House Republicans scored a big victory in the past few weeks: They killed the Senate deal on unemployment insurance, blocking much-needed relief for more than a million Americans. But it's how they killed it, and their reasons for doing so, that are particularly infuriating.

In March, a group of Senate Republicans, along with the entire Democratic caucus, passed a five-month retroactive extension of federal unemployment benefits. The legislation included spending offsets, although a significant portion of them was accomplished through an accounting gimmick. The deal gave hope to the more than 2 million long-term unemployed Americans—those who have been out of work more than six months—who lost their benefits in December.

But House Speaker John Boehner and his Republican colleagues stood in the way. They ran through a range of excuses for blocking the legislation: First, unemployment benefits were a disincentive to work. Never mind that the academic evidence said otherwise. The long-term unemployed have not suddenly begun accepting jobs now that they've lost their benefits, but that has not led the GOP to rethink its position.

Then, Republicans argued that the bill needed a spending offset. Democrats obliged and included one in the deal. Not that Republicans genuinely care about the deficit. They are likely to pass a collection of business tax cuts in the upcoming weeks that would increase the deficit by nearly $400 billion. That’s more than 40 times the $9.7 billion cost of the Senate UI deal, and the Senate deal even includes a partial offset.

Boehner followed up those two weak excuses by saying the five-month retroactive extension was impossible to implement. Labor Secretary Thomas Perez’s assurances that the states would make it work didn’t change the speaker’s mind. Boehner had no desire to fix any design problems in the Senate deal anyways.