When Barack Obama caved in on the Republican tax cut bonus for millionaires and billionaires, he said it was necessary, because Republicans were holding unemployed workers hostage. I said he was wrong, because Republicans would just delay screwing US workers until the first opportunity of the new year. I was right. This is what the Republicans are up to now.

After months of working on anything but jobs legislation, GOP lawmakers got an opportunity this week to actually address the crisis. Tomorrow, the Trade Assistance Adjustment (TAA) Program and the Health Care Tax Credit (HCTC) will expire. TAA helps retrain and re-employ workers who have lost their jobs due to foreign trade. HCTC provides compensation to help unemployed workers afford private health insurance. While 72 percent of Americans oppose cutting such critical unemployment assistance, the GOP is seemingly insistent that it expire.

On Tuesday, the House GOP’s plan to extend TAA was pulled from the House floor due to conservative backlash against the government “getting too involved in the economy.” That left the typically obstinate Senate as the last hope to extend the much-needed aid. Together on the Senate floor yesterday, Sens. Robert Casey (D-PA) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) offered three different proposals to extend both benefits for 18 months, 4.5 months, and just the HCTC for 18 months by unanimous consent. However, each time, Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) was there to block it.

Increasingly incensed over each of Barrasso’s obstructions, Brown expressed anger uncommon on the Senate floor at Barrasso’s final objection to the HCTC extension. Offended by the apparent GOP hypocrisy in enjoying taxpayer-funded benefits while refusing to aid those “who don’t dress like this everyday” and “don’t make $170,000 a year,” he blasted Senators for “turning our backs” on the American worker…

…Watch it:

Brown’s anger is certainly justified. His state alone has “208 groups with 26,427 workers certified for TAA.” About 280,000 workers across the country stand to lose these benefits. Brown’s anger is only likely to grow as it appears that the GOP is holding these benefits hostage in “an effort to pressure the administration” on free trade agreements that helped generate this unemployment issue in the first place. Indeed, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) said “he will block TAA until the White House vows to move the free trade agreement with Colombia.”

As Center For American Progress’s Sabina Dewan puts it, “the conservative schizophrenia on trade — pulling funding for the National Export Initiative designed to support American jobs, while threatening to let Trade Adjustment Assistance expire unless the administration ‘moves’ other trade agreements amounts to little more than a conservative anti-jobs and anti-worker agenda.”… [emphasis added]