We Know Exactly Who The Democrats Want To Bail Out-- They Passed A Bill Months Ago... What About Trump And The Republicans?

Lambchop by Nancy Ohanian

Doesn't it seem like the GOP actually wants to inflict misery on the working class? It seems that way because it is that way. McConnell purposely let the eviction moratorium and enhanced unemployment benefits expire before allowing even a discussion in the Senate about what to do to alleviate Trump's COVID-economy. While flaming asshole and coke freak Larry Kudlow was on the elitist Fox Business channel promising GOP donors "increased business deductions for meals and entertainment"-- long a self-serving priority for Trump-- as part of the relief package being thrashed out in Congress, Mnuchin told reporters that McConnell's and his proposal would reduce the expanded $600 weekly unemployment benefit to $200 a week. Asked about Mnuchin's announcement, Kudlow called it just a "technical adjustment." Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) called it something else:

Erica Werner, Jeff Stein and Seung Min Kim, reporting for the Washington Post, wrote that "Senate Republicans want to reduce the $600 payment to $200 until states can implement a new approach that would pay the unemployed 70 percent of the income they collected before they lost their jobs. The states are supposed to phase in the new formula within two months under the new GOP plan, though it’s unclear how cumbersome that process could prove to be. Many state unemployment systems are expected to have difficulty implementing the more targeted program, so the $200 weekly payment would be designed to serve as a bridge until the other changes are made. The $200 would come on top of whatever unemployment benefits states already pay, which vary but generally replace 45 percent of a worker’s wages before they lost their job." Reducing that $600 payment has been a key GOP focus of both Trump's, the Senate Republicans' and Republicans in the House.

In addition to the reduced unemployment benefits the legislation is expected to include a new round of $1,200 checks to individual Americans, billions of dollars for schools with some of the money aimed at helping classrooms reopen, and a five-year liability shield for businesses, health-care providers and others.

The legislation also includes at least $100 billion more for the small-business Paycheck Protection Program. It does not contain any new money for state and local governments-- a key Democratic demand-- but instead gives state and local leaders additional flexibility in spending the $150 billion approved in the Cares Act in March.

...“We have unemployment running out, we have renter protection running out, we have state and local governments going into a new month and won’t have the money and will lay off thousands and thousands of people,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) said Monday morning on MSNBC. “We’re at all these cliffs and we still at this very moment don’t have a plan from the Republicans. We want to sit down and negotiate. But you can’t negotiate with a ghost.”

...Congressional Democrats oppose both GOP plans to curb the benefit amount and to transition the payment system to the new model. Critics point out state unemployment offices have already been overwhelmed. The National Association of State Workforce Agencies has warned in a memo circulated on Capitol Hill that targeted wage replacement could take most states “8 to 20 weeks or more” to implement from the date of the Labor Department’s guidance.

“We are skeptical that state UI infrastructure has improved dramatically since the CARES Act given how overloaded the system has been,” Evercore ISI, which conducts market research, said in a Monday note.

Julie Oliver (TX) and Kara Eastman (NE) are both running against Trump enablers who the came close to dislodging in 2018. Each has a great chance to do so in November. I asked them to give me their takes on the way the relief package is moving. "Pay and benefits for tens of millions of American workers," said Julie, "was too low before the pandemic. Millions of people have lost their jobs. Now, instead of getting Texans the relief necessary to stay afloat, Roger Williams wants to end the $600 UI extension and let your boss allow you to get coronavirus. And that's after he funneled millions in undisclosed taxpayer bailout funds to his own personal business in Weatherford. We need real relief, and we need it now. Direct cash payments, moratorium on evictions and foreclosures, and a suspension of consumer debt collection, rent and mortgage payments. We're facing an unemployment crisis, eviction crisis, a health crisis, a child care crisis, and a business failure crisis, all feeding each other at once. We need someone fighting for the people in this district in Congress, not someone only in it to help himself.

Kara Eastman's incumbent is a lot like Julie's-- a big waste of a seat. She told that "Unfortunately, Rep. Bacon is aligned with the Republican approach. He voted 'no' on the HEROES Act, and has repeatedly stated that the government is spending too much on COVID relief. That's funny, because he seemed to be fine with the $1.5 trillion giveaway to corporations and wealthy interested in the 2017 tax bill. He voted 'yes' then and still brags about it. My approach is different: we need to listen to the people who are struggling because they can't pay rent, are losing their unemployment, and are juggling between putting food on the table and paying bills."

Cathy Kunkel is running for office for the first time. Republicans in West Virginia would be smart to hear what she's saying: "Thousands of West Virginians are still struggling in this ongoing economic depression-- and as WV utilities start processing shutoffs over the next month, this pain will intensify. Now is not the time to cut pandemic unemployment compensation. Clearly Senate leadership is more interested in pursuing their ongoing war on working class and poor Americans than in getting us out of this economic depression-- which requires getting money into the hands of people who will actually spend it, not Wall St billionaires."

We're In A Deep Recession And McConnell And Congressional Republicans Are About To Turn That Into The First Depression Since 1929

The Senate Republicans-- Mitch McConnell and his cronies-- have decided to let the 4 month long moratorium on evictions during the pandemic lapse-- despite the fact that the pandemic is raging worse than ever. Friday saw +78,009 new one-day cases and 1,141 one day COVID deaths. The pandemic is out of control in Florida, southern California, Texas and Georgia and rapidly and dangerously rising in smaller states like Tennessee, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, Wisconsin, Arkansas... McConnell forced the moratorium to end Friday night, knowing full well that it would cause a surge of evictions from coast to coast-- including in Louisville, Lexington, Bowling Green, and Owensboro in his own state. And McConnell planned to see that the ban on evictions would end just as pandemic-related enhanced unemployment benefits also ended. Millions-- literally, millions-- of Americans will lose their homes because of two very wealthy men: Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump, the former having married into wealth and the latter who inherited it. Around 20 million Americans are now unprotected by either federal or state eviction moratoriums. Landlords who were covered by the moratorium-- 12 million households-- must give tenants 30 days notice before they can actually evict them from their homes.

