When George W. Bush was president, John Boehner didn't demand cuts to pay for unemployment benefits.
Who could possibly have predicted that congressional Republicans would return from their Christmas recess ready to block emergency unemployment insurance? A plan to extend the benefits for the long-term jobless for three months does not yet have the votes to clear a Senate procedural vote planned for Monday evening
because it isn't paired with a "pay for"—and since Republicans would never go for raising revenue, what we're talking about is a demand for cuts to another part of the safety net.
This is yet another example of the GOP's move to extremism in recent years, and especially since the election of President Barack Obama:
National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling said in an interview airing Sunday on “Meet the Press” that precedent from the George W. Bush years dictates unemployment benefits be extended without being paid for.
“Fourteen of the last 17 times that emergency unemployment’s been extended there have been no strings attached,” Sperling said. “All five times that President Bush extended unemployment benefits there were no pay-fors.”
Remember that as Republicans inevitably take to the cable news shows acting all pious about how they couldn't
possibly do anything like keep emergency unemployment insurance going without an equal cut to, say, food stamps or Head Start. And remember a few essential facts about the federal unemployment insurance program: Long-term unemployment is
double what it's been when emergency benefits were cut off after previous recessions. Unemployment benefits inject much-needed money into the economy and cutting them off could
slow economic growth. And if things continue as they are now, the share of jobless people covered by unemployment insurance is
projected to fall to a historic low.
Sign and send a petition now to Senate Republicans demanding that they restore benefits to the Emergency Unemployment Compensation program.