Small-Biz Killers: Who Pays for Jobless Benefits?
Grim reaper photoshop credit: Manly Rash
As I promised you on Tuesday, today’s column takes a closer look at how small businesses are getting whacked by skyrocketing unemployment insurance tax hikes across the country. Friends of mine here in Colorado Springs first alerted me to their massive bills, which have arrived over the past two weeks. Business owners from several other states have written me with similar horror stories — and I’ve included some of their experiences below. It’s yet another example of how the hidden Obama jobs death toll is wreaking havoc on America’s wealth producers.
One important point of clarification: The extra 13 months will not be tacked on to the existing 99 weeks’ package. Rather, the current proposal would extend eligibility for this basket of benefits until the end of 2011. (See Gabriel Malor at Ace of Spades for an explanation.) For the business owners footing the bill, the distinction makes little difference. Politicians pontificate. Employers pay. And you can bet come December 2011, they will extend this bottomless government “compassion” at others’ expense all over again.
For an excellent overview and analysis of the UI program’s flaws, fiscal problems, and needed changes, see the April 2010 testimony of UI expert Douglas Holmes here (PDF). He concludes: “The status of the slowly recovering economy dictates that, although the state and federal trust funds are insolvent, we must first do no harm to discourage job creation and economic recovery.” If only “Do No Harm” were a Washington mandate.
(See also this useful UI state tracker.)
Meanwhile in the Beltway, opposition to the tax deal is building. Staunch conservatives Sen. Jim DeMint and Rep. Michele Bachmann have announced their opposition (DeMint opposes the bill; Bachmann is objecting to the added spending). As I’ve urged before, Republicans need to tell the stories of those who are harmed by interminable wealth redistribution programs. They need a voice.
***
Small-Biz Killers: Who Pays for Jobless Benefits?
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2010
There is no such thing as a “free” government benefit. Ask small-business owners who are footing skyrocketing bills for bottomless jobless benefits. While politicians in Washington negotiate a deal to provide welcome temporary payroll, income and estate tax relief to America’s workers, struggling employers wonder how long they’ll have to pay for the compassion of others — and whether they can survive.
The Beltway deal hinges on extending federal unemployment insurance for another 13 months. This would mark the sixth time that the deadline has been extended since June 2008.
State unemployment benefits last up to 26 weeks. Bipartisan-supported Washington mandates have raised that to 99 weeks. The current proposal would extend eligibility for this basket of benefits until the end of 2011. The cost of the joint federal-state program is borne by employers who pay state and federal taxes on a portion of wages paid to each employee in a calendar year. (At the federal level, employers must pay 6.2 percent of the first $7,000 of income to keep the system afloat.)
The combined burden of these hidden state and federal payroll taxes has exploded during the recession as President Obama’s economic recovery interventions backfire and the jobless rate remains stuck near double-digits. State unemployment insurance funds have gone broke in nearly half the states. As of April 2010, unemployment tax analyst Douglas Holmes testified before the Senate, 35 states and jurisdictions had unemployment fund-related debts worth $39.5 billion. Anti-fraud efforts to prevent scams and overpayments are woefully underfunded.
In an interminable money shuffle, these bankrupt state unemployment insurance funds are now borrowing money from the feds, whose own regular unemployment benefits account and extended benefits account are both in the red. Washington is relying on transfers from the federal general revenue fund to cover loan obligations related to all these hemorrhaging accounts.
Who pays? Dentists, tavern owners, maid services, mom-and-pop shops — small businesses that are the backbone of the American economy. In my home state of Colorado, small and mid-size firms have been saddled with eye-popping unemployment insurance bills that have doubled, tripled and more in the past year. The businesses that have the lowest claims histories are getting punished the most to make up the jobless benefits fund deficit.
Greg Howard, owner of McCabe’s Tavern in Colorado Springs, told the Colorado Springs Gazette his bill spiked a whopping 600 percent. “It’s enough to T you off a little bit,” Howard told the newspaper. “The dollar amount isn’t tremendous, but it’s going up six times.”
