{"id":11900,"date":"2010-06-17T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-06-17T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2010-06-18T02:46:50","modified_gmt":"2010-06-18T02:46:50","slug":"dianne-feinstein-walks-back-her-unemployment-comments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/2010\/06\/17\/dianne-feinstein-walks-back-her-unemployment-comments\/","title":{"rendered":"Dianne Feinstein Walks Back Her Unemployment Comments"},"content":{"rendered":"

I consider this a major victory for progressive economic policy advocacy. Dianne Feinstein is backing off her comments from yesterday<\/a> in which she appeared to argue that the long-term unemployed were merely lazy and that we should start considering withdrawing their benefits if they couldn’t get a job in the worst recession in 60 years. For a refresher, here’s how the Huffington Post reported the quote<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“We have 99 weeks of unemployment insurance,” Feinstein said. “The question comes, how long do you continue before people just don’t want to go back to work at all?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Feinstein communication director Gil Duran emailed me today to say the quote was incorrect. He indicated that Feinstein did not say the word “want” and that the quote came from “an impromptu press gaggle” that apparently made her true context and intent hard to read. He pointed to the Wall Street Journal’s article<\/a> as being more accurate. Here’s what they said:<\/p>\n

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) was among those Democrats who supported the bill Wednesday. But she said a growing number of lawmakers weren’t as willing as they were during the recession to extend jobless benefits, especially with the mounting national debt. Europe’s debt crisis has shoved the issue back into the spotlight.<\/p>\n

“We have 99 weeks of unemployment insurance now. The question becomes how long do you continue it before people just don’t go back to work at all?” Sen. Feinstein said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m not sure how much this actually changes. Even without the word “want” in there, the quote does seem to suggest that she worries about unemployment benefits being a kind of permanent benefit to those who do not work, and the Senator does appear to be falling under the sway of the new Hoovers who want to throw the country into a Depression by removing stimulus before we have a full recovery.<\/p>\n

I’ll leave it to you all to decide where she stands. Regardless, I see this as a big victory for progressives, as we have begun to set a narrative that suggests Democrats cannot place deficit concerns over supporting the spending we need to put people back to work.<\/p>\n

UPDATE:<\/b> Here’s the full statement Feinstein released today regarding this issue:<\/p>\n

Senator Feinstein believes that unemployed Americans want jobs, not unemployment checks. She has voted for every single extension of unemployment insurance during this downturn because she knows that there is currently one job opening for every five out-of-work Americans, according to the Department of Labor. Some 880,000 people have been unemployed for 27 weeks or more in California, which has a 12.6 percent unemployment rate – one of the highest in the nation.<\/p>\n

Senator Feinstein is concerned about the deficit, but she also understands that unemployment insurance is a financial lifeline for millions of Americans right now. Given the dearth of available jobs, a sudden cessation of unemployment benefits would be financially devastating to many people.<\/p>\n

Senator Feinstein is working hard to make sure Congress enacts policies that will promote economic recovery, create jobs across multiple sectors of the economy and keep America’s economy strong in the 21st century.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I consider this a major victory for progressive economic policy advocacy. Dianne Feinstein is backing off her comments from yesterday<\/a> in which she appeared to argue that the long-term unemployed were merely lazy and that we should start considering withdrawing their benefits if they couldn’t get a job in the worst recession in 60 years. For a refresher, here’s how the Huffington Post reported the quote<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“We have 99 weeks of unemployment insurance,” Feinstein said. “The question comes, how long do you continue before people just don’t want to go back to work at all?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Feinstein communication director Gil Duran emailed me today to say the quote was incorrect. He indicated that Feinstein did not say the word “want” and that the quote came from “an impromptu press gaggle” that apparently made her true context and intent hard to read. He pointed to the Wall Street Journal’s article<\/a> as being more accurate. Here’s what they said:<\/p>\n

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) was among those Democrats who supported the bill Wednesday. But she said a growing number of lawmakers weren’t as willing as they were during the recession to extend jobless benefits, especially with the mounting national debt. Europe’s debt crisis has shoved the issue back into the spotlight.<\/p>\n

“We have 99 weeks of unemployment insurance now. The question becomes how long do you continue it before people just don’t go back to work at all?” Sen. Feinstein said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m not sure how much this actually changes. Even without the word “want” in there, the quote does seem to suggest that she worries about unemployment benefits being a kind of permanent benefit to those who do not work, and the Senator does appear to be falling under the sway of the new Hoovers who want to throw the country into a Depression by removing stimulus before we have a full recovery.<\/p>\n

I’ll leave it to you all to decide where she stands. Regardless, I see this as a big victory for progressives, as we have begun to set a narrative that suggests Democrats cannot place deficit concerns over supporting the spending we need to put people back to work.<\/p>\n

UPDATE:<\/b> Here’s the full statement Feinstein released today regarding this issue:<\/p>\n

Senator Feinstein believes that unemployed Americans want jobs, not unemployment checks. She has voted for every single extension of unemployment insurance during this downturn because she knows that there is currently one job opening for every five out-of-work Americans, according to the Department of Labor. Some 880,000 people have been unemployed for 27 weeks or more in California, which has a 12.6 percent unemployment rate – one of the highest in the nation.<\/p>\n

Senator Feinstein is concerned about the deficit, but she also understands that unemployment insurance is a financial lifeline for millions of Americans right now. Given the dearth of available jobs, a sudden cessation of unemployment benefits would be financially devastating to many people.<\/p>\n

Senator Feinstein is working hard to make sure Congress enacts policies that will promote economic recovery, create jobs across multiple sectors of the economy and keep America’s economy strong in the 21st century.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-87"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-35W","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11900\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}