The headline on MSNBC is “Republicans kill Senate Jobless aid measure.”
The lead paragraph reads:
Republicans on Thursday defeated Democrats’ showcase election-year jobs bill, including an extension of weekly unemployment benefits for millions of people out of work more than six months.
The Las Vegas Review Journal reports:
Eugene Turner has a word or two for U.S. senators who voted Thursday against a $109 billion bill that would have extended emergency unemployment benefits for job seekers like himself.
The photo above is of Eugene Turner. He says:
“They have no heart for the public — the working man,” Turner said Friday at the Nevada JobConnect office on Maryland Parkway near Desert Inn Road, where people were waiting to use computers.
Turner, who moved here from Los Angeles six weeks ago looking for work, said he’s scared about how he’s going to pay rent when his government assistance runs out.
“My bills ain’t going to stop in 10 weeks,” he said, shaking his head.
Jerry Medina, an unemployed bartender who just received the last of 26 weeks of state unemployment benefits and was searching for a job at the jammed JobConnect office in Carson City, stated things in stronger terms.
“They are destroying my life,” Medina said. “I don’t know what I am going to do. What they have done is a total disgrace. Those politicians are scum.”
The bill, which fell three votes short of passage, would have allowed jobless people to receive as many as 73 weeks of additional emergency benefits after they get 26 weeks of benefits from the state.
Mae Worthey of the Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation said:
…70,000 Nevadans now are receiving federally-paid benefits under five different programs approved by Congress. Once they finish their current extension program — none lasts longer than 20 weeks — they won’t receive more benefits.
“There is really not much they can do,” Worthey said. “The social service programs will be flooded. It is very sad.”
Nevada has the highest unemployment rate in the country at 14 percent; 189,300 people were out of work in May.
Many unemployed people already have exhausted the maximum possible 99 weeks of benefits, still are jobless and haven’t gotten a check for months.
About 120,000 residents now are receiving benefits under either a state or federal program, according to Worthey. About 69,000 unemployed people already must get by without a check.
Daniel Burns, spokesman for Nevada Republican Governor Jim Gibbons, says the unemployed can expect no help from the state of Nevada—to call their representatives in Congress. Republican Senator Mitch McConnell is quoted as saying:
“It adds new taxes and over $30 billion to an already staggering $13 trillion dollar national debt,” said McConnell.
Nobody is going to get any help from the Republicans. They aren’t going to get help from Governor Gibbons, Republican Senator John Ensign, Republican candidate Sharron Angle, Republican Representative Dean Heller or any other members of the Republican Party.
The Republican view seems to be to vote against anything that might help Republicans win election in November. People be damned.
I don’t understand that reasoning but that seems to be the case.
So, what can you do? Your only leverage is your vote. Don’t aid and abet the Republicans in November. Don’t vote for anything with an R attached to their name, either federally, state or local elections.
Rise up and strike back in November! They don’t care about you—then don’t care about them.
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When we have the Republicans running the congress and not the majority, it makes getting anything actually accomplished very difficult and what does get done has usually been compromised so badly tht teh essence of any actions have been so diluted and added on with frills for the republicans, well, it’s just sad.
We need a system where the clear majority rules–the sixty vote rule should be revised to make progress actually happen.
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