Main Street

Rep. Camp’s Unemployment Bill: “Cruel and Selfish”

If you closed your eyes and tried to imagine a piece of legislation that could inflict the most damage on the pocketbooks and dignities of working Americans, you couldn’t get much better than H.R. 3630.

Introduced by Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI), fresh from driving the bipartisan “Supercommittee” into the ground with his intransigence, H.R. 3630 is a Frankenstein of poison pills, deceptive language, and punishment for the unemployed.

A report from the National Employment Law Project lays out the tenets of this bill:

• H.R. 3630 shortens the federal unemployment benefit period by a whopping 40 weeks, even as the average length of unemployment is at its highest since 1948.
• H.R. 3630 overrides the power of the individual states to determine eligibility for unemployment benefits.
• H.R. 3630 eliminates Tier IV of unemployment compensation, removing a vital lifeline specifically from those states with the highest rates of unemployment.
• H.R. 3630 charges unemployed workers for the cost of their own reemployment.
• H.R. 3630 imposes the requirement of a high school diploma or GED to be eligible for benefits, an unfair burden on those with less access to education.
• And in an insult to the millions of American who are unemployed through no fault of their own, the bill allows states to test every UI applicant for drug use.

It’s titled, unbelievably, the “Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2011.” George Orwell doesn’t hold a candle to Rep. Dave Camp.

In a letter to members of the House of Representatives, AFL-CIO Government Affairs Director Bill Samuel expresses our attitude perfectly:

H.R. 3630 would protect the most privileged one percent of all Americans from having to pay one more penny in taxes, and it would do so by demanding still more sacrifice and pain from jobless workers, federal employees, and low- and middle-income families. The authors of H.R. 3630 obviously have more sympathy for millionaires than for the victims of the economic crisis caused by Wall Street. We urge you to vote against this cruel and selfish piece of legislation.

Tomorrow, starting at 11am, we’ll be having an #ExtendUI Tweet-a-thon to get the word out about the importance of a clean extension of unemployment insurance. If you haven’t, sign our 9 Demands for the 99 Percent petition, which includes a demand for Congress to extend this vital lifeline.

Photo of Representative Dave Camp by Michael Jolley on Flickr, via Creative Commons.

Tags: John Boehner, Payroll Tax Cut, Tea Party, unemployment, unemployment extension