WHO'S GOT THE AMERICAN WORKER'S BACK?

Partisanship is something that really gets under my skin. To me, you can be a republican and agree with a democrat and vice versa. You can be against 99 out of 100 policies that Barack Obama supports, but still support one. Granted, partisanship is played out in exactly the same way on both sides of the aisle, so if George Bush were still the president you could put his name in place of Barack Obama's name and have the same argument. Democrats can support one out of 100 policies that Bush supports.

It's not even a tall order.

The latest debacle comes out of this whole debate as to whether or not we (the republicans) should allow more pork barrell spending by already out of control spending democrats in order to ensure that the hard working Americans who are currently unemployed—thanks to the still high rate of unemployment, which is thanks to the anti-business Obama administration and all of his democratic cronies—don't have their unemployment insurance benefits stopped.

Sure. Spending is a serious issue. It's way out of control. At some point in the very near future we are going to have to take drastic and serious measures to curtail spending at every turn. Even democrat Erskine Bowles, on the debt commission, has said we will have grave consequences if we do not do something soon. But not this very moment. Not on the backs of the American worker who is in need of his benefits right now. We can play politics later. But now is the time to give the unemployed worker at least his benefits.

The thing here is that of course the democrats want to make the republicans look bad by blaming them for the lack of benefits arriving in the mail. Even my democrat cousin snidely told me on the phone, "Yeah, how about your republicans on the workers?" So, the blame is landing squarely on the republicans so long as no benefits are coming. And yes. I don't think there is any disputing that there are things the democrats included in this bill that would turn republicans heads on the real underyling issue.

But the republicans are essentially doing exactly the same thing. That is, they are trying to make the democrats look bad by saying, "It's not our fault your benefits have stopped. The democrats are to blame for putting too much pork into the bill that would have allowed your benefits."

We have to put this all into the proper perspective. This is posturing. Spending is an issue now? After we've dished out trillions of dollars in bailout monies to AIG? To Citibank? To General Motors? We want to talk about reigning in spending now? Let me just point out that the amount of money, pork included, we're talking about literally pales in comparison to the amount of money we've already laid out. And, add in the thought that there is still hundreds of billions of dollars of already approved, unspent stimulus dollars the president said we could spend any way we want to—we could get this done. We could get these benefits done.

It's all partisan politics. It's game playing. It's setting the stage for issues to come to the fore for the mid-term elections. It's a game that aims to shift anger at the democrats to anger at the republicans.

The republicans are letting the democrats get away with it.

The fact is that these folks who recieve unemployment benefits are the very same people who worked and paid taxes to pay for the bailout. They paid taxes into the federal system that will pay for the extension of benefits. They paid the taxes which paid for people to get a credit to buy a new car, or buy their first home. They are out of work largely not by their own design, but rather as a result of the shenanigans of their government and some of the largest corporations in the world.

The last people that should be left out are them. The hard-working, tax paying American worker who is right now out of work. The last people who should be allowing this are the republican party—truly the party of the American worker thanks to its pro-business stance. Voting against this bill is a vote against the American worker for whatever reason.

As for the partisanship? Well, it's just one more example that on either side, democrat or republican, they really have no clue what the average American is having to go through right now. And besides that, think about how much debate went into deciding over the last pay raises that went through Congress and the Senate. It was a very quick vote with not much debate at all, if any at all. Spending wasn't an issue there, was it?

At every turn the American worker is simply being told, "You're going to have to suck it up." It looks to me right now that there is no one who has the American worker's back. Not the democrats. And sadly, not the republicans either.

More great reading:

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