“They’re going to end up spending more money on unemployment benefits, while less money is coming in on tax returns,” he said, suggesting that the government should focus on measures that might encourage businesses to hire. “Far better to relax some of these outrageous regulations.”
Make no mistake — Mr. Tolleson, 54, has collected unemployment checks, saying he had little choice. But his objection to a policy that would probably benefit him shows just how divisive the question has become of providing a bigger safety net to the long-term jobless, a common strategy in recessions.
President Obama wants to continue offering benefits for an extended period of time, a maximum of 99 weeks, as is now the case. The measure is part of his jobs bill, which he once again called on Congress to pass in a press conference on Thursday.
If the extension is not renewed, benefits for more than 2.2 million people will be curtailed by mid-February, according to the Department of Labor. The Obama administration estimates that with no extensions, a total of six million people will run out of benefits over the course of next year.
Unless job growth picks up sharply, many of those people will struggle to stay out of poverty. Unemployment benefits, which average $298 a week, help families and serve as economic stimulus because most of the money gets spent right away on basics. Liberal and many centrist economists say that the economy is too weak now to withstand the shock of a sharp drop in those payments.
Still, conservatives contend that extending benefits pulls money from other parts of the economy, discourages people from finding work and increases the unemployment rate. Some Republican politicians have gone so far as to suggest that people living on unemployment are simply lazy. Even President Obama’s pick for head of the Council of Economic Advisers, Alan B. Krueger, has acknowledged that increasing unemployment benefits prolongs unemployment, as conservatives were quick to point out when he was nominated in August.
To some taxpayers, unemployment extensions are just another big government expenditure that comes out of their pockets and goes into someone else’s. Some would rather see the money spent on projects with a return, like building highways and schools. Others prefer freeing businesses of expenses like the health care plan and new regulations.
Even among those struggling to find work, Mr. Tolleson is not alone in his views. In a recent survey of the unemployed by Rutgers University, more than one in four respondents was opposed to renewing the current extended unemployment benefits. Three out of five said recipients should be required to take training courses.
Mr. Tolleson, who lives in Houston and whose last good job was working for a group that aims to replace the income tax with a national sales tax, said he filed for unemployment after a church said it could not help him otherwise. But, he said, he knows the money is not free: “They either tax it from somebody who’s making money or they’re going to print it — either way, the economy goes down.”
Theresa Gorski, a pharmaceutical sales rep in Detroit before losing her job 17 months ago, once shared his skepticism of prolonging unemployment benefits.
“If you would have asked me five years ago, I would have said no, because I always considered myself a Republican,” said Ms. Gorski, 50. “But now being in this position, with a college education and lots of work experience behind me, I find myself swinging more liberal, and more Democrat. And that would never have happened before.”
This recession has left more people unemployed for longer than ever before. In September, nearly seven million people were receiving unemployment benefits, and the Census Bureau says the payments lifted more than three million people out of poverty last year. Keeping the extensions in place for another year would cost $49 billion, the White House estimates.
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