Should WE Keep Paying People Not To Work

This Opinion piece comes from Foxnews.com:

Do we really want paying people not to work for 99 weeks – nearly two years – to be a permanent feature of the American economic system? Is that what the American people voted for in the historic landslide election of 2010? If not, then why are Republicans poised to – for the first time since the election – extend this program?

The economic case for nearly two years of unemployment benefits is extremely weak. While supporters tout the demand-side effect of the benefit checks being spent, they ignore the much larger supply-side effect of creating a significant disincentive for work and consequently for economic production. The same Keynesians who brought us trillions of failed stimulus and a mountain of debt tell us the paying people not to work is a good way to grow the economy. Common sense – and the data – say otherwise.

As the Cato Institute’s Alan Reynolds eloquently explained: “Whether the government pays people to work or to stay on the dole, it has to get the money by taxing, borrowing or printing money — all of which reduce real income and employment opportunities in the private sector. … If every dollar of unemployment benefits really added $1.61 to real GDP, then putting everyone on the dole would make us all much richer.”

In reality, economists have shown that unemployment benefits actually increase unemployment because they increase the average duration of unemployment for individuals. There is less incentive to search for new employment when the government pays people as much as 60 percent of their previous salary to do nothing at all.

It should be no surprise then that since the extended benefits were signed into law, the median duration of unemployment has more than doubled from 9.6 weeks to 20.8 weeks, and the unemployment rate has remained stubbornly high for months on end.

Not all of this can be attributed to overly-generous unemployment benefits, of course, but they certainly aren’t helping. And given that more people are staying on government benefits for longer periods of time, federal spending on unemployment compensation has nearly quadrupled from $45 billion in 2008 to $160 billion in 2010 – all funded by higher taxes or federal debt, which takes resources out of job creators’ hands.

House Republicans will have their first opportunity to end this costly giveaway. To win, they need only to do nothing; the 99 weeks of unemployment are set to expire at the end of the year, automatically returning to the standard 26 weeks of unemployment (some states pay more).

Unfortunately, it looks like most Republicans missed one of the key messages of the landslide 2010 election – no more expensive giveaways.

Last Thursday The Washington Post reported that House Republicans plan to renew the expiring benefits program in a larger package that also includes an extension of the Social Security payroll tax cut. Perhaps it will be similar to a bill introduced by their Republican counterparts in the Senate, which extends the benefits but subjects them to means testing. Regardless, it will mean continuing to pay many people for nearly two years for not working.

This is a key test for the House Republican majority: will they listen to the small-government mandate that swept them into office? Or will they succumb to political pressure and advance a disastrous economic policy?

Democrats Block Disaster Aid Bill

Just last April Democrats were excoriating House Republicans asserting they were holding government hostage during the contrived government shutdown debacle. In a tit-for-tat move the Senate Democrats are now the "stonewallers" on keeping the government going by failing to pass the stopgap CR(continuing resolution).

In this latest saga the government is holding disaster relief hostage. Up and down the Wyoming Valley political pundits took jabs at Congressmen Lou Barletta and Tom Marino during the first showdown. It remains to be seen whether they voice the same opinion against the likes of Harry Reid and his cohorts in the Senate. Senate Blocks House Disaster Aid Bill

The Democrats are holding out for funding what they call an "Energy Department Loan Program".  Well twist my britches in a knot and send me over the edge.  The White House embarassment over the  Solyndra bankruptcy announcement after backing it with loans(Obama administration agreed to Solyndra loan days after insiders foresaw firm's failure) this past week and charges it inflated the claim of green jobs (Fly a plane or drive a bus? Then Obama says you've a GREEN job: White House accused of massaging eco-employment figures) shows genuine chutzpah to make this issue a stumbling block to disaster aid.

Administration Defends Half Billion Dollar Loan to Bankrupt ‘Clean Energy’ Firm

Obama administration officials told U.S. lawmakers Wednesday that a contributor to the president’s 2008 campaign played no role in pushing the $535 billion federal loan to the bankrupt solar panel firm Solyndra, Inc., raided by the FBI last week.

However, one Energy Department official did not answer directly when asked whether he had direct communications with the White House over the loan provided through stimulus money.

Emails obtained by the House Energy and Commerce Committee appear to show that Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and Department of Energy (DOE) employees had expressed concerns that the process was being rushed – even as President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Energy Secretary Steven Chu were touting the California-based “clean energy” company as the wave of the future.

The Administration was warned back in 2009 about Solyndra but they threw caution to the wind with taxpayer money.