In May, the House passed a rescue package-- enhanced last month by the addition of legislation that would extend the federal eviction ban until March of next year-- and both Sherrod Brown and Elizabeth Warren have introduced similar legislation in the Senate. McConnell and his Republican cronies have adamantly and arrogantly refused to take any of the bills up. On Thursday, on the Senate floor, Sherrod Brown said that "Right now, millions of Americans are in danger of losing their homes. The last thing we need in the middle of a public health crisis is families being turned out on the streets." This is a list of senators whose names should appear on every eviction notice-- along with Trump's-- before November 3:

• Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
• Cory Gardner (R-CO)
• Steve Daines (R-MT)
• Susan Collins (R-ME)
• Thom Tillis (R-NC)
• Joni Ernst (R-IA)
• Martha McSally (R-AZ)
• Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
• Kelly Loeffler (R-GA)
• David Perdue (R-GA)
• Shelley Moore Capito(R-WV)
• John Cornyn (R-TX)
• Dan Sullivan (R-AK)
• Bill Cassidy (R-LA)
• Ben Sasse (R-NE)
• Jim Inhofe (R-OK)
• Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS)
• Mike Rounds (R-SD)
• Tom Cotton (R-AR)
• Jim Risch (R-ID)

Neither rent relief nor unemployment relief are priorities for the Republicans; legal immunity for businesses that kill their employees is what drives them. As Annie Lowrey wrote Friday for The Atlantic, "Now We'll Know What The Recession Feels Like-- Congress Is Severing A Lifeline For Millions Of Americans. This week, Congress will decimate the economy, in an unfortunately literal sense: It will cut unemployment-insurance payments to more than 25 million people, more than one in 10 American adults. When it does, the coronavirus recession, already historic in its severity, will become far, far worse. The CARES Act, the coronavirus-relief legislation, included a huge expansion of the unemployment-insurance (UI) program, to include gig workers and freelancers not normally eligible for benefits. It also added a $600-a-week bonus payment to state UI payouts, which generally range from $100 to $400 a week. For four months, these $600-a-week bonus payments have prevented the country’s jobs catastrophe from becoming a catastrophe for family budgets too. They have helped laid-off workers pay their rent, put groceries on the table, and keep the lights on... [T]he $600-a-week payments were a lifeline. Research by the JPMorgan Chase Institute, a think tank housed in the mega-bank, found that the recession and the pandemic cut the spending of employed workers by roughly 10 percent. That makes sense: Many workers had their hours cut, many families spent less as they sheltered in place and worked from home, and many cut back due to fear and uncertainty about the economy. But unemployed workers actually spent a little more than they did before the pandemic hit, due to the additional UI money. The think tank concluded that 'expanded unemployment benefits are acting both as a source of stability for unemployed individuals and also as a form of stimulus to the overall economy.' Congress is now severing that lifeline. The $600-a-week bump functionally expires on Saturday. Even if Congress were to pass an extension now, state UI systems would not be able to program the benefits back in quickly enough to avoid a lapse for millions of recipients. Nor do Republicans want to extend the benefits in full. Concerned about the economy not restarting (a result of the virus, not UI), concerned about the $70-billion-a-month cost of the payments (chump change, given that the economy is collapsing), concerned about disincentivizing work (which, again, does not appear to be happening), Republicans are proposing to cut the payments to just $100 or $200 a week through December, or perhaps to cut them to $300 a week and then extend them only two more months."

Obviously, this kind of a reduction "will hurt families struggling to navigate the dangers of an incurable virus, the disastrous loss of child care and in-person education, and the worst job market in 80 years. Reopening is not leading to a boomerang in economic activity-- indeed, the number of people employed fell from mid-June to mid-July, the Census Bureau reported this week. Jobless workers can’t just go out there and make some money. Now they won’t be able to go out there and spend money either." In other words, what McConnell and his cronies are doing is quite simply "turning a stalled recovery into a double-dip recession. Workers on UI will see their income drop. With no work and no UI, they will spend less, hurting local businesses. Those businesses will purchase less from suppliers, cut their investments, and perhaps lay off employees. This vicious cycle will repeat millions of times, in millions of places across the country. The United States’ economic problems will get worse, not better." Republican politicians are already figuring out how to blame this catastrophe on Biden and the Democratic Congress in the 2022 midterms!

Last week, reporting for the Wall Street Journal, Ruth Simon, Amara Omeokwe and Gwynn Guilford wrote that small businesses are bracing for a prolonged crisis. Many small businesses are shutting down or slashing jobs again after having "brought back staff beginning in mid-April, believing they could get back to business. Now, many are shutting down or slashing jobs again as local officials and consumers pull back and the pandemic shows no signs of abating... [M]any business owners are facing make-or-break challenges. Many may not last. Businesses are entering this phase just as many are exhausting their rescue funds from the federal Paycheck Protection Program, a $670 billion coronavirus stimulus measure launched in April to offer loans to small firms." Billions of the PPP money was stolen for Trump and congressional cronies

An estimated 1.85 million U.S. businesses closed their doors or temporarily suspended operations in the second quarter, according to Oxxford Information Technology Ltd. in Saratoga, N.Y., which tracks roughly 32 million U.S. businesses of all sizes using data from credit bureaus, surveys and government sources.

Raymond Greenhill, Oxxford’s president, forecasts that total losses this year will be greater than in the last recession, when 20%, or roughly 4.5 million businesses, disappeared in just over a year. He added that some of the losses will be offset by new business formation.

Mr. Greenhill said small firms are especially vulnerable now and will account for most of the losses. He said most lack the working capital to survive the downturn or to meet customer needs when the economy recovers. He added that it’s more difficult for young businesses and for other businesses that entered the year in weak financial shape to tap funding from banks and other sources.

As states eased restrictions in May and June, spending at small businesses-- which commonly offer in-person services-- recovered more slowly than in the rest of the economy, according to Womply, a data and technology company with 500,000 small-business customers, mostly in the food and beverage, retail, health and beauty and automotive services sectors.

...Enterprises with fewer than 500 employees accounted for almost half of private-sector employment in 2017, the most-recent data, according to the Census Bureau. Small firms also employ a majority of the workers in industries such as restaurants and personal care that are most affected by capacity restrictions.

“If a small- or medium-sized business becomes insolvent because the economy recovers too slowly, we lose more than just that business. These businesses are the heart of our economy and often embody the work of generations,” Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said last month during testimony before Congress.

Michael Gibbons, co-owner of three restaurants in Portland, Ore., with his wife, Evelyn, reduced his staff in mid-March to 10 from 97 after shifting to takeout and delivery. The business experimented with outdoor dining on Father’s Day, but scrapped it. “Some guests are just not compliant with safety measures,” he said. Staffing was a hurdle too, as former employees were reluctant to return because they were concerned about their safety and earning more by collecting unemployment benefits, he said, adding that protests in the city didn’t factor in his decision.

