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Lack of unemployment funding could hurt local businesses
NEW YORK - OCTOBER 08: Dale Chandler's unemployment insurance notice sits on a table on October 8, 2010 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. The U.S. government reported today that the U.S. economy continued to shed jobs for the month of September. The unemployment rate remained unchanged at 9.6 percent in August
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JEREMY HOBSON: Tackling the deficit seems to be a more pressing priority for Congress than helping the jobless. Today funding runs out for extended unemployment benefits. That's $310 a week on average for up to 99 weeks paid by the federal government to the unemployed. Democrats have been trying to pass a $12 billion extension since before Thanksgiving. But yesterday Republicans again successfully blocked it citing the money it will add to the deficit. So if two million long-term unemployed Americans lose their assistance, which businesses feel it?
Marketplace's Mitchell Hartman went to find out.
Mitchell Hartman: The average unemployment check's $300 a week -- the bottom of the income ladder where families typically spend well over half of what they make on necessities.
So when unemployment checks stop, it's felt right away by businesses like gas stations, apartment operators, and grocery stores.
Grant McLoughlin: A good portion of our business currently is subsidized by public assistance.
Grant McLoughlin is with Fresh Grocer, with 10 stores in Philadelphia.
McLoughlin: People that don't have the unemployment insurance may not shop there at all, or be shopping elsewhere or I don't know what they're going to do, but it could certainly impact our bottom line which would probably force us to cut back on our labor force.
I asked Kathy Getsla of Blaine, Wash., what she'll do. She's 60, has been out of work for 18 months and says she's already cut her food, gas, and utility bills to the bone.
Kathy Getsla: I just hope to squeak by. But it'll be on savings I had not anticipated to be dipping into.
If funding isn't restored, it could slow the economy next year.
I'm Mitchell Hartman for Marketplace.
Senator Scott Brown, (R, MA) blocked
extending unemployment benefits to
our most desperate citizens who - typically
through no fault of their own - have lost
their jobs and can't find a new one.
(Recall that much of this mess and much of our deficits are directly due to the policies of past borrow-and-spend Republican administrations).
Senator Scott Brown, (R, MA) should have his home picketed by the unemployed and
their supporters over the holiday season.
The unemployed are all too often invisible, isolated and unheard - particularly now that they don't meet at unemployment offices.
Unemployed citizens and their friends and families who are suffering over the holidays due to Senator Scott Brown's (R, MA) mean-spirited partisanship should be
sent by bus to his home so they can
demonstrate in front of it and remind
Senator Scott Brown, (R, MA) of his
cruelty and remind Senator Scott Brown, (R, MA) that these are his fellow human beings and citizens and should be treated as such.
If you need funds to pay for this mess,
tax the wealthy bankers and companies who benefitted both from the Bushes' profligate policies and from extorting a bailout from a crisis they caused.
It's interesting that Simpson and Bowles are quite willing to impose austerity on the middle class, but not on large corporations and the wealthy.
For example, why not Cap or Eliminate the Corporate Interest deduction instead of the individual mortgage deduction ?
Excessive leverage increases volatility and risk, and leads to waves of debt-financed takeovers, the reduction of U.S. jobs and offshoring. Uneconomic takeovers are often facilitated by the preferential treatment of corporate interest payments - that companies can deduct their interest payments from their taxes - even if it is excessive or harmful.
The idea that middle-class tax payers should subsidize this destructive corporate welfare is alarming.
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We must organize as a nation now. Our government has allowed an invasion of over 30 million illegal immigrants of who are habitual lawbreakers, uneducated, criminals, terrorists, gang members, pedophiles, prostitutes, and drug users/dealers. Defense budgets and military bases all over the country are closing down. Open your eyes people they don�t need soldiers they want slaves. Your current lawmakers have sold us out to foreign nations, private investors and the poor south of our border. The plan is to replace us with illegal immigrants then leave legal U.S citizens broke, hungry and defenseless to be taken over by rich and poor foreigners with bad intensions. Citizens born in the United States are the target of elimination and are slowly being pushed out of the workforce. Illegal immigrants in the U.S earn an average income of $30,000 per yr with no papers, elementary diploma, high school diploma, or college degree. This is our land and civilization we were born here. The people do not have to accept this treason or any new laws or legislation that supports foreigners before it�s own legal citizens. Organize & mobilize join us at http://usmoa.org
