Senate Democrats to the unemployed: Drop Dead

After all, if Democrats fight for those who can't find work in a country where there are no jobs, Republicans might say mean things about them. We're spending trillions on a war in Afghanistan that's going nowhere, but God forbid people who can't find work should be able to put food on the table:

President Obama's urgent plea for more spending on the economy ran into the political buzz saw of the Senate on Tuesday, where Democratic leaders began chopping apart an aid package for unemployed workers and state governments in an effort to lessen its impact on the deficit.

The slimmed-down measure was still evolving late Tuesday. But Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) was trying to salvage one of Obama's top priorities -- $24 billion to avert the layoffs of state workers -- by scaling back other pieces of the sprawling package, including a provision to postpone a scheduled pay cut for doctors who see Medicare patients. Instead of postponing the cut until 2012, Reid is considering protecting doctors only through the rest of this year.

Reid also took aim at jobless benefits, which some Democrats complained may be too generous in a time of economic recovery. While the revised package would extend emergency benefits through the end of November, aides said it also would take $25 out of the weekly checks received by 15 million unemployed workers, repealing a payment boost first approved in last year's economic stimulus package.

One in five workers in this country is currently out of work. And because Harry Reid is running against a nutjob, these people are going to find their lives just a little bit more difficult in the next few weeks.

Here's who the Democrats are throwing in with: Guys like Orrin Hatch, who would insist that people like me, whose "drug use" consists of the occasional Advil for neck tension headaches and Benadryl for allergies, who are laid off (as I was in 2008) because the research grant money dried up, should have to pee in a cup in order to collect the unemployment insurance payments from the fund into which I'd been paying for years.

Let's not look at outsourcing. Let's not look at the "high productivity" in this country which means that fewer workers are doing the work that more were years ago, driving themselves into an early grave in the process. Let's not look at the fact that the "Rich People Create Jobs" doctrine is a complete and utter failure. Let's instead pit the still-employed against those who were jettisoned by corporate greed so that they can delude themselves that their government gives any more of a shit about them than it does about those who have already been vomited out by the Corporate States of America.