A state of miserliness
By Max J. Castro
majcastro@gmail.com
If you are one of the 836,000 unemployed people in Florida, you are out of luck and very likely out of bucks too.
At a time when multiple states seem engaged in a fierce contest to see who can spend the least money helping the most vulnerable among its citizens, the Sunshine State beats every other state in the country when it comes to denying the unemployed the economic assistance to which they are entitled and desperately need.
The headline to last week’s Miami Herald story on the current status of unemployment compensation in the state sums up the situation: “Getting an unemployment check in Florida is frustrating ordeal for many.” The article goes on to detail just how unconscionably badly this state, which suffers a worse rate of unemployment than the high national average, treats its residents who have had the misfortune to succumb to the jobs crisis brought on by greed on Wall Street:
“Only one in three applicants for unemployment compensation in Florida receives any money, ranking the state dead last among the 50 states.”
Nor is this pathetic performance the product of bureaucratic red tape or government incompetence. It is the intended result of a set of Robin-Hood-in-reverse policies put in place during the last two years by the rabidly pro-business Republicans who rule the state – Gov. Rick Scott and the Florida legislature.
The new rules create many obstacles and conditions to receiving unemployment aid, all with one transparent purpose: to drive down as much as possible the number of Floridians receiving aid among the more than 800,000 currently without a job.
It is working. In fact, the situation for Florida’s unemployed is actually significantly worse than the one-in-three figure might indicate. That’s the proportion of people who receive unemployment compensation during any portion of the time they are out of work. The percentage of the total unemployed at any given time who are getting aid is 16 percent, less than half the one-in-three figure.
Among the many hoops the Republicans have thought up for applicants to go through just to have a chance to receive an unemployment check: applying exclusively online, taking a 45-question “skills assessment” test, and contacting five employers every week. They also reduced the maximum number of weeks the unemployed can receive compensation from 26 to 23. At the same time, Gov. Scott gave his corporate friends a big gift in the form of a cut of $800 million over three years in the very taxes which pay for unemployment compensation.
The contrast highlights the real class warfare that Republicans have been carrying on for quite some time. It’s not the phony kind that Republicans scream about every time anyone dares to oppose yet another huge tax cut for the super-rich (who already are paying miniscule rates that would be reduced to microscopic if Romney, Ryan and a Republican Congress come to power in 2013.) It’s the kind that ruins lives, destroys families, hurts children and kills dreams.
This has been happening in this state, which swings back and forth between Democrats and Republicans in presidential races but where power at the state level is monopolized by Republicans, since Jeb Bush. Jeb began, in tandem, to cut social programs and taxes for the rich. Now Gov. Rick Scott, a political neophyte and vulture capitalist if there ever was one, and the solidly right-wing Republican state legislature, has taken this practice to a new level.
Indeed, Florida Legal Services and the National Employment Law Project believe the state has taken its campaign to curtail unemployment compensation way over the line and have filed a complaint with the U.S. Labor Department. The groups charge that the net effect of the rules contained in the new state unemployment compensation law “has erected insurmountable barriers for people who are eligible.” This at a time when new claims for unemployment compensation continue to rise at the national level and the 20-week extended federal unemployment benefit is being eliminated.
It could not be more appropriate that a state that is taking the lead in coddling the wealthy and beggaring the poor and the middle class is playing host this year to the Republican National Convention, which will select a presidential candidate who, in his latest incarnation, supports the increasingly pitiless class war so favored by Gov. Scott in Florida and Republicans in Washington.
Alas, tropical storm Isaac is raining on the GOP’s parade, forcing the party to cancel the first day of the show. May hurricane winds blow in their face come November.