Mr. Gibbons said he plans to test outdoor dining again later this month, but also said that Oregon’s uptick in Covid cases is worrisome.

Consumers are pulling back across the country, but spending in small-business categories such as food and beverage, retail, health and beauty has fallen even more sharply in places with rising coronavirus cases, such as Texas, Florida and Arizona, said Michael Stepner, economist at Opportunity Insights, a nonpartisan research institute.

At bars, for example, national spending in mid-July was less than half what it was a year ago, with even worse numbers in Texas, Florida and California, according to Womply.

“It’s hard for small businesses to weather the storm when they don’t know when this will be over,” Mr. Stepner added.

...Nearly one-third of small businesses had less than one month of cash reserves on hand at the end of June, according to the Census Bureau.

Congress sought to allay those strains with PPP funds. The program provided a quick influx of cash to struggling businesses, allowing many of them to retain employees or bring back workers. The loans are generally forgivable if businesses spend a certain share of the funds on payrolls and meet certain other requirements.

The federal government as of July 21 had approved about five million PPP loans, worth a total of $518 billion, according to the Small Business Administration, the agency overseeing the program.

But lawmakers designed the PPP to help owners manage through a V-shaped recovery-- a steep but brief collapse in demand, followed by a swift rebound. Many firms have now burned through the loans, but sales have only barely picked up-- leaving them without funds to keep paying their full pre-pandemic workforce.

On Friday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Congress should consider automatically forgiving PPP loans taken out by the smallest U.S. businesses and offer a second helping of aid to some firms.

...A July survey conducted by the National Federation of Independent Business, a small-business advocacy group, found roughly 22% of PPP loan borrowers have laid off or anticipate having to lay off employees after using their loan, according to the 615 survey respondents.

A renewed downturn in activity could especially affect minority-owned businesses, which have been harder hit by the pandemic and slower to rebound.

Robert Fairlie, an economics professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, found that 81% of Black-owned businesses and 82% of immigrant-owned businesses that had been up-and-running in February were still operating in June, compared with 95% of white-owned businesses, in a study that analyzed Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Immigrants and minorities are more likely to be in industries, such as restaurants and personal services, hard hit by social-distancing mandates and economic and health concerns, he said. Even more important, many of these businesses “are really small,” Prof. Fairlie said. “It’s much harder for them to operate during the pandemic, and many lack the financial resources to move forward.”

He said that Black and immigrant business owners tend to hire from their local communities. “If the business owners are struggling and the employees are struggling, it’s a double hit to those communities,” he said.

For some industries, economic pain might not end until the health crisis is fully extinguished.

A survey by Drizly, an online alcohol delivery company, found 13% of respondents said they would return to bars and restaurants again only when a coronavirus vaccine became available. A further 31% said they had no plans to return to bars soon.

Washington Post's Jeff Stein and Erica Werner reported that Mnuchin and the Democrats have said they want a deal by the end of the month, but McConnell said that reaching an agreement could take several weeks, "a timeline that could leave many unemployed Americans severely exposed... Part of the problem stems from a push by administration officials and GOP lawmakers to reduce a $600 weekly payment of enhanced federal unemployment benefits. The White House and the GOP disagree about how to do this, and talks remain highly contentious. They hope to release a proposal early next week... In practice, the coming lapse in the jobless benefit means millions of workers are receiving their last enhanced benefit payment this week... [L]eading Republican lawmakers have argued for cutting the $600-per-week bonus down to $200-per-week, these people said, with one possibility being that this amount slowly phases out over time."

The proposed legislation could come on Monday, a lag that has prompted scorching criticism from congressional Democrats who have been demanding action for months. Congress has not passed any coronavirus relief legislation since approving four bipartisan bills in March and April that pumped around $3 trillion into the economy. McConnell wanted to wait to see how the unemployment benefits and other programs approved in that unprecedented stimulus effort played out before taking additional action.

“This weekend, millions of Americans will lose their unemployment insurance, will be at risk of being evicted from their homes, and could be laid off by state and local government, and there is only one reason: Republicans have been dithering for months while America’s crisis deepens,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) said in a joint statement Friday.

If adopted, the new unemployment plan could complicate negotiations with congressional Democrats, who favor extending the $600 weekly payment through January. And it’s unclear if balky state processing systems would have the capacity to implement a complicated new formula on such short notice.

“We’re dealing with the mechanical issues associated with that,” Mnuchin told reporters about the wage replacement plan.

The proposal would, in key respects, meet the conflicting political and economic pressures bearing down on the GOP and White House as the unemployment deadline looms for millions of Americans months away from Election Day.

Senate Republicans and White House officials have been clear that they are not willing to extend the $600-per-week benefit, which conservatives and many business organizations say encourages people to stay home rather than work. Many economists dispute this notion. Senior Republicans have also said they do not want additional federal unemployment benefits to go away entirely, acknowledging that some additional federal help should still be provided to those made jobless during the pandemic. The benefits are politically popular, with a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll finding close to 60 percent of Americans supporting their extension.

...Congressional Democrats and many economists say the current benefit should be extended in full to prevent a crucial stimulus from disappearing from an already wobbly economic recovery.

Given the difficulty of reaching a deal with Democrats before the existing benefits expire, Mnuchin and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on Thursday floated a stand-alone extension of unemployment provisions as part of a package with school funding and a type of lawsuit shield to make it harder for employees to sue their employers if they become sick with the novel coronavirus.

Senior lawmakers in both parties oppose this piecemeal approach, but if they are unable to reach a deal, they might be forced to pass some type of stand-alone benefit extension next week.

In March, lawmakers initially discussed increasing unemployment benefits so they would represent 100 percent of a worker’s prior income. Congress ultimately abandoned the idea in favor of the universal $600 bonus, in part because Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia warned that the nation’s unemployment systems could not handle the complexity of matching every individual’s unemployment benefits to the person’s prior income, according to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), who led those negotiations.

“Scalia said, ‘It can’t be done,’ ” Wyden said in an interview. “We have not seen a single piece of paper describing how this would be administered without the downsides Scalia pointed out months ago.”

Mnuchin acknowledged the technical challenges posed by converting from one system to another when addressing reporters on Thursday. He said the matter was being discussed with state unemployment offices. “Let me just say, different states are in different places,” Mnuchin said. “Some states can implement this quickly. Some states will take time."

