Over the last 15 months, the US has been gripped by the worst pandemic in 100 years. The COVID-19 virus caused many businesses to be shuttered and put millions of Americans out of work.
The economy is quickly recovered, but there are many people in the country that still need help. To that end, most states expanded their unemployment benefits. Republican lawmakers are claiming that these benefits are preventing people from going back to work. Lindsey Graham took it a step further Tuesday claiming that he has family members that “ain’t working.”
The South Carolina senator made the comments during a Tuesday senate hearing. He told OMB head Shalanda Young, “enhanced unemployment benefit is deterring people from re-entering into the workforce. There’s a lot of jobs out there that are unfilled and will never be filled until you change the benefit structure.”
Young responded, “I understand the logic. But I’ve also not met Americans who would prefer not to work. There’s a dignity to work in this country.”
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A laughing Graham shot back, “Well, I’ve got a lot of people in my family that ain’t working because they get it. I’ll show you some in my family. So the bottom line is I think there are people out there that are not bad people but they’re not going to work for $15/hour if they can make $23 unemployed. That doesn’t make you a bad person. If you’re working for $15/hour that makes you almost a chump.”
There are certainly people in the country choosing to accept unemployment rather than working. The vast majority of out of work Americans are certainly desperate to find a new job.
Todd Neikirk is a New Jersey based politics and technology writer. His work has been featured in psfk.com, foxsports.com and hillreporter.com. He enjoys sports, politics, comic books and spending time at the shore with his family.
