Rand Paul Rips Obama’s ‘Big-Hearted, SmallBrained Policy’ For Unemployed By Bill Hoffmann Jan 7 2014
Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky on Tuesday fired back at President Barack Obama's aggressive push for extended unemployment benefits, saying that like "most liberals," he makes "big-hearted, small-brained policy statements." "They can make all these emotional arguments, but their policies haven't worked and unemployment is still a horrific problem in our country," Paul, a Republican, told "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV. Earlier in the day, Obama ripped Paul's belief that expanding benefits harms the country. "I have heard the argument that says extending unemployment insurance will somehow hurt the unemployed, because it saps their motivation to get a new job . . . That really sells the American people short," Obama said. "I can't name a time when I met an American who would rather have an unemployment check than the pride of having a job," the president said. But Paul said statistics in many states bear him out. "North Carolina reduced their unemployment benefits and their unemployment went from 8.9 percent to 7.4 percent. South Carolina did the same thing, reduced their unemployment 3.5 points. Missouri did
the same thing, reduced their unemployment benefits, so their unemployment went down 2.5 points," Paul said. "So, really there is a direct correlation between extending benefits and having more unemployment . . . All of the studies also show that the longer you are unemployed, the less likely you are to get a job. "So, if an employer looks at somebody who's been unemployed for two months and someone who's been unemployed for two years, the employer almost always, regardless of skills, chooses the [person] that's only been out of work for two months." Asked whether he was disappointed that six Republicans voted with the Democrat-controlled Senate to extend benefits, Paul said: "I'm disappointed in the sense that I don't think [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid's going to allow any amendments or any ability to pay for this. We've spent over $230 billion on unemployment benefits over the last six or seven years, and that adds to the deficit, which causes rising prices. "The people who are least able to absorb inflation with food prices rising, with gas prices rising, are the poor and those on fixed incomes . . . So on the one sense, they have this big heart, they're going to help all these people, but on the other sense, the $230 billion they borrowed to pay for unemployment insurance has actually hurt the working class and the poor by raising the prices of their goods." Paul also is pursuing a lawsuit against the National Security Agency over its ongoing blanket surveillance of Americans' phone records, which many people think is unconstitutional. "We've assembled a team of lawyers. We expect to file our complaint in court within the next week or two. We have over 250,000 people who have signed up for the lawsuit, and I've told people that the class or nature of people who can apply is pretty wide open. You have to own a cellphone," Paul said. "So, if you own a cellphone in America, you probably had your records taken by the government. And there really is a constitutional debate in question, whether a single warrant from a judge can apply to millions of people's phone records." Paul's lawsuit has ruffled fellow Republican lawmaker Rep. Peter King of New York, who says the NSA's surveillance has stopped numerous terror plots and saved hundreds of lives. Paul doesn't agree. "There will always be people who succumb to fear and are ready and willing to trade their liberty for security, but there are serious constitutional questions here, and there are questions of whether or not you do have an expectation of privacy," Paul said. "It's pretty clear to me that a warrant for a million people's phone records is not a valid warrant, and this needs to be decided by the Supreme Court. We may not win at the Supreme Court, but I have a feeling the Supreme Court is going to expand the right of privacy and expand the notion that the Fourth Amendment does protect some of these records." Rand Paul Rips Obama’s ‘Big-Hearted, Small-Brained Policy’ for Unemployed VIDEO BELOW http://www.newsmax.com/NewsmaxTv/rand-paul-obama-unemploymentpolicy/2014/01/07/id/545746#ixzz2poO1UVtB
Poverty Level Under Obama Breaks 50-Year Record By Dave Boyer The Washington Times January 7, 2014 Fifty years after President Johnson started a $20 trillion taxpayer-funded war on poverty, the overall percentage of impoverished people in the U.S. has declined only slightly and the poor have lost ground under President Obama. Aides said Mr. Obama doesn’t plan to commemorate the anniversary Wednesday of Johnson’s speech in 1964, which gave rise to Medicaid, Head Start and a broad range of other federal anti-poverty programs. The president’s only public event Tuesday was a plea for Congress to approve extended benefits for the long-term unemployed, another reminder of the persistent economic troubles during Mr. Obama’s five years in office. “What I think the American people are really looking for in 2014 is just a little bit of stability,” Mr. Obama said. Although the president often rails against income inequality in America, his policies have had little impact overall on poverty. A record 47 million Americans receive food stamps, about 13 million more than when he took office. The poverty rate has stood at 15 percent for three consecutive years, the first time that has happened since the mid-1960s. The poverty rate in 1965 was 17.3 percent; it was 12.5 percent in 2007, before the Great Recession. About 50 million Americans live below the poverty line, which the federal government defined in 2012 as an annual income of $23,492 for a family of four. President Obama’s anti-poverty efforts “are basically to give more people more free stuff,” said Robert Rector, a specialist on welfare and poverty at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “That’s exactly the opposite of what Johnson said,” Mr. Rector said. “Johnson’s goal was to make people prosperous and self-sufficient.” The president’s advisers defend his policies by saying they rescued the nation from the deep recession in 2009, saved the auto industry and reduced the jobless rate to 7 percent from a high of 10 percent four years ago. Gene Sperling, the president’s top economic adviser, said Mr. Obama has pulled as many as 9 million people out of poverty with policies such as extending the earned income tax credit for parents with three or more children and reducing the “marriage penalty.” “There are things that this president has done that have made a big difference,” Mr. Sperling said Monday. The White House again is pushing for an increase in the federal minimum wage, this time advocating a Senate bill that would raise the hourly rate to $10.10 from its current $7.25. Mr. Sperling said that action would lift another 6.8 million workers out of poverty.
