Tim Burchett is an actual U.S. representative from the state of Tennessee, and he apparently has no idea how unemployment insurance (UI) works. As in, we don’t (very rarely, anyway) pay people who quit their jobs. The people who are quitting are frequently applying early for Social Security and/or living off whatever savings they managed to claw back from the hulking dragon hoard of our oh-so-magnanimous cabal of hardly working plutocrats.
Okay, so we’re dusting off the bleached bones of this talking point? I’m starting to miss the intellectual heft of the Dr. Seuss/Mr. Potato Head wars. It’s like everything Republicans say these days was crafted and focus-grouped by a think tank that shares coworking space with painter Jon McNaughton and a meth lab.
But, hey, why let reality get in the way of a fun narrative?
Unfortunately, this bullshit story is so old it should be meeting Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queen” trope at Perkins every morning to double-fist Sankas and parse the latest Bonanza fanboy theories.
For the nontweeters:
Good gourd, that’s ignorant.
The tweet caught the attention of 10th-level Twitter ninja Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has turned down numerous overtures to join me at Perkins for late-night Sanka bacchanals. It’s starting to make me feel just a little uncool.
For the nontweeters:
Yup. As many people who aren’t members of Congress know, extended federal UI benefits expired in early September, and their removal didn’t meaningfully goose hiring rates, even though Republicans were convinced that “free money” was the sand in the gears preventing more robust recovery from the pandemic.
In fact, 26 states stopped those payments early, and it did bupkis.
Slate:
Not only did ending enhanced unemployment benefits do little to boost hiring, the states that ended the programs early also damaged their own economies. According to a paper released in August from researchers at Columbia, Harvard, the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and the University of Toronto, the decision to end benefits early actually resulted in a significant financial hit.
CNBC:
As Ocasio-Cortez notes, people are starting to realize that working a job (or two, or three) that doesn’t pay all their bills—or even all the expenses related to getting back into the workforce—is sort of pointless. Without a strong push for human infrastructure—which includes government support for child care—you’ll never get some of these people back to work, because they literally can’t go.
But since Republicans found a talking point that works for them, they’re going to dry-hump it into humiliated mounds of lint. Never mind that it’s a total lie. Their die-hard base doesn’t know that, after all. All they “know” is that Joe Biden is the next Che Guevara. And they don’t want communism—unless, of course, Donald Trump tells them it’s okay.
It made comedian Sarah Silverman say, “THIS IS FUCKING BRILLIANT,” and prompted author Stephen King to shout “Pulitzer Prize!!!” (on Twitter, that is). What is it? The viral letter that launched four hilarious Trump-trolling books. Get them all, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.
Okay, so we’re dusting off the bleached bones of this talking point? I’m starting to miss the intellectual heft of the Dr. Seuss/Mr. Potato Head wars. It’s like everything Republicans say these days was crafted and focus-grouped by a think tank that shares coworking space with painter Jon McNaughton and a meth lab.
But, hey, why let reality get in the way of a fun narrative?
Unfortunately, this bullshit story is so old it should be meeting Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queen” trope at Perkins every morning to double-fist Sankas and parse the latest Bonanza fanboy theories.
For the nontweeters:
Good gourd, that’s ignorant.
The tweet caught the attention of 10th-level Twitter ninja Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has turned down numerous overtures to join me at Perkins for late-night Sanka bacchanals. It’s starting to make me feel just a little uncool.
For the nontweeters:
Yup. As many people who aren’t members of Congress know, extended federal UI benefits expired in early September, and their removal didn’t meaningfully goose hiring rates, even though Republicans were convinced that “free money” was the sand in the gears preventing more robust recovery from the pandemic.
In fact, 26 states stopped those payments early, and it did bupkis.
Slate:
Not only did ending enhanced unemployment benefits do little to boost hiring, the states that ended the programs early also damaged their own economies. According to a paper released in August from researchers at Columbia, Harvard, the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and the University of Toronto, the decision to end benefits early actually resulted in a significant financial hit.
CNBC:
As Ocasio-Cortez notes, people are starting to realize that working a job (or two, or three) that doesn’t pay all their bills—or even all the expenses related to getting back into the workforce—is sort of pointless. Without a strong push for human infrastructure—which includes government support for child care—you’ll never get some of these people back to work, because they literally can’t go.
But since Republicans found a talking point that works for them, they’re going to dry-hump it into humiliated mounds of lint. Never mind that it’s a total lie. Their die-hard base doesn’t know that, after all. All they “know” is that Joe Biden is the next Che Guevara. And they don’t want communism—unless, of course, Donald Trump tells them it’s okay.
It made comedian Sarah Silverman say, “THIS IS FUCKING BRILLIANT,” and prompted author Stephen King to shout “Pulitzer Prize!!!” (on Twitter, that is). What is it? The viral letter that launched four hilarious Trump-trolling books. Get them all, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.