Why are drug testing and GED classes considered 'poison pills'?
Unfunded mandates maybe, but no one seems to be couching the argument in those terms.

Poison pills in the sense that House Republicans want to force the president to sign a bill which kills people, lines the pockets of Koch Industries and kicks people off unemployment.

This, the theory goes, would make Obama look bad.

Maybe I'm dense on this issue, but, i don't see any problem with mandating that someone cannot draw unemployment unless they show they are not using drugs, or obtaining a minimal education level as 'retraining.' I don't see how these things would 'kill people' or 'line the pockets of Koch Industries'. They probably would kick a few people off unemployment--those who refuse to participate in minimal educational retraining, or who choose to squander their weekly benefits on drugs.

So, I ask again, what exactly is the problem (with those two particular items)?

a) The grab bag of punitive douchebaggery is unrelated to the payroll tax cut.
b) Should anyone who performs services for a government entity be subjected to periodic and/or random drug testing? I see a great deal more logic in that from a public policy standpoint than in testing the unemployed.
c) The Keystone pipeline is designed to enrich the Koch Brothers.
d) Environmental deregulation kills far more people than Al-Qaeda ever did.
e) What good would training and drug testing for nonexistent jobs do? We have unemployment in this country because there are no jobs. Not because the unemployed lack the skills or work habits to perform.

Here's another way of looking at the problem with the teaparty bill.

Either people are unemployed because they are lazy ignorant drug addicts, or they are unemployed because the macroeconomy needs stimulus in the form of increased pollution and environmental sacrifice.

You can't have it both ways, but that is exactly what you must believe to think this bill is useful.

Sounds like a false premise to me. Neither of your assertions is necessarily either accurate or exclusive.

I merely question why two items that are related to federal unemployment extension funding are considered poison pills. The other items in your original post clearly are poison pills (to Dems, at least), and are likely on the House agenda because there was some outside chance Obama might accept them. Look at his track record. Don't be surprised when these items surface in negotiations again.

At any rate, states pay what, the first 6 or 12 months of unemployment benefits, then federal funding extensions kick in? While there are obviously national/global economic depression issues at play in the high unemployment rate, I suspect it is also fair to say that the lazier or less skilled workers tend to draw unemployment longer. Thus, a federal interest in forcing members of that subgroup to get clean, or improve their educational level so they can qualify for a broader range of jobs.

That is just a small part of what should be done, and it is no surprise to me that the Repugs won't discuss the easier solution of major public works funding. Of course, it was a major disappointment to me when Obama chose to bail out wall street rather than throw everything at major public works funding a couple years ago.

It may make sense from a social policy standpoint to raise the aggregate level of education, ambition and cleanliness, but it has no real relevance to overall employment.

If you raise all the 13.3 million unemployed americans to a uniform level of education and sobriety, that doesn't change the fact that only 103,000 (8% of them) will get jobs this month.

It's funny how the invisible hand of the free market is abandoned when that means not poking people with the +2 stick of punitive sanctimoniousness.

To believe that the two beliefs are not exclusive one must accept that 19 million people became lazy unemployable drug addicts since 1999.

In the short term, you are correct. Sobriety and education do nothing to cut the unemployment rate. Major public works funding is the obvious solution.

In the long haul, however, once we are out of this depression, elevating the skill set of the unemployed should, or at least could, shorten the period of time the average individual draws benefits, thus allowing fewer federal funds to be spent on extended benefits. So, those elements of the House Repug bill do have some merit, even if only marginally relevant in today's market. That does not make those elements poison pills.

Agree.



Disagree.

To avoid inflation, a "wage and price spiral", the primary knob the fed adjusts has the effect of dialing the unemployment rate up and down. At no point will they allow the dial to read zero, therefore workers will always be competing with one another for available jobs. The higher skill worker will get the job over the lower skill worker. Elevating the skills of the latter simply gives him/her a competitive advantage against the former, their average length of unemployment remains the same, given unchanged economic conditions.

This is only defensible on the basis that improving the skills of society in general is useful to improve global competitiveness, and that's obviously not a priority - doing marginally well enough but cheaper is.