Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
In the waning days of the legislative session we told you about the Democratic Caucus's attempt to pass a one word amendment to Arizona's unemployment insurance statutes to correct a funding formula which would keep emergency federal unemployment insurance funds coming to Arizona for up to 99 weeks of unemployment.
"This does not require any Arizona dollars," said Rep. Debbie McCune Davis, D-Phoenix. Rather, Arizona law needs to be changed to establish a three-year period for calculating the benefit, instead of the current two years.
Without the amendment, a drop in Arizona's unemployment rate below the federal unemployment rate would result in unemployment insurance benefits terminating at 79 weeks. Senate Commerce Committee chairman Al Melvin (R-Tucson), said it was a bad idea, even if there were ample time left in the legislative session. "The shorter the period, the faster people go back to work," Melvin said.
House Speaker Kirk Adams (R-Mesa) said there was not enough time in the legislative session to deal with a one word amendment to the unemploymeny insurance statutes, even though he managed to find time for Tea-Publican mischief with amendments they wanted passed. The unemployment benefits amendment died at sine die.
The day of reckoning arrived today. Arizona Capitol Times reports Arizona’s unemployment rate lowers to 9.3 percent in April:
The Department of Commerce reported Thursday that the state’s economy added 17,200 nonfarm jobs in April as the unemployment rate dropped from 9.5 percent in March. It was at 9.6 percent the three months before then.
The April state unemployment rate of 9.3 percent will be used to calculate a new three-month average for the state.
As of April, approximately16,000 people received the federally funded extended benefits now in jeopardy, according to the state Department of Economic Security.
DES spokesman Steve Meissner said the likely result of the new average will be that benefits will be reduced to a maximum of 79 weeks from the current 99.
Confirmation of the benefits change isn’t likely for about a month and implementation details have yet to be worked out, he said.
Gov. Jan Brewer’s administration and legislators discussed the possibility of changing the state’s “look back” formula so that those who receive extended benefits would still get them.
That would involve changing state law so the current employment rate is compared with one of the previous three years instead of one of just the past two years. No action was taken during the regular session that ended in April as lawmakers focused on other topics, including the state’s budget shortfall.
Senate President Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, said Tuesday the topic was discussed during a meeting with Gov. Jan Brewer and House Speaker Andy Tobin, R-Paulden, on possible special session topics.
Pearce said no decision was made during the meeting, but he expressed coolness toward making the possible change.
“I have natural concerns about paying people to sit at home,” he said.
The GOP war on the unemployed was led by Senator Obstruction, Jon Kyl, in the United States Senate last year. The GOP war on the unemployed has been led by Senators Russel Pearce and his toady Cap'n Al Melvin in the Arizona legislature.
Their visceral hatred towards the unemployed who are victims of the Bush Great Recession, the product of failed GOP economic policies, indicates they are made uncomfortable by the constant reminder of their failures in the eyes of desperate people whose lives they have destroyed with their failed ideological policies. They just want the unemployed to go away — out of their sight — so they can go on living comfortably in their alternate reality where all the world is right.
Structural long-term unemployment is a component of Arizona's failed economic model. Credible economists are not predicting an economic recovery until sometime in 2014 or 2015 — years away. The unemployed are not going away any time soon, even if Sens. Pearce and Melvin miserly refuse to extend 20 weeks of emergency federal unemployment insurance benefits to the "99ers" with a simple one word amendment to Arizona's unemployment insurance statutes. (The federal emergency unemployment insurance will terminate at the end of this year in any event).
The Arizona Daily Star in an editortial opinion today Arizonans deserve safety net of extended jobless benefits noted:
People who receive unemployment benefits spend that money in their communities, paying for food, housing, gas and utilities. Ending the benefits will have a ripple effect throughout the economy.
Meanwhile, one thing that isn't needed are cruel remarks from politicians like Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce, who suggested that extending benefits to 99 weeks is "almost enabling unemployment."
He surely knows that the maximum weekly benefit in Arizona amounts to $240 a week, or $12,480 a year. That hardly funds a lifestyle that encourages unemployed people to stay on the public dole.
What Arizona does need are leaders who pave the way for job growth. The good news is that we were among the 48 states that added jobs between March 2010 and March 2011. The bad news is that we rank 47th. Until that improves, more help for Arizona's unemployed is appropriate.
Well said.
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I make this clarification because the right-wing noise machine would have people believe that the Great Recession began under Barack Obama, rather than he inherited it from his predecessor. I will not allow this obfuscation.
When George W. Bush came into office this country had four years of surpluses, and Alan Greenspan testified to Congress in February 2001 that we were in danger of paying dowm the federal debt too quickly. Seriously.
