Posted by
Steve on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 11:31:16 AM
There is a lot to talk about today. There is the Republican
debate last night, the Wallow fire and the AZ Legislature not extending
unemployment. All are important, but the one generating talk in Arizona is the
Arizona Legislature not extending the unemployment benefits.
I was listening to KFYI on the way to work. Barry Markson
was in for Barry Young. He was lamenting that the Arizona Legislature had not
extended the unemployment benefits for the long term unemployed. He said he
agreed with the premise of not extending the benefits, but that battle was lost
in Washington. Now the money is available and all the legislature has to do to
get it is to pass a bill authorizing the extension. He made the comment that
the money was “free” money. There is no such thing as “free” money. I think he
meant that the money was going to be spent and our not taking it would not save
it. But it was taken from taxpaying Americans and would be given to people that
have been unemployed for about two years.
I have always believed if something was wrong it is wrong. I
believe that is the stance the legislature is taking. They believe that it is
wrong to extend unemployment benefits beyond two years. Unemployment benefits
were originally intended to be a short term benefit and were available for just
a few months. If you did not find employment in that time period, you lost the
benefit. When the economy started to tank, the Democrats started increasing the
amount of time you could receive unemployment. You can now receive unemployment
for so long it is basically a new welfare program. The original intent of the
program has been lost.
This morning, just before I got out of the car, a business
owner called up and told Barry Markson that she paid unemployment insurance to
the state and the federal government. The longer a person receives unemployment
payments, the higher her unemployment insurance payments are. That would be
logical as the money does not generally come out of the budget. That is why
Democrats love increasing the unemployment payments. They can increase the time
people receive payments and not impact the federal budget. They just impact the
“evil” business owners. Since they are evil, impacting them negatively is just
fine.
One thing we need to do in this economy is to make it more
advantageous to own and operate a business. You do that by decreasing the
impact that government has on each business. Getting the unemployment program
back to its original intent would go a long way to help businesses get back on
their feet. Other measures would also need to be taken to get business
ownership back in the positive arena, but it would be a good start. You also
need to decrease taxes, decrease regulations and generally make it a positive
experience to own a business.
Democrats love to demonize businesses and business owners as
the embodiment of evil. They do this because they have to generate divisions in
the public. If they generated togetherness in the public, Democrat policies
would be the first casualty. It used to be in this country that people wanted
to be wealthy and own their own business. Democrats have worked hard to destroy
that dream. Fortunately, Americans are tough and there are still a lot of
people that dream of becoming rich and owning their own business. We need to
encourage business ownership, not discourage it.