"Borrowing and deficit spending at the point of an economic crisis--and we were in a severe one in late 2008 and early 2009--is one thing," Nelson said. "But when you're in an economic recovery, as we are today, borrowing and deficit spending is another thing."
Another Democratic "no" vote, Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, told Fox News through a spokesman that she was particularly opposed to a provision in the bill that would have raised taxes on the oil and gas industry from 8 cents a barrel to 49 cents, raising $18.3 billion to replenish the Oil Liability Trust Fund.
Besides the oil industry tax, there is enormous business opposition to a proposed increase in the tax on the compensation of hedge fund managers--much of it currently taxed not as income but at the much lower capital gains rate--as well as a tax increase on investment partnerships. Lobbying against this provision was said to be especially heavy on the part of companies like Blackstone.
A Republican alternative, introduced by Senator John Thune of South Dakota, would have extended jobless benefits and selected tax credits for business, but at the price of a 5 percent across-the-board cut in all federal discretionary spending (with the military-intelligence apparatus excluded, of course). This was defeated by a 41 to 57 margin.
Big business politicians of both parties have expressed their disdain for the unemployed, suggesting that extended unemployment benefits, now set at 99 weeks, are encouraging jobless workers to stay home and not look for work. Georgia Republican Congressman John Linder said that extended benefits were "too much of an allure."
Senator Diane Feinstein, a multi-millionaire Democrat from California, complained, "We have 99 weeks of unemployment insurance. The question comes, how long do you continue that before people just don't go back to work at all?" California has a 12.6 percent unemployment rate, with 880,000 workers unemployed for 27 weeks or more, and receiving extended benefits.
Senator Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat with particularly close ties to the White House, voted against the unemployment extension and backed the $25 a week cut. "This is not something that can go on indefinitely," she said. Otherwise, "it begins to look like a brand-new level of entitlement program, which is something that we really can't afford to do right now."
Reports in the corporate-controlled media invariably cite mass popular opposition to higher federal deficits as the reason for the shift by a section of the Democratic Party to opposing extended unemployment benefits. However, the claim that working people are up in arms over deficit spending is a spurious one, identifying the media-promoted antics of the Tea Party and other right-wing groups as a genuine popular movement.
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