GOP Senator Jon Kyl claims unemployment benefits make people not want to work

Is it me, or has the Republican Party followed Jim Bunning over a cliff? From The Huffington Post:

A debate on the Senate floor Monday over unemployment compensation crystallized, at least for a moment, the divide between the two parties in Washington.

Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the Republican whip, argued that unemployment benefits dissuade people from job-hunting "because people are being paid even though they're not working."

Unemployment insurance "doesn't create new jobs. In fact, if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work," Kyl said during debate over whether unemployment insurance and other benefits that expired amid GOP objections Sunday should be extended.

"I'm sure most of them would like work and probably have tried to seek it, but you can't argue that it's a job enhancer. If anything, as I said, it's a disincentive. And the same thing with the COBRA extension and the other extensions here," said Kyl.

Unemployment benefits are generally so small that much of it is often used to pay for COBRA health insurance, even when subsidized. The size of the benefits does not generally cover the cost of living and it would be hard to find a single person who would prefer unemployment to having a job so that they could get subsidized COBRA.

I think that Jim Bunning has just opened a huge can of night-crawlers here. Had Bunning kept quiet, and allowed Congress to pass the unemployment extension with overwhelming support from both political parties, this debate would have never come to the forefront. However, Bunning decided to engage in his one-man filibuster. Now we have another Republican Senator, Jon Kyl of Arizona, who is calling unemployment benefits as dissuading people from looking for jobs. Now the debate has crystallized to where the Republicans want to end unemployment compensation for jobless Americans at a time of high unemployment. The Democrats want to extend unemployment. I should also say that the current unemployment rate in the U.S. is at around 9.7 percent.

What are these guys drinking?

There is a new horror movie coming out called The Crazies. I'm actually starting to think that we have our own version of The Crazies in Washington DC, also known as the GOP.

Here's the preview for the horror movie The Crazies. What do you think?