A small commercial painting contractor told me this week that her nine-person company’s 1st quarter UI bill has gone from $1,000 to more than $6,500 over the past three years. “It’s killing us!” she told me. “How can we hire additional employees? This is a big increase in addition to the health insurance annual increases, etc. We had to reduce our employees’ wages by 10 percent this year, and who knows when we will be able to bump them back up?”
Lon Gibson, owner of Legalpool, Inc., told me how perverse unemployment insurance incentives led him to shut down his business in Philadelphia:
“We placed legal staff, especially temporary secretaries and paralegals. Part of our business was to place a secretary at a law firm for a short period of time. … Invariably, however, the temp would apply for unemployment benefits after the assignment. The agency would make a profit of $6 to $10 an hour from the assignment. Later, the bill would come in from unemployment for the temp and thus eliminate the profit we made from the temp! Ultimately, unless the temp didn’t file, the money we made on the temp was completely subtracted by required unemployment payments. It was exactly like, to use a football analogy, making a 10-yard gain and consistently having it eliminated by a holding penalty. … I can only imagine what other agencies are going through now with this administration.”
John S., president of Vinyl Headlights Inc., shared his plight:
“We are a variety rock band that travels up and down the East Coast. Yes, everyone thinks we’re lefty rockers, but that could not be further from the truth. We’re all businessmen, and we provide a service. Since Obama’s term, I have been watching our cost of business going up (UI, fuel, licenses, etc.), and we’ve had to modify our rates lower to keep us profitable. … We have let an employee go to further reduce costs. The last resort is to dissolve the company and send every man for himself. More than likely, all employees would take unemployment. If the government just got out of the way, I could employ people and provide the government revenue, but I am better off employing no one to keep from paying UI and the taxes. If a musician can get it, why can’t (Obama)? Oh, wait: He’s never had to make a payroll, and private enterprise is the enemy.”
These unsung Obama jobs death toll stories are amassing across the nation. Alas, the victims of government wealth redistribution never earn as much of Washington’s attention as the beneficiaries.
***
Reader and small business owner Bill in Shelton, WA e-mails a great point: “Never discussed is the fact that the unemployment rate (9.8% today) does not include unemployed or underemployed small business owners. Your article today quoted many small business owners and the amounts they were paying for UI, but no one talks about the fact that these small business owners are not eligible for unemployment benefits so when the contraction of the economy or the burdens of taxation drive them out of business, there is no benefits to tide them over.”
Two more important points of clarification from reader Mike Switzer, former Director of the Florida Division of Unemployment Compensation:
1. The current “net” federal unemployment tax (FUTA) rate is .8% after applying a standard credit against the nominal 6.2% rate paid only rarely in states that have failed to repay federal loans timely.
2. Normally employers do pay 100% of all UC benefits through 2 payroll taxes: the state (SUTA) tax that covers regular benefits up to 26 weeks, and a separately collected federal tax (FUTA) that covers half of 13 weeks of basic extended benefits. However, Congress has authorized seveal additional extensions including some of the ARRA [stimuluus] grants, and they do not come out of dedicated UC trust funds at state or local levels. These additonal weeks up to 99 are simply based on expanding the federal debt that will need to be repaid by all taxpayers….and thereby socializing the UC system even further, despite the original design in 1933 to pay for benefits only out of payroll taxes, a mechanism that has been viable for over 70 years and many recessions….yet another radical/root Obama change.
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The message to those who lost their jobs in the second year of the POR Economy (name courtesy Tom Blumer) – Dno’t worry about getting a job in 2011. Hugh Gubmint will be here to coddle you while you sit on the couch and watch “Oprah”.
“Don’t worry”, even. Either I need to learn how to type without typos or we need a comment editing feature here.
This deal was the best we were going to get out of Obama. He has the veto pen. The Democrats have the Senate for two more years. The Bush tax cuts were expiring. Without legislation that could get past Obama’s veto pen, they were gone, and the economy would spin back into the ditch.
If you don’t like it, blame the electorate. They chose him. They chose the Democrat Senate.
Frankly, I’m a bit surprised Obama caved this much.
