 0.6 of a percentage point higher than it would have been otherwise, according to a new paper by Jesse Rothstein, a University of California, Berkeley economist and released at the Brookings Institution this week.

“Any negative effects of the recent unemployment insurance extensions on job search are clearly quite small, too small to outweigh the benefits of transfers to people who have been out of work for over a year in conditions where job-finding prospects are bleak,” according to the report.

Economists generally agree that extended jobless benefits increase the unemployment rate. But they disagree on how big the effect is and how damaging that is to the economy.

Generous unemployment insurance can increase joblessness if Americans who are out of work don’t search as hard as they otherwise would have for new jobs. They can also give recipients a reason to hold out for better-paying jobs. Those impacts can be a negative for the economy because it means instead of reentering the job market, sidelined workers are relying on the government for assistance and staying unemployed for longer.

Yes, because as any austerity cheerleader will tell you, it's very important that workers get used to the fact that they're now permanently competing for Third World wages.

Continue reading »

Here's what I suggest for anyone who's losing their unemployment payments this week: Grab a blanket and a pillow, and head on over to your local congressperson's office -- or, if you live in a big city, go to your senator's office. Tell them you can't afford to turn on the heat, and you're going to camp out in their waiting room until the congressman or senator has time to talk to you. And since you don't have money for food, either, I suggest you loudly solicit the staff and incoming visitors for cash.

Because I am so goddamned sick of these bastards and the protected little bubbles in which they live. It's time we did what we could to remind them of the consequences of everything they've done -- or failed to do:

WASHINGTON -- Food banks across the country are watching for the end of federally-funded extended unemployment insurance.

"We are bracing for it," said Vicki Escarra, CEO of Feeding America, the nation's largest domestic hunger-relief charity, in an interview with HuffPost. Escarra said that Feeding America's 200 member food banks across the country feed nearly six million people every week.

"I can assure you, if these unemployment insurance benefits are not reinstated we'll see these numbers go way up," Escarra said.

Two federal programs -- Emergency Unemployment Compensation and Extended Benefits, which together provide up to 73 weeks of jobless aid on top of 26 weeks of state aid -- are set to begin to expire this week because Congress has not reauthorized them. According to the Labor Department, two million long-term unemployed will be dropped from the programs by the end of December if Congress does not act.

Congress allowed benefits to lapse twice for a brief time earlier this year, and once for a long time, when 2.5 million had their benefits interrupted for nearly two months over the summer. The path forward for reauthorizing the benefits is unclear, but Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said Sunday that he wants the benefits preserved as part of a deal to reauthorize the also-expiring Bush-era tax cuts.

The Congressional Budget Office recently reported that extended unemployment benefits prevented record poverty in 2009 and were used mostly by middle-class Americans. Households with total income more than twice the poverty threshold received 70 percent of the $120 billion the federal government spent on unemployment benefits last year. Part of the reason is that the benefits themselves push families into higher-income groups.

A study released by Feeding America this year found that of the 37 million people served by its member food banks, 70 percent came from households with incomes below the poverty line. The study found that 5.7 million people received emergency food assistance in 2009, a 27 percent increase from 2006.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. On the eve of midterms elections that could make him House Speaker, John Boehner announced, "This is not a time for compromise." His lieutenant Mike Pence (R-IN) echoed that line, declaring that with a new Republican majority "there will be no compromise" with President Obama and the Democrats. Of course, with their record-setting use of the filibuster, unprecedented obstruction of presidential nominees, and unified no votes on almost every major piece of legislation, the past performance of Congressional Republicans is a guarantee of future results.

Even before Barack Obama took the oath office, Republicans leaders, conservative think-tanks and right-wing pundits were calling for total obstruction of the new president's agenda. Bill Kristol, who helped block Bill Clinton's health care reform attempt in 1993, called for history to repeat on the Obama stimulus - and everything else. Pointing with pride to the Clinton economic program which received exactly zero GOP votes in either House, Kristol in January 2009 advised:

"That it made, that it made it so much easier to then defeat his health care initiative. So, it's very important for Republicans who think they're going to have to fight later on on health care, fight later on maybe on some of the bank bailout legislation, fight later on on all kinds of issues.."

And so, as the table above reveals, it came to pass.

On issue after issue, even when President Obama extended his hand, Republicans showed him the back of theirs. Despite dedicating 40% of the $787 billion stimulus package to tax cuts (making it, as Steve Benen noted, the "biggest tax cut ever"), Obama got no GOP votes in the House and only three in the Senate. Months of painful concessions to supposedly moderate Senate Republicans only served to produce a watered-down health care bill - and no GOP support.

Time after time, President Obama could count the votes he received from Congressional Republicans on the fingers (usually the middle) of one hand. The expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) to four million more American kids earned the backing of a whopping eight GOP Senators. (One of them, Arlen Specter, later became a Democrat.) Badly needed Wall Street reform eventually overcame GOP filibusters to pass with the support of just three Republicans in the House and Senate, respectively. This summer, it took 50 days for President Obama to get past Republican filibusters of extended unemployment benefits and the Small Business Jobs Act. As for the DISCLOSE Act, legislation designed to limit the torrent of secret campaign cash unleashed by the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, in September Republican Senators prevented it from ever coming to a vote.

And when they weren't showing up to vote no on President Obama's initiatives, Senate Republicans blocked voting altogether.

Continue reading »