Is paying unemployment benefits a crime?
Senator Tom Coburn, Republican Senator of my native state of Oklahoma thinks that extending payment of unemployment benefits to the jobless amounts to a crime, unless money is found to pay for it.
He says, “It is theft,” because it is essentially stealing from future generations.
On the other hand, Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, thinks the real injustice is holding up badly needed help to the jobless. He says, “It is as if a tornado hit their home or a flood wiped out their community. It is an emergency, and we respond to emergencies with emergency spending.”
It is a classic display of a difference between the Libertarian, Republican and Democrat’s thinking.
Coburn, a fiscal conservative, is against spending money the federal government doesn’t have. Few of us would disagree with that. If you don’t have it, don’t spend it.
Yet, what do you do if you are faced with an emergency? Borrow the money or not?
Look at New Orleans following hurricane Katrina. That was an emergency of major proportions. Thousands were homeless. Scores of people were drowning. Relief had to be provided. What could the Louisiana state and federal government do? Decline assistance on the ground they didn’t have nor could find the money to come to the aid of the citizens of Louisiana? New Orleans has a heavy population of the poor. Why spend money you have to borrow helping them? Are they worth helping?
Wouldn’t that be just another display of some kind of wealth redistribution from the wealthy to the poor by the government? Is that the Libertarian way? The Republican way? The Democratic way? The Tea Party way?
Now put yourself in the place of one of those unfortunate souls in New Orleans? Odds are you’d do whatever you had to do to escape the agony of your predicament.
So, would Senator Coburn maintain his position of refusing financial aid to Louisiana and the gulf coast if the money had to be borrowed? I don’t know.
Is governmental response coming to the aid of people caught in such turmoil a socialist act? Is it defensible in a capitalistic economic system? Certainly there is no profit to be gained. Who is to make the decision?
If you are jobless, through no fault of your own, your kids sitting at the bare dinner table, the electric bill is overdue—VEA is threatening to cut off your power, the mortgage payment or rent is due and the mortgagor is on the verge of foreclosing on your home, the landlord on eviction. You can only find five dollars in your pocket and no income. What do you do?
Do you head to the unemployment office to pick up your unemployment check—to be told your benefit had expired? Then go off to the welfare department, hat in hand, seeking welfare assistance?
Would it concern you that you might be taking money from the wealthy by doing so, or increasing a debt your descendants may wind up paying for? Or that you were taking assistance from a government being criticized as being socialist?
Is that what a self-professed Christian nation would do?
What if you knew that Business Insider, a financial management resource center, found that in 2007 the top 1 percent owned over a third of the nation’s wealth while the bottom 50 percent had a measly 2.5 percent and that you are taking some of the wealth of that top 1 percent?
Would you take that unemployment and welfare help if you were a Libertarian, Republican, Democrat, or member of the Tea Party? Of course you would.
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