Some experts are skeptical. State unemployment offices have been badly overwhelmed by the unprecedented surge in claims, and there were another 1.4 million claims last week. Thousands of the newly jobless have struggled for months to obtain benefits and in some states have camped outside unemployment offices overnight to be ahead in line for help.

The $600-per-week bonus was chosen for its simplicity compared with targeted, individual wage replacement-- but it has proved tremendously difficult for states to implement as the nation’s unemployment rate spiked to 15 percent before falling to 11 percent.

Why It Amazes Me That ANY Working Class Voters Are Trumpists

Gangsta President by Nancy Ohanian

The top problem with the pandemic is health, of course. And Trump and his party have failed miserably there. Not unrelated, they have also failed in terms of the economy. As usual, Trump and the GOP are taking care of their wealthy campaign donors-- and leaving the working class to... whatever fate has in store. And what fate has in store has been made much worse by the incompetence and venality of the GOP. We'll come back to that in a moment. First, I want to reference an essay in the New Yorker, How Trump Is Helping Tycoons Exploit The Pandemic, in which top drawer investigative journalist Jane Mayer takes Trump to task for catering to the top 1% at the expense of everyone else. Short version: "The secretive titan behind one of America’s largest poultry companies, who is also one of the President’s top donors, is ruthlessly leveraging the coronavirus crisis-- and his vast fortune-- to strip workers of protections." Trump has aided and abetted billionaire scumbag Ronald Cameron-- widely considered one of the most evil and satanic men in the world-- in his vivious campaign to destroy the union representing poultry workers.

Trump issued an executive order defining slaughterhouse workers as essential. The White House had appointed Cameron to an advisory board on the pandemic’s economic impact. The executive order commanded meat-processing facilities to “continue operations uninterrupted to the extent possible.” The Labor Department released an accompanying statement that all but indemnified companies for exposing workers to covid-19. It assured employers in essential industries that the agency wouldn’t hold them responsible if they failed to follow the C.D.C.’s health guidelines, as long as they made a “good faith” effort.

Meat and poultry workers had to keep working and risk infection-- or lose their jobs. By July 7th, OSHA had received more than six thousand coronavirus-related workplace complaints but had issued only one citation, to a nursing home in Georgia. David Michaels, a professor of public health at George Washington University, who headed osha during the Obama Administration, told me that the agency was “saying that the Labor Department would side with the employers if workers sued,” and added, “That would be unthinkable in any other Administration. OSHA’s job isn’t to protect corporations-- it’s to protect workers!”

The prospect of food shortages understandably caused concern in the White House. Yet reports show that in April, as Tyson and other producers were warning that “millions of pounds of meat will disappear” from American stores if they had to shut down, exports of pork to China broke records-- and Mountaire’s chicken exports were 3.4 per cent higher than they were a year earlier. The next month, the company’s exports were 10.9 per cent lower than in 2019, but its exports to China and Hong Kong grew by 23.1 per cent in April and by fourteen per cent in May, according to statistics provided by Christopher Rogers, an analyst with Panjiva, which tracks the food-supply chain. Tony Corbo, a lobbyist for Food and Water Watch, a progressive nonprofit advocacy group, said, “They were crying about shortages, and yet we’re still exporting meat. The shortage was phony.”

Meanwhile, coronavirus cases exploded in the meat-and-poultry industry. Initially, Mountaire released statistics about employee infections. At the end of March, the company told the union that there had been forty-one cases in Selbyville. However, Hill’s shop steward, Manuel Rosales, told him not to trust this number. “Half the plant isn’t there,” he explained, either because the workers were sick or because they feared becoming so. A month later, a television station in North Carolina reported that a Mountaire plant, in Siler City, which employs some sixteen hundred workers, had at least seventy-four positive cases among workers and their families. After that, the company stopped sharing its covid-19 numbers. Mountaire became so secretive, Hill said, that workers “were seeing people disappear, and they didn’t know what the hell was going on.” In many cases, a “co-worker had tested positive, but the company wouldn’t tell anyone.” Rosales, who works in the deboning department at the Selbyville plant, told me, “People are coughing and they don’t look well, but they just want to keep the chicken coming. It’s all hush-hush.”

...The union’s struggles with the Labor Department are part of a much larger reversal of federal protections for workers, consumers, and the environment under Trump. In 2016, the President promised to “dismantle the regulatory state,” as Stephen Bannon, his former White House strategist, often put it. Given the complexities of federal rulemaking, this proved somewhat difficult in the first three years of the Administration. But the pandemic has offered Trump an opportunity: now that he can invoke an economic emergency, he can relax, rescind, or suspend federal regulations by fiat. In May and June, Trump issued a pair of executive orders directing national agencies to ignore federal regulations and environmental laws if they burdened the economy-- again, in many instances, the companies were told that they just had to act “in good faith.” As the Times and the Washington Post have reported, these moves have weakened regulations on all kinds of businesses, from trucking companies to oil and gas pipelines. In Corbo’s view, many in the media have missed one of the biggest aspects of the covid-19 story. “Everyone is looking at the shiny object-- the pandemic,” he said. “Meanwhile, the government is deregulating everything. It’s unreal.”

In April, for instance, the United States Department of Agriculture granted fifteen waivers to poultry plants, including a Mountaire facility in North Carolina, authorizing them to increase the number of birds per minute-- or B.P.M.-- that workers must process. The waivers enabled companies to accelerate the pace from a hundred and forty B.P.M. to a hundred and seventy-five. Angela Stuesse, an anthropologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who has studied the poultry industry, told me that, in the chicken business, “you make pennies on a pound.” Among the few ways to increase profits are squeezing labor costs and accelerating line speeds, which are set by the U.S.D.A. to accommodate federal inspectors, who are supposed to assess every bird. The regulations have long been a point of contention between poultry-plant owners and unions, because as the line speed increases so do injuries and other stresses on workers’ bodies. “They move the birds so fast, you have to be really close together to get every bird,” Williams, the union spokesperson, told me. “It’s like the I Love Lucy episode at the chocolate factory.” Even though the C.D.C. has emphasized that social distancing is necessary to maintain safety, faster production lines require more workers, who must then squeeze closer together. In many areas of a plant, poultry workers already stand two feet apart at most, often facing one another. Nonetheless, the U.S.D.A. has now indicated that it plans to permit faster line speeds throughout the poultry industry. The National Chicken Council, the industry’s trade group, had lobbied for precisely this change. Williams fears that “these policies will result in the deaths of many more workers.”





