Rand Paul: Up Is Down, Unemployment Edition
Helping the unemployed hurts them! The junior senator from Tennessee appeared this morning on FOX News Sunday and let loose with the sort of Bizarro-world reasoning that typifies modern Randian (Ayn, that is) libertarian doctrine:
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said Sunday he opposes extending unemployment benefits for workers, arguing that it would be a “disservice” to jobless individuals.
“I do support unemployment benefits for the 26 weeks that they’re paid for. If you extend it beyond that, you do a disservice to these workers,” he said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.”
About 1.3 million long-term jobless Americans will lose federal benefits if Congress fails to reauthorize the Emergency Unemployment Compensation program, which expires at the end of December.
Without congressional action, the most time that people could get would be six months of state unemployment benefits.
“When you allow people to be on unemployment insurance for 99 weeks, you’re causing them to become part of this perpetual unemployed group in our economy,” Paul argued on “Fox News Sunday.”
Riiiight. And the failure of the government to do anything remotely effective to stimulate job creation combined with an economy rigged to benefit the one percent by soaking the rest has nothing to do with systemic unemployment and disemployment.
We’d love to see what Senator Paul has to say about that.