This is what people who want to stay on the dole don’t understand, somebody’s got to pay for this. The Government doesn’t make squat, but sure knows how to break stuff.
Compassion With Other Peoples’ Money–CWOPM–The DNC mantra for the ages. So it hurts people, cost jobs, often sending those jobs overseas, it is the Compassion that counts.
Liberals are easy to hate.
===
Let your sidearm be like American Express:
Don’t Leave home without it.
Resistance is mandatory
Come January 1, let the investigations begin (Give Frank, Dodd, Schumer, and Raines partial immunity and then roll up all the scumbag traitors involved in the Great Housing Meltdown of 2008), and open debate on repealing all the absurd spending mandates of Obama and his dog-and-pony Congress.
Tax the rich indeed. You could take 100% of the money of the “rich” and even harvest their organs and it still would not touch the lustful spending demands of Marxian Democrats. But as they have known since FDR and the halcyon days of the ’30s, the real money is in the middle class worker’s pocket – just make them think you are “soaking the rich”. Brilliant strategy if you can continue the deception.
They did not have the time to address 17% real unemployment but did have the time to ram through prepackaged boilerplate laws and saddling all Americans with bone crushing debt. And never mind that “bipartisan” thang, they prefer to do their wet work up close and personal.
We know who and what “Democrats” are, as far as I’m concerned there should never be any cooperation with them. Scorched earth and take no prisoners….
Exactly.
Whenever someone gets something for nothing,
someone else got nothing for someting.
The government can’t give away anything without first taking it away from someone else.
And unless that money goes towards a limited number of Constitutionally-specified things like national defense, then it unconstitutional redistribution of wealth.
I fully concur that the UI program is a disaster. But reforming UI (a grim prospect in itself) would be vastly easier than freeing the labor market. I cannot think of a single reform (repealing union-friendly regulations, eliminating minimum wages laws, voiding affirmative action, etc.) that would even be considered, let alone implemented.
We are now in a situation where only short term fixes are politically possible. Huge amounts of TARP funds remain. They were George (“Good man” “Kept us safe”) Bush’s gift to the democrats. One idea is that money should be returned to the taxpayers at once or used to bolster the UI funds across the country. The government (which means the democrat party) cannot fubar the economy and then sit back and say it’s not their problem.
I know we’re all open to ideas. Let’s hear some.
The Marxist/Leninists seek to destroy the small and mid-size businesses, and nationalize the big businesses.
This is what America gets for giving the Marxist/Leninist Democratic Socialists control of everything in the 2008 elections:
the Presidency, the House, and a filibuster-proof Senate.
Scott Brown’s win of “Teddy Kennedy’s seat” in Jan 2010, and Mark Kirk’s win of “Barack Obama’s seat” in November 2010 have helped our numbers slightly, but I think it’s almost best if they just run out the clock on the Lame Duck session and then get right back to things with the new Congress (with a Republican House and 5 more Republicans than they have now in the Senate).
You have to be kidding.
Ever notice how bent out of shape liberals get when you tell them has to be paid for?
At least Gibson can get unemployment benefits now that his business wen bust. No wait, self-employed and business owners don’t qualify for any benefits, but we have to pay into the unemployment fund in PA. Sorry Lon!
Maybe the government will quadruple our eligibility too: 0 X 4 = O. Enjoy!
Wild guess – the same 51% who pay for everything for the other 49%?
I am confused. (not surprising) The liberals in Congress, including Pelosi and Reid are furious with Obama for “caving”? And, he announced the “compromise” on national TV without consulting with them first? What is wrong with this picture? Either they are playing a shell game, or Obama has deemed himself dictator already. Obama seems to have overstepped his authority, but maybe there is a reason for that…to make him “look” more centrist. I don’t trust any of them. This is one big performance.
That’s because they know just evil, greedy, rich people who make money on the backs of poor people have to pay for it. Everyone knows that. So why are nasty conservatives who want children to starve always bringing it up?
Modern liberalism is a mental disease. Really.