Debbie Berkowitz, a program director at the National Employment Law Project, a pro-labor group, who previously headed the health-and-safety division of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, told me that, thanks to the pandemic, “the Chamber of Commerce is getting everything they always wanted.” An analysis of public records by her group found that, of the fifteen poultry plants granted waivers to increase line speeds in April, eight had covid-19 outbreaks at the time. “If you’re a worker in a plant bursting with covid-19, it’s a shitshow for you,” Berkowitz said. “The industry is getting away with murdering people.”

Michaels, the former OSHA head, told me, “We’re very much back in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle ”-- the 1906 novel that exposed abuses in the meat industry. The book so shocked Americans that President Theodore Roosevelt ordered an immediate investigation of slaughterhouses. The result was landmark consumer-protection legislation that formed the foundation of today’s Food and Drug Administration. But, for the past four decades, wealthy donors to the Republican Party have pushed hard for the dismantling of Progressive Era reforms and later curbs on corporate power. The 1980 platform of the Libertarian Party, which was underwritten by the billionaire conservative donors Charles and David Koch, laid out a road map, calling for the abolition of almost every federal agency, including the F.D.A. Although Trump claims to be a defender of the working class, he has delighted wealthy donors-- and their pressure groups, such as the Club for Growth-- by reliably serving their agenda. Michaels told me, “Mountaire and others are taking advantage of the covid-19 crisis to say, ‘We need more chickens.’ The Trump Administration is aiding and abetting this. They’re saying, ‘Produce more food,’ regardless of the cost to workers. If companies cared as much about their workers as they do about their chickens, we’d be a better country.”

You get the picture right? These workers-- many of them immigrants-- are treated like animals so actual beasts like Cameron can get richer and throw down some bribes to worse beasts like Trump. Cameron spends tens of millions underwriting right-wing SuperPACs and committees.

A director of the notorious Family, his most recent contribution was a max-donation to Randy Feenstra, the far right Republican running around Iowa calling J.D. Scholten a socialist!!!. [ You can contribute to J.D.'s campaign here.]

That's how Trump differentiates between citizens in the pandemic. His regime and his agenda almost appear to have been designed to drive working families into the dirt. Yesterday, writing for the Washington Post, Eli Rosenberg reported about ordinary working class families, thrown out of their jobs because of the pandemic but unable to collect the benefits Congress passed for them. "The pandemic’s toll on workers who have been furloughed or laid off ," he wrote, "is measured in numbers that splash across headlines: 1.4 million new weekly unemployment claims and 18 million people are already receiving continuous unemployment insurance. Tens of thousands of workers at Levi’s, Wells Fargo and United Airlines learned this past week they could be furloughed or laid off in coming months, sending those workers to seek jobless benefits as well. Four months into the worst recession since the Great Depression, tens of thousands of workers... across the country have filed for jobless claims but have yet to receive payments. Many are now in dire financial straits."

The issue has spilled back into public view in recent weeks, as thousands of frustrated workers awaiting payments have camped out, sometimes overnight, in front of unemployment offices in states like Oklahoma, Alabama and Kentucky.

The ongoing delays are the result of a confluence of crises, experts say.

A flood of new jobless applications-- about 50 million-- has overwhelmed state unemployment offices over the past four months. The agencies themselves are hampered by years of neglect. They rely on reduced staffs and badly outdated technology after years of budget cuts, often at the behest of business groups and Republican legislatures. Issues with fraud and user confusion over the new rules and filing process have further bogged down the process.

...[W]hat happens when workers simply run out of money and the social safety net malfunctions with defaulted payments and trips to food banks[?] In more desperate situations, workers become homeless.

“We’ve kind of abdicated our responsibility to the unemployed,” George Wentworth, a senior counsel at the National Employment Law Project and an expert on unemployment insurance. “There need to be more standards and those standards need to be rigorously enforced by the federal government.”

The Department of Labor does not track the percentage of unemployment benefits that have been processed, an agency spokeswoman said in an email. The agency did not offer a comment on the issue of delays in processing benefits.

But previously unreleased data compiled by Andrew Stettner, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, illustrates the scope. By the end of May, about 18.8 million out of 33 million claims-- 57 percent-- had been paid nationwide. That number has steadily improved from 47 percent of paid claims at the end of April and 14 percent at the end of March.

In Wisconsin, where about 13 percent of claims remained unprocessed as of July 7, residents told local reporters that they had waited 10 weeks or longer for their claims to be processed, leaving some on the brink of bankruptcy and eviction. The Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development said through a spokesman that the average time from application to payment is 21 days. In Pennsylvania, another 15 percent of claims were still in review as of mid-June.

Oklahoma has approved 235,000 out of about 590,000 claims, with about 2,000 still under review as of June 21, but the state also has denied a whopping 350,000 claims, said Shelley Zumwalt, the interim director of the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission. Zumwalt said a small portion of the denied claims-- about 47,000-- are people who have applied for the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), a program for gig and self-employed workers who must get rejected from regular unemployment insurance before qualifying for the expanded benefit for gig workers.

Nevada has also had issues processing these gig worker jobless claims, fulfilling only 74 percent of the 106,667 eligible PUA claims by June 19.

Cone Of Shame by Nancy Ohanian

...One problem is that some states have made it tougher to access benefits. Florida was one of many Republican-led states that restricted unemployment benefits in the aftermath of the Great Recession. After sustained lobbying from corporations hoping to reduce unemployment taxes, the state, under then Gov. Rick Scott, limited unemployment to 12 weeks and capped weekly benefits at $275, according to the Orlando Sentinel.

By contrast, unemployed workers in Florida, and across the nation, are temporarily eligible for $600 in supplemental federal benefits every week, but that’s slated to expire at the end of the month unless Congress extends them.

A report written in 2017 by Wentworth, the unemployment expert, found those types of changes, which both limit the amount of benefits paid out and add restrictions, disqualifications or higher burdens for workers applying, had drastically reduced the number of unemployed workers collecting benefits in states around the country.

“States that have been the most restrictive in moving people off unemployment insurance-- those states have had the hardest time processing claims now,” Stettner said in an interview.

...[S]tates systems are... bogged down by outdated or poorly designed technology, concerns about fraud and staffing issues. In Nevada, the interim director for the state unemployment system resigned in June after facing threats from angry workers. In Washington state, 100 National Guard members have been called in to help sort through issues around fraudulent cases.

