Chuck Grassley reiterates that the GOP would be fine with extending jobless benefits, as long as they are paid for with already appropriated stimulus funds.

“Ninety percent of the bill isn’t controversial,” Grassley said, concluding that the big problem is that he and many other lawmakers don’t want to add to the federal deficit. He chided Democrats for refusing to pay fully for the legislation with offsetting savings, revenue increases or the remaining federal stimulus funds. Even though Democrats repeatedly cut the bill in an effort to win Republican backing, the latest version would have added $55 billion to the nation’s $1.4 trillion deficit over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Grassley said he’s heard from his constituents that they are tired of the government running up huge debt, and that the message is starting to get through to Democrats as well. “It wasn’t just Republicans who voted against the bill in the U.S. House,” he said. “There were plenty of Blue Dog Democrats who don’t agree with this type of spending either.”

There are two basic problems with that. First, jobless benefits have always been passed as emergency funding, in every Congress under every administration since the program was created.

But, second, with states in dire crisis and stimulus funds already drying up, what's left of that money needs to be used for the purpose it was intended: creating new jobs.

Republicans are holding the economy hostage, with the enabling of Ben Nelson, who's bored with hearing about the jobless.

[A]s Sen. Debbie Stabenow told reporters yesterday afternoon, the same should've applied to the current jobs bill: "15 million people unemployed," she stressed, "is an emergency." Not so, according to Ben Nelson. "I don’t buy that distinction," Nelson said yesterday. "At some point, it ceases to be an emergency. It's ongoing...I think the bill should be paid for."

Republicans have a political reason to keep the economy in the dumps--they want to use it for political gain. They can read polls, they know that unemployment and jobs continues to remain the primary concern of the majority of Americans. And Ben Nelson's boredom is giving them that political advantage.