Thanks MM… We finally get a report on WHO pays for unemployment insurance… I can’t begin to tell you for how long people I both employed and people that I worked with thought they paid into the unemployment benefit fund… WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!!! All over this GREAT NATION, this fund is paid for by the EMPLOYER!!! To give benefits now for a total of 165 weeks, is no longer a helping hand, it is now WELFARE!!! Although i also have deep feelings for the people who have been unemployed for 99 weeks, having the government make WELFARE payments for an extended 13 months is totally unacceptable… The GOP caved on this, period!!! Let the OBAMA “TAX INCREASES” go into effect in January… For the GOP needs to stop referring to these as THE GEORGE BUSH TAX CUTS, and called them what they are, the OBAMA “TAX INCREASES”. Come January, when the so-called “MIDDLE CLASS” sees what happens to their TAKE HOME PAY, you will see the DEMS including O-BOZO end the “TAX INCREASE” pronto, and without the 13 month extension of WELFARE…
“One important point of clarification: The extra 13 months will not be tacked on to the existing 99 weeks’ package. Rather, the current proposal would extend eligibility for this basket of benefits until the end of 2011.”
So no 165 weeks.
THANK YOU MICHELLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is getting way out of hand, its next to impossible to hire or even stay in biz w/ obama in office.
And the fear of ‘whats next?, i.e. more regs, scares the crap out of all of us in business.
Its so much more than just the taxes, UI, work comp, SS, etc and those already are enough to kill the economy-
as long as that ‘partial immunity’ includes 20 years in prison for those four crooks-
they destroyed the economy while profiting, period.
Well, now I’m feeling worse about being on unemployment – which I’ve been on since my layoff at the end of May
However, I’ve been trying very hard to find a job in my field – a specialty area of electrical engineering. If I take an unrelated job, I’ll never be able to work in my specialty again, which I have been doing for 25 years.
Also, having been a single professional with limited tax deductions, I’ve paid quite a bit into the entitlement/tax system, so I’m still a net gain to that system.
It’s important to realize that there are two sides to this issue. I would like to keep trying to get back into my field, so that all my experience is not wasted. I plan to use the extended UI benefits for at most another six months before giving up, and I am glad they are available.
I would like to extend my “thanks” to the “new” GOP that “took Obama hostage” and forced him to accept a “compromise” deal that does exactly what its liberal critics say it does: explode the deficit.
We have now returned to the same business as usual as it was under the Bush administration. So much for the GOP “getting it” and hearing us. Where are the spending cuts? Where are the structural fixes to the economy? Why agree to this unemployment insurance boondoggle? We could have gotten the tax-cut extensions without it. Bad deal once again negotiated behind closed doors and no one knows the details of what else was dealt away.
Add this week’s RINO committee chair appointments, I would say that we Tea Party people have been thoroughly played for chumps. The only difference between the Bush GOP and this one is the mask. They are still nothing but Assistant Democrats with a new Kabuki narrative.
No, we could not.
Obama has triangulated this perfectly. If we had rejected this deal and the tax cuts expired, Obama would have been able to successfully blame all of the ensuing economic difficulties on the GOP and “extremism” in both parties.
I was surprised we got as good as we got. I understand the angst from the Left.
Everything they have done, are doing and will do leads directly to that end. Unless they are stopped cold in their tracks.
I mentioned this on another similar thread, why are the two subjects in the same bill, tied together, taxes and UI? No wonder our giverment is so screwed up, And don’t put frosting on this with “that’s the way it works”, bull puckies. These package deals is one big problem with our country. If you only like 1/2 the sandwich don’t buy the whole thing.
there are two rules to live by: 1. the Golden Rule, if lived by us all would solve one hell of a lot of our troubles. 2. One has to be a liar to be a liberal…plan on it.
The gov has painted us all in a corner. No matter what they do, they screw the economy and the job creators. Prosperity isn’t created through gov handouts. I don’t understand why anyone would want to get the gov goodies because of all the strings attached to them. He who holds the purse strings controls everything. There is no dignity attached to gov handouts. The rest of us don’t want to be supporting freeloaders. Unemployment was created as a safety net, not a welfare program. Now we are seeing another gov program turning into fraud and waste.