George W. Bush presided over: (1) the Bush tax cuts for the rich that turned surpluses into deficits and is the driver of all future deficits; (2) fiscally irresponsible and reckless GOP spending on borrowed money – Bush never vetoed a single spending bill; (3) the war in Afghanistan and the unnecessary war in Iraq put on the nation’s credit card; and (4) the Medicare Part D prescription drug “subsidy” to Big Pharma that also was not paid for.
It is true that the GOP’s financial services deregulation bills were signed into law at the end of president Clinton’s term (something for which I have criticized him), but the shadow markets created by deregulation really did not begin to take shape until 2001. It was the lack of regulatory oversight by Alan Greenspan and the Bush administration that allowed casino capitalism to run wild on Wall Street.
The Great Recession began in December 2007 and “officially” ended in June 2009, according to the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research, which is within FY 2009, the last Bush budget. For purposes of tracking fiscal policies, the start date for president Obama would be October 2009 with the FY 2010 budget. Bush owns it.
You are incorrect in your belief. Eisenhower, Ford, Reagan and Bush 41 all had their recessions associated with their administrations (it cost Ford and Bush 41 election). The Great Depression was exceptional, because it lasted for more than a decade.
Phillip D: Very eloquent. Richard needs to get his news from other than FAUX NEWS, it’s been widely reported for years of the Bush Recession: I would only add that Wall Street manufactured this by creating the vehicle that crashed it all. Many forget this, forget the tax cuts, 2 unfunded wars, Perscription drug benefit and TARP that combined added nearly 9 trillion to our debt. We forget we had a surplus in 2000 and a $1.3 Trillion deficit in 2008. We forget that TARP was a $760 Billion giveaway to bailout Banks/Wall Street and that in 2008 we lost 8 million plus jobs. Bush created it and it was Obama’s to cleanup. And we are now expected to belive Tea-publicans are fiscally responsible. Scoop is correct that those here legally will get jobs – when there are jobs to get, but even through this, employers are still hiring illegals (Chuy’s raid). We can get upset at illegals, but 11 million of them here did not come in since 2008. Several administrations bear that blame (State and Fed).
We also need to remember the manufactured debt crisis this country is suffering: continuing to hand out tax cuts do not create jobs (10 year failed program). We need to continue to hold our elected representatives to account and represent us – not push their agenda.
Dems, repubs and indy’s are an embarrassment. We need representation and we are not getting it.
I disagree, Richard. In the simplest terms, the bursting of the housing bubble caused the Great Recession, and George Bush actively fueled the housing bubble.
There were other culprits too: lenders who peddled easy credit, consumers who took on mortgages they couldn’t really afford, and Wall Street peddled mortgage-backed securities in a scam to make a buck.
But George Bush was the leader, he was driving the train, he set the standards and encouraged the behavior that brought us down. Therefore, it is the George Bush Great Recession.
He came into office pushing his “ownership society,” and he had two ideas that he paired together: Americans do best when they own their own homes, and markets do best when left alone. He pushed for more minority home ownership, appointed a school buddy to oversee Fannie and Freddie, and his housing policies and hands-off approach to regulation encouraged lax lending standards. He appointed regulators who, like him, didn’t believe in regulation. Bush persuaded Congress to spend $200 million a year to help first-time buyers with down payments and closing costs, and he pushed to allow first-time buyers to qualify for government insured mortgages with no money down. He insisted that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac meet ambitious new goals for low-income lending, and he simultaneously leaned on mortgage brokers and lenders to devise their own innovations, and said publicly that corporate America has a responsibility to help make America a “compassionate place.” He was the unquestioned leader and instigator of the downfall. He blew and blew and blew and inflated the bubble.
We know the consequences. We got left with a disaster. Financial meltdown, lost jobs, foreclosures, lost wealth, and right now home ownership rate isn’t any higher than when he started the whole mess.
George Bush himself has tried to deflect blame — foreign money flodding in, drunk Wall Street, Congress not tightening down on Fannie and Freddie — but it’s his mess. He was the leader, he was the instigator, he pushed and pushed and blew and blew until it all fell down. The George Bush Recession.
This is a great post, except (to my mind) for one phrase: “the Bush Great Recession.” I think this kind of cheap partisan stuff — the use of a phrase, frankly, I’ve never seen anywhere else — is the kind of kid stuff uneducated conservative bloggers use. Perhaps I’m alone in this, but I feel it demeans you and your argument and brings you down to the level of people who are your intellectual inferiors.
The Great Recession had many causes, and the Bush administration’s lack of oversight played a role, but by and large economic and financial disasters and crises have a multitude of causes. To say that it is the “Bush great recession” only invites retribution. After all, although the recession officially ended years ago, we all still feel it’s with it, and just as the Great Depression may have begun under Pres. Hoover, it lasted through at least most of Pres. Roosevelt’s first two terms. I’ve never heard anyone apply the name of a president to the Great Depression, and it is the sheerest of partisanship and intellectual sloppiness to define the Great Recession in any one individual’s name.