Greg Sargent finds two more prominent Republicans who seem to think the unemployed are just lazy. It's not the fault of the worst economy since the Great Depression, it's the easy living provided by unemployment benefits.
Ron Johnson is the Tea Party favorite who is opposing Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold. As he explained to Wisconsin Public Television:
Quite honestly, one of the economic advisors to President Obama actually wrote a paper or made statements a few years ago talking about the extension of unemployment benefits actually prolongs unemployment. When you continue to extend unemployment benefits, people really don't have the incentive to go take other jobs. They'll just wait the system out until their benefits run out, then they'll go out and take, probably not as high paying jobs as they'd like to take, but that's really how you have to get back to work. You have to take the work that's available at the wage rates that's available.
Exactly. When there's no work, and no money, people will do anything, at any price. And then maybe our wage rates can be allowed to drop to those of our overseas labor competitors, and everything will be just grand. As for that Obama economic advisor, Johnson didn't bother to provide a name, or explain where he supposedly read or heard about it.
And then there is Republican Senator Richard Burr, of North Carolina. Caught on C-Span (viewable here), and quoted by Sargent:
The wrong thing to do is to automatically today extend unemployment for 12 months. I think that's a discouragement to individuals that are out there to actually go out and go through the interviews.
If you're unemployed, or know anyone who is unemployed, it should be gratifying to hear that a Republican Senator from North Carolina and the leading Republican Senate candidate from Wisconsin think so highly of you. According to them, it's probably your fault. The jobs are there, if you'd only go look for them. It's not the economy, it's you.
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