Tennessee Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey (R)

Despite the necessary aid that unemployment benefits provide for those who have been laid off (not to mention the boost they give to the entire national economy), Republicans continue to attack and deride people who collect those benefits. In September, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) dismissed unemployment benefits as “welfare for people that won’t work,” and an Ohio state representative suggested his state drug test all benefit applicants. (He got the idea from Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R), who signed a law in June requiring drug tests for all welfare recipients.)

Now Tennessee Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey (R) thinks receiving unemployment benefits (an average of $285 per week in Tennessee) is simply a “lifestyle“:

Ramsey, during his “Red Tape Road Trip” luncheon highlighting government’s negative effect on business, said he’s been getting an earful from employers about people opting for an unemployment check rather than seeking a job when the state’s jobless rate remains well above 9 percent.

He cited a trucking company that wants but can’t find drivers and a heating and cooling firm with unfilled technician positions.

“When does it become a benefit and when does it become a lifestyle?” Ramsey, R-Blountville, asked of the current unemployment compensation system. [...] Beneficiaries aren’t pressed hard enough to look for work, Ramsey said.

While Jordan Young, Ramsey’s special assistant, insists there are jobs available, people should not have to forego benefits while they look for one (even assuming that they could move to where jobs are available). Nationally, there are more than four job applicants for every open position.

While Republicans like to claim that those on benefits are not looking for work, research from the San Francisco Fed has found that workers who qualify for unemployment benefits stay unemployed just 1.6 weeks longer than those who do not qualify for benefits. Meanwhile, without extended unemployment benefits, the United States economy would lose $57 billion, or 0.38 percent of GDP, in the first three months of 2012. Clearly Ramsey has not considered how this could impact Tennessee businesses during his “Red Tape Road Trip.”

On Tuesday, Ohioans will vote on Issue 2, a referendum on Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s (R) anti-workers’ rights law Senate Bill 5 (SB5). The bill strips teachers, police, and firefighters of their rights to collective bargain for better wages and working conditions. The bill is deeply unpopular.

This, however, has not stopped right-wing groups from flushing the pro-SB5 campaign with money or conservatives from insisting that the law helps local governments by preventing layoffs.

But while most Republicans at least acknowledge that the law disadvantages public employees, one Republican thinks the opposite. This summer, Ohio Treasurer and U.S. Senate candidate Josh Mandel said he supported Senate Bill 5 because the law, in his mind, actually “respect[s] police, and firefighters, and teachers” by giving “fiscal conservatives” the tools to ignore collective bargaining rights, which somehow “insur[es]that there is a state and there are local governments” down the road:

MANDEL: Well I’ve been supportive of Senate Bill 5…In my mind, it’s not about going after police, and firefighters and teachers. It’s about respecting police, and firefighters, and teachers and insuring that there is a state and there are local governments long into the future so that we have communities here in the state. The current level of spending in our state and our country? Simply unacceptable. And I think we need to put the tools in the tool belts of local government leaders and also people who are fiscal conservatives to bring this state into a sense of fiscal health. And that’s one of the reasons I’ve been supportive.

Watch it:

In what must come as a surprise to Mandel, Ohio’s teachers, police, firefighters, and even veterans feel slighted — not respected — by this bill. SB5 strips unions of the right to negotiate wages, eliminates pay increases, and completely bans the right to strike. As public officials and unions both note, teachers and safety forces have already made substantial sacrifices — including zero pay raises and paying more for health insurance — to accommodate the tough economy.

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States and cities around the country have desperately slashed spending in the face of record budget deficits, including unpaving roads, shrinking schools, closing libraries, and even a failed attempt to decriminalize domestic violence.

The latest consequence of extreme austerity is in Highland Park, Michigan, which has not only turned off all of its streetlights, but also ripped out the light poles — a telling sign that its darkening of the streets is permanent. With an unemployment rate at 22 percent and a city debt of $58 million, Highland Park could no longer afford to pay the electric bills:

The city is $58 million in debt and has many more people than jobs, plus dozens of burned-out or vacant houses and buildings. With fewer than 12,000 residents, its population has dwindled to half the level from 20 years ago. Faced with a $4 million electric bill that required $60,000 monthly payments, Mayor Hubert Yopp asked the City Council to consider reducing lighting. Council members reluctantly approved it, even in an election year.

In Highland Park, “the median household income is $18,700, compared with $48,700 statewide. And 42 percent of the city’s residents live in poverty.” The city has seen a precipitous drop in population over the last few decades.

The drastic measure arrives just after Michigan’s 2011-12 state budget went into effect Oct. 1 — a budget that cuts millions of dollars in funding to cities and schools. Michigan had its own budget crisis to close. However, Gov. Rick Snyder (R) and the GOP-led legislature felt it could afford a $1.7 billion tax cut to businesses, even as the state cut $400 million in school and city aid. Snyder’s budget shifts the economic burden entirely to low-income residents by cutting 86 percent of business taxes, as it slashed the social safety net.

– Rebecca Leber

Former Gov. Mitt Romney (MA) has pegged his latest campaign push to deficits, taking a shot at Gov. Rick Perry’s (R-TX) seeming disregard for balancing the country’s accounts. Today, Romney will be laying out a plan that he claims will cut $500 billion from the deficit in 2016; his biggest cut is block granting Medicaid, while pretending that repealing the Affordable Care Act saves money. Other than that, Romney’s “savings” come from favorite conservative bogeymen like Amtrak and the National Endowment for the Arts.

During an event in New Hampshire last night previewing today’s release of his plan, Romney explained that, in his view, reducing the deficit is “a moral responsibility“:

“We have a moral responsibility not to spend more than we take in, we have a moral responsibility not to pass onto our kids the spending of our generation,” he said. “It is a moral responsibility to believe in fiscal responsibility. We do, and I do.”

However, if it’s a moral responsibility to reduce the deficit, Romney may need to spend some time in an ethics course. He envisions federal spending at 20 percent of GDP, but his tax plan, as we found, will raise less than 17 percent of GDP in revenue. As Michael Linden has explained, the result of Romney’s plan “would be continued unsustainable deficits and more debt. In fact, Romney’s plan would yield approximately $6.5 trillion in deficits from 2013 through 2021.”

The revenue Romney envisions is “below the levels suggested by the House Republican Budget, which abolished Medicare as we know it, slashed Medicaid, and still didn’t balance the budget until 2040.” Nibbling away at Amtrak subsidies and slashing health care spending for low-income Americans doesn’t change the fact that Romney’s plan lets the richest Americans avoid paying their fair share, resulting in loads of red ink.