Michelle thank you for adding the explanation of the UI monies by Gabriel Malor at Ace of Spades.
I say let the tax rates expire and let the taxes go up …
It is time that some of these Obama supporting morons actually get to experience what the libs and dems have brought to their doorstep … even if only for a short period of time …
NOW … before everyone jumps all over me … allowing the expiration is just to get everyone’s attention and give the new Congress the chance to address all of this right …
1. After Jan. 1 the new Congress can pass everything … and do it their way …
2. They won’t have to include the unemployment as a part of the bill … they will have the ability to address that piece of business separately and use some of the TARP money just returned to pay for it instead of running up the deficit even more …
3. They won’t have to give in to reinstatement of the Estate Tax at all … it goes from 0% to 35% under this current proposal …
4. The continuation of the current tax rates could then be permanent instead of temporary …
5. To make up for the massive increases from the ending of the Bush Tax Rates they could give everyone a complete tax holiday … with no withholding for a couple of months while they get the accounting packages straightened out all over again …
Just an idea folks … but some of these idiots out there need a big slap of reality up the side of their heads to begin to see all of this as real world and not some virtual abstract fantasy …
can somebody hep a brotha out?
last week we were told 2.1 million would lose unemplyment, today it is 9 million.
Previous reports said extending the current tax rates to those making over $250k would “cost” the treasury $700 billion over 10 years, today I read that it will be that much in the two years they are extending.
Where is the true accounting breakdown of the $900 billion new stimulus that Obama has already declared he negotiated with republicans?
Unfortunately, your list is a “virtual abstract fantasy.”
Whether it is through this lame duck Congress or through the Congress next year, any deal will have to go past Obama’s veto pen.
This deal was not negotiate with Pelosi and Reid. It was negotiated with Obama.
Since the DC elites can only spend, spend and spend, while they lie about why they need to spend. Why should they get any more tax money to spend irresponsibly? I think every one of them should be taxed at 90% and give up their retirement plans until they balance the budget, cut back the size of gov, pay down the debt and stop borrowing money.
Guess you missed the part where the economy will still be in the ditch when the current legislation kills any possible reason an employer might have to hire somebody.
By doing what they did, the R’s just allowed failure to be hung on their neck. They didn’t have to do anything and the D’s would have owned it lock, stock and barrel.
Most people think cutting back on unemployment insurance eligibility now would be nasty, given the overall employment situation. Refusing to extend eligibility for the 99 wks benefit as an excuse for inflicting massive damage on the economy with a the largest tax increase in American history would fail badly.
For some strange reason, you seem to believe that Government can successfully manipulate and out-maneuver the “law(s) of supply and demand”.
Further, you seem to miss the point that extending UI, tilts the cost/benefit analysis of hiring a new employee further in the cost direction and less in the benefit. Taking money from the productive (those working) and giving it to the un-productive (those not working) is socialism. Whether you do it for 1 week or 100 or “forever”, it’s still a recipe for decline. It’s been tried over and over and over throughout history and has never resulted in success.
Not even close. I was not arguing whether or not unemployment benefits extended to 99 wks were a good thing. I was pointing out the politics of this particular deal.
And that is all I was doing.
If you have a fantasy that if we just “do the right thing,” then the People will vote for us regardless of how the consequences of our “doing the right thing” impacts the economy and them in the short run (a couple of years), you are out of your mind.
The politics of this deal were simple and obvious. If the GOP let the huge tax increase happen because they wouldn’t continue the popular 99 wk benefit for another year, and then the economy spun back into the ditch, for whatever reason, Obama would have been able to successfully slam the GOP and conservative “extremists” for the disaster.
If you disagree with that, we’ll just have to disagree.
You did leave one thing out of the politics in play on this issue. The one in which this latest extension will expire just in time for Christmas next year. Because of the politics of it, there will be another extension again around the same time next year.
If the Republicans felt that they needed to extend the benefits due to political reasons they would have been smarter to have them expire in 3 to 6 months (not that extending them is a good thing as it just exasperates the problem in the first place).
