The Unemployed Get Screwed Again

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

11 January 14

ob Portman of Ohio, who might have been the 2012 Republican vice-presidential nominee had the Romney people not been terrified that, if they put Romney and Portman on the same stage together, the earth would spin into a dark region of the galaxy made up only of the primeval tedium whence the cosmos came, and we'd all come out named Tagg or something. Now, though, he's back in the Senate being "reasonable," which means that Portman felt free to allow an extension of unemployment benefits to come to a vote in the Senate, so Portman then could devise a way to sabotage those benefits because that is reasonable and bipartisan and centrist, and nobody will yell at him on the radio too loudly back in Columbus or Elyria.

It depends, he said, on whether lawmakers find a way to pay for the $6.4 billion cost. Wednesday, Portman said he has just such a way. He said that people drawing two other kinds of government aid -- Social Security disability insurance payments (SSDI) and trade adjustment assistance (TAA) -- can simultaneously get unemployment benefits, which he thinks is wrong.It depends, he said, on whether lawmakers find a way to pay for the $6.4 billion cost. Wednesday, Portman said he has just such a way. He said that people drawing two other kinds of government aid -- Social Security disability insurance payments (SSDI) and trade adjustment assistance (TAA) -- can simultaneously get unemployment benefits, which he thinks is wrong.

The "compromise" on offer is to help the unemployed while stoking the usua; anger at a vague claque of disabled freeloaders elsewhere. Where ever did Portman get the idea that the country's economy is beset by double-dipping cripples?

In 2012, the Heritage Foundation discussed the idea in a blog post entitled, "Freeloaders on safety net programs double dip to get thousands in taxpayer benefits."

In short, Rob Portman knows full well his amendment is doomed in the Senate, but he's going to attach it to the extension anyway because kicking the poors is never a bad career move, and he knows the extension itself if doomed in the House because, in matters like this, the House is little more than a Dickensian madhouse. So Portman, reasonably, has made the calculation that he can profit politically by this little dumbshow. Meanwhile, the longterm unemployed, who originally got sold out on the Murray-Ryan bipartisan Glory Train, have to be completely unsurprised that any relief at all seems now to be beyond the powers of the performance artists of our national legislature.