The delays in getting jobless benefits to the unemployed have led to some informal organizing-- social media groups with thousands of members have cropped up on Facebook and other sites in states like Wisconsin, Nevada, Florida and Oklahoma.

Anselm Weber is going to be an explosive tribune for the working-class inside the Florida legislature-- which very much needs what he's offering. "Florida," he told me this morning, "is now the global epicenter for COVID-19 with the state reporting a record 15,000+ cases consecutively over the weekend and 12,000+ as of today, leaving the state total at over 270,000. However, instead of prioritizing paying out jobless claims or giving relief to tenants and homeowners, our Governor and GOP leadership is moving forward with reopening our economy and our schools. The GOP has been brazen about their pro-austerity and anti-poor ideology in the past, but now it is at a new level of evil. Sadly, many working class people in Florida and across the country are still drawn to Trump and the GOP because they can relate to them on somewhat of a cultural appeal. This is partly because the Democrats, for the last 40-50 years, have not prioritized addressing deep material inequities in our system. It should be a slam dunk for the Democrats to be yelling and screaming about expanding universal healthcare, rent control, a living wage or ending Right-to-Work laws. However, they will only push in so far as it agrees with their donors and those donors include private healthcare companies, real estate and property managers, along with companies like Amazon that have been militant to local organizers addressing management's terrible labor practices. What we desperately need at this moment is a massively mobilized and organized labor movement and a party that 100% has their back."

Supporting Anselm with a small contribution, is a real good idea-- and why the 2020 Florida electoral thermometer is included here. Adam Christensen, Cindy Banyai and Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick are reformists running for Congress in tough races-- and can also use some help. Christensen is exactly what the Gainesville region is in need of in Washington. "Some of the hardest working people I know are currently working minimum wage jobs and struggling to survive," he said. "They are designated 'essential' but treated as expendable. Any company that purposefully puts their workers in danger has be held accountable. We have to force a change the structure so that people are valued over profits. The pandemic didn’t create the underlying issues that we we have, it just made them blatantly clear and exasperated them."

Cindy Banyai pointed out that "Florida’s unemployment system was designed to fail by then governor Rick Scott to keep unemployment number low during the Great Recession. Ron DeSantis looked the other way when reports that the unemployment system had problems. Republicans in Florida have a long track record of thinking of themselves first, the truth and the people be damned."

Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick is clear-eyed about why she's running for Congress in South Florida. "Time and time again," she said, "Trump and the GOP fail the working class. Working class families have lost their jobs as a result of this pandemic, yet have struggled to receive their unemployment benefits for stimulus checks. Written into the stimulus bill meant to support American families, were tax breaks and bailouts for large corporations. Moreover, Trump and Republican lawmakers are pushing from public schools to reopen, despite growing numbers of COVID cases. This will disproportionately impact working class families who are forced to work but cannot afford childcare. They have no other alternative but to send their children into COVID hotspots. Throughout the course of my campaign, I have helped voters and working class citizens apply for unemployment and small business loans. If elected, I will pledge to support all current, and future small business owners. I will also support further rule changes to the PPP that would ensure only deserving small businesses get all the help they need for as long as they need. I plan to stand against the Republican lawmakers who serve corporate interests of working class families. It is time for real leadership in Congress."
 

Boehner, A Captive To His Party's Sick Confederate Wing, Refuses To Allow A Vote On The Bi-Partisan Senate Unemployment Extension

Although the successful 61-35 cloture vote last week to break the Republican filibuster on extending unemployment benefits was the real test, yesterday the Senate officially passed the bill, 59-38, and sent it to the House. Boehner and Cantor have already decided that unemployed people and their families can die of hunger and cold for all they care and are refusing to allow the House to vote. Six Senate Republicans-- Dean Heller (R-NV), Susan Collins (R-ME), Mark Kirk (R-IL), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Rob Portman (R-OH) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH)-- voted for it and there are enough Republican House Members willing to join the Democrats and pass it, but the Confederates who control the party refuse to allow it to be voted on and Boehner is too much under their thumb to let the bill go forward. Bernie Sanders summed the dilemma up perfectly: "After a long struggle here in the Senate, we managed to get a few Republicans on board to help us pass this legislation. Now, it goes to the House. After pushing for tax breaks for billionaires and large corporations, it would be unconscionable for the Republican House not to pass this legislation. If the House does not act, millions of jobless workers will be left out in the cold by the end of this year. That would be an outrage."

Endangered Republicans in normal, non-Confederate parts of the country-- Frank LoBiondo (R-NJ), Peter King (NY), Jon Runyan (NJ), Chris Smith (N.J), Chris Gibson (NY), Michael Grimm (NY) and Joe Heck (NV)-- are worried that this kind of obstruction from the GOP will further wreck the party brand and endanger their own reelection bids. They ran to the media frantically waving a letter they wrote to Boehner: "As many Americans continue to struggle without benefits, we respectfully request that the House immediately consider this bill or a similar measure to restore unemployment benefits to struggling Americans." Among the phony "moderates" refusing to sign the Republican letter were this dozen smug reactionaries. Bolded names are the ones the DCCC is giving free reelection passes (oh, almost all of them… what a coincidence!):

• Mike Fitzpatrick (R-PA)
• Dave Reichert (R-WA)
• Richard Hanna (R-NY)
• Tom Petri (R-WI)
• Fred Upton (R-MI)
• Rodney Frelinghuysen IV (R-NJ)
• Jim Gerlach (R-PA)
• Charlie Dent (R-PA)
• Leonard Lance (R-NJ)
• Pat Meehan (R-PA)
• Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL)
• Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL)

Jason Ritchie is the Democrat running against Reichert. Last night he was majorly pissed off that Reichert didn't join the Republicans pressuring Boehner to allow a vote. "Today," he told us, "I met with the Pierce County Labor Council and discussed how we can get Western Washington's skilled trades back to work. My union friends and co-workers have suffered under Rep. Reichert's unwillingness to move forward on any infrastructure reinvestment projects and his ignorance of middle class issues. Rep. Reichert isn't interested in helping local long-term unemployed families who are worried about making it another month. Moreover, he doesn't seem to grasp basic economic concepts like how renewing unemployment benefits helps stimulate the local economy.

"I am a job creator in the private sector, running on a platform of growing middle class living wage jobs that will pay down our debts and support our social safety net. Investing into our middle class is key to our economic recovery. Living wage jobs are middle class jobs and family jobs. We must renew unemployment benefits now to keep our skilled trades engaged and seeking new opportunities. We must move forward on infrastructure reinvestment and get our skilled trades back to work. With no jobs plan and no experience creating jobs in the private sector, it's time to retire Reichert."