There's an even bigger problem that has been put on the back burner.  Our government has not passed a budget in 900 days making these CR's a necessary evil.

Is it any wonder why this nation is so colossally screwed?  Right now party leaders on both sides of the aisle are using this nation as a pawn in their political brinksmanship.

The amount of disaster aid needed to re-fund FEMA is a drop in the federal budget bucket at $ 7 billion when we are racking up multi trillion dollar deficits.  Everyone in Washington knows that FEMA is going to get its money so get on with it. 

Did anyone tell the leaders that 1 in 4 children in Northeastern Pennsylvania live in poverty? 

One in every four children in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre/Hazleton metropolitan area lived in poverty in 2010, a dramatic increase over the previous year that came even as median household income in the region edged up slightly, new U.S. Census Bureau estimates indicated Thursday.

The jump was accompanied by a rise in the number of regional households that received food stamps, according to the American Community Survey, a census sampling of counties with population of at least 65,000.

"We are really talking about a huge portion of residents in Northeastern Pennsylvania who have trouble putting food on the table," said Teri Ooms, director of the Institute for Public Policy and Economic Development, a Wilkes-Barre-based think tank.

Families have lost everything, children are living in poverty, and Washington is quamired.  They got molasses in their britches in a time when this nation needs action and compromise.  The Democrats know they can't keep spending and the Republicans know that the government still has responsibilities.  In that statemen

Obamanation Spending

So much for blaming Bush for the money spent on the Iraq War. It gets tiring to hear the same old whining. Bush is gone. Obama is in the present. Here is a story from the New York Post.


It was an $800 billion misadventure that will be wreaking havoc on the economy for years to come.

No, not the war in Iraq, where an American combat-troop presence officially comes to an end tomorrow.

We're talking about President Obama's economic-stimulus program.

Remember the stimulus? The miracle cure Obama said would boost the economy and save millions of jobs?

Well, the president's panacea turned out to be an $862 billion bottle of snake oil -- and it cost $100 billion more than the entire Iraq campaign to date.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the total Iraq tab comes to $709 billion this month, a costly engagement in terms of treasure.

But as Randall Hoven points out on the American Thinker Web site and in the nearby chart, the war made up just 3.2 percent of federal spending while the fight raged. Leave it to the feds to make $700 billion look like a drop in the ocean.

And it accounts for less than 15 percent of the overall deficit since it began in 2003.

In fact, the war is to blame for a majority of the deficit only in 2007, when the US launched its surge, a brilliant success that changed the war. (If only all federal spending were as effective.)

Meanwhile, despite assurances that the stimulus would be "timely, targeted and temporary," Americans will be paying for some of it well into 2019.

Even with that vast, taxpayer-funded infusion, the economy remains stagnant, with unemployment pushing hard against 10 percent.

As Bush adviser Lawrence Lindsey wrote, "the actual performance of the economy is almost exactly what [Obama White House advisers] said would happen if we had done nothing."

But the beat goes on, and some of the more popular stimulus programs look likely to be made permanent -- in which case, the "temporary" fix could end up costing more than $3.2 trillion.

That's big bucks.

We want to know: Where's the bang?

Karen Feather Listens,Paul Not So Much

One might ask why I am doing a post about Karen Feather. For those that don't know Karen Feather is Paul Kanjorski's Chief of Staff..She is featured in a few You Tube video moments plus caught on film attending a political pow wow with Eachus operative DP and another afficable Hazleton politician BL. Yes together all of them closed down Ferdinand's restaurant but that is another story for another time.

On Joe Valenti's blog he makes an interesting observation about Karen after meeting her.

I did have a chance to catch up with her and have a very meaningful conversation.

While it only lasted all of five minutes, I can tell you un-equivalently she is a breath of fresh air when it comes to Washington politics.

You see, Feather asked me my opinion on health care reform, which is the complete opposite of her boss, and she listened.

Paul Kanjorski has a reputation for not listening to his constituents. Instead he spends more time telling you why he thinks he and Barack Obama have this country in the right direction. As you can see from the federal deficit widget to the right in less than a year and a half the pair have added $3.7 trillion to our debt. Unemployment continues to climb and there is no economic relief in sight. That will lead me to my next post.

Our Children's Children's Burden- Our Fiscal Cancer

Debtocracy: As a president, it's one thing to know you have a big fiscal problem. It's quite another when a panel you appointed tells you the policies you have in mind will only make things worse.

You can read all about it here.

By some estimates, total U.S. commitments for entitlements total $107 trillion over the next 75 years or so. That's an unpaid tax bill of $912,000 per household, or $351,000 for each child born today.