Yesterday, all but six Republicans voted to block the Senate from taking up a bill extending unemployment insurance for three months. But according to RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, it is actually the Democrats who don’t want jobless aid to pass the Senate.
That’s right, even though his own party has tried to throw a wrench into efforts to extend aid to 1.3 million jobseekers — the GOP’s position would even threaten job growth and cut GDP — Priebus yesterday told radio host Lars Larson that Democrats “don’t want this to pass.” He claimed that the Democrats’ attempt to pass emergency jobless aid was in fact a ploy to “avoid Obamacare.”
Priebus claimed that President Obama is promoting income inequality, even though the federal programs such as food stamps that Republicans want to drastically cut keep millions of people out of poverty.
Priebus: I think the President is the king of income inequality. He has doubled food stamps, the poor are poorer under this president, Wall Street is doing better under this president and he’s jamming Obamacare under everybody’s throat. That’s his record.
Larson: The first three months of this extension — if the Houses is crazy enough to pass it — costs about $6-7 billion.
…
Priebus: All of this kind of stuff is ridiculous because we’re spending all of our time actually talking and perpetrating what the Democrats actually want. They don’t want this to pass, what they want to do is they want to talk about these things, they want to talk about minimum wage and what they want to do ultimately is create a campaign issue, this sort of rich vs. poor, the same old thing they can do and avoid Obamacare. That’s what they want.
Perhaps Priebus should have listened to the interview with Larson’s other guest today, Sen. Jim Inhofe.
The Oklahoma Republican in no uncertain terms said he has consistently opposes extensions of unemployment insurance. He also contradicted Priebus by saying that Democrats do in fact want to extend such aid…but only because it will encourage joblessness and government dependency.
“I think that we’ve developed a society that, you know, as long as they don’t have to work they don’t work. I’ve always opposed extending that and I’ve opposed that in my own state,” Inhofe said. “This president has intentionally put us in the position where people are relying upon government for their existence, this is just one element in that overall program.”
