Todd Akin Has Nothing To Say To Long-Term Unemployed

Fox2's Charles Jaco interviewed Rep. Todd Akin last week about his vote to end long-term unemployment benefits -- ostensibly because he's concerned about the deficit -- while fighting to cut taxes for the wealthiest of the wealthy.   Picking up at the 3:15 mark:

JACO: So what do you tell her and other people whose extended benefits run out?  Ms. Payne says she's sixty, she's been interveiwing for job after job after job. There's six to eight applicants per job.  And you klnow, the statistics show that about forty five percent of the people who are unemployed are over the age of forty five, and we know employers aren't hiring them. What she might say, I'm all about fiscal austerity, but what do you say to people like that whose benefits are going to be cut off in these hard economic times and suddenly their out $850 a month, which is not much to you and me, but it's everything to her.  What do you tell them?

AKIN: Well, the point of the matter is that you can't tell 'em anything, can you Charles?   I'm mean, they're -- the amount of suffering, the amount of pressure, the stress, the difficulty we've created by doing these things has created a tremendous amount of pain.  And I'm aware of that.  I'm in my sixties too.  These are people, we all grew up together.  So what can you say to them?  Well, you can't really say anything for those individual situations.

What a dope.  Here's an idea for something Akin could say: "I'll vote to extend unemployment benefits because it will have a direct impact in the lives of my constituents and in the economy at large, and it would be pretty audacious for me to stick it the poor while exacerbating long-term federal deficits with tax cuts for the very wealthy, wouldn't it?" 

The first two minutes of this clip is a review of a story Fox 2 ran earlier last week, and the Akin interview begins at around the two minute mark. Watch the whole thing here:

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