“It would make them less dependent on government programs. It would not add to the deficit one penny, but it would reward work and reduce poverty,” he said. The president is expected to use his State of the Union address Jan. 20 to pressure Congress to raise the minimum wage. He made the same pitch a year ago. Democrats are advocating issues such as unemployment benefits and the minimum wage especially hard this year as the classwarfare rhetoric heats up to frame the congressional midterm elections. House Republican leaders oppose increasing the minimum wage and want unemployment benefits to be paid with savings elsewhere in the budget. Mr. Obama is insisting that the benefits be extended without offsets. The president last month declared the widening gap between rich and poor as “the defining challenge of our time,” and Democratic candidates are expected to pick up that theme on the campaign trail rather than debate deficits and the complications of Obamacare. In spite of the administration’s anti-poverty efforts, however, the government reported this week that poverty by some measures has been worse under Mr. Obama than it was under President George W. Bush. The U.S. Census Bureau reported that 31.6 percent of Americans were in poverty for at least two months from 2009 to 2011, a 4.5 percentage point increase over the pre-recession period of 2005 to 2007. Of the 37.6 million people who were poor at the beginning of 2009, 26.4 percent remained in poverty throughout the next 34 months, the report said. Another 12.6 million people escaped poverty during that time, but 13.5 million more fell into poverty. Mr. Rector said the war on poverty has been a failure when measured by the overall amount of money spent and poverty rates that haven’t changed significantly since Johnson gave his speech. “We’ve spent $20.7 trillion on means-tested aid since that time, and the poverty rate is pretty much exactly where it was in the mid-1960s,” he said. The liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said in a report that some trends have helped reduce poverty since the 1960s, including more Americans completing high school and more women working outside the home. But the group said other factors have contributed to persistent poverty, including a tripling in the number of households led by single parents. Mr. Rector said too many government anti-poverty programs still discourage marriage, factoring into statistics that show more than four in 10 children are born to unmarried parents. “When the war on poverty started, about 6 percent of children were born outside of marriage,” he said. “Today that’s 42 percent — catastrophe.” That’s rich: Poverty level under Obama breaks 50-year record VIDEO BELOW http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jan/7/obamas-rhetoric-on-fighting-poverty-doesntmatch-h/?page=2
Record High Numbers Believe “No Matter How Bad Things Are, Congress Will Make Them Worse” Steve Watson Infowars.com January 8, 2014
Poll finds Independent voters at an all time high A new survey out of Rasmussen finds that a record number of Americans believe that Congress will always find a way to make things worse, no matter how terrible the country’s prospects become. According to the poll, a three year high of 69% believe that their elected representatives are capable of being even poorer at their jobs, despite 2013 being the year of rampant excessive spending, bitter stalemate between the parties, and a government shutdown. Only 17% disagree with the notion. The number represents a four point increase from similar findings in October when members of Congress were spotted drinking and partying on Capitol Hill for an entire week in the first seven days of the shutdown. The overall approval rating of Congress has, shockingly, improved. However, it still stands at a dismal 8%, with that amount of voters saying they feel Congress is doing a good or excellent job. That means that your elected representatives are still viewed in a worse light than zombies, witches, dog poop, potholes, toenail fungus and hemorrhoids. Last month, just 5% said they approved of the job Congress is doing, making it less popular among the American public than cockroaches, lice, root canals, colonoscopies, traffic jams, used car salesmen, Genghis Khan, Communism, North Korea, BP during the Gulf Oil Spill, or Nixon during Watergate. Given that historians estimate between 15 and 20 percent of the European-American population of the colonies were Loyalists during the the American Revolution, it means that King George coveted more than twice as much support as Congress has today. In the latest poll, a total of 66% rate Congress’ performance as poor, a figure that stood at 75% in November. Only 16% of voters believe that in the
past year Congress has done anything that will significantly improve life in America, according to the figures. A sizeable majority of 67% say it has not passed any such legislation, while 17% are not sure. The poll also noted that just 17% of Americans believe most members of Congress care about the opinions of their constituents, while only 24% think their member of Congress is the best possible person for the job. In a separate poll, conducted by Gallup, an all time high of 42% say that they now class themselves as Independents, highlighting how out of touch the public feels both parties are with the nation.
The poll also found that voters identifying themselves as Republican are at a 25 year low at 25%. Democratic identification is unchanged from the last four years at 31%, but down from 36% in 2008. “Americans are increasingly declaring independence from the political parties.” Gallup notes. “It is not uncommon for the percentage of independents to rise in a non-election year, as 2013 was. Still, the general trend in recent years, including the 2012 election year, has been toward greater percentages of Americans identifying with neither the Republican Party nor the Democratic Party.” “The rise in political independence is likely an outgrowth of Americans’ record or near-record negative views of the two major U.S. parties, of Congress, and their low level of trust in government more generally.” the polling company states.
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