It’s not very often I’ve agreed with “The Hammer”; in fact, I don’t think I’ve ever agreed with him. When I was living in Texas I viewed DeLay as a pompous horse’s patoot and an embarrassment to the state. After I moved to Oklahoma, I was glad to see him fall.
That being said, I am in 100 percent agreement with him about unemployment being bad for the economy because it encourages people to not work. For every person I know who is unemployed that is diligently looking for work is another who is goosing the system and isn’t. I know a single, unattached person who has been unemployed since December and hasn’t even been able to get a fast food job and has even bragged about how she is covered by unemployment until December!
Before you give me that “Oh, you don’t understand, you’ve never been there” malarkey, I have been there. Before I landed my current job, I was unemployed for 10 weeks, and let me just say that it was the most humiliating 10 weeks of my adult life. I did not like being unemployed, and in those 10 weeks, I sent out 100 resumes and job applications. Unfortunately, there are a ,lot of people out there who do not feel embarrassed about being unemployed, and rather enjoy the fact that they receive an income without working!
Here are DeLay’s thoughts from an article from the Huffington Post.
Tom Delay: People Are Unemployed Because They Want To Be
Former House Majority Leader Tom Delay called Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) “brave” on Sunday for launching a one-man filibuster of unemployment benefits, arguing that they dissuaded people from going out and finding work.
Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union,” the Texas Republican said that Bunning’s fiscal responsibility was commendable, even if his shenanigans (refusing to allow unemployment benefits to be considered by unanimous consent) nearly brought the Senate to a halt.
“Nothing would have happened if the Democrats had just paid for [the benefits],” Delay said. “People would have gotten their unemployment compensation. I think Bunning was brave in standing up there and taking it on by himself.”
Asked whether it was bad strategy to make a budget stand on a $10 billion extension of unemployment (as opposed to, say, the Bush’s $720 billion prescription drugpackage), Delay insisted that if the PR had been done right, Bunning would have been applauded. Helping the unemployed with federal assistance, he said, was unsound policy.
“You know,” Delay said, “there is an argument to be made that these extensions, the unemployment benefits keeps people from going and finding jobs. In fact there are some studies that have been done that show people stay on unemployment compensation and they don’t look for a job until two or three weeks before they know the benefits are going to run out.
Host Candy Crowley: Congressman, that’s a hard sell, isn’t it?
Delay: it’s the truth.
Crowley: People are unemployed because they want to be?
Delay: well, it is the truth. and people in the real world know it. And they have friends and they know it. Sure, we ought to be helping people that are unemployed find a job, but we also have budget considerations that are incredibly important, especially now that Obama is spending monies that we don’t have.