Killing employment by extending UI still tanks the economy. Tanking the economy (whether by “popular” means or not) is not the right thing to do.
It’s 2008 again and we are back to “the best we could do” to explain away why a bad deal that grows government while exploding our deficits and out-of-control debt is actually a good deal.
Typical RINO solution. Phony political victory. But it’s okay because the libs are apoplectic which is how we define whether a deal is good or bad.
I am already sick of the “new” GOP and they haven’t even been sworn in yet.
Exactly. I would much rather have seen the republicans hold out for a clean bill that extends all the tax cuts without any gimmicks added to it. Of course that would take a backbone and the R leadership left their collective backbone at home when they left for DC.
To me this bill is a loose loose situation for Republicans. Sure they get the tax cuts, but this is going to blow up in their faces big time.
Unemployment will remain high and now Obama and the Dem’s can claim it was because of allowing the “Bush Tax cuts for the rich” to stay in place. In 2012 Obama will have pull a “see I told you this would happen moment” and the Republican leadership will stumble and bumble around while trying to explain that the tax cuts were not the reason (which their message will be lacking in substance as usual).
As a small business owner I desperately need a personal assistant as the business has grown beyond what I can do myself and maintain the current level of service. But there is no way with the current tax structure I can hire another person.
As for unemployment rates I believe them to be a figment of the governments imagination. First they define someone as employed if they work one hour a week. Second how are they generating the numbers to decide the unemployment rate? Alaska used to call three hundred households and ask if they are working to determine Alaska’s unemployment rate.
I can well envision that by the end of this presidents first term, the Democratic Party as we know it will be dead, and the Republicans will have one foot in the grave. I can only imagine the outrage at both party memebers in this lame duck congress trying to shove this kind of crap down the voters throats.
I might as well just start building one of those mini-houses Ive been reading about…200 square feet, because at this rate, that will be all I can afford. As another small business owner, the State and Federal govt is killing me.
Just the other day I got a letter from the employment commission of my state. As a small business owner, my rate went from 58 cents to 79 cents. Does anybody with a brain think that this will encourage me to hire?
Add to that all the uncertainty over new regulations, obamacare, and the environmental baloney, and I am just going to sit of it until 2012 — and hope some adults take over and cut spending.
How so? Obama was opposed to the tax cuts to begin with. If the economy continues to founder or worsens once taxes go back up, he would own it. The President usually does anyway, but especially when it’s the result of policies he advocates.
Desert Lover, I think you have a point. The ball has moved into Pelosi’s House, and they are dropping it. It is their last gasp. They have one week to do something, else lose the whole deal for good.
Then Jan 1, the GOP will pass a permanent extension of the tax cuts, and it will probably get enough votes with some compromise (but more in the GOP favor), and Obama will have to sign it. Because the taxpayers will be angry and the effects will be obvious.
The strangle hold on the government by the 20% who are liberal will fail. As far as extending the benefits. That will be decoupled and the GOP can pretty much tie it up on grounds that it raises the cost of doing business.
They can then just tell Pelosi to go F yourself.
This crowd in DC is hell bent on rewarding irresponsibility, dependency and criminality and have it paid for by those who are self-sufficient. Paying more to the unemployed is laziness insurance. Pelosi et al are dignity thieves.
I laid off my sole employee this week. In addition to the employer taxes, the cost of a CPA to do the payroll each pay period and then the quarterly filings cost me close to $1000 per year. Add that to all of the employer taxes and the fact that things slowed down, it no longer made it feasible to keep this person employed. I had her for 3 years. I carried her the 4 months her newborn baby was in a hospital with a heart issue (thankfully he has fully recovered), and she was there at that hospital every day and staying at the Ronald McDonald house the whole time. Thankfully I did pay into the UI system so she can collect unemployment as the unemployment rate in her county is close to 15%.
Regarding the extended benefits, I went to the federal unemployment insurance website. They are NOT extended benefits for the 99′ers. They are keeping the 99 weeks total to collect unemployment in place if this passes. So anyone who bumps up to the 99 weeks, there are no more extensions.
