“Who Cares about Hungry Homeless People, we have a Debt to Bring Down!!!”

"We are now speeding down the road of wasteful spending and debt, and unless we can escape, we will be smashed in inflation." -Herbert Hoover During the Great Depression

The Senate has refused to extend unemployment benefits to the millions and millions of out of work Americans that rely on this safety net to stay afloat. The reason? The Republicans have chosen this moment to take a stand against "runaway spending," not allowing for anymore debt to be taken on in order to stop the growth of the deficit. Unbelievably, this is the issue that the Republicans (and Ben Nelson) chose to take their stand on, demanding the counter-productive step of using the unused portion of the stimulus fund to pay for unemployment benefits. This move is heartless, bad economics and so cynical that it makes my eyes bleed.

The Republicans argue that our growing deficit is a major concern that needs to be addressed, and it needs to be addressed now! Left unaddressed, the deficit could cause a crisis, much like it has in Greece and to a lesser extent, other European nations recently. They lament that the country is making our children and grandchildren pay the tab for what we do now, and that's "unconscionable."

Is it not "unconscionable" for those children and grandchildren to see their parents out of work, with every available job ready to be filled by five out of work Americans? Is it not "unconscionable" that America refuses to go 0.00043% more into debt? Is it not "unconscionable" to put these children and grandchildren's parents and grandparents under the strains of this economy without the meager safety net that is unemployment benefits? If the children and grandchildren of today could give their "grown folks" answer on whether their willing to pay pennies 20 or 30 years from now in order to ease their family's suffering now, I wonder what their answer would be? Maybe we should ask them whether they'd rather pay for hundreds of billions of unfunded tax cuts for the wealthy and unbudgeted wars that ballooned the deficit by much, much more than 0.00043%?

You don't fix the crisis on the horizon by letting the crisis you're facing now get even worse. People aren't spending because they don't have jobs. The only way that they can spend in lieu of jobs is with some help. When they spend that help to get what they need to survive, the stores that they spend at gets more business and may need some help to handle that business, then those people that needed some help may just be able to get the new jobs and keep spending with the income they receive and so on. Cutting off the flow of money, means less gets spent, means the store needs less help, which means someone new gets fired that can't spend anymore, and on and on. The problem gets even worse when the flow being cut off is not just to recipients of unemployment, but also to states that are nearly all in dire straits.

The states, lacking funds to keep them, will have to lay off scores of workers from their payrolls, causing even less money to flow into the economy. How does stalling an economic recovery in its infancy help to solve our debt problem? It doesn't, but continued, or even deepened, misery might help the Republicans win a few more elections. The Republicans argue that they're not against extending unemployment benefits and aid to States; they just want it to be paid for by raiding 14 Billion dollars of the remaining stimulus funds. The stimulus fund that they voted against before touting the jobs it saved in their states and districts. What about this economy makes it seem like stimulus funds aren't needed? Doesn't the fact that unemployment benefit extensions are still desperately needed prove that the economy still needs to be stimulated?

The deficit is a serious, long term problem, that needs to be addressed in a serious, long term way. Instead of worrying about 0.00043 % at the expense of citizens that are truly suffering during this most difficult time, we should make policy that seriously drives down the debt over the long haul. That means dealing with Medicare and Social Security in a meaningful way. That means looking at the defense budget and our unending wars, and yes it means tackling health care reform in a way that brings down the deficit long term (oh wait, that was done, without Republicans). Keep our citizens afloat, invest in our county's infrastructure and create America's new manufacturing opportunities (it cost money to make money) so that we're more of a producer nation with things to export to the world, than a consumer nation that needs ever more credit to consume. That's how we can work our way out of this debt. Letting our people, and our economy fall deeper into a hole, is not. Beyond that, it's just not right, and I think our children and grandchildren will agree when they (and the Congress) grow up…