Extending Unemployment

I don’t normally watch The Ed Show, we’ll skip the reasons why not, but I caught the last part of it yesterday when I tuned in the watch Hardball. He had on as guest a woman named Beth Clark who is unemployed, and whose benefits ran out in April. Emphasis in the following exchange has been added by me.

Schultz: Are you offended in any way by the way the Republicans are saying that would you rather sit home and take the benefits than to go look for a job, that it‘s a disincentive? What about that?

Clark: I‘m absolutely offended. That‘s not me.

Schultz: Would you take any job at this point?

Clark: If it was in my field, yes, an office administration. I would take any job if it provided insurance benefits.

I have been thinking, and repeatedly saying here, that we should extend unemployment benefits, but if this is who we are extending them for then I may need to rethink that.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I had been unemployed once. I was working at the time as a maintenance electrician, which was a high paying and highly skilled trade. The job I took, to get my scrawny butt off of the unemployment line, was as a machine operator in a steel plant. It turned out well, but it was one hell of a comedown from what I had been doing and it paid quite a lot less. I didn’t care; it was a job.

If Ed Shultz is using this woman as an example of why we need to extend unemployment benefits, then maybe we don’t need to extend them. On the other hand, it’s Ed Shultz who is using her as the example, so maybe my mind should remain open.

Yes, family readers, my butt was scrawny once. We won’t get into a discussion of what it is now.