This is what I read. The first 26 weeks are on the state plans. Then there are 4 Tiers of extensions, that run it out to what appears to be 79 weeks, with each tier a shorter extension. Tier 1 starts with a 20 week extension of the first 26 weeks.
Then once the 4 tiers run out, the stimulous program last year created something called the Extended Benefit period, which added 20 weeks on the back end of collecting unemployment, to a total of 99 weeks.
Based on what I read at the federal UI website, this deal in the works keeps the 4 Tiers and the Extended Benefit in place for 2011. So the 99 weekers will have to go find jobs. They are NOT getting an additional 13 months of checks on top of the 99 weeks they already received.
Once I read that, I felt a bit better about this deal they have in DC.
I think the pols in DC are all playing chicken right now. Each party hates this deal now, but each party somewhat fears what could happen in January when the House power shifts.
Overlooked is the fact that the employee FICA withholding drops from 6.2% to 4.2%. I have been unable to find out if there are conditions to this part of the deal. Does it include ALL taxpayers with W2 wages up to the cap that FICA is withhold or does it exclude the “rich” employees? I don’t know.
For the self employed, do they pay 2% less in when they file their EFTPS each month and pay their taxes? I don’t know.
Our news media is so lazy. They do not do research to explain how these things are laid out and will be implemented. Most of them are still giving people the impression that 13 months of unemployment checks have been added to 99 weeks.
Sigh.
The Lame Stream Media isn’t lazy. It’s more than glad to work overtime in doing this administrations bidding as the fully operating propaganda arm of the Democrat Party.
Good article Michelle! Employers pay UI, and yet aren’t covered by it. Does anyone really want to be in business in America. OSHA, is but one of hundreds of beaurocratic agencies bent on taking businesses money at the point of a gun. Profits for our biggest corporations are comming from oversees operations, not domestic operations. The small mom and pop business is going, going and gone. Look at the empty storefronts in small shopping centers. There are two crisis’ which need immediate fixes or our children and grandchildren will face a life of flipping burger jobs. Crisis one, K-12 education in America sucks, and it isn’t because we don’t pay enough. Crisis two, we have WAY too many gubmint beaurocrats seeking to justify their overpaid underworked jobs by creating regulations which screw the businessman they effect, but never the beaurocrat.
So it goes. A handful of multinational corporations and workforce are much more easily nationalized and controlled.
The Demonrat traitor commie scum may save the Republicans from a very bad decision.
One thing for sure, still a lot of inside the Beltway squish/RINO Republicans, especially in the GOP, and the Tea Party needs to send more Bob Bennett squishes home in the 2012 primaries.
OT:
We need someone like Mrs. Malkin or Governor Palin, not Boehner running the House…
http://clerk.house.gov/member_info/memberfaq.html
I do Bill. I’m glad you’re maing the point as well and Michelle is publishing your e-mail.
Since I’m an “employee” of my S-corp, I have the pleasure of paying into the UC fund too, with zero eligibility to ever receive any benefits, so it grates on me to no end that people who may be refusing to move for a job, or refusing to accept a job that is inferior to the one they had lost, continue to collect for 2 years or more.
And the media demonizes anyone who dares to question the situation.
My wife also works with people who are planning to start small businesses, and when she tells them that they will lose their UC when they start the business, and will not qualify for UC should it fail, they often just scrap the idea and stay on benefits and keep holding out for a good quality local job that probably won’t materialize. If UC benefits weren’t endless, they would probably give entrepreneurship a try.
I am also in Bill (Shelton, WA)’s boat. Increasingly, I am more and more disconcerted about the “real” unemployment figures, and how underemployment figures into them. Since Obama & his accomplices in Congress before him drove the car into the ditch, I have taken my MBA and invigorating consulting business and exchanged it for a $30K pay cut. With a stay-at-home super awesome wife, it no longer adds up. Mr. Obama is systematically de-incentivizing ambition and work ethic, opting instead for building additional milk-production plants and more voluminous teats.