Congressional Progressive Caucus Co-Chairs Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) and Keith Ellison (D-MN) spoke for their whole caucus when thanked the Senate for passing the bill and urged Boehner to put aside the ugly partisanship for once and just let the House vote. Grijalva: "Republicans seem to think everyone has exactly what they deserve and money is the measure of a person’s value. If you don’t have enough for their tastes, you’re out of luck and they have no interest in helping you. If you have a lot, they’ll go out of their way to make sure you get more at our expense. This damage this attitude has done to the American people is out there if Republicans care to take a look. Unemployment insurance is a fair system that keeps Americans out of poverty. Renewing it helps everyone and hurts no one. The only thing in the way is conservative ideology, and until Republicans start living in the real world, more families will continue to struggle for lack of a few votes in Congress."

Alan Grayson (D-FL) had a similar perspective, concerned about ordinary working families trying to keep it together in a difficult situation: "Unemployment insurance is a crucial lifeline for millions of Americans who are struggling to find work. When Republicans blocked an extension of the program in December, more than 1.7 million Americans-- including an estimated 73,000 Floridians-- lost that lifeline. Now that the Senate has passed legislation extending unemployment insurance, it’s time for the House to act. Millions of Americans are waiting on Speaker Boehner to allow a vote on this program, and they cannot afford to wait any longer." Earlier he had written to his constituents and supporters about the Ryan budget-- to which he submitted 8 amendments by yesterday's noon deadline:

[I]f you wanted to distill every form of right-wing economic lunacy into a 100-page document, then hypothetically, it would be the Ryan Budget… Tax cuts for the rich, the so-called "job creators." Tax cuts for multinational corporations, the other so-called "job creators." (Why don't they ever call them by their real name: the "job exporters"?) Cuts in middle-class tax benefits, like the deduction for pension benefits and IRAs, to pay for this. (Robin Hood in reverse.) Cuts in Medicaid and food stamps, because, you know, the Republicans want to make millions of sick, hungry poor people more self-reliant. A legal requirement to force the President to propose legislation to cut Social Security benefits and/or raise Social Security taxes, to make Obama do the Republicans' dirty work for them. Big jumps in student loan interest rates. And massive increases in military expenditures.

President Obama was right onboard with Grayson and Grijalva: "Today the Senate acted in a bipartisan way to reinstate emergency unemployment insurance for 2.3 million Americans who depend on it as they search for work. As I’ve said time and again, Washington needs to put politics aside and help these hard-working, responsible Americans make ends meet and support their families as they look for a job. Each week Congress fails to act on this crucial issue, roughly 70,000 long-term unemployed Americans lose their vital economic lifeline. I urge House Republicans to stop blocking a bipartisan compromise that would stem this tide, take up the bill without delay, and send it to my desk. Let’s remove this needless drag on our economy and focus on expanding opportunity for all Americans."

I want to add one more statement to the list of political leaders urging Boehner to act in good faith for once, Matt Cartwright (D-PA), freshman class president and a Member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. His statement was very simple and straight-forward: "These Americans lost their jobs-- and now their last lifeline, unemployment insurance-- through no fault of their own. They don’t deserve to lose their homes as well." Matt's 100% correct when he said "through no fault of their own." A failed European-style Austerity agenda pushed by Republicans is what put the economy in the toilet and forced millions of workers into unemployment. But the fact that this was coming from Matt is even weightier because GovTrack.us, a non-partisan watchdog group, just named him one of its "moderate Democratic leaders" because of his record of earning bipartisan support in Congress. Cartwright works across the aisle without ever selling out his progressive values-- or his constituents. I keep hearing from other Members that Matt is a potential leader for House Dems. Almost 2/3's of the bills he's introduced have received bipartisan support. That's rare in this obstructionist Congress, even for bills, like Matt's, that have included legislation to help schools retrofit to become more energy efficient, prevent elder abuse, improve mental health care for veterans, and provide greater flexibility for the families of deployed service members.

Unemployment Insurance Extension? Really?

Yesterday the Senate finally reached a bipartisan deal on extending unemployment insurance. Does anyone think the House is going to give it serious consideration? The 5 months worth of benefits (around $10 billion) would go until May… if the House passes it. The Senate will vote on it towards the end of March, after the Senate gets back from yet another vacation.

The bill is being cosponsored by 5 Republicans, Dean Heller (R-RI), Susan Collins (R-ME), Rob Portman (R-OH), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Mark Kirk (R-IL), and 5 Democrats, Jack Reed (D-RI), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Sherrod Brown (D-OH),and Dick Durbin (D-IL). It allows for retroactive payments going back to December 28th. Reed, the chief architect of the bill:

“There are a lot of good people looking for work and I am pleased we’re finally able to reach a strong, bipartisan consensus to get them some help. Restoring this much needed economic lifeline will help job seekers, boost our economy, and provide a little certainty to families, businesses, and the markets that Congress is capable of coming together to do the right thing. It has now been 75 days since UI expired and it needs to be renewed. We’re not at the finish line yet, but this is a bipartisan breakthrough. I am grateful to Senator Heller for his leadership and for my many colleagues on both sides of the aisle who worked constructively to find a way forward. I join Rhode Islanders and millions of people across the country in calling on Congress to pass this essential, common sense legislation without further delay and take additional action to help save and create jobs."

Greg Sargent predicted that the House Republicans will kill the bill after it passes the Senate. "In raw political terms," he wrote, "that means UI as a key issue is back. Now the Senate will vote on it, and Senate Republicans will be challenged to vote against it. Senate candidates on both sides will be asked by the press to take a position on it. Presuming it passes the Senate, which it should (any Dem defections are unlikely), the House GOP will have to decide whether to kill it-- by not allowing a vote on it or by voting it down. House Republicans will now have to confront the issue. With vulnerable Democrats in red states looking to make the 2014 elections about which party has a real agenda to boost economic mobility, combat inequality, and help alleviate poverty-- as opposed to All Obamacare All The Time-- this may well help draw the contrast."

Rick Weiland, the populist insurgent running for the open South Dakota Senate seat-- and endorsed by Blue America-- was happy to hear about the deal, of course, but… Here's how he put it on the phone a few minutes after Jack Reed announced they had the 5 Republicans aboard they needed.

