Roughly 1.3 million people will be losing their unemployment benefits today, with many more to come if Congress does not vote to extend the program.
As what some are referring to as the “Great Recession” bulged and reached its peak, Congress extended the expiration of the Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) program 11 times already, acknowledging thereby the dire circumstances the nation’s workers and economy currently still face. However, the economic framing by some to point toward a dwindling if not eradicated recession has led Republicans to believe it is time to cut the assistance cord, and just in time for the holiday season.
Democrats initially agreed to the cuts as a means of avoiding another stalemate such as the government shutdown last fall, but Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D – Nev.) has said that renewing the program is a top item for the Senate’s agenda when they reconvene Jan. 6. Reid is hopeful the Senate will vote quickly to reinstate the EUC for a three-month extension though the extension is grossly opposed by Republicans.
With little more than a week between the expiration of the benefits and the Senate’s vote, recipients are faced with, at best, a delay in their assistance, and at worst a permanent end to it and the beginning of a highly dubious existence for an undetermined amount of time.
At the time of expiration, unemployed workers will be able to collect at most 26 weeks of benefits — little over six months, though the projected average length of time workers are remaining unemployed is closer to eight to nine months. Because unemployment benefits are determined at state level, they vary across the nation. Twenty-six weeks is down by nearly twice as much in many states previously.
Though we are told the recession is technically over, many have yet to feel that change in their daily lives. Every state but North Dakota (thanks to the filth of the fracking boom there) has added more people than jobs since the recession hit. The gap in employment that results from such activity and numbers yields roughly 9.2 million workers lacking jobs across the nation, according to the Economic Policy Institute. The gap between jobs and would-be workers in 33 states is 5 percent or greater. To put that into perspective, 215,000 unemployed workers will be affected in California initially. In New York, that number is roughly 125,000 workers, according to the Labor Department data offered by the Democrats on the House Committee on Ways and Means. 
New Jersey will be hit hardest by the unemployment benefit cuts, though.? Roughly 90,000 people — around 1 percent of the state’s population — will lose their benefits today. North and South Dakota will be the least affected, with only .05 percent of its population losing benefits.
Though the cuts may result in some workers taking part-time work that fails to pay the bills out of sheer desperation, many others are more likely to give up looking for work altogether.? Both can lend the illusion of unemployment temporarily improving somewhat, but it does not paint a realistic picture for the employment field out there for workers.
Chief economist at the Bank of the West, Scott Anderson, stated:
This will likely lead to an artificial decline in the overall unemployment rate.
Cutting benefits is also highly likely to stunt economic growth. How will the economy be affected if folks cannot buy their groceries, pay their bills, if they lose their homes? Tacked on fees and skyrocketing interest rates for those struggling to pay their bills only pull them down harder and faster into poverty and homelessness while those who manipulated the global interest rates continue to walk free, to live and dine in a five-star bubble. Scott Anderson also went on to say that the reduction in consumer spending from lack of benefits would essentially wipe out the small economic boost gained from the budget deal. Isn’t that grand?
Let us hope Congress and the Senate understand these numbers clearly, as well as the effects cutting unemployment benefits in this era will yield. The American people have been lied to, swindled, bled and robbed. It is high time they are given the recompense they deserve to pull themselves back out of the muck that such egregious crimes as the collapse of the housing bubble, the bailing out of the auto industry, and the LIBOR scandal has afflicted them with.
Unemployment benefits are not a handout. It is merely a small bone we are given to chew after the masters of war have filled their bellies and cast the carcass to the floor — meat they have stolen from us in the first place. If we are not careful, America will soon itself be the carcass on the floor, gnawed by the hungry teeth of the next global powerhouse’s poor.
Edited/Published by: SB
