Rep. John Shaddeg of (surprise, surprise) Arizona thinks that extending unemployment benefits will basically take money OUT of the economy because unemployed people will SAVE money rather than spending it and that it’s not the spending of money that moves the economy.
No shit. Here he is on MSNBC’s Morning Joe yesterday being asked a question by Mike Barnicle:
BARNICLE: What about the fact that unemployment benefits pumped into the economy are an immediate benefit to the economy? Immediate…SHADEGG: No, they’re not! Unemployed people hire people? Really? I didn’t know that.
BARNICLE: Unemployed people spend money Congressman, ’cause they have no money.
SHADEGG: Aha! So your answer is it’s the spending of money that drives the economy and I don’t think that’s right. It’s the creation of jobs that drives the economy…Actually, the truth is the unemployed will spend as little of that money as they possibly can. Job creators create jobs.
BARNICLE: Have you ever been unemployed? Have you ever been unemployed?
SHADEGG: Yes, I have.
BARNICLE: What did you do with the money? Save it?
So, if you have lost your job and are behind on your mortgage payment, having trouble putting food on the table, and seriously at risk of having the lights turned on in your house, your first instinct, according to Shadegg, is to SAVE any money you get. That way you can sit in the dark, hungry and cold while you wait for the bank to come to kick you out of your home so they can foreclose on it. I can’t believe I didn’t come to that same conclusion myself. Must be because I never had a lobotomy.
The thing that really gets me about Shadegg is when I watch his face while he spews this sewage. He smirks and smiles and laughs and you fucking know he doesn’t believe a word of what he’s vomiting out. He’s simply pandering to his wealthy benefactors. Period. End of sentence.
More at Think Progress.
By the way, there’s something going on here that should get far more attention than it has and the Obama administration and Democrats up and down the food chain should be educating America about. Do you know why the “Bush tax cuts” are expiring? It’s because they were passed under reconciliation so that they didn’t have to worry about a filibuster by Senate Democrats ten years ago. Things passed under budget reconciliation expire/sunset after ten years.
Remember the hue and cry and complete GOPocrisy of the Republicans during the health insurance reform debacle? To listen to them, you would have thought that Democrats had cooked up some sneaky trick play in order to pass legislation. That they had made up this unconstitutional scheme to do an endrun around Republicans and that the Republicans would neeee-eeeever do something so twisted and evil as that, oh no!
Well, reconciliation bills expire in ten years and these tax cuts are now expiring. The Republicans are stopping the extension of unemployment insurance this week that puts 2 million Americans on the dole while they are making sure that the tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% of Americans get extended. Meanwhile, it’s looking way too possible that the White House and Democratic members of Congress are ready to capitulate to the Republicans and extend the billionaire tax cuts (which amount to a mere 4.5%.) If the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats cave on this, I may well hang up my organizer hat for Organizing for America. I am willing to fight for them if they fight for us but when they can look Americans in the eye and say, “this is okay” when it is anything BUT okay, they lose me.
And that fucking hurts me to say more than you will ever know.
I’m just sayin’…