"What we really need is for this Congress to pass the President's 'jobs bill' and put America back to work fixing our crumbling infrastructure. I'm obviously relieved that millions of our unemployed fellow citizens are getting a few more months of unemployment benefits but I believe people want to work. It's time this Congress gets to work and pass the 'jobs bill.'"

Who would argue with that? Well… start right here:

Now Let's Define Morality… And Connect It To A Primary Color

Since 2007, Democrats have been predicting that demographics, coupled with Republican knee-jerk bigotry and xenophobia, will turn Texas blue within a decade. When Texas-born Rand Paul confirmed this yesterday, he neglected to mention that Georgia is turning blue just as quickly. Watch Chris Hayes and his guests, Georgia state Rep. Stacey Abrams and former NAACP President Ben Jealous, above.

At a GOP dinner in Houston while Hayes was on TV talking about turning Georgia blue, Rand Paul warned Republican officials, big money contributors and operatives that "What I do believe is Texas is going to be a Democrat state within 10 years if we don’t change. That means we evolve, it doesn’t mean we give up on what we believe in, but it means we have to be a welcoming party… We won’t all agree on it. But I’ll tell you, what I will say and what I’ll continue to say, and it’s not an exact policy prescription… but if you want to work and you want a job and you want to be part of America, we’ll find a place for you… Immigrants are assets, not liabilities. We were all immigrants once." Paul noticed-- and commented-- that the response was "kind of tepid" from the assembled GOP muckety-mucks. The one-eyed aunt sharing the room with the elephant were the 40% of the Texas population who are now Hispanics-- except they weren't actually in the room… except as underpaid waiters and busboys.

So while Hayes was on MSNBC explaining how Georgia could be slipping out of the GOP's grasp and Rand Paul was doing the same thing-- albeit with less relish-- in Houston, the Washington Post was publishing a column by Dana Milbank that summed up exactly why Republicans have fallen into such palpable disrepute with ordinary American voters of late. Pete Sessions is one of the highest-ranking Republicans in Texas' massive GOP House delegation-- the biggest and most influential in the Republican Caucus.

Pete Sessions raising campaign cash with Vegas strippers

“It is immoral.”

That was the judgment of Rep. Pete Sessions, a Texas Republican and committee chairman, on the House floor this week. But the subject of his sermon wasn’t the Assad regime in Syria or human trafficking. What Sessions found immoral was the repugnant notion that the government would help Americans who lost their jobs and are looking for work.

Sessions was preaching in response to Democrats’ pleas that the Republican majority hold a vote on restoring unemployment-insurance benefits to the 1.7 million who have lost them since the benefits expired six weeks ago and the 70,000 or so who are losing them each week. Sessions, on the floor to usher through the House “sportsmen’s heritage and recreational enhancement” legislation, explained why he wouldn’t bring up jobless benefits: “I believe it is immoral for this country to have as a policy extending long-term unemployment to people rather than us working on creation of jobs.”

In fact, the economy has added about 8.5 million private-sector jobs in the last 47 months, and overall unemployment, at 6.6 percent in January, would be substantially lower if Sessions and his colleagues hadn’t been so successful in their “work” of cutting government spending when the recovery was fragile.

…Republican opponents of the benefits extension said they would consider extending that help if it were “paid for” by saving money elsewhere. So Senate Democrats drafted a three-month extension that was paid for using an accounting method Republicans have supported in the past. Republicans responded with another filibuster-- and on Thursday they again succeeded in blocking an extension of benefits.

…This morality is also at work in the decisions by 25 states under Republican control to reject the expansion of Medicaid offered under Obamacare. The states generally object because they are philosophically opposed to entitlement programs. But a new study from researchers at Harvard Medical School and City University of New York calculates that 7,115 to 17,104 more people will die annually than would have if their states had accepted the Medicaid expansion. The researchers, who favor a single-payer health system, examined demographic data and past insurance expansions.

Conservatives dispute the study’s findings, and I hope the critics are right. Allowing people to die to advance your political philosophy isn’t just bad policy. It’s immoral.

Republicans Kill Unemployment Insurance Extension Again

This morning the Democrats were unable to break the Republican Party filibuster against extending unemployment benefits for three months, despite Democratic compromises with GOP demands. Harry Reid's attempt to shut down the filibuster through cloture failed 58-40. Almost two million American workers who lost their jobs because of the vicissitudes of the market-- almost entirely caused by conservative economic policies-- are now stuck with no income… as the GOP celebrates another victory in their Class War against America's working families.

Although 4 Republicans-- Kelly Ayotte, Susan Collins, Dean Heller and Lisa Murkowski-- joined Reid's bid to shut down the filibuster, it lost by one vote because of three particular villains in today's action: Rob Portman (R-OH) and Mark Kirk (R-IL), who were thought to be a yes votes but who chickened out at the last moment, and Tom Coburn (R-OK), who had gotten the Democrats to agree to a hideous amendment to means test unemployment insurance, a camel's nose under the tent that some conservatives hoped would lead to weakening other social insurance policies, particularly Social Security, of course, which Republicans will apparently never give up trying to undermine. Even accepting GOP concessions wasn't enough for Republicans given an opportunity to inflict more pain on working families. This is the official White House response:

It is disappointing that Republicans in the Senate chose to again deny emergency unemployment insurance for 1.7 million Americans who need this vital lifeline to support their families as they actively search each and every day for a job. As the President said during the State of the Union, we need to give these hardworking, responsible Americans a chance. We cannot allow one vote to stand in the way of supporting these Americans as they struggle to find work. Both sides of the aisle have worked together to prevent this kind of hardship in the past, and neglecting to do so now is unacceptable-- especially given the high long-term unemployment rate.

  Last week the President took action on his own, bringing together CEOs whose companies have agreed to take steps to help give the long-term unemployed a fair shot at a job, and announced new steps to expand partnerships that connect the long-term unemployed to good jobs.  Republicans in Congress need to allow this bill to have an up or down vote and remove this needless drag on our economy and American families.

How could they? Maybe Matea Gold had it right in the Washington Post this morning by pointing out that "Americans for Prosperity, the advocacy group backed by the billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch, is emerging as the most powerful ally of the Republican Party ahead of the 2014 midterm elections, bombarding Senate Democrats with early air attacks that could help the GOP retake the Senate… As of this week, Americans for Prosperity has spent more than $27 million on ads since August, putting it on pace to far outstrip its overall $38.5 million budget for the 2010 midterms."