That's how Ryan's austerity works: CEOs get to keep their golden parachutes because the government is making the clerks and park rangers and soldiers and sailors do all the sacrificing. It's redistribution of the wealth upward, in the grand tradition of the Charles Dickens character Ebenezer Scrooge, who griped that his clerk's request for a Christmas holiday was "a poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every 25th of December."
The cruelest calculus comes now, after December 25, as 1.3 million Americans are denied assistance that they need to pay for shelter, food and the transportation they use in searching for jobs that in many parts of the country just aren't available. Roughly 28,000 Wisconsin families, including many residing in Janesville, Ryan's hard-hit hometown, are among those slated to lose benefits.
Paul Ryan and Patty Murray had every opportunity to include an extension in the agreement. Democrats were angling for it, and Republicans were unlikely to balk at a proposal to help the needy in the holiday season. Yet when the plan was presented, no provision was made for the long-term unemployed. Despite Democratic objections prior to the House and Senate votes, the measure advanced with overwhelming support from compromise-prone members of both parties. And it was signed by the president on December 26.
Then they hightailed it home for the holidays.
So it was that a Congress that could easily have cared for the poor took actions that suggested the sentiment similar to that of old Scrooge, who replied to a request for a donation for the destitute, with a growl of "It's not my business."
Politicians are rarely so crass in their language. Yet the budget deal Paul Ryan did so much to shape, and that too many Republicans and Democrats endorsed, contains precisely nothing for those whose want is keenly felt.
The question now is whether Congress will be shamed sufficiently to act.
There are certainly those who are ready to respond.
On January 6, when the Senate reconvenes, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) says the first measure up for consideration will be a plan to restore long-term unemployment benefits. The measure is backed by Nevada Republican Dean Heller and 21 members of the Senate Democratic Caucus.
Give Heller credit. He is doing the right thing -- for his constituents and for the national economy -- by breaking with Ryan and the austerity agenda.
But there must be a bigger break -- in the Senate and, especially, in the Republican-controlled House. As Sanders says, "The critical question is how many Republicans are prepared to stand with unemployed workers."
Put another way: How many Republicans will join Heller is recognizing that the circumstance of the long-term jobless is their business? Indeed, it is all of our business.
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