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U.S. Senate Vote Ends Unpardonable Republican Filibuster of Unemployment Benefits

By Andis Kaulins

As reported at the Los Angeles Times by Lisa Mascaro and Michael A. Memoli, Tribune Washington Bureau, in Senate vote ends GOP filibuster of extended jobless benefits, the seating of Carte Goodwin as the new Democratic senator from West Virginia and the vote of two Republicans in Congress having a social conscience ? Maine Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins ? resulted in a vote to extend jobless benefits to 2.5 million Americans whose unemployment benefits expired in June with no jobs in sight.

To filibuster that people with nothing should have less than nothing is unpardonable. Republicans should instead be working to get the people with money in the U.S.A. to create jobs, rather than to be filibustering against existential aid to those who have no work. Somewhere along the road, the Republican Party has gotten totally off course in following dogmatic theoretical conservative ideas that have no sensible relationship to current economic realities.

Again, we say this as political centrists who find that people should work -- but there do have to be jobs to be had. If not, the country has to support those who do not have work. People at the lower end of the scale are seldom in any position to create jobs for themselves. Denying them unemployment compensation is just morally despicable.

Full post as published by LawPundit on July 22, 2010